Will Townsend
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Articles by Will Townsend
This week, I had the opportunity to attend the Brooklyn AI-Native 6G Summit, hosted by Nokia and NYU WIRELESS. Now in its 13th year, it's an invitation-only, research-grounded gathering where… | Will Townsend
This week, I had the opportunity to attend the Brooklyn AI-Native 6G Summit, hosted by Nokia and NYU WIRELESS. Now in its 13th year, it's an invitation-only, research-grounded gathering where industry and academia shape what comes next in mobility. My key takeaways: The network is more important than ever.
SpaceX Selects Qualcomm to Accelerate Starlink Mobile’s Nationwide 5G Network
As a precursor to my upcoming Beyond the Network podcast that will dive deeper into the recent news that SpaceX has selected Qualcomm to power Starlink Mobile's planned nationwide terrestrial 5G network, I wanted to share some initial insights based on my prebrief with Qualcomm's executive leadership and past published work. What stands out for me is the deployment path that SpaceX is taking.
Sean Kinney and I will be diving into this big announcement between Qualcomm and SpaceX and sharing our hot takes and insights in an upcoming Beyond the Network podcast episode. Stay tuned! | Will Townsend
Sean Kinney and I will be diving into this big announcement between Qualcomm and SpaceX and sharing our hot takes and insights in an upcoming Beyond the Network podcast episode. Stay tuned! Big step forward for 5G networks: SpaceX selected Qualcomm Dragonwing to power Starlink Mobile’s US nationwide terrestrial 5G network.
AT&T and AST SpaceMobile: Engineering the Connected World
Ground control to Major Tom! 🚀 AT&T and AST SpaceMobile recently completed the industry's first handoff between a terrestrial cellular network and a direct-to-device satellite network. Ericsson's radio and core intelligence on the AT&T side cut transition times from seconds to milliseconds and Nokia continues to power the mobility on AST SpaceMobile's space-based network. Connecting a phone to a satellite has been mission accomplished.
T‑Mobile Opens Up on Its Cybersecurity Transformation in New Report - T‑Mobile Newsroom
I applaud T-Mobile for publishing a detailed report on its cybersecurity transformation, Advancing Cybersecurity at T-Mobile, and some of the outcomes are noteworthy. According to the report, phishing-related credential compromises among employees decreased by 99% after T-Mobile paired biometric identity verification with FIDO2 hardware security keys. The report also states that layered authentication has reduced successful SIM swap attacks on customers by 99% since 2022.
#ibmtechxchange | Will Townsend
I spent this past Tuesday with IBM leadership at its TechXchange, and I left with three big takeaways: 1️⃣DevOps is shifting from code to systems. The future of DevOps will be less about writing discrete code and more about architecture development and the orchestration of systems. That's a meaningful change in how developers will spend their time, and it unlocks the opportunity for more time spent on the creative aspects of development with AI agents handling more tedious tasks.
The Race To Secure Agentic Identity
Identity security is undergoing a kind of renaissance. Historically, organizations took years to deploy human-centric identity access and control, largely because solutions were fragmented and focused on discrete capabilities, including authentication, authorization, privileged access, governance and administration, and threat detection and response. Integrations between cybersecurity infrastructure providers have helped, but agentic frameworks fundamentally challenge that approach.
Palo Alto Networks - Redefining Secure Enterprise Connectivity In The AI Era - LoneStar Advisory & Research
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Fortinet Expands AI Security with the FortiGuard Inline AI Security Service
Fortinet announced its FortiGuard Inline AI Security Service today, and the press release includes my insights. What stands out for me is the delivery model. Rather than requiring a separate AI security deployment, Fortinet is offering FortiAIGate-based inspection and guardrails as a service on FortiGate firewalls, with a self-hosted FortiAIGate option for organizations with stricter privacy and sovereignty requirements.
Nokia advances AI-RAN toward commercial deployment and physical AI, launches sovereign agentic AI platform for telco autonomy with NVIDIA
In my mid-July Nokia AI-RAN LoneStar Advisory & Research note, I highlighted that proof of success for Nokia's AI-RAN efforts lies in broad operator experimentation and eventual adoption. Today's announcement with NVIDIA at GTC Berlin demonstrates progress on that front. What stands out for me is mobile network operator momentum. Elisa has demonstrated AI and traditional mobile services running side by side in its live network.
