Category Archives: The Industry

For the Holiday

For the holiday, I’m republishing my most popular blog that talks about critters and broadband networks. Enjoy your weekend and stay cool!

Most people don’t realize the damage done every year to fiber and other wired networks by animals.

Squirrels. These cute rodents are the number one culprit for animal damage to aerial fiber. To a lesser degree, fiber owners report similar damage by rats and mice. Squirrels mainly chew on cables as a way to sharpen their teeth. Squirrel teeth grow up to 8 inches per year, and if squirrels aren’t wearing their teeth down from their diet, they look for other things to chew. There has been speculation that squirrels prefer fiber to other cables due to some oil or compound used in the fiber manufacturing process that attracts them.

Level 3, before it was part of CenturyLink, reported that 17% of aerial fiber outages were caused by squirrels. A Google search turns up numerous outages caused by squirrels.

Companies use a wide variety of techniques to try to protect from squirrel damage – but anybody that has ever put out a bird feeder knows how persistent they can be. One deterrent is to use hardened cables that are a challenge for squirrels to chew through. However, there have been cases reported where squirrels partially chew through such cables, which still lets in water and can cause future damage.

A more common solution is adding a barrier to keep squirrels away from the cable. There are barrier devices that can be mounted on the pole to block squirrels from moving higher. There are also barriers that are mounted where cables meet a pole to keep the squirrels away from the fiber. There are companies that have tried more exotic solutions, like deploying ultrasonic blasters to drive squirrels away from fiber. In other countries, the fiber providers sometimes deploy poisonous or obnoxious chemicals to keep squirrels away from the fiber. These techniques are frowned upon or illegal in the US.

Gophers. Buried fiber also has a gnawing pest in the pocket gopher. There are thirteen species of pocket gophers that range from 5 to 13 inches in length. The two parts of the country with the most pocket gophers are the Midwest plains and the Southwest. Gophers live on plants and either eat roots or pull plants down through the soil.

Pocket gophers can cause considerable damage to fiber. These rodents will chew almost anything, and there have been reported outages from gophers that chewed through buried gas, water, and electric lines. Gophers typically dig between 6 and 12 inches below the surface and are a particular threat to buried drops.

There are several ways to protect against gophers. The best protection is to bury fiber deep enough to be out of gopher range, but that can add a lot of cost to buried drops. I have a few clients that bore drops rather than trench or vibrate them for this reason. Another protection is to enclose the fiber in a sheathe that is over 3 inches in diameter. A tube of that size is too big for the gophers to bite. Again, this is an expensive solution for buried drops. Another solution is to surround the buried fiber with 6 – 8 inches of gravel of at least 1-inch size – anything smaller gets pushed to the side by gophers.

There are examples of even more exotic animal damage to fiber. Large birds of prey have sharp talons that can create small cuts in the sheathe and allow in water. Flocks of birds repeatedly sitting on a fiber can cause sag and stretching of the fiber. I can remember living in Florida and seeing end-to-end birds sitting on wires – that has to add a lot of weight to a 200-foot fiber between poles. Over the last year I’ve seen several reports of sharks chewing on undersea fibers.

Finally, although not directly animal related, a common cause of rural fiber cuts happens when farmers hit fiber with a backhoe when burying dead livestock. They typically bury wherever an animal died, including in the buried fiber right-of-way.

No Break in Global Chip Shortages

It looks like the chip shortage is going to last longer than expected. At the beginning of this year, it looked like the chip shortage might be over by early to mid-2027. That no longer seems to be the expectation.

As a reminder of the issue, the chip shortage has come about due to chip manufacturers migrating to produce the more profitable chips used by AI data centers. Recent predictions are that 70% of all memory chips manufactured worldwide will go to data centers for the rest of 2026 into 2027. To put that number into perspective, the first public AI model was introduced to the world in November 2022, and the demand for AI chips has grown since then. At that time, about 32% of chips went to the more traditional data centers used for cloud computing.

Electronics of all types rely on chips known as DRAM (Dynamic Random-Access Memory). A DRAM is comprised of a large number of tiny cells that contain one capacitor and one resistor. The simplicity of the structure makes it relatively easy to affordably manufacture chips in volume. The function of DRAM is to temporarily hold data in storage as the computer uses it, and to dynamically cycle in new data as needed during processing.

