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 12.

Eight Big Telcos Join Forces on U.S. Network Cybersecurity

AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Lumen, T-Mobile, Verizon and Zayo are working together in a communications cybersecurity group to share information and respond rapidly to threats. The eight U.S. telecom operators are the founding members of the Communications Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (C2 ISAC) that will start operations next month. CIOs and CSOs from eight operators will make up the board of the nonprofit organization, with AT&T CISO Rich Baich as chairman. Read the Light Reading story.

Mobile CEO: Satellite Traffic Still Small Part of Network Usage

T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan sat that T-Satellite is unfolding like previous “un-carrier” moves, but he added a tiny bit more detail about its actual usage. By tiny, we mean really tiny. Gopalan told a J.P. Morgan investor conference that May data showed the use of T-Satellite is about 0.0002% of its total network usage, proving that satellite direct-to-device (D2D) is a “fundamentally complementary” category to regular terrestrial mobile service. Read the Fierce Network story.

Jury Ruling in Musk Lawsuit Favors OpenAI

OpenAI’s court victory over Elon Musk is likely to significantly bolster OpenAI as it prepares for an IPO expected later this year. A swift end to the three-week trial of the lawsuit brought by Musk is just what OpenAI could have hoped for. What will it mean for Musk and the planned SpaceX IPO? Michael Bennett, a lawyer and associate vice chancellor for data science and AI strategy at the University of Illinois Chicago, said the decision is unlikely to change many minds about either company, Musk, or OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Read the AI Business story.

Anthropic Claude No. 1 AI Model in April, Beats OpenAI’s GPT

Anthropic’s Claude models passed OpenAI’s GPT suite in business adoption last month for the first time, according to an analysis by fintech platform supplier Ramp. Anthropic adoption rose 3.8% in April to 34.4% of businesses while OpenAI adoption fell 2.9% to 32.3%, according to the Ramp AI Index. Overall AI adoption rose 0.2 percentage points to 50.6% in April. Read the Ramp AI Index blog.

HPE Picks TD Synnex, Ingram Micro as Global Distribution Partners

HPE has revealed its global distribution lineup as it looks to unify its offerings, including networking, through a couple of partners. The IT infrastructure giant said TD Synnex and Ingram Micro would be handling its products as it unified its routes to market following the acquisition of Juniper Networks last year. Read the Microscope story.

Cisco Slashes 4,000 Jobs Despite AI Revenue Spike

Cisco will shed close to 4,000 jobs in a bid to focus on its silicon, optics and cybersecurity businesses CEO and Chairman Chuck Robbins told employees last week. The cuts amount to nearly 5% of Cisco’s workforce. The layoffs come at a time of record growth for the tech giant. Cisco’s revenues increased 12% year over year to $15.8 billion last quarter, as hyperscalers and enterprises purchased hardware to support AI-driven data center buildouts. Orders for data center switching spiked 40%, driven partly by customers fast tracking purchase in response to a memory chip shortage. Read the Channel Dive story.

NVIDIA CEO Huang: ‘Demand Is Going Parabolic, Utterly Parabolic’

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang joined Michael Dell at the Dell Technologies World open keynote, during which Dell said worldwide AI infrastructure spending could reach $3 trillion to $4 trillion by 2030, with token consumption projected to grow 3,400% in the same window. Huang added that enterprise AI has moved past pilots into agentic AI and inference deployments at scale. Read the Nvidia press release.

Dell AI Partner Program Revamp Rewards Systems Integrators

Dell made channel changes during Dell Technologies World this week as part of a broader push to help companies surmount AI adoption hurdles. Its retooled partner program will strengthen customer outcome incentives and reward advisory services that lead to sales. Dell will roll out premium rebates for select products, starting in August, and will begin crediting systems integrators and advisories for transactions involving multiple sellers at that time. Read the Channel Dive story.

Verizon Joins Anthropic AI Security Venture

Verizon has joined Project Glasswing, the elite AI-driven bug hunting taskforce put together in April by AI vendor Anthropic. Verizon joins the likes of Cisco, Nvidia, Broadcom, and Palo Alto Networks in Project Glasswing, with the telecom operator claiming the move would help it identify and remediate complex vulnerabilities while maintaining its "high standards of network protection." Read the SDxCentral story.

Lumos Appoints ex-Frontier Exec as New CEO

Lumos picked Scott Mispagel to replace outgoing CEO Brian Stading. Mispagel spent more than a decade at Frontier, serving as SVP for network engineering and operations for the last seven years. Stading said in a statement Mispagel brings “a proven ability to scale organizations, drive operational excellence and build high-performing teams” and called him the “ideal person to guide the company forward.” Read the Fierce Network story.