Jason's Industry Insights - Issue #39

Weekly Telecom, Space Communication, and AI Market Intelligence

Author

Jason Presement
October 04, 2024

You won’t find a better source for Market Intelligence about Telecom, Space Communications and AI, all in one place, for free, anywhere!

🌎 What’s Happening on Earth

🪐 What’s Happening in Space

🤖 Enabling AI

💡 Learn About…

🍳 This and That!

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In this Issue

What’s Happening On Earth?

🔗 Majority of BEAD money may not hit until 2026

The program has a $42.5 billion fund, but the rollout has been slow, with most states still waiting for approval of their proposals before they can access these funds. Only a few states, like Louisiana, have received full approval to begin using the allocated funds, and significant broadband deployments aren’t expected to kick off until 2025 at the earliest. This delay has frustrated many in the communications industry, which is counting on BEAD funding to drive broadband expansion and revenues.

My Take: Extended grant process times, LEO discussions, and challenges.. I know many have high hopes for BEAD to drive revenue into early 2025. Any funded program is unpredictable.

Through its Broadband Fund, the CRTC is committing over $8 million to Westman Communications Group to build approximately 310 kilometres of transport fibre infrastructure. The projects will improve access to reliable and high-quality Internet service.

My Take: Good that they’re still awarding money for transport projects. No transport, no access!

The telecommunications industry of 2025 and beyond will be characterized by rapid change and intense competition. Operators are unable to invest in next-generation technologies due to the high debt risk of being marginalized or forced out of the market entirely. The winners in this new landscape will be those who can adapt through innovation, strategic investment, and a customer-centric approach. For struggling operators, the path forward may involve exploring M&A opportunities, investing in strategic partnerships, diversifying revenue streams, and optimizing operations through automation and AI. 

My Take: Find your niche, as they say. There will be market consolidation at some point, so the competitors will change. Those who innovate will win, of course.

Edge computing and its multi-access edge compute (MEC) sub-component could finally be ready to hit center stage, fulfilling long-held promise for a technology and service platform set to benefit telecom service providers and hyperscalers.

My Take: Reduced latency. Increased privacy. Both are required to support AI and automation, both of which need to be part of any conversation, or no one will listen to you. Everything will have to be positioned closer to the customer to support the real-time requirement.

Telecom vendors are facing tough times due to shrinking capital expenditure (capex) budgets, which fell by 10% in early 2024. Spending on network equipment dropped 17%, with no quick recovery expected. This decline is linked to inventory stockpiles, slowing network rollouts, and financial uncertainties in key markets like China, India, and the US. Major vendors like Huawei, Nokia, and Ericsson are seeing reduced orders, further compounded by struggles to monetize new technologies like 5G.

My Take: Funding always drives CAPEX, and networks are being built with the capacity to support the growth. It’s like building a library and putting up shelving to support 10,000 books when you only need space for 5,000 today. No need to buy new shelving any time soon, and you want to automate the the process of running the library to keep it viable - drive out cost. Maybe find other ways to monetize that shelving that you already have.

Nokia today announced significant enhancements to its Corteca software suite, making it the industry’s first platform to adopt open standards and protocols for both home networking and application lifecycle management. The Corteca Home Controller now supports prpl LCM, the Open Container Initiative (OCI), and the TR-369 User Services Platform (USP) protocol, giving operators a vendor-agnostic solution that simplifies the management of in-home broadband gateways, Wi-Fi connectivity, and applications.

My Take: The lifecycle management piece is important. You can’t keep loading up apps and hoping they’ll just work. Memory and processing are finite. Apps affect throughput. Orchestration and management of s/w in uCPE type models are critical in an open environment for effective service delivery and platform management. There’s a similarity to the ETSI MANO architecture, which focuses on NFV in the network as opposed to a CPE-focused initiative.

See “Learn About” below for a discussion about OCI

"We have a cold weather climate, so it's easy to keep these things cool. We have an abundance of energy that we can develop very cheaply and very quickly in a very friendly business environment — and we can do this faster than anywhere else," he said.

My Take: Nuclear. Natural Gas. What other option are there?

🔗 New CIRA data finds cyber crime is driving customers away from impacted Canadian businesses

The article discusses new data from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), revealing that cybercrime is causing significant harm to Canadian businesses, driving customers away from companies affected by data breaches. The report highlights that customer trust is increasingly fragile when businesses fail to protect sensitive information, leading to reputational damage and lost revenue. The findings emphasize the importance of cybersecurity measures for businesses to retain consumer confidence in the digital landscape.

My Take: Well, it’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when for companies to suffer some breach. I guess no one will be dealing with anyone at some point. Consumers need to be more proactive about how they share data, being notified about possible issues and reacting accordingly.