Broadband devices like Wi-Fi routers, cable modems, and the core electronics used for fiber and wireless networks use a type of DRAM called DDR4. A few other industries, like automotive and consumer electronics, also rely on DDR4 chips. DDR4 chips have less capacity and are cheaper to make than DDR5 chips used for computers and cellphones. By contrast, AI datacenters use HBM (high-bandwidth memory) chips. These are comprised of a three-dimensional stack of DRAM chips. HBM chips are larger and require more wafer space than normal DRAM, and the manufacturing process is more challenging. At least currently, there is a lot more profit in manufacturing the HBM chips.

Three companies have historically manufactured over 90% of all DRAM chips – SK Hynix Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., and Micron Technology, Inc. All three companies have shifted a lot of manufacturing capacity to the HBM chips for AI. Micron fully halted the manufacture of DRAM for personal computers. SK Hynix converted its primary DRAM production line to AI chips in late 2024. DRAM wholesalers are alarmed that the average worldwide DRAM inventory in the supply chain has fallen from a normal 17-week supply in 2024 to a 2-4 week supply currently. All three companies have already pre-sold all of their DRAM capacity for the rest of 2026 and well into 2027.

Unfortunately, there is no short-term relief on the way. Micron is building a new mega-factory in Onondaga, New York, to manufacture DRAM that won’t benefit the supply chain until sometime in 2028. The company is expanding a factory in Taiwan that won’t produce new chips until at least the end of 2027. SK Hynix is investing $13 billion in a new factory in Cheongiu, South Korea, that will be completed at the end of 2027. Samsung is building as new factory in Gyeonngi Province in South Korea that won’t be completed until sometime in 2028.

It doesn’t seem realistic that any other companies will step in to fill the market void because of the complexity and intense quality control needed to make DRAM chips. This means a growing shortage of chips for telecom and other industries for the next two years. A few auto factories have already reduced the number of cars being built due to a lack of chips. For telecom, this is going to result in higher prices and longer waits to get electronics. This also means that ISPs at the bottom of the supply chain, those without the buying power of AT&T or Charter, will see the biggest impacts. Also note that ISPs are going to lose broadband customers who can’t afford to replace a dying computer. As always happens with a big price increase, I can’t imagine that chips will ever return to the old prices. The handful of manufacturers are going to expect higher profits from DRAM than in the past, and due to their monopoly, will be able to charge whatever they want.

Network Challenges from AI Traffic

Cisco recently published a report that looks at the impact of AI traffic on networks. It’s an interesting paper because Cisco found that AI traffic does not operate the same as most other web traffic. While the volume of AI traffic is small today, Cisco predicts that we’ll have to make changes to the web over time to accommodate growing AI traffic volumes. Cisco predicts that by 2035, one fourth of all web traffic will be AI agents and AI models in data centers.

Cisco notes that we’ve spent decades optimizing a web that delivers burst traffic, like video. When a video is viewed from the web, the data stream doesn’t have to be delivered evenly in real time. Instead, all that is needed is for the transmission of the video to reach the viewer before they are ready to watch it. Anybody who has watched a video can see that the streamed video is always working to to stay ahead of what you are watching.

AI traffic is very different. Cisco uses the term AI inference traffic to mean the real-time transfer of AI traffic between the AI models operating in data centers and users. AI inference traffic is delivered at what Cisco calls software speed, meaning the receiving end is ready to digest and use the data as it is delivered, quite different than streamed video that is only trying to stay ahead of a viewer.

The difference between AI traffic and normal web traffic is significant. The typical burst of AI traffic lasts twice as a typical burst of video data. While individual bursts of video data are smaller, the flow rate for video, which means the actual delivery time, lasts ten times longer than AI traffic, since video bursts are spread over time in multiple small bursts.

AI traffic is also two-way and requires a good upstream connection. In fact, Cisco found that 9% of AI traffic requires more upstream traffic than downstream traffic. Cisco believes the need for network upload speeds will increase as AI agents mature.

Current network latency is not a bottleneck for AI traffic, but Cisco says latency will become a problem as the volume of AI traffic increases. This will require a major rework of web architecture when latency becomes an issue.

Cisco found that tasks performed by AI generate 450% more traffic than the same task performed in a more traditional way. In Cisco’s vocabulary, AI agents act as power users and use a lot of network resources.

The bottom line is that AI traffic is different from current web traffic and will not only increase traffic volumes on networks, but it will also change the shape, symmetry, and needed priority of traffic.

