Virgin Media O2 is set to become the first mobile operator to offer UK customers automatic connectivity via satellite in places without mobile signal. O2 Satellite will be an optional service due to launch in the first half of 2026. The firm has not yet revealed how much it will cost, but it will be an additional fee to pay each month. O2 has partnered with Elon Musk's satellite business Starlink to offer the service. Enabled smartphones will automatically switch to satellite coverage in parts of the UK where there is no terrestrial signal available - for example in rural areas.

Telecom giant Vodafone is no stranger to the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), having used the technology for years, with hundreds of data scientists that have built thousands of models. While Vodafone was able to deploy and benefit from AI, over the last several years it increasingly faced a number of challenges. Among the challenges was the issue of scaling its AI workloads in a standardized and repeatable approach. Vodafone also faced issues with speed and security. In a session at the Google Cloud Next 2022 event this week, Sebastian Mathalikunnel, AI strategy lead at Vodafone, detailed the issues his organization faced and what it had to do to help overcome them.

Vodafone's motivation to become the first service provider in Germany, and in Europe, to commercially offer 5G Standalone based services was highly driven by their desire of using this new technology to address the industry challenges and needs, such as: The core network in 5G non-standalone solutions is based on existing LTE infrastructure, meaning customers are not able to fully exploit advanced 5G capabilities such as network slicing and ultra-low latency. Vodafone wanted their customers to, for example, be able to experience applications such as lag-free online gaming experiences and virtual reality, and for enterprises, industrial robot applications, or remotely operated drone fleets, which is only possible with 5G Standalone. Better support and accelerate Industry 4.0 realization across Germany Vodafone is considered a key contributor to the development of Germany's digital infrastructure whose customers rely on them to deliver the best in connectivity. The German market has a very high percentage of small and medium enterprises that are world market leaders, and for those industries, it is super important to be competitive now in the journey towards digitalization and industry 4.0. Vodafone wanted to be ready to support them.

A new platform launched by Vodafone and Google called AI Booster aims to handle thousands of ML models a day across 18 countries. AI Booster is the result of 18 months of development and is built upon Google's Vertex AI and integrates with Vodafone's Neuron platform. Vertex AI, among other Google technologies, had not been officially announced when Vodafone started development on AI Booster. "To maximise business value at pace and scale, our vision was to enable fast creation and horizontal/vertical scaling of use cases in an automated, standardised manner. To do this, 18 months ago we set out to build a next-generation AI/ML platform based on new Google technology, some of which hadn't even been announced yet. We knew it wouldn't be easy. People said, 'Shoot for the stars and you might get off the ground…' Today, we're really proud that AI Booster is truly taking off, and went live in almost double the markets we had originally planned. Together, we've used the best possible ML Ops tools and created Vodafone's AI Booster Platform to make data scientists' lives easier, maximise value, and take co-creation and scaling of use cases globally to another level."

The telecom is an essential part of our lives in the modern world. With the advent of 5G era and the rapid advance in other technology, the telecom network equipment is growing dramatically, which brings new complexities and challenges to operations - the management of co-existence of new and legacy networks. This causes a huge interest in AI among telecoms in a hope to resolve this inherent complexity. According Tractica's prediction, the telecom industry is going to invest $36.7 billion annually in AI developments. The global AI in telecommunication market is expected to reach $14.99B.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) this week announced a public preview of SageMaker Studio Lab. AWS also announced the Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Scholarship. The new US $10 million program will prepare underrepresented and underserved students globally for careers in Machine Learning. The announcements came during this week's AWS re:Invent event. AWS hopes SageMaker Studio Lab will attract developers, academics and data scientists to learn and experiment with Machine Learning (ML).

If there is to be a "6G Wireless," its proponents will need to learn some significant lessons from the era of 5G. Already, 5G Wireless as a market strategy is four years old. The R&D divisions of telecommunications firms whose 5G rollouts are well under way, are now looking ahead to whatever the next version of wireless may be. . . So far, what they're seeing may be a bit far out. It's a capital improvement project the size of the entire planet, replacing one wireless architecture created this century with another one that aims to lower energy consumption and maintenance costs. "6G must deliver an outcome that is aligned with real needs," remarked David Lister, Head of 6G Research and Development Technology at Europe's Vodafone Group, "and deliver outcomes that are sustainable and commercially driven." Lister was speaking at an annual conference called the 6G Symposium. Yes, there is already an annual 6G Symposium. Back in 1998, the leading stakeholders in global telecommunications formed the 3GPP consortium, to officially designate which technologies belong to a "G" and which don't.

Artificial Intelligence is no new concept. The phrase was first coined by John McCarthy in 1956[1], when he invited a group of researchers to discuss the notion of'thinking machines' during a conference at Dartmouth College. Since then, it has been a point of fascination for scientists, academics, software developers, and moviemakers alike. Fast-forward to today where you'll find lots of examples hiding in plain sight. From digital assistants like Amazon's Alexa or Apple's Siri, who use AI to learn from user interactions, to automated email responses and search engines predicting what you're looking for.

In-house legal teams including Vodafone, Featurespace and Ferrero are using London-based legaltech firm Luminance's new artificial intelligence platform to help their departments get a better grip on their contracting issues. The platform – Luminance Corporate – streamlines the contract lifecycle process by automating contract drafting, version control and renewal, enabling in-house lawyers to better understand, manage and negotiate their contracts. The platform's AI capabilities also provide insights on those contracts, meaning lawyers don't have to manually search for key information. Rosemary Martin, group general counsel and company secretary at Vodafone, said: "Good technology can make a really positive difference in corporate legal departments. Being able to rapidly analyse contracts and display critical information means lawyers no longer have to waste time trawling through their contracts."

The future of work is an estimated subject. Will we come to acknowledge wearables as consistently on-trackers of our temperament, prosperity, and efficiency? Will virtual reality transform our entire workplace? Will robots be our teammates? In the midst of the perpetual progression of "what if's" and "when's," one previous forecast is presently guaranteed: artificial intelligence is completely installed into the working environment.