Today, I joined La Luce Cristallina in Austin for the ribbon cutting of their wafer fab that opened last year, and it's worth explaining why this startup from my alma mater The University of Texas at… | Will Townsend
Today, I joined La Luce Cristallina in Austin for the ribbon cutting of their wafer fab that opened last year, and it's worth explaining why this startup from my alma mater The University of Texas at Austin may have a future impact in the semiconductor space. The company has taken barium titanate, a crystal that responds to electricity far more strongly than silicon, from the lab into production.
Infoblox – Fortifying Frontier AI Cyber Defense Through DNS
Enterprises are increasingly adopting both generative AI applications and agentic frameworks to unlock robust levels of security automation, visibility, and runtime protection, and the operational efficiencies are astounding. The recent emergence of Frontier models represents the next evolution of AI. It can scan enormous codebases at machine speed to assist defenders in prioritizing existing vulnerabilities and discovering new ones that require critical patching.
Fastly for AI | Govern. Control. Protect. | Fastly | Will Townsend
I spent the day with Fastly in NYC and had many conversations with the executive leadership team and customers. I continue to be impressed with how the company finds adjacencies beyond content delivery to provide highly efficient and cost effective compute, security that includes its depth in bot management, API contract enforcement, DDoS, WAF, and new AI runtime controls as well as highly resilient edge connectivity for enterprise use cases.
Cisco Advances Scalability and Openness at OCP 2026
Cisco continues to make a strong case for open AI infrastructure at the Open Compute Project Foundation Global Summit 2026, with new Silicon One silicon, systems and optics spanning rack-scale to scale-across architectures. Several things stand out for me. Silicon One P200-powered systems are now in production at Microsoft and in Alibaba's eCORE backbone running SONiC, the first G300-powered systems are shipping, and the new 51.2T G302 brings 200G SerDes and liquid cooling to top-of-rack.
Horizons of Identity Security, 2026-2027
For years, identity security was considered a second-class citizen in the broader cybersecurity market. A necessarily control that often introduced user friction, it resulted in many organizations taking years to piece together a mature deployment, as evidenced by SailPoint's recent maturity model research. Today, identity is serving as a critical control plane for agentic AI.
Join me with Infoblox on October 21 as we explore the power of EASM and deep DNS protection in defending against the weaponization of frontier AI.
AI-automated attacks can continuously scan, adapt and pursue thousands of targets in parallel. Join Infoblox to learn how EASM can identify exposed assets, misconfigurations, credentials and abandoned domains, while helping teams prioritize and reduce the conditions attackers rely on. Register here 🔗: https://brnw.ch/21x6evs...
No window, no warning: why security has to live in every layer
The time between a vulnerability being theorized and exploited has collapsed, which changes what infrastructure has to do. It's the thread we'll follow through Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
I continue to be impressed with the innovation incubation that Outshift by Cisco pioneers. I've written about its efforts in the past tied to its AGNTCY investigations that are now a part of the The… | Will Townsend
Look at this picture. That is how quantum networks are run today, with a hand on every part of the car. Entanglement decays within microseconds, pairs fail to arrive, and you cannot read what a quantum state carries without destroying it, so physicists stand over every source, detector, timing system and switch, adjusting each one by hand for as long as the connection is up. A link at a time! A system that needs a hand on every part does not scale, no matter how good the hands are.
Arctic Wolf – Delivering Protection At Machine Speed With The Aurora Agentic SOC
Generative and agentic AI is quickly reimagining security operations. Natural language copilots are providing highly valuable ways to evaluate looming threats, apply breach mitigation, and improve posture. In parallel, agents can be deployed to automate critical runtime tasks at machine speed, such as red teaming, to fight AI with AI. However, bad actors are simultaneously moving from AI-assisted to AI-autonomous campaigns to improve the sophistication and scale of attacks.
AT&T and Corning Team Up to Engineer the Connected World with Fiber | Will Townsend
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Strengthening AI Governance and Security Outcomes With Deeper Network-Derived Intelligence
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Gigamon authored by the team. Read the original post at: https://blog.gigamon.com/2026/09/28/strengthening-ai-governance-and-security-outcomes-with-deeper-network-derived-intelligence/ Modern AI, including generative applications and agentic frameworks, represents a double-edged sword.