There have already been discussions of creating a private web to connect between AI data centers. But that would only solve part of the problem, because AI traffic is eventually delivered to users throughout the web. AI traffic is going to create an interesting new set of challenges for network engineers, something that nobody envisioned just a few years ago.

Is There an AI Divide?

I recently attended and spoke at an AI conference. One of the things that became clear to me is that we are probably headed for a new digital divide related to AI. What do I mean by that?

In that short period of time, AI has touched a large majority of computer users. A survey from Pew in September 2025 showed that 95% of adults had heard of AI. At the time of the survey, 47% of people had heard a lot about AI, up from 26% measured in a 2022 survey. That’s bound to be a higher number in the summer of 2026. As you might expect, people with a high awareness of AI tend to be younger and better educated. For example, 62% of adults under 30 had heard a lot about AI, compared to 32% of those 65 and older. 60% of adults with post-graduate degrees had heard a lot about AI, versus 38% of those with a high school diploma or less.

Only about 3% of U.S. households pay for a consumer AI subscription. There is a lot of expectation that AI companies will be forced to greatly increase the costs of monthly access, which will undoubtedly lower the percentage of folks who are comfortable working directly with AI. Most people who use AI today interface through some tool like virtual assistants, GPS navigation apps, streaming algorithms, or weather forecasts. According to a survey from Quinnipiac University from March 2026, 51% of respondents say they use an AI tool, up from 37% a year earlier.

Another Pew poll showed that 46% of Americans hold a negative view of AI, while only 26% view it favorably. 57% believe the risks outweigh the benefits, and 41% actively distrust AI systems.

All of these statistics point to a possible AI-divide, separating those who believe in and use AI, from those who don’t trust AI and refuse to use it. This divide already exists, and the future question that will  have to be answered is if those who distrust AI will eventually be won over. It’s easy to forget that AI has only been available to the public since the end of 2022, which, for a new technology, is still in the infancy stages.

There will be consequences if there is a permanent gap between those who use AI and those who don’t or won’t. If AI brings measurable advantages to those who use it, then, over time, non-users will be at a disadvantage in many ways. There is also the possibility that those who distrust AI will be able to thwart its expansion. There are already numerous communities creating barriers to new data centers.

It’s easy to conclude that using AI is a choice, and that anybody who doesn’t use AI has to live with that decision. But consider a few statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). It reports that 21% of adults are functionally illiterate, meaning they cannot complete basic reading tasks, such as filling out job applications, reading medicine instructions, or helping with children’s homework. 54% of adults have reading skills below a sixth-grade reading level. Less than half of adults demonstrate strong reading comprehension skills.

These statistics are relevant when talking about using and benefitting from AI, which is ultimately a language model. Literacy is far less of an issue when talking about the use of broadband, because it doesn’t require advanced reading skills to watch videos and engage in other forms of online entertainment and social media.

It’s way too early in the life of AI to draw any conclusions about a possible divide, but it’s not hard to foresee a likely divide between those who benefit from AI and those who can’t or won’t. In a decade, this might become the most important digital dividing line, more so than the digital skills divide we talk about today.

Broadband Shorts June 2026

Digital Equity Grant Lawsuit Update. In April, a D.C. federal judge declined to pause litigation over the Administration’s cancellation of the $2.75 billion Digital Equity grants aimed at increasing digital literacy and digital skill training. The suit was filed by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. The Court found that the case covered distinct issues from the related Climate United Fund v. Citibank case and should proceed on its own merits. A month ago, the administration asked the Court to dismiss the case. However, a DOJ attorney told the Court last week that the government would withdraw from the case and let the grants proceed if all preferences for race are removed from the grant rules. This entire suit, from the beginning, has been about the title of the grant program and not about the substance of the program. This should hearten digital inclusion advocates since there is now a chance of seeing the promised grant funded after all. But before celebrating, its worth noting that the White House removed this grant from its proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

Lower Budget for the FCC. Like is happening with many federal agencies, the House Appropriations Subcommittee is recommending a lower budget than requested by the agency for the fiscal year 2027 that starts in October. The agency had requested a budget of $416 million, and Congress reduced that by 6% to $390.2 million. The Congressional appropriations bill also added some conditions to the appropriations:

  • The FCC will be prohibited from updating minimum service standards for fixed or mobile broadband without first evaluating any impact on affordability and consumer choice.
  • The FCC will be prohibited from enforcing the digital discrimination rules passed by the previous FCC.

