Telecommunications Infrastructure

Tehran – October 29, 2026 -- Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar have no subsea route to the outside world that avoids the Strait of Hormuz, after an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spokesman said on October 19 that seven major internet cables run beneath the waterway and that new targets and weapons would be unveiled.

Spokesman Hossein Mohebbi told a ceremony in Tehran that the response this time would be much harsher. Earlier in October, Supreme National Security Council secretary Mohsen Rezaei said Iran could strike U.S.-linked cables, data centers and AI facilities in a new war. In May, the IRGC said every cable crossing the strait could be placed under Iranian permits.

Global – October 29, 2026 -- Some 88% of 350 telecom decision-makers surveyed plan to increase spending on satellite technologies over the next five years, according to research commissioned by ST Engineering iDirect, which is promoting hybrid architectures as the fastest route to 5G non-terrestrial network (NTN) deployment.

Survey of 350 executives across seven markets shows broad satcom backing

The global survey covered mobile network operators, infrastructure providers and cloud service companies. Some 95% called satcom essential or important to seamless global connectivity, and 93% expect satellite to play a bigger role in their business.

Expanding coverage ranks high on the agenda: 22% named 5G expansion as their biggest technology focus for the next 12 months, and 19% already see 5G NTN as a future growth opportunity.

Global – October 29, 2026 -- Ninety-three percent of 350 senior telecom decision-makers surveyed globally by ST Engineering iDirect expect satellite to play a bigger role in their networks, and 88% plan to increase investment over the next five years.

Around 94% already classify satellite as essential or important to network strategy, and 85% highlight the importance of partnerships with satellite providers, according to the research cited by Shravan K Gaddam, VP Engineering in the company's CTO Office.

Operators want satellite to run inside the existing 5G core

Gaddam argues that operators do not want another network. They want 5G non-terrestrial networks (NTN) to reuse 5G core functions such as authentication, billing and policy control, and to deliver consistent service whether connectivity is terrestrial or satellite. Siloed systems with different operational models do not scale as networks grow more complex, he says.

ABU DHABI – October 28, 2026 -- etisalat's consolidated net profit for the first nine months of 2026 rose 45.9% year-over-year to AED 17.2 billion, boosted by the completed sale of its entire Vodafone Group stake. Q3 net profit alone reached AED 11.2 billion.

Vodafone exit delivers AED 21.9 billion in consideration

The Vodafone divestment generated total consideration of AED 21.9 billion, including the final dividend, and a gain of approximately AED 8.0 billion. etisalat said the transaction adds financial flexibility.

Stripping out the gain, Q3 net profit was AED 3.2 billion with earnings per share of AED 0.37. Adjusted nine-month net profit was AED 9.2 billion, with EPS of AED 1.06.

Q3 revenue grows 6.9% to AED 19.5 billion

Consolidated revenue for the third quarter rose 6.9% year-over-year to AED 19.5 billion. Nine-month revenue reached AED 57.6 billion, up 10.0%.

Global – October 28, 2026 -- ST Engineering iDirect SVP Brian Jakins argues that sovereignty, multi-orbit resilience and open ecosystems, not satellite count, will decide who leads satellite communications in the next decade.

More than 120 mobile operators now partner with satellite players, yet customers still struggle to get capacity

Jakins says customers in Asia, LATAM and the Middle East keep asking why capacity is so hard to obtain when GEO, MEO and LEO supply is greater than ever. He cites mega-constellation launches, Europe's IRIS2 moving into production and Amazon Leo scaling up. By his account, customers want less complexity, not more connectivity.

Dusseldorf – October 28, 2026 -- Deutsche Glasfaser scored 963 of 1,000 possible points in the 2026 fixed-network test by telecom magazine connect, the highest total of any national or regional provider tested in Germany.

Fourth regional title since 2022 for Deutsche Glasfaser

The result is the company's fourth regional win in the connect test, after 2022, 2024 and 2025. Deutsche Glasfaser says its rating improved on the prior year based on the base points awarded.

The network scored strongly in coverage and upload data rate. Reliability received the top grade of "outstanding" ("überragend"), the third time the company has earned that rating.

Global – October 28, 2026 -- Telit Cinterion is promoting eSIM Protect, a service built on independent eSIM profiles linked to separate core networks and partner ecosystems, as a remedy for single points of failure in mission-critical IoT deployments.

Single-operator connectivity fails outside home markets

A deployment that depends on one mobile network operator (MNO) can lose connectivity during a core network outage, and devices may stay offline until the operator recovers. A commercial dispute can also disrupt service if terms change or access is restricted. Carriers in markets with national roaming restrictions may be unable to support redundancy beyond their own networks.

GLOBAL – October 27, 2026 -- Foresight, a network operations platform, lets satellite operators add AI-driven management without replacing the infrastructure they have already invested in, according to a recent Via Satellite webinar.

Fragmented tools slow troubleshooting across multi-orbit networks

Multi-orbit environments, rising service expectations and expanding infrastructure have made traditional network operations harder to scale. Many operators still work across fragmented tools, disconnected data sources and siloed management systems. The result is slower troubleshooting and harder optimization.

Global – October 27, 2026 -- ST Engineering iDirect expects its new Foresight AI platform to cut network operations center (NOC) workload by up to 60% and shrink mean time to repair from hours to minutes, according to the company's input to the World Teleport Association (WTA) report "The AI-Driven Teleport."

Foresight KPI gains are projections, not measured results

Shanthakumar Ramakrishnan, Sr. Director of Engineering, said the figures draw on industry benchmarks, operational analysis and Foresight's developing capabilities. The company has run AI proofs-of-concept in network operations, service assurance and service orchestration. It reports the most measurable value in predictive maintenance, anomaly detection and closed-loop automation.

HANOI – October 27, 2026 -- Viettel High Technology Industries Corporation has migrated more than 100 million subscribers and about 5,000 tariff plans at Viettel, Vietnam's largest mobile operator, to its in-house cloud-native charging system vOCS 4.0. The three-month cutover ran on a live national network with no service disruption.

Phased cutover with instant rollback limits the risk of replacing a charging system

Replacing a charging system is one of the riskiest projects an operator can undertake, and many operators therefore stay on legacy platforms. Viettel High Tech, part of Viettel Group, reduced the risk through real-time data synchronization, parallel running and a phased cutover, with instant rollback at every stage.