Americans are hanging onto their smartphones for much longer than they did a decade ago, but new releases like Apple’s iPhone 17 can entice consumers to upgrade. Businesses tend to hang onto their devices even longer than individual consumers, especially overseas. While it may seem to be a smart money move, it can result in a costly productivity and innovation lag for the economy.

If the operational loop describes an agent's physiology, the reference architecture describes its anatomy. Across research labs and enterprise engineering teams, a standard structural pattern has emerged. It resembles a traditional microservices stack, but with a probabilistic inference engine at its core. This architecture is designed to solve a specific engineering paradox: how to host a non-deterministic model inside a deterministic business application.

The European Commission is changing how cookie prompts work in Europe. You’ll soon be able to use browser preferences instead of per-site pop-ups.

India’s telecom market behaves like a digital continent. It carries volumes that rival entire regions, yet it runs on the lowest revenue per user among major economies. Two operators deliver world-class network performance at a national scale, one operator remains structurally distressed, and a state player anchors policy goals. This mix of extreme usage, thin margins, and relentless investment pressure creates a system that is both remarkable and unstable.

Every week, I collect private confessions from telco CXOs. This time, I pulled together fifteen short stories. Small moments that expose the truths our industry keeps quiet. Real voices. Real pressure. Real mistakes. Real opportunities. A clearer picture of telco emerges one confession at a time. A collection of honest reflections from the people who actually run networks and see the industry from the inside every day. 

The reason these collisions keep appearing is that WiFi and cellular no longer occupy separate roles. They chase the same physics, the same mid-band capacity, the same enterprise environments, and the same edge compute opportunities. The Brussels decision is only the most recent signal that the two stacks are converging on the same territory, and every time that happens, the tension becomes visible.

The layoff wave that started in the technology sector in 2021 reset the rules of corporate finance.More than 500,000 technology workers were cut between 2021 and 2025. In 2023 alone, companies announced 264,220 job reductions. This happened inside firms with operating margins above 25% and cash balances in the tens of billions.Investors rewarded the cuts because they protected earnings and released capital for artificial intelligence programs that require extreme spending on compute, data centers, and model development. Meta declared a Year of Efficiency in 2023, removed 11,000 roles, and the stock jumped more than 19% in a single session. That reaction created a new norm. A layoff became a signal of discipline rather than distress.

I’ve spent the last year drinking from the AI firehose, part doctoral research, part field therapy. Between telco boardrooms and academic labs, I keep hearing the same wild claims about.“AI transforming everything.”To separate physics from PowerPoint, I asked two of my research partners to join me for an experiment: let’s run the industry’s favorite AI myths through a Bullcrap Meter.

Several companies are building brain implants to allow people to communicate with computers directly through their minds, benefitting those who are paralyzed, blind or otherwise have limited use of their limbs or sensory organs. In the long term, some entrepreneurs and investors think that brain implants will become everyday consumer technology, like cellphones. No such devices are approved by government regulators for long-term medical or recreational use.

Dans cette bataille, les trois géants européens se retrouvent tiraillés entre la volonté politique de l’UE et la réalité économique de leur premier marché. Visiblement, ils n’ont pas d’autre choix que d’accepter les quatre conditions imposées par Nexperia Chine.

Mercor aurait recruté près de 150 consultants afin de bâtir une intelligence artificielle capable de les assister au quotidien, selon Bloomberg. Le secteur s'interroge de plus en plus sur l'arrivée en force de cette nouvelle technologie.

Les startups misent sur une croissance rapide plutôt que sur une rentabilité immédiate. Mais entre ambitions démesurées et réalité du terrain, l’art du business plan consiste à bâtir des hypothèses solides sans céder aux mirages des tableurs. Un plan crédible doit articuler une vision, des données dûment étayées et une capacité d’adaptation face aux aléas. La crédibilité d’une équipe tient moins à la précision de ses prévisions qu’à sa lucidité et à sa faculté à s’adapter pour garder le cap lorsque les promesses se confrontent au réel.

Telco used to be the most exciting place on Earth. We were the people who made the impossible happen. We connected continents, carried the first digital signals, and built mobile networks that turned communication into a human right. We were the engineers who bent physics to our will. Then something happened. We turned into administrators of connectivity. The industry that invented the digital age now spends more time in regulatory filings than in labs.

When Nvidia takes a billion-dollar stake in an old-guard telecom vendor, it’s not a financial gesture but a signal. A signal that the AI arms race is moving from datacenters into the network fabric itself. On October 28, 2025, Nokia announced that Nvidia will invest $1 billion in newly issued shares, acquiring roughly 166 million shares, or about 3.5% of the company, and forming a deep strategic alliance to co-develop 6G and AI-native networking technologies. Nokia’s stock jumped 18 % within hours.

Most telcos still haven’t come to terms with what AI truly means for their future. This is a 2007 iPhone moment on steroids, not another radio upgrade, not a “TechCo” rebrand, and certainly not a digital transformation checklist. AI is changing the very physics of how humans, and now machines, connect and interact across the digital and physical world.

Before 2007, Telcos knew precisely who they were.They built networks. They connected nations. They carried the weight of communication with pride. Telcos were infrastructure institutions: disciplined, engineered, predictable. Then, in 2007, everything changed. The iPhone turned connectivity into an afterthought. The network disappeared behind the screen, and the center of gravity shifted from infrastructure to experience. For the first time, the telco wasn’t the main act; it was the invisible stagehand behind the digital revolution.

This week, the confession comes from the other side of the table. From the people who have built our systems, sat through our meetings, and quietly watched the same story repeat across continents: the vendors.They have seen how decisions are made, how timelines are invented, and how politics replaces logic. They know when a project will fail before the first contract is signed. They understand that most telcos no longer innovate; they negotiate. Procurement has replaced product. Compliance has replaced creativity.

Les annonces de Pékin sont lourdes de conséquence pour les chaînes d’approvisionnement déjà fragilisées : désormais, n’importe quel produit, composant, ou technologie incorporant des terres rares ou savoir-faire chinois, devra obtenir une licence de Pékin pour être exporté, y compris si le produit se trouve déjà hors de Chine et si l’expédition se fait entre deux pays tiers.

Telco CEOs have changed as much as the networks they run. Two decades ago, most were engineers obsessed with coverage maps; today, they’re diplomats managing politics, investors, and cloud partners.

In 2008, Europe’s telcos were the most valuable companies in technology. Today, their worth has fallen by more than 80%. We spoke to insiders to understand how the empire collapsed.