It was a mixed week for Verizon, underscoring both the scale of its ambitions and the growing complexity of operating a national network at scale.
On the positive side, Verizon and Frontier cleared all remaining regulatory hurdles for their $20 billion deal, bringing the telco closer to significantly expanding its fiber footprint. The acquisition is set to add millions of new fiber locations, strengthening Verizon’s long-term broadband strategy as fiber and 5G increasingly converge in the race for residential and enterprise customers.
But the milestone comes as Verizon is also managing fallout from a widespread network outage that disrupted service for customers across parts of the U.S. A report suggested the incident may have been triggered by a server failure in New Jersey, raising fresh questions about network resiliency, redundancy, and the operational risks that accompany increasingly software-driven telecom infrastructure.
Together, the developments highlight the dual pressures facing large operators: investing aggressively in future-facing infrastructure while ensuring existing networks remain stable, reliable, and resilient.
Catherine Sbeglia Nin
Managing Editor
RCR Wireless News
RCR Top Stories
Do FWA limits loom?: Dell’Oro’s Jeff Heynen explains why FWA growth remains strong but constrained, as operators manage spectrum, competition, and economics that have the potenital to increasingly limit how far fixed wireless can scale.
Mapping Nvidia’s billion-dollar deals: Nvidia is spending its market-valuation windfall not diversifying randomly, but acquiring the knobs and levers that determine how the AI factory runs, what it runs, and whose machines power it.
FirstNet to add satellite: Working with AST SpaceMobile, AT&T’s FirstNet is testing a satellite service that could potentially plug gaps in its emergency network, extending coverage for “any potential emergency”.
Viettel hits 5G-A: Viettel has completed what it claims to be Vietnam’s first 5G Advanced trial, reaching speeds above 7.3 Gbps using carrier aggregation, paving the way for nationwide rollout and future 6G development.
Driving in-car AI: SK Telecom has debuted “A.Dot Auto,” its next-generation in-car AI assistant built on its own large language model, marking a bold push by a telco into automotive artificial intelligence.
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Beyond the Headlines
EU sovereign cloud: AWS has launched its European Sovereign Cloud, offering EU-only infrastructure, operations, and governance to support public sector and regulated industries.
Wi-Fi 8 modulation: Wi-Fi 8’s unequal modulation lets MIMO spatial streams use different modulation based on signal quality, so stronger streams aren’t limited by weaker ones, improving efficiency, reliability, and real-world performance overall.
Jio eyes IPO: Indian company Reliance Jio is considering a 2.5% IPO in 2026 that could raise more than $4 billion, testing regulatory flexibility and marking India’s most anticipated and potentially largest public listing.
MNOs push FWA: FWA is on the march and operators keep betting bigger on it. A new report from Dell’Oro Group estimates that total Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) subscriptions will surpass 191 million by 2029.
Nvidia challenger?: California semiconductor startup Bolt Graphics has an ambitious new GPU architecture, Zeus, which targets high-performance workloads; it claims to have the jump on Nvidia on certain lab scores.
What We're Reading
Full regulatory approval: Verizon and Frontier have cleared all required regulatory approvals for their $20 billion deal, paving the way for closing on Jan. 20 and expanded fiber-plus-5G offerings to nearly 30 million locations.
Verizon outage culprit found?: Verizon’s widespread outage may have stemmed from a server failure in New Jersey, investigators say, as millions of customers lost service for hours and emergency calls were disrupted.
U.S. MNO outages: Mashable rounds-up the latest from Downdetector, about outages suffered by big public 5G operators — and everyone has problems. The subtext here is whether that is good enough for enterprises.
Telecom cooperation pact: India and Germany have signed a Joint Declaration of Intent to deepen cooperation on telecommunications and digital technologies, establishing frameworks for policy, research, industry, and ICT collaboration.
Nokia NZ tower deal: Nokia will manage Connexa’s nationwide tower operations in New Zealand as its exclusive network operations center partner, centralizing and automating tower management.
LATAM spectrum: Spectrum auctions and public tenders are pending in Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, and Colombia to free up mid- and low-bands for public 5G and private 5G networks.
Airport neutral-host: Boldyn Networks will build and manage a neutral-host 5G DAS network at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, extending high-capacity coverage across terminals, parking, tarmac, and other facilities.
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Industry Resources
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