Stephen Saunders

"The 14th best broadband and grand ambitions to build an AI-powered economy of the future.

I recently sat down with telecom analyst Will Townsend, VP and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, for a long discussion about AI, telecom infrastructure, 5G monetization and the increasingly strange battle to define the architecture of the next digital economy. Townsend has been covering telecommunications and infrastructure for roughly three decades, and what made the conversation particularly interesting was that it avoided the usual AI evangelism and telecommunications buzzword soup.

America used to build the future; now it holds hearings, shouts at allies, lets hyperscalers drink the water, and wonders why China is winning. Blair Levin, chief architect of the 2010 National Broadband Plan, reflects on what the U.S. got right, what it missed, and why it risks falling behind in the next phase of the global digital economy. From AI infrastructure to Chinese soft power, hyperscaler dominance to Roosevelt-era ambition, Levin offers a candid assessment of where America stands—and what it needs to do next.

When my phone stopped working last month during the latest calamitous network outage to hit the US, I assumed it was that pesky Amazon cloud POP in North Virginia playing up again.

It took the U.S. six days to get water to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in the Superdome in 2005.

Another day, another embarrassing analyst flub.

Ericsson’s analyst and media day at County Hall on the banks of the River Thames in London, England last week heralded a significant shift — not just for the Swedish vendor, but for the entire communications industry.  “We are at an inflection point,” Erik Ekudden, Ericsson’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), pointed out in his opening remarks. After a sticky start, carriers have recognized the value of 5G and are finally starting to successfully monetize it in new ways beyond just selling capacity, moving beyond POCs (proofs of concept) to launching revenue-generating services.