The best piece of writing / analysis today in RCR is by Vish Nandlall – who seeks to unify systems theory, market structure, and capital allocation in a single thesis. Which makes a difference from most of the pure-tech / -finance / -market narratives that get told about AI infrastructure – including by RCR itself. Infrastructure supercycles are driven by two engines: bottleneck migration and asset economics, he writes.

The standard line is that the technology determines the economics. But Vish says these are equal forces, and makes a distinction between relatively-ordered bottleneck handoffs in the cloud-era and concurrent co-design in the AI-era – cross compute, networking, power, orchestration. Which explains why the cost stack has gone from being balanced and predictable to completely unhinged – and why so much money is being poured into AI infrastructure all at once.

Which is genuinely insightful – like the kind of thing investors will be citing years from now. There’s more in there. The workload liquidity concept seems novel, too: cloud (CPU) infrastructure economics depended primarily on utilization, whereas AI (GPU) economics depends on utilization and the ability to redeploy assets across workload classes. Value comes not only from maxing usage, but from shifting usage – between workloads with demand.

So hardware depreciation is reframed as a demand-matching problem rather than just an accounting one, based on age and wear. Anyway, I need to read it again; I’d recommend you do the same.

James Blackman
Executive Editor
RCR Wireless News

RCR Top Stories

D2D for the 1%: Speaking days before SpaceX’s IPO announcement, AT&T’s CFO framed satellite D2D as filling the rural 1% gap, not threatening telco margins, and backed three-carrier cooperation on spectrum.

Infra supercycle: Why the bottleneck always moves, why economics is an equal partner, and why capital recovery in AI infrastructure now depends on workload liquidity. A fantastic Analyst Angle column from Vish Nandlall.

Telco tactics: European telcos are rebuilding scale in their fixed networks through acquisitions, joint ventures, and wholesale models to reduce fiber overlap, improve economics, and prep the AI-edge. Vodafone and Telenor lead the charge.

China 6G tests: China has launched a 6G pilot program to advance core tech, test real-world apps, and coordinate ecosystem development as the country moves toward commercial deployment expected around 2030.

Mini data centers: Susana examines the Nvidia-backed concept of “mini” data centers as a distributed AI strategy to bypass grid bottlenecks by placing smaller compute clusters near available local power, accelerating AI capacity deployment.

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Beyond the Headlines

Malaysian cloud: Chinese company Alibaba Cloud launched a new public cloud region in Johor with two data centers, expanding its AI-ready infrastructure in Malaysia as part of a broader global investment strategy.

UK AI mettle: The UK government’s £1.1bn AI plan anchors a new compute strategy, including a £750m supercomputer, targeted support for startups, almost £4m from AMD and Nebius, plus photonics, frontier models, and industrial AI.

Optical AI spend: Spending patterns in the optical market are increasingly shaped by hyperscalers rather than traditional telecom operators – says Ciena, Nokia, and Dell’Oro on an RCR webinar.

Scale-testing LLMs: Enterprises must validate LLM performance, security, and cost efficiency at scale. Testing under realistic workloads is essential to ensure reliable, secure, and economically sustainable customer-facing AI systems.

Networks matter, too: AI is constrained not just by chips but by infrastructure, from storage and energy to connectivity bottlenecks. As data centers expand, the weakest link shifts, threatening to limit AI’s future scale and performance.

What We’re Reading

Atlantic quantum: Colt and Ciena have demo’d a quantum-safe transatlantic transmission on coherent optical tech, achieving ultra-high-capacity data transfer while enhancing encryption resilience, network efficiency, and energy performance.

Euro space startup: ICEYE, a Finnish space company, has raised €1bn to expand its SAR satellite constellation, strengthening sovereign defence-grade Earth observation capabilities and scaling global demand for geospatial intelligence.

Gigawatt SK cloud: SK Telecom and Nvidia are to build a gigawatt-scale AI cloud in South Korea using the NVIDIA DSX platform, with the first AI factory expected to come online in 2027, advancing Korea’s sovereign AI infrastructure.

Wirepas funds: The European Investment Bank has handed €24 million to Finnish IoT firm Wirepas to develop self-healing wireless mesh networks for industrial and urban infrastructure across Finland and France.

Governance gap: A new study by IBM finds CIOs and CTOs face a growing AI control gap as deployments scale – with most saying they are accountable for systems they don’t control, and aren’t ready for AI agents.

Events

Virtual Program

Telco AI Forum, June 16th
Telco AI Forum brings together operators, vendors, hyperscalers, and academia to explore how the evolution of the industry and partnership ecosystems is laying the foundations for AI-native 6G networks and unlocking ROI. Register now

Quantum Safe Networks Forum, July 14th
Quantum Safe Networks Forum brings together telecom operators, cybersecurity experts, and industry analysts to explore how to build resilient, future-ready infrastructure in the face of quantum disruption. Register now

RCR Roundtables AI Infrastructure, October 21st, Dallas, Texas
Join 50 senior data center, energy and AI leaders at the Ritz-Carlton Dallas on October 21 for invitation-only roundtables on powering and scaling AI. Request your invitation