Update on FCC Router Ban. The FCC expanded its ban on foreign-made WiFi routers to also include “consumer-grade portable or mobile MiFi Wi-Fi or hotspot devices for residential use” and “LTE/5G CPE devices for residential use”. That’s a gigantic issue for the large cellular carriers who have been selling FWA cellular broadband to roughly 1 million new households per quarter. As a reminder, the FCC router ban only applies to any new routers, and carriers and ISPs can continue to import any existing routers they already use today.

But this is quickly going to become a major issue for carriers. The cable industry asked the FCC in the first week of June to swap some components inside existing routers, which would mean these are not identical to routers that were used before the ban. The cable companies warn that without the ability to modify older models that the cable industry faces a huge router shortage in the near future. The Global Electronics Association (GEA) has continued to argue that the FCC’s policy is flawed because security vulnerabilities are not related to where a router was manufactured and is endemic to the technology. Th good news is that the FCC is reviewing, and has approved several new routers.

New Fiber Factories. Corning is partnering with NVIDIA to build three new fiber factories that will increase the company’s capacity by 50%. The factories will be located in North Carolina and Texas. The cited reason for the expansion was the increased demand for fiber for data centers, but this increases fiber availability for all other purposes. NVIDIA is making a $500 million investment in Corning as part of the deal, and the company has an option to buy an additional 15 million Corning shares. This is another example of companies in the AI space investing in each other.

Supreme Court Upholds FCC Fines. The Supreme Court voted 8 to 1 to uphold the FCC’s authority to issue fines against companies that it regulates. The original suit that asked to eliminate the FCC fine authority was brought by AT&T and Verizon, which were trying to avoid fines levied after the two companies sold customer location data. The two carriers had argued that the FCC was improper to fine them since the companies should have been given the option of requesting a jury trial. The two companies said they are considering not paying the fines as another test of FCC authority.

 Spectrum Auction Results. The FCC held the first spectrum auction in four years and auctioned AWS-3 spectrum that is valuable for cellular traffic. The FCC was worried when the spectrum raised only $95 million in the first few days. The One Big Beautiful Bill had ordered the FCC to resume spectrum auctions as a way to raise money to offset tax cuts in the bill. Congress assumed that all upcoming spectrum auctions would raise $85 billion. At the end, the auction raised just over $3.5 billion, which was a big relief to EchoStar. This spectrum was originally won at auction by EchoStar, which was subsequently accused of claiming bidding discounts it didn’t deserve, and the FCC expected EchoStar to make up any shortfall under $3.4 billion. .

AT&T Offers Daily Rates for iPad Users. In a new pricing plan, AT&T is offering a daily rate of $3 to activate broadband on a SIM-enabled iPad. This can be done using the iPad settings and doesn’t require a special app. No contract, subscription, or credit check is required. This is interesting because this is how broadband is sold in much of Africa, where users buy broadband by the day and use those days to tackle all broadband tasks. The $3 rate is not cheap, at $90 per month, but would be a savings for somebody buying usage as few times per week.

Extreme Market Segmentation

Linda Hardesty of Fierce Network recently quoted Verizon’s new CEO Dan Shulman as saying that the company is looking at market segmentation. He said that instead of pricing for a few market segments that Verizon might be considering hundreds of thousands of segments. ‘

Hardesty said this stunned her, because nobody has ever talked seriously about market segmentation to that extent before. What Verizon is thinking about doing is to develop multitudes of products and prices to fit small market niches, or even individuals.

This is not entirely a new idea. A few years ago, the public advocate from the California Public Service Commission conducted a detailed study and looked at broadband rates offered by Charter and other big ISPS across Los Angeles and a few other larger markets. They found that Charter prices varied by neighborhood, and surprisingly, the highest prices were in the poorest neighborhoods. Charter mostly did this through promotional and special rates, but there was a clear delineation of rates by the incomes of neighborhoods.

When Verizon talks about segmenting into hundreds of thousands of segments, they are talking about going far beyond what Charter was doing in California. Verizon is talking about profiling customers and making pricing offers specific to each customer.

You might wonder how they can do this. It’s well known that there are companies like Acxiom, Experian, and Epsilon that have created a detailed profile on families and individuals. These profiles are highly detailed and combine information about earnings and financial status, lifestyle, and buying habits. Verizon can combine this with what they know about every customer to be able to offer them the price or package they think will sell. This doesn’t just mean defining low rates, and ISPs might us the profiling to charge more to people they think will pay it.