The article discusses six major barriers that are preventing the scaling of private 5G networks in Industry 4.0. These include the availability of spectrum, the slow development of compatible 5G devices, challenges in proving financial value, complexities in IT and OT systems integration, cybersecurity concerns, and a lack of necessary skills in the workforce. These hurdles are delaying widespread adoption, even as industries recognize the potential of private 5G for enhancing efficiency and productivity.

My Take: I think it’s more about the devices. Spectrum is there, especially in Canada. It’s about devices designed to speak “5G”.

What’s Happening In Space?

What’s in Space This Week?

Elon Musk is escalating his attacks on the FCC with claims the US regulator put lives in danger by refusing to award $886 million in funding to SpaceX’s Starlink. 

SpaceX and the US government have been shipping hundreds of Starlink dishes to help restore internet access in areas hit by Hurricane Helene. On Tuesday, SpaceX began offering residents living in the hurricane-ravaged regions one month of free access to the satellite internet service.

My Take: Partisan politics at play. IMHO, the data was trending in SpaceX’s favour, but they were cut. The irony is that it’s exactly what’s needed and being deployed to keep displaced people connected.

Seven companies – including Vodafone, Liberty Global, Orange, PPF Telecom, Telefonica, Telenor and United Group – have told the FCC they’ll sue if the Commission loosens its rules for SpaceX’s cellular Starlink.

My Take: Everyone is taking on the 800lb gorilla. Read the article for more context on this. In a nutshell, it’s all about interference.

Starlink has introduced a new $100 “congestion charge” for users in areas with network overloads, reflecting the growing challenges it faces with bandwidth management. As more users sign up for Starlink’s satellite internet service, performance has suffered in heavily populated regions. This new fee applies to new customers or those activating a service in congested areas. While Starlink claims that refunds might be given to users in regions with excess satellite capacity, the company’s track record with customer service raises doubts about how consistently these will be issued.

My Take: Seems like usage-based billing of days gone by, except it’s a flat fee. Not sure how it will make a service different in the end.

Industrial communication is growing, and flat-panel satellite antennas and private 5G networks are among the leading technological enablers. These compact, low-profile antennas reshape how businesses connect, especially when traditional methods fail. Whether a fleet of trucks needs internet access on the highway or an emergency response team sets up a temporary command center in a remote area, flat-panel antennas deliver.

My Take: This is a great educational and reference piece that breaks down flat panel applications, vendors and futures. There’s a full table of contents around the information.


The U.S. is preparing to enhance its GPS capabilities by exploring the use of geostationary orbit (GEO) for next-generation navigation systems. The Air Force’s NTS-3 satellite, which has faced launch delays, is designed to test advanced positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies. This mission will assess how well PNT signals perform from GEO, potentially improving GPS coverage in areas with interference or weak signals. The success of NTS-3 could pave the way for a multi-orbit GPS system, integrating GEO, LEO, and MEO satellites to boost accuracy and resilience.

My Take: PNT is critical for military and defence applications.

Iridium has unveiled NTN Direct, a new service developed under its Project Stardust initiative. This offering will be the world’s first 5G Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) service, based on the 3GPP standards. By using Iridium’s existing low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation, NTN Direct will provide global, low-latency connectivity, making it particularly useful for IoT devices and direct-to-device communication like smartphones and tablets. This new standards-based approach offers reliability and extensive coverage, targeting industries like emergency services, remote monitoring, and mobile network operators.

My Take: I’m getting more interested in the whole IoT side of space-related things. Standards will definitely be the way to go to take advantage of device economics and the existing base.

Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) is rapidly becoming the busiest area in space due to the rise of satellite constellations for communication and Earth observation. Daniel Bock, CEO of Morpheus Space, highlights the growing congestion and the increasing risk of collisions as more satellites are launched. His company provides innovative propulsion solutions to address these challenges, helping satellite operators avoid potential collisions and extend mission lifespans.

My Take: Talked about another propulsion system last week as well. Starlink had to make 25,000 collision-avoidance maneuvers in a 6-month period last year. It’s a big deal and will only get worse as more “stuff” and “junk” appear in every orbit.

Viasat’s satellite network plays a critical role in ensuring safety across various sectors, including maritime, aviation, disaster relief, and defence. By providing real-time connectivity, Viasat enhances operational efficiency and helps prevent accidents in high-risk environments.

My Take: All about resiliency, redundancy, disaster recover, safety and risk mitigation.

This collaboration will enable Kepler to share its space data relay technologies and demonstrate key use cases that can support NASA’s transition to commercially operated communication systems for near-Earth missions. Kepler’s space data relay network offers high-speed, low-latency communications and will provide continuous, real-time service for missions in low-Earth orbit (LEO), with plans to expand to other orbits.

