• Meta takes us a step closer to the next ‘smartphone moment’
• SK Telecom is allowed to sign up new customers again
• SoftBank Group chief has a new $1tn vision for Trumpland

In today’s industry news roundup: Meta’s new wearable is the kind of device that will make mobile operators rethink their networks; SK Telecom gets the all clear to sign up new customers following its major data breach in April; The Stargate Project isn’t enough for Masayoshi Son’s US infrastructure vision; and much more!

Meta, still plugging away at trying to make smart glasses the de rigeur facial adornments du jour, has launched another new and upgraded version of its spectacles in collaboration with the trendy high-performance brand, Oakley. The new specs cost US$499 a pop (or, for the Brits, an even more expensive £499) and are called Oakley Meta HSTNs. Presumably the initials stand for something referring to technology but the press release is coy about that and instead tells us that, when we finally get to the front of the long line queuing to lay out upwards of 500 bucks (once sales, state and other miscellaneous taxes and gratuities are added) the smart giglamps are to be called “how-stuhn”. Of course they are! Come on, you can add the vowels for yourself can’t you? It’s not much to ask – Meta’s not going to do all the work for you!! The new Oakley models, like Meta’s existing glasses, are made in collaboration with Ray Ban, which is owned by the same company as Oakley. The how-stuhns (hopefully they’ll be called “ow dos” in Yorkshire) feature a camera, microphone and speakers but otherwise “look normal”, even though they combine Meta AI with “performance AI”. They are paired with a phone and can then be used for taking pictures and videos, as well as making calls or listening to music. In a posting on Threads, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said the new jam jars have AI features that are “built for action”. One useful suggestion for that action is that golfers will be able to ask their glasses to tell them wind speed and direction before they wave and waggle their mashie-nibklicks. No more chucking blades of grass in the air and smelling the breeze for them! Meta says it “hopes that the glasses will eventually merge with its virtual reality headsets… to allow for wearable glasses with a display that users can wear to access the metaverse.” On a more serious note, and discounting the hype and bugle-oil, the glasses are an example of the new breed of devices that Yago Tenorio, the CTO of Verizon, was talking about when he recently addressed the audience at TelecomTV’s DSP Leader’s World Forum 2025 event. In his opening address, Tenorio observed that the mobile comms sector is on the cusp of a change as important and far-reaching as the ‘smartphone moment’ that transformed the industry almost 20 years ago. He noted that “new devices will add to data uplink volumes and enable AI-related opportunities, but for that [the] RAN needs to be re-engineered so that telcos can capitalise on those opportunities.” He continued: “You remember when we were very busy rolling out 3G and then a smartphone [the iPhone] happened to us and we weren’t ready? I think there is another one of these coming. New devices, new form factors are about to go mainstream, wearables, glasses, you name it – socially acceptable, thin, light [devices that will] enable new AI use cases.” He noted that some of the workload will be processed on the device itself and they might be tethered to other devices that can help with the processing, but ultimately there will always be a major flow of data to the network for AI inference to take place. The Verizon CTO believes the best location for that inference workload is “on the other side of the core somewhere – the difference of latency between the radio access network (RAN) and that point is not significant. What's significant here is the opportunity that we have to engineer the future RAN so that we maximise that [data] loop.” Meta’s latest move puts the industry one step closer to that next ‘smartphone moment’. 

The State of the Digital Decade 2025 from the European Commission (EC) is a “comprehensive overview of the EU’s digital transformation”, while the Digital Decade Policy Programme 2030 sets the framework for it. The EC also monitors Europe’s overall digital evolution and publishes an annual report on progress made towards meeting the 2030 targets and objectives. The new one is a mixed bag to say the least. It lists seven challenges and key drivers, starting with the observation that, halfway through the life of the Europe-wide digital transformation project, the rollout of connectivity infrastructure, including fibre and 5G standalone networks, remains behind schedule. The evidence collected does indicate some improvements in the deployment of edge nodes, thus enabling faster data processing at lower rates of energy consumption, but submarine data cables and satellite systems remain “under-developed and vulnerable to external dependencies and security risks”. Secondly, the report adds that whilst the adoption of AI, cloud and big data by many companies has increased, it is not moving quickly enough. The EU remains dependent on external providers for AI and cloud services (particularly where public services are concerned) as well as in the production of semiconductors and quantum infrastructure components. Thirdly, the percentage of EU citizens with just a “basic level” of digital skills stands at 55.6%. This is far too low and must be boosted forthwith if European societies are to be better armed against online threats. This applies particularly to threats relating to information integrity and mental wellbeing. The simple fact of the matter is that, overall, the EU has nowhere near enough highly skilled and highly trained ICT specialists: That lack is compounded by what the report calls a “a stark gender divide” that is further hindering progress in key sectors, such as cybersecurity and AI. On a more positive note, in its fourth point, the report notes that last year the EU made “steady progress” in digitalising key public services, but then comes the caveat that “a substantial portion of governmental digital infrastructure continues to depend on service providers outside the EU”. So, not that impressive after all in these increasingly sovereign days. The fifth factor is that the EU’s digital future is becoming increasingly dependent on stable energy production, noting that exponentially rising energy demands, linked notably to massive datacentres and the ever-increasing use of AI, are already outpacing the development of clean and reliable energy supply and grid capacity across the whole of Europe. The report regards this as a “potential significant barrier to the scaling of key digital technologies and delaying the EU’s ability to fully leverage AI and data-driven innovation for economic competitiveness.” In other words, the EU is falling behind again. The sixth point spotlights a lack of effective collaboration between the civil sector and the defence sector, which is causing delays in advancing dual–use digital technologies, such as AI, quantum computing and semiconductors. The seventh and final point examines the urgent societal challenges that are linked to digitalisation in the EU. As technology advances, digital transformation has intensified vulnerabilities and inequalities, “especially affecting minors and mental health”. A major concern here is information integrity, with 88% of Europeans “expressing concern” about fake news and online manipulation, and 90% citing the protection of children online as a critical priority. These risks, amplified by AI and online platforms, threaten to undermine democratic integrity, deepen societal polarisation and erode public trust. Great. In summation, the report notes: “Halfway through the Digital Decade, the time to act is now. 2025 will be a pivotal year to accelerate actions to tackle key challenges and boost the EU’s digital transformation.” As the crime writer Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled private eye character, Philip Marloe, so succinctly put it, “No sh*t, Sherlock.”