It’s likely that any attempt to do this is going to be aided by AI. One of the axioms of the telecom industry over the years has been to keep pricing simple to make life easier for the customer service and billing process. But with AI tied to billing systems and customer service that may no longer be needed.

Shulman is oversimplifying when he says that Verizon will be expanding from four segments today, because the company surely has more than that. They company has offered varying special prices to land new customers and negotiates rates to keep existing customers, and probably has dozens of slightly different rates, if not more. But that’s a far cry from separating the market into hundreds of thousands of market segments.

There can only be two reasons why Verizon would do this. Hardesty suggests it’s to make more money by creating multiple tiers of customers, including a tier for those willing to pay premium rates for concierge service.

But I think there is an alternate possibility, which is to reduce churn. Cellular competition, in particular, has gotten fierce and the three big cellular carriers see about 1% of postpaid customers churn each month and 3-4% of prepaid customers. This high level of churn is what drives the gigantic advertising budget of each carrier, and perhaps tailoring custom plans to match the individual customer preference might increase loyalty, reduce churn, and reduce costs.

If Verizon implements this, I’m sure the rest of the industry will be watching closely. If extreme market segmentation is successful, then AT&T and T-Mobile will have to follow to keep even in the competition game. But if it’s unsuccessful, the other carriers will gleefully watch Verizon struggle. It’s going to be an interesting experiment to watch if the company really goes for it.

Satellite News June 2026

FCC Approves AST SpaceMobile Constellation. The FCC approved an application from AST SpaceMobile to launch an additional 248 low-orbit satellites to deliver mobile service using 700 MHz and 800 MHz spectrum. These is a premium spectrum for this use since it carries further and penetrates clouds and storms better than higher frequencies. A year ago, the FCC gave the company permission to test direct-to-device connectivity using Band 14 spectrum, which is 700 MHz spectrum that had previously been reserved for public safety and first responder emergency use.

AT&T is Looking for Multiple Partners for D2D. AT&T Chairman and CEO John Stankey said recently that the company is looking at additional partners other than its current partnership with AST SpaceMobile for offering direct-to-device cellular services. He noted that SpaceX should have better capacity after it purchased spectrum from EchoStar. He also noted that Amazon will be a player when it completes the acquisition of Globalstar in 2027. Stankey noted that he is not interested in helping the D2D satellite companies disrupt the terrestrial satellite business, and that he believes that D2D is an alternate service that makes the most sense where cell networks don’t reach.

UK Launches D2D Service. The UK became the first country in Europe where a cellular company is offering D2D service for smartphones that is integrated into normal cellular service without the need for a special phone or a separate app. Virgin Media O2 uses the Starlink constellation and licensed 1800 MHz spectrum to offer an add-on service. Virgin customers can add satellite cellular service for £3 per month or can get the service for free with premium cellular packages. The initial service offers messaging and data, and works automatically in areas where Virgin doesn’t have good cell coverage.

This action in the UK is prompting the European Union to accelerate its effort to finalize spectrum for D2D service. The EU’s current spectrum plans include using 2 GHz spectrum, which is prized by LEO satellite companies, but Starlink and Amazon Leo are worried about current EU plans to allocate most of this spectrum to European satellite companies.

SpaceX IPO. In preparation for the SpaceX IPO on Nasdaq, the company announced that it had $13 billion in losses since the beginning of 2023. In 2025, the company had almost $18.7 billion in revenue but had an overall loss of $4.9 billion. The recent losses were driven by xAI, the company’s artificial intelligence venture that was founded in 2023.

The SpaceX IPO (SPCX) sold 556 million shares at a price of $135 on June 12. On the day when trading opened, the price started at $150 per share and closed at $160.95 at the end of the first trading session. The stock climbed to as much as $216 per share before ending around $190 per share yesterday.

Blue Origin Disaster. Amazon’s space ventures suffered a setback when the heavy-duty New Glenn rocket exploded on the launch pad in late May at the Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This will likely slow the launch of Amazon Leo, as this rocket was scheduled to carry 48 satellites into space. This also probably delays the company’s planned moon mission. The FCC had recently granted Amazon a requested delay in meeting the dates for activating the broadband satellite constellation.

100 Million Starlink Subscribers? New Street Research predicted that Starlink could reach 100 million subscribers by 2034. The prediction is based on the increasing number of satellites in the Starlink constellation and the technical improvements that will be introduced with the next generation of V3 satellites. For Starlink to reach that many subscribers will likely require the company to compete in urban or suburban areas with lower prices.