My Take: No sense in reinventing the space relay wheel.

Yahsat and Bayanat have merged to form Space42, an AI-powered space technology company valued at $3 billion. Space42 aims to integrate satellite communications and geospatial services, particularly for applications in autonomous vehicles and other emerging sectors. The new company, backed by the UAE’s Mubadala, plans to leverage AI for optimizing satellite networks and geospatial analytics. Space42 will operate a multi-orbit satellite strategy, starting with five geostationary satellites and upcoming launches to enhance its service offerings.

My Take: See, this is why I focus on telecom, space and AI. It all comes together. May be worth following this one to see where it ends up.

Enabling AI

Today, the Honourable Anita Anand, President of the Treasury Board, launched public consultations on Canada’s first artificial intelligence (AI) strategy for the federal public service. This next phase of the public consultation process will gather insights from Canadians across the country on how artificial intelligence should, or shouldn’t, be used in the federal government.

My Take: Artificial Intelligence. Federal Public Service. <Enter Joke Here>

Yoshua Bengio played a crucial role in the development of the machine-learning systems we see today. Now, he says that they could pose an existential risk to humanity.

My Take: “There was a recent study that showed that ChatGPT-4 is a lot better than humans at persuasion, and that's just ChatGPT-4 — the new version is gonna be worse.”. Won’t need salespeople soon as well. Door-to-door robots, anyone?

A new approach using AI-generated images is transforming how robots learn to perform tasks. By feeding generative AI models vast amounts of visual data, researchers can create simulated environments that teach robots how to interact with objects and execute complex actions. This technique allows robots to learn without the need for large, specific datasets from real-world operations, significantly speeding up their training. This breakthrough is paving the way for more adaptable, efficient robots capable of performing tasks ranging from factory work to more intricate, human-like actions.

My Take: This is what the dock workers on the East Coast of the US are worried about.

Ello, an AI-powered reading companion, has introduced a new feature called “Storytime,” which allows children to create personalized stories by choosing settings, characters, and plots. This interactive experience lets kids select from a wide variety of prompts, resulting in unique stories that enhance creativity while improving reading skills. The platform continues to evaluate children’s speech and reading accuracy, providing guidance and corrections. Designed to make reading fun and educational, Storytime aims to improve literacy through phonics-based strategies and personalized content.

My Take: We may as well get them into prompt engineering early. It looks like an interesting tool for getting kids reading and writing at a younger age.

🔗 PodSnap

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This and That!

Very little is known about the origins of stuttering, but there are several possible explanations.

My Take: I stuttered as a kid. I’m one of the 90% who grew out of it, apparently

This article highlights how a vital part of the global semiconductor industry depends on high-purity quartz sand from Spruce Pine, North Carolina. This specific sand, used to make microchips, is a key component in advanced technology manufacturing. However, Hurricane Helene has taken the supply of sand offline, which will ripple across industries that rely on chips, from smartphones to electric vehicles. The fragility of this resource raises concerns about future disruptions in tech production.

My Take: Funny how fragile things are. The largest known deposit of high-purity quartz is now offline.

A U.S. F-22 fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Canada’s Yukon territory in February 2023, sparking widespread speculation about its origin. Described as a “cylindrical” object with a metallic top and a tethered payload, the UFO was one of several unidentified aerial objects downed over North America around that time. Recent releases from Canadian authorities, including a grainy image of the object, have reignited public curiosity. However, recovery efforts were abandoned due to harsh conditions, leaving the true nature of the object a mystery.

My Take: An F-22 took out a balloon. What did that cost? I guess we’ll never find out what it was. Harsh conditions, and all.

Learn About - The Open Container Initiative (OCI)

The Open Container Initiative (OCI) is a Linux Foundation project established in June 2015 with the goal of creating open industry standards for container formats and runtimes. It was founded by Docker, CoreOS, and other leaders in the container industry to address the need for standardization in the rapidly growing world of containerization.

The OCI's primary objective is to ensure containers remain portable and interoperable across different platforms and runtimes. This standardization is crucial because it allows developers to create container images running consistently across various environments, from development laptops to production cloud servers, regardless of the underlying infrastructure or container runtime.

The OCI currently maintains three key specifications:

  1. Runtime Specification: This defines how to run a "filesystem bundle" that is unpacked on disk. It also outlines the standard for executing and managing containers.

  2. Image Specification: Defines the OCI Image Format, which specifies how container images should be built, transported, and prepared for execution.

  3. Distribution Specification: Outlines an API protocol for distributing content, standardizing how container images are pushed, pulled, and stored in registries.

These specifications are vital because they prevent vendor lock-in and ensure that containers remain an open, flexible technology. They allow for innovation while maintaining compatibility, essential for the continued growth and adoption of containerization in enterprise environments.

