Connectivity Technology Blog

Wi-Fi HaLow is emerging as an important technology for large scale Internet of Things deployments that require long range, energy efficient, and IP native connectivity. Built on the IEEE 802.11ah standard, Wi-Fi HaLow extends Wi-Fi into sub-1 GHz spectrum, typically between 850 and 950 MHz depending on the regulatory domain. Operating well below the traditional 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz Wi-Fi bands allows it to support significantly greater range and better penetration through walls, floors and outdoor obstacles, which makes it well suited to industrial environments, logistics facilities, campuses, utilities and extended coverage smart home scenarios. Where conventional Wi-Fi standards such as Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 are optimised for very high throughput and multi-gigabit applications, Wi-Fi HaLow is targeted at low to moderate data rate IoT workloads. These include telemetry, control, monitoring, and in some cases transmission of images or video streams where bandwidth requirements are modest ra...

Connectivity Technology Blog may still be a relatively small and focused publication, but its scope is broad. The blog looks across the full spectrum of connectivity technologies, from fixed and mobile cellular networks such as 4G, 5G and 6G, through to Wi-Fi, IoT, Bluetooth, LoRaWAN, Sigfox and satellite communications. Since launching in 2019, the aim has always been to explain how these technologies work and why they matter, without hype or unnecessary complexity. 2025 turned out to be a standout year. The blog crossed a significant milestone, recording well over half a million views during the year. That growth has been driven entirely by reader interest and engagement, which makes it even more rewarding. As the year comes to a close, it feels like the right moment to look back and highlight the posts that resonated most strongly with readers. As has become a bit of an annual tradition, here is a look at the most popular content from 2025. Top 5 Most Viewed Posts of 2025 One intere...

At the Global 5G Evolution Workshop a couple of months ago, Soham Desai, Staff Wireless Systems Engineer at Skylo, delivered an insightful session on the progress of voice over NB-NTN and why this capability is now becoming practical. His talk walked through the state of the technology, the recent advances that make narrowband satellite voice possible, and the work being done in 3GPP to support it. Soham began by introducing Skylo and its role in enabling direct-to-device (D2D) satellite connectivity. Skylo works with a wide ecosystem that spans chipset vendors, device manufacturers, carriers and test equipment providers. The company promotes a hybrid approach that allows a single device and SIM to move seamlessly between terrestrial networks and Skylo’s satellite network whenever coverage is needed. A large number of consumer devices, including popular smartphones and smartwatches, already use Skylo’s services for satellite SOS and messaging, supported by a growing base of partners an...

China is increasingly asserting its presence in the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband arena, with two major constellation programmes, one state-backed and one commercially driven, now under active deployment. The government’s strategic plan for global communications infrastructure includes the Guowang network, targeting as many as 13,000 satellites, and the municipally supported Qianfan, also known as “Thousand Sails,” which aims for around 15,000 satellites. As of November 2025, Guowang has exceeded 100 satellites in orbit following a launch of nine satellites on 10 November. The Qianfan project, by contrast, has deployed around 90 satellites to date, a fraction of its target for regional coverage by the end of 2025. Both networks face significant challenges including manufacturing scale-up, launch cadence, orbital debris and regulatory timelines, yet their evolution has direct implications for the future architecture of global broadband, the integration of satellite and terre...

There has been a great deal of excitement around Ambient IoT and the idea of giving everyday objects the ability to sense their environment and communicate seamlessly. Wiliot has been one of the pioneers in this space, and its latest collaboration brings the technology into one of the UK's largest and most demanding logistics environments. Royal Mail has started using Wiliot’s digital tags across its network, becoming the first delivery operator globally to scale this technology. At the heart of the solution are Wiliot’s IoT Pixels, ultra-thin, sticker-like tags that function as tiny computing devices. They operate without batteries, drawing energy from surrounding radio waves. These miniature computers sense factors such as location, temperature and humidity and continuously stream data to the cloud. The result is real-time visibility without the need for manual scanning or integrated power sources. The connectivity layer relies on standard Bluetooth infrastructure. As tagged it...

Mobile internet has become the backbone of modern life, yet the latest GSMA report shows that progress is uneven. While billions enjoy fast 4G and 5G connections, hundreds of millions are still left outside the digital world entirely. The real challenge now is not just building networks but making them sustainable, affordable, and meaningful for the people who need them most. Connectivity has never been closer to universal, but the final stretch is proving to be the hardest. The GSMA’s latest report on 'The State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2025' paints a mixed picture of progress and persistent challenges in global mobile internet connectivity. While mobile broadband coverage has continued to expand and network quality is improving in many regions, significant gaps remain, particularly in the world’s most vulnerable communities. As of 2025, 96% of the world’s population lives within the footprint of a mobile broadband network. However, that still leaves around 300 millio...

We have looked at transparent antennas for a while now with my first post on the topic back in 2019. Since then this technology has matured immensely as I detailed in a blog post last year. Transparent antennas are no longer just experimental concepts but have reached the stage of commercial deployment, often combined with infrastructure sharing models to maximise efficiency and coverage. In Japan, infrastructure sharing has taken on special significance. The high cost of network deployment, limited availability of installation sites and the density of urban environments make it challenging for operators to expand coverage on their own. Shared infrastructure helps reduce duplication, control costs and speed up the roll-out of services. For readers unfamiliar with JTOWER , it is a Japanese company specialising in shared telecommunications infrastructure. JTOWER develops and manages towers and in-building solutions across Japan, with the goal of improving connectivity while reducing the...

Amazon’s Project Kuiper is moving rapidly from concept to large-scale implementation, aiming to deliver high-speed, low-latency broadband services to communities and organisations that are unserved or underserved by existing terrestrial infrastructure. The programme involves deploying a constellation of more than 3,200 satellites in low Earth orbit, supported by an extensive ground network and customer terminal technology. The initiative began research and development in 2018, with formal approval from the US Federal Communications Commission in 2020. After launching two prototype satellites in 2023, Amazon commenced production satellite deployment in April 2025. The pace of activity has since accelerated, with four missions completed in under four months and more than 100 satellites now in orbit . This early progress is part of a planned series of over 80 launches that will populate the initial constellation by the end of the decade. The system architecture is based on three core com...

In May 2024, TheNetworkingChannel hosted a thought-provoking expert panel titled New Frontiers in Wireless Sensing. This session brought together leading researchers from institutions such as MIT, CMU, Microsoft Research Asia, EPFL, IMDEA, UMass and HKUST. Each speaker offered a unique perspective on how wireless sensing is evolving into a foundational capability across domains ranging from healthcare and robotics to ocean and space exploration. The session began by addressing joint communication and sensing with unsynchronised transceivers. Joerg Widmer (IMDEA Networks) demonstrated how millimetre wave systems, despite relying on single RF chains and operating with unsynchronised clocks, can still achieve accurate multipath decomposition by employing cross-correlation techniques. These enable compensation for timing and frequency offsets, which are otherwise significant challenges in multistatic and passive localisation scenarios. Jie Xiong (Microsoft Research Asia and UMass) presente...