Masayoshi Son, the Tokyo-based founder, representative director, corporate officer, chairman and CEO of the SoftBank Group, has a lot on his plate – after all, SoftBank Group comprises dozens of operations, including Japanese telco SoftBank Corp, the well-known and enormous Vision Fund investment vehicle and the UK-based chip developer Arm. In addition, he’s also the chairman of The Stargate Project, the new Delaware, US-headquartered company promising to invest $500bn over the next four years in building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI and Oracle in the US: $100bn is already being ploughed into that development. You might think those responsibilities would be enough to keep Son fully occupied but no, renowned for what his admirers call his “optimistic” plans for the future, and what critics regard as castles in the air that fade away into mist on closer examination, he is also cooking-up Project Crystal Land, a $1tn AI robotics factory in Arizona that, he hopes, will ensure the US dominates the global AI sector. He is courting putative investors to help to pay for his grandiose vision. Amongst his prime targets are the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), MGX of Abu Dhabi (which is also involved in Stargate), Nvidia and Samsung. It remains to be seen which of these companies (and/or others) will bite at Son’s bait, but he has form for hyping ambitious ideas that later get canned because not enough money has been raised to finance them. Son’s plans, should they reach fruition, run to the construction of a huge campus of R&D laboratories and massive production facilities focused on artificial general intelligence (AGI), the processing of advanced semiconductors, robotics and automation. A smart-grid infrastructure will be built to power the immense complex that will include residential accommodation (ie. the construction of a sizeable town) to house the thousands of personnel required to operate the facilities. According to Bloomberg, SoftBank is in talks with both federal and Arizona-state officials and is discussing tax incentives and regulatory “relaxations”. Much will depend on the overt and tacit support Son’s plans will get from President Donald Trump, his advisers and from Arizona politicians. Both the administration and state authorities want to build new high-tech facilities in the US and “bring jobs back home”. 

More than two months after its calamitous data breach, SK Telecom has been given the go-ahead by South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT to sign up new subscribers, something it hasn’t been doing while it deals with the SIM replacement process that was made necessary after its mobile core platform was hacked and data related to its 23 million customers was stolen. According to the Korea JoongAng Daily, SKT has lost more than 500,000 customers in the past couple of months, while almost 9.3 million of its customers have replaced their SIM cards: The Ministry decided to let SK Telecom sign up new customers as it believes the operator’s online reservation system for new SIM cards is stable and the operator now has a sufficient number of new SIM cards to meet demand. As we noted elsewhere today, SK Telecom is also back in the headlines for its AI infrastructure developments, something that will be welcome for the operator’s management, investors and media relations team. They will also be relieved that, following a post-hack crash of more than 10%, SKT’s share price is now almost back to where it was before the data breach was uncovered and, at 56,100 won, is trading at the same price as at the start of this calendar year. 

We like an in-your-face pun here at TelecomTV HQ, so a shout out today to Singapore’s Singtel, which made us smile as it announced, in partnership with Lenovo Connect and floLIVE (a cloud-native IoT connectivity provider), its “enhanced Multi-Domestic Connectivity solution that enables seamless, secure, and regulatory-compliant global IoT deployments” for automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) – or carmakers, as we used to call ’em. You can read all about the cross-border IoT offering in this press release, but here’s the bit that brought a smile to our corporate face: “Singtel is already a driver of connected car innovation in the region – being the only operator to have powered connected vehicle programmes for automotive OEMs from the United States, Europe, China and Asia Pacific.” We know from experience that it’s impossible to publish anything about connected cars without using some derivation of the verb ‘drive’. On a more serious note, here’s a bit more from Singtel which, with its proposition, is meeting one of the key challenges facing the connected car sector – roaming. “By integrating floLIVE’s capabilities and partnering with Lenovo Connect – whose solutions span secure payment, connection and device management, data collection and computing – Singtel can now offer OEMs a frictionless path to international expansion, with fully compliant and secure in-vehicle connectivity and device orchestration.” Good luck with that… Singtel may need to ‘shift up a gear’ to turn that promise into a reality.  

– The staff, TelecomTV