Connectivity Technology Blog

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China’s Growing Constellations, Ambitions and the Future of Satellite Broadband

China is increasingly asserting its presence in the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband arena, with two major constellation programmes, one state-backed and one commercially driven, now under active deployment. The government’s strategic plan for global communications infrastructure includes the Guowang network, targeting as many as 13,000 satellites, and the municipally supported Qianfan, also known as “Thousand Sails,” which aims for around 15,000 satellites. As of November 2025, Guowang has exceeded 100 satellites in orbit following a launch of nine satellites on 10 November. The Qianfan project, by contrast, has deployed around 90 satellites to date, a fraction of its target for regional coverage by the end of 2025. Both networks face significant challenges including manufacturing scale-up, launch cadence, orbital debris and regulatory timelines, yet their evolution has direct implications for the future architecture of global broadband, the integration of satellite and terre...

Wiliot and Royal Mail bring Ambient IoT to postal logistics

There has been a great deal of excitement around Ambient IoT and the idea of giving everyday objects the ability to sense their environment and communicate seamlessly. Wiliot has been one of the pioneers in this space, and its latest collaboration brings the technology into one of the UK's largest and most demanding logistics environments. Royal Mail has started using Wiliot’s digital tags across its network, becoming the first delivery operator globally to scale this technology. At the heart of the solution are Wiliot’s IoT Pixels, ultra-thin, sticker-like tags that function as tiny computing devices. They operate without batteries, drawing energy from surrounding radio waves. These miniature computers sense factors such as location, temperature and humidity and continuously stream data to the cloud. The result is real-time visibility without the need for manual scanning or integrated power sources. The connectivity layer relies on standard Bluetooth infrastructure. As tagged it...

The State of Mobile Internet Coverage and Infrastructure 2025

Mobile internet has become the backbone of modern life, yet the latest GSMA report shows that progress is uneven. While billions enjoy fast 4G and 5G connections, hundreds of millions are still left outside the digital world entirely. The real challenge now is not just building networks but making them sustainable, affordable, and meaningful for the people who need them most. Connectivity has never been closer to universal, but the final stretch is proving to be the hardest. The GSMA’s latest report on 'The State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2025' paints a mixed picture of progress and persistent challenges in global mobile internet connectivity. While mobile broadband coverage has continued to expand and network quality is improving in many regions, significant gaps remain, particularly in the world’s most vulnerable communities. As of 2025, 96% of the world’s population lives within the footprint of a mobile broadband network. However, that still leaves around 300 millio...

Boosting 5G Coverage with Transparent Antennas and Shared Infrastructure

We have looked at transparent antennas for a while now with my first post on the topic back in 2019. Since then this technology has matured immensely as I detailed in a blog post last year. Transparent antennas are no longer just experimental concepts but have reached the stage of commercial deployment, often combined with infrastructure sharing models to maximise efficiency and coverage. In Japan, infrastructure sharing has taken on special significance. The high cost of network deployment, limited availability of installation sites and the density of urban environments make it challenging for operators to expand coverage on their own. Shared infrastructure helps reduce duplication, control costs and speed up the roll-out of services. For readers unfamiliar with JTOWER , it is a Japanese company specialising in shared telecommunications infrastructure. JTOWER develops and manages towers and in-building solutions across Japan, with the goal of improving connectivity while reducing the...

Amazon’s Project Kuiper Advances Towards Global Satellite Broadband Deployment

Amazon’s Project Kuiper is moving rapidly from concept to large-scale implementation, aiming to deliver high-speed, low-latency broadband services to communities and organisations that are unserved or underserved by existing terrestrial infrastructure. The programme involves deploying a constellation of more than 3,200 satellites in low Earth orbit, supported by an extensive ground network and customer terminal technology. The initiative began research and development in 2018, with formal approval from the US Federal Communications Commission in 2020. After launching two prototype satellites in 2023, Amazon commenced production satellite deployment in April 2025. The pace of activity has since accelerated, with four missions completed in under four months and more than 100 satellites now in orbit . This early progress is part of a planned series of over 80 launches that will populate the initial constellation by the end of the decade. The system architecture is based on three core com...

Pushing the Boundaries of Wireless Sensing Technologies

In May 2024, TheNetworkingChannel hosted a thought-provoking expert panel titled New Frontiers in Wireless Sensing. This session brought together leading researchers from institutions such as MIT, CMU, Microsoft Research Asia, EPFL, IMDEA, UMass and HKUST. Each speaker offered a unique perspective on how wireless sensing is evolving into a foundational capability across domains ranging from healthcare and robotics to ocean and space exploration. The session began by addressing joint communication and sensing with unsynchronised transceivers. Joerg Widmer (IMDEA Networks) demonstrated how millimetre wave systems, despite relying on single RF chains and operating with unsynchronised clocks, can still achieve accurate multipath decomposition by employing cross-correlation techniques. These enable compensation for timing and frequency offsets, which are otherwise significant challenges in multistatic and passive localisation scenarios. Jie Xiong (Microsoft Research Asia and UMass) presente...

Understanding Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) for Seamless Indoor Connectivity

Distributed Antenna Systems, commonly known as DAS, play a crucial role in extending mobile connectivity into environments where outdoor signals struggle to reach. From convention centres to hospitals, and from tunnels to stadiums, DAS ensures that users stay connected in areas where mobile coverage would otherwise be poor or non-existent. The main challenge arises from the fact that large buildings often block or degrade cellular signals due to their construction materials. DAS addresses this by redistributing the signal inside the structure through a network of antennas connected to a common source. This significantly improves coverage, capacity and user experience. To explore how DAS works in practice and the differences between types of solutions, we are sharing two insightful videos that break down the fundamentals and practicalities of deploying DAS. The first video, by WilsonPro, offers a straightforward explanation of passive and active DAS. Passive DAS, also referred to as sig...

Building the Low Altitude Economy (LAE) with 5G Advanced and 6G

As mobile networks expand into new vertical domains, the low altitude economy (LAE) is emerging as one of the most promising frontiers for connectivity. In China and Hong Kong, this area is rapidly evolving with strong government support, early infrastructure deployments and growing commercial interest. It includes services and applications that operate in airspace typically below one thousand metres, covering everything from drone deliveries and infrastructure inspections to emergency response and environmental monitoring. The LAE is not just a collection of novel use cases. It represents a structural shift in how connectivity infrastructure is being designed and deployed. A layered approach is taking shape, combining reuse of existing terrestrial networks, new network deployments tailored for low altitude operation, and integration with non terrestrial networks such as satellites. Together, these networks are already delivering coverage up to 600 metres with end to end latency under...

Seamless 5G Connectivity Across Germany on Deutsche Bahn

Rail passengers today take uninterrupted mobile and data connections for granted as much as a smooth journey. Meeting these expectations demands close collaboration between train operators and mobile network providers to deliver consistent coverage along thousands of kilometres of track. Deutsche Bahn’s comprehensive approach to connectivity weaves together network expansion, onboard innovations and the latest digital standards to ensure passengers stay connected from station to station. Since 2021 Deutsche Bahn has been working with Deutsche Telekom to blanket its main lines with high-performance mobile coverage. By supplying speeds of more than 200 Mbit/s on nearly all key routes the partnership reached its original targets two years ahead of schedule. Today passengers enjoy at least 200 Mbit/s on 99 per cent of the 7 800 kilometres of main lines and even 300 Mbit/s or more on 95 per cent. Secondary lines also saw a transformation. Coverage of 100 Mbit/s rose from under 83 per cent ...