The OCI specifications are widely adopted in the container ecosystem. Many popular container runtimes and tools are OCI-compliant, including:

  1. runc: The reference implementation of the OCI runtime-spec, used by Docker and other container engines.

  2. containerd: An industry-standard container runtime that implements OCI specifications.

  3. CRI-O: A lightweight alternative to Docker used in Kubernetes environments.

  4. Podman: A daemonless container engine for developing, managing, and running OCI containers.

Major cloud providers and container registries also support OCI specifications, ensuring container images can be easily shared and deployed across different platforms.

The OCI has broad industry support, with members including:

  • Tech giants: Google, Microsoft, IBM, Red Hat, Intel, Cisco

  • Cloud providers: Amazon Web Services, Oracle

  • Container and orchestration specialists: Docker, VMware, Rancher (now part of SUSE)

  • Financial institutions: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase

This wide-ranging support underscores the importance of OCI in the container ecosystem and ensures its continued development and relevance.

While OCI has become the de facto standard for containers, there are alternatives:

  1. appc (App Container): An earlier specification that influenced OCI but is now largely obsolete.

  2. Proprietary container formats: Some companies have developed their own container formats, but these lack the broad compatibility of OCI-compliant containers.

  3. Virtual Machines (VMs): While not a direct alternative, VMs offer a different approach to application isolation and portability.

The widespread adoption of OCI specifications means that most container-related technologies are now OCI-compliant or compatible.

The OCI was developed in response to the rapid growth and fragmentation of the container ecosystem. As containers gained popularity, different vendors began developing their own formats and runtimes, which threatened to create incompatibility issues and vendor lock-in.

The formation of OCI was a proactive move by industry leaders to prevent fragmentation in the container ecosystem, ensure long-term viability and adoption of container technology, foster innovation while maintaining compatibility, create a vendor-neutral, portable container format, and establish a common ground for collaboration in the container industry.

By creating open standards, the OCI has helped to accelerate the adoption of container technology, making it easier for organizations to implement containerization strategies without worrying about future compatibility issues or being tied to a single vendor's ecosystem.

OCI provides an open, vendor-neutral standard, ensuring that containers remain a flexible, portable, and interoperable technology, driving the widespread adoption of containers in enterprise environments and continuing to drive innovation in cloud-native computing.

Infographic Of The Week

My Take: Oh, Nortel and Lucent.. Thank’s for the memories, and the capital losses. It certainly does paint an interesting picture of how tech has shifted.

Podcast Recommendation

John Bragg, founder of Oxford Frozen Foods and Eastlink, shares his journey from growing up in a small village to becoming one of North America's largest wild blueberry producers and leading a major telecommunications company. He discusses his early entrepreneurial ventures, why he chose to get into the blueberry business in the first place, and how he pivoted when things didn't go quite as he planned.


Bragg emphasizes key business principles like long-term thinking, efficiency, and maintaining a low-cost mindset. He also reflects on the importance of cultivating strong teams and staying humble despite his success.


John Bragg is the Chairman, President, and Co-CEO of Oxford Frozen Foods Limited, a food manufacturing company which he founded in 1968. It operates the largest fruit farm in the world, with over 12,000 acres of wild blueberries. He also founded a cable TV company in the 1970s which became Eastlink.

Listen Here!

Movie/Streaming Recommendation

Cowboy Cartel - Apple+

IMDb: 7.1/10

JMDb: 6/10

Cowboy Cartel offers a unique twist on the typical drug cartel documentary. The four-part series follows Scott Lawson, a rookie FBI agent from rural Tennessee, as he uncovers a massive money laundering operation run by Los Zetas, one of Mexico's deadliest cartels.

The plot centers on how the Treviño brothers, leaders of Los Zetas, used American Quarter Horse racing to launder millions of dollars. Lawson, on his first assignment in Laredo, Texas, stumbles upon this scheme and doggedly pursues the case.

The series details Lawson's investigation, from tracing money flows to monitoring phone conversations and working with informants. It showcases the meticulous work required in such a large-scale probe, one of the most significant money-laundering investigations in Texas history.

While the premise is intriguing, the series struggles to maintain excitement throughout its four episodes. The pacing is slow, and much of the content feels repetitive. Even the climactic raids and arrests are described as "anti-climactic" by those involved.

Despite its flaws, it offers an insider's look at how law enforcement tackles international crime, even if it doesn't quite deliver the thrills one might expect from a cartel takedown story, like Narcos!

Until Next Time

Comments here are my own and do not represent the opinions, views or thoughts of any person, company or organization that I may be associated with.

Feedback, comments and ideas are welcomed. Message me on LinkedIn or contact me at [email protected]

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