New Telecom Security Alliance

Eight major communications companies have created a new non-profit, the Communications Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (C2 ISAC), that is going to coordinate cybersecurity issues across the sector. The original founders include AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Lumen, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Zayo.

This effort expands on a long-time public-private cybersecurity efforts between carriers and government agencies through the National Coordinating Center for Communications (ISAC). The existing ISAC effort includes a lot of non-communications companies like Apple, Boeing, Cloudflare, Hughes, Juniper, and Qualcomm.

There are several reasons for the creation of the new entity. The industry and networks are facing threats from hackers like China’s Salt Typhoon, and the severity of cyberattacks is increasing. Hackers are trying to disrupt and shut down networks, are trying to steal customer information, and are trying to steal trade secrets from telecom companies. Nation-state hackers have breached critical infrastructure in healthcare, energy, water, and telecommunications companies. For example, it’s been documented that Salt Typhoon targeted companies like Charter, Consolidated Communications, Windstream, Cisco, and Viasat in 2025.

There is also an increasing sentiment in the cybersecurity world that major cutbacks in the federal government have decreased any reliance on the federal government to police major cybersecurity threats. This means that hospitals, electric utilities, water treatment plants, energy companies, and telecommunication companies are more on their own to tackle security threats for their sectors. There are stories circulating that government officials have stopped attending cybersecurity events, have stopped working with some of the key commercial players, and have put coordination efforts on hold. I’ve seen articles that describe the current cybersecurity situation between the government and private companies as being in suspended animation.

Even before this latest distancing from government, there were issues in the larger ISAC effort, which included fourteen government agencies like the FCC, NTIA, the Department of Defense, the FBI, and others.  Many telecom companies have been leery for years about sharing sensitive data with government agencies. The hope is that a new group composed of only telecom companies will make it easier for members to be candid with each other.

One of the reasons I wrote the blog is to recognize that the cybersecurity efforts by the largest companies in the sector tend to help everybody else. These are the companies that push hardware and software vendors to stay current with cybersecurity measures that benefit everybody else.

Remembering Our Microwave Past

Somebody sent me a link to an interesting article posted on 99% Invisible, a website associated with a podcast that looks at “the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world” The article covers a book called The Long Lines that documents the abandoned infrastructure of the national microwave network built by AT&T that predated the eventual long-haul fiber networks that now connects us.

The AT&T microwave network was built in the 1950s. The first long-haul microwave route put into service was between New York and Chicago, and went live on September 1, 1950. Over the next few years, microwave routes were established across the country.

The networks were enabled by the high-powered klystrons developed during World War II, plus new microwave technologies that allowed for the simultaneous transmission of multiple channels of data. A klyston is a vacuum tube that amplifies a signal from a low-power level to a higher one. The klystron system enabled the creation of microwave links with enough power to carry not only voice calls, but television signals. The technology was developed at Bell Labs, and the microwave radios were manufactured by Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T.

The AT&T microwave network enabled the first nationwide broadcasts of television shows and news events. The first television event sent was a speech by President Harry Truman from the San Francisco Peace Conference in September 1951, which was then broadcast by the early television stations in major cities across the country. The first regular TV show that used the microwave network was Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now, broadcast in November 1951.

The AT&T microwave network led to some of the early success of television networks since it allowed for content that people had never seen before, like live Saturday football games from across the country. From the 1950s through the 1970s, practically all national programming was transmitted through the microwave network.

The microwave network wasn’t the only transmission network used by AT&T. The company had built coast-to-coast copper networks, and Alexander Bell made the first transcontinental phone call from New York City to San Francisco on January 25, 1915. This network was eventually enhanced with long-line coaxial networks, but those networks didn’t have the capacity to support television signals.

The microwave network consisted of towers built between thirty and forty miles apart, which accommodated the need for a line-of-sight connection. Interestingly, the core network electronics nodes of the network were built to supposedly withstand a nuclear explosion, since the microwave network also carried military traffic. These core locations included underground bunkers for electronics, staff, and backup power generators.

Anyone of a certain age remembers these towers, which either disappeared or were repurposed for cellular. Each tower had multiple giant horn antennas used to transmit and receive data. I remember in the 1970s that it was always easy to spot the AT&T building as you drove into a city because of the giant antennas on top, like the picture at the top of the blog of the antennas of the AT&T building in Minneapolis.

