The content team at Channel Partners tracks stories of interest to the technology advisor and wider channel communities. Anyone selling communication and connectivity solutions will want to stay abreast of these developing stories or catch up on ones they have missed. All links are valid as of May 27.
Channel Vendors’ Account Management Problem
Channel leaders have aligned sales teams with partner-first strategies. In-house management teams have been harder to rein in. IT and telecom vendors are adding customers through partner relationships, but keeping them isn’t assured. Channel partners are evaluating renewal strategies, as vendors cut customer support staff. In the agency sales model, which gives the vendor account ownership while technology advisors add logos, it’s a balancing act. Read about it on Channel Dive.
Telecom’s Great AI Dilemma: Everybody Wants the Future, Nobody Knows How to Monetize it
In this interview with Fierce Networks’ Stephen Saunders, telecom analyst Will Townsend of Moor Insights & Strategy discusses AI, telecom infrastructure, 5G monetization and the increasingly strange battle to define the architecture of the next digital economy. Read it on Fierce Network.
Jensen Huang Told Every CEO Hiding Behind AI Layoffs to Shut Up
Speaking to Channel NewsAsia, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang was asked about the wave of AI-attributed layoffs sweeping tech. He did not hedge. CEOs who blame layoffs on AI are "scaring people, and that's irresponsible." The whole explanation is "lazy." Read the State of Brand story.
OpenAI’s Altman Denies AI Will Trigger Global ‘Jobs Apocalypse’
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said surging AI adoption would not lead to a global “jobs apocalypse” and the technology hasn’t claimed as many white-collar jobs as he had feared. Altman added that he was initially concerned about the impact AI would have on global employment levels. Even though AI was taking on a more active role across many industries and jobs, he stressed there is still a “human part” of employment that couldn’t be replaced. Read the Capacity Global story.
SpaceX IPO Filing Casts Starlink Mobile as Future Wireless Challenger
SpaceX’s IPO prospectus casts Starlink Mobile as more than a remote-area backup, with next-generation direct-to-smartphone services designed to be “on par with terrestrial mobile networks” even in urban areas. The company’s May 20 regulatory filing outlined how upgraded satellites and the spectrum it is acquiring from U.S.-based EchoStar would greatly improve services currently limited to messaging and light voice and data services. Read the SpaceNews story.
Analysts Say Starlink Could Reach 100M Subs by 2034
New Street Research analysts predict that SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service could approach 100 million subscribers by 2034. Starlink now has about 10.3 million paid customers (residential, roaming and business subscribers) worldwide. See the Light Reading story.
Nokia AI Networking Lab Reaches Beyond Telco for Storage, Compute
Nokia launched an AI networking lab with an array of storage and compute partners including AMD, Everpure, Keysight Technologies, and Viavi Solutions. Located within its Sunnyvale, CA facility, Nokia's AI Networking Innovation Lab was described as driving co-innovation with AI and neocloud partners to accelerate next-generation networking technologies for AI infrastructure. Read the SDxCentral story.
AT&T, T-Mobile Show AI in RAN with Ericsson Sans GPUs
Telcos are starting to inject AI smarts into the radio access network (RAN) and showing improvements in performance and spectral efficiency, all without having to change radio hardware and deploy graphics processing units (GPUs). Contrary to all the talk, it appears not all AI-RAN applications need the heavy lifting processing of a GPU supplied by Nvidia. See the Light Reading story.
Zero Trust for AI agents: SASE Vendors Race to Secure Non-Human Users
Security has already gone from hard to harder with the rise of AI as the technology has helped bad actors just as much as it has helped defenders. But the proliferation of AI agents is about to make the situation infinitely more complex. And SASE providers Versa Networks, Cisco, Palo Alto and others are now scrambling to get battlements in place before the fight heats up. Read the Fierce Network story.
Nvidia’s Profit Hits $58.3 Billion as AI Boom Gathers More Steam
Another huge quarterly profit announced by the chip maker Nvidia last week provided solid evidence that Silicon Valley’s artificial intelligence spending spree is still gathering steam. Nvidia said profit in its most recent quarter was $58.3 billion, up 211% from a year earlier and topping expectations by financial analysts. Just three years ago, the Silicon Valley company’s quarterly profit was $2 billion — about one-thirtieth of what it is today. Read the New York Times story.