AT&T isn’t the only company that used a microwave network. MCI got its start as a competitor to AT&T by carrying telephone calls using its own microwave network that was often built along railroad rights-of-way. That network supported the early competition that eventually resulted in a competitive telecom industry.

The microwave towers were eventually replaced by the now-familiar fiber routes that were built starting in the late 1970s, and the greater capacity of fiber quickly made the microwave network obsolete.

AT&T – No Rush for 6G?

Jenifer Robertson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Mass Markets for AT&T, gave a lengthy interview at CTIA’s annual summit in D.C. that led to an article by Rob Pegoraro of Light Reading. The interview covered a range of topics and is worth reading. I was struck by a comment at the end of the article where Robertson said,  “I don’t have any data that tells me consumers are chomping at the bit for 6G.”

Part of that reason is that the AT&T 5G network is performing well. A big part of that performance came earlier this year when the company integrated the midband spectrum purchased from EchoStar. I’m an AT&T subscriber, and I saw my 5G cellular speeds more than double after that upgrade.

AT&T also moved further along the path towards fully implementing 5G. The company announced it deployed its first 5G standalone in October 2025. That includes launching new features that the company is labeling as 5G Advanced, which includes network slicing and other features that were part of the original 5G specification.

It’s not unusual that AT&T is still implementing 5G features in 2026. The cellular industry has implemented a new G generation of cellular technology every decade, starting with the introduction of 1G in 1979. It’s always taken much of each new decade to fully implement the newest generation of technology. You might remember that ten years ago, the big carriers were still implementing some of the specification features of 4G.

Robertson’s comment on 6G is a big shift from the way that the big carriers talked about 5G a decade ago. The hype for upgrading to 5G started in 2016, and folks probably remember that you couldn’t read an industry publication or go to a tradeshow without being bombarded about the upcoming miracles that were going to be unleased with 5G. We’re not seeing that same kind of excitement for 6G, and I would bet that the average cellular customer hasn’t even heard of 6G.

I also remember the market reaction when 5G was introduced in 2019. The first introduction of 5G only included a small piece of the new 5G specification, and the major real-world difference from 4G was that carriers put 5G connections on a different set of spectrum. Early adopters praised 5G, mostly because they were connecting on empty networks, but within a year, that advantage disappeared as the 5G spectrum got flooded with users.

There is a lot to brag about with 5G performance. Speeds increased dramatically over 4G, and in most urban markets, 5G speeds are at 200-300 Mbps download, or faster. There is one big downside to 5G in rural areas, in that the higher spectrum for 5G doesn’t carry as far, and so cellular network coverage in rural areas is shrinking. This will be dramatically noticeable when the carriers eventually decommission 4G.

By the time 5G was released to the public, every tech head wanted the new technology. This led to a huge surge in handset sales. There is no doubt that the equipment and handset vendors will want a big push for 6G. But there aren’t many advantages of 6G that will excite consumers. Most of the advantages of 6G benefit the carriers more than the public. Consider the following touted benefits. 6G will:

  • Enable immersive communication and human-machine interactions. That would enable eXtended Reality (XR), remote multi-sensory telepresence, holographic communications, haptic sensors and actuators, and multi-sensory interfaces.
  • Allow the connection of massive numbers of devices at a cell site. This will supposedly unleash more smart city applications, smart cars, environmental monitoring, and agricultural sensors.
  • Ease connections to smart machines for the remote operation of robots, autonomous factories, and the creation of digital twins for factories, health care, and other complex use cases.
  • Have peak theoretical data rates between 50 and 100 Gbps.
  • Target air interface latency between 0.1 ms and 1 ms.
  • Will introduce AI-related features to support distributed data processing, distributed learning, AI computing, AI model execution, and AI model inference.

Almost none of these new benefits will excite the average cellular customer. These upgrades mostly open up new markets for the carriers. The big carriers saw similar claims for 5G fizzle in the market. Folks aren’t interested in buying separate cellular subscriptions for smart devices, and the battle for connecting multiple devices has largely been won by WiFi. Faster speeds will benefit FWA home cellular, but will not be seen as an important benefit for cellphone users.

It’s going to be interesting to see if AT&T and the other big carriers stay lukewarm about paying for the upgrades to 6G. That would break the cycle of a new generation of cellular technology every ten years and would put equipment and handset vendors into a tailspin.