Why marketing’s hidden operating system is becoming a competitive advantage in the age of AI
We recently hosted a webinar, Survival of the Best Connected, to explore the future of the marketing operating model. Compared with many other industries, marketing still lacks a clearly defined and consistently applied operating system. Architects train for years to create plans that every contractor can interpret, and that ultimately result in buildings that stand up.
This announcement follows Nokia's recent claim to being first to commercialization of AI-RAN. Proof of success lies in broad operator experimentation and eventual adoption and this second… | Will Townsend
1,964,987 followers 1d Edited AI-RAN is rapidly moving from industry vision to commercial reality. Today, Nokia announced growing momentum for AI-RAN, with operators across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East accelerating the evolution toward AI-native 6G networks.
I'm looking forward to Connected Britain and another panel moderation opportunity! See you next week London! | Will Townsend
⚡ The telecom industry spent years debating the potential of disaggregated networks- now comes the hard part: executing at scale. Transitioning Open RAN and cloud-native architecture from controlled pilot environments into mission-critical, mass-market infrastructure requires a fundamental shift in how operators manage integration, security, and supply chains. The Connected Networks stage at #ConnectedBritain presents Open RAN and cloudification: Moving from trials to mass deployment in the UK.
Qualcomm 6G Leadership Day, AI-Powered Accessibility, and New Qualcomm Dragonwing Platforms
I had the opportunity to attend Qualcomm's 6G Leadership Day and thank Tony O'Connor and the analyst relations team for the sponsored travel. My big takeway was the company's vision for 6G moving from a device centric application model to an agentic centric multi-device experience. That tracks based on what I'm observing across mobile infrastructure providers and operators.
OpenAI's ad business shows blistering growth, hits $1 billion annualized revenue run rate | Will Townsend
Excited to announce that our ChatGPT ads business has surpassed a $1B annualized run rate, less than 200 days since launch. Our team has done it with a careful focus on user experience and trust. When I started in early April we were live in the US only. We’re now live in 40 countries. I’m grateful for the advertisers, agencies and partners who’ve been with us from the start, and are now scaling in substantial ways.
Beyond the Network – Qualcomm 6G Leadership Day (Episode 8)
© 2026 LoneStar Advisory & Research | "Ask Will" is a Denser AI beta agent trained on a subset of the formal published work of Will Townsend. It generates responses based on vast data inputs and lacks critical thinking, so it can't guarantee factual accuracy and may produce content that's incorrect or misleading.
Forbes JAPAN 公式サイト（フォーブス ジャパン）
子供の頃、私は『MAD』誌に連載されていたセリフのない漫画『スパイvsスパイ（Spy vs.
Three Big Takeaways From Black Hat USA 2026
As the summer vacation season winds down, Black Hat’s early August event in Las Vegas marks a return to big tech industry trade shows. It is a somewhat unique gathering relative to other industry cybersecurity events, one that is heavily focused on security practitioners and the challenges they face in protecting organizational operations. To no surprise, many of the conversations and announcements this year focused on the weaponization of Frontier AI.
Beyond the Network – Episode 7
© 2026 LoneStar Advisory & Research | "Ask Will" is a Denser AI beta agent trained on a subset of the formal published work of Will Townsend. It generates responses based on vast data inputs and lacks critical thinking, so it can't guarantee factual accuracy and may produce content that's incorrect or misleading.
I've long asserted that 5G and Wi-Fi are better together. Celona does too and the company's recent announcement aims to provide enterprises with a hybrid deployment that is architected to ease… | Will Townsend
Yesterday, we introduced Celona Orion, the agentic converged wireless platform purpose-built for the AI-native enterprise. Over the coming weeks, we’ll take a closer look at the core capabilities that power the platform. Today, we’re starting with convergence. Enterprise wireless has traditionally been deployed and managed as separate networks — each with its own infrastructure, policies, and operational model.
Securing Modern AI In A Machine-Versus-Machine World Original
Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Large Language Model AI Technology Data Fabric Data Science getty As a kid, I fondly remember the Spy vs. Spy wordless comic strip in MAD Magazine. It featured two agents, each employing clever tactics to outwit the other. For fun, its creator Antonio Prohias also introduced a third agent who often outsmarted both. Dating back an astounding sixty-five years, MAD’s iconic sequential art is symbolic of today’s new cybersecurity battlefront.
Everything is Bigger in Texas!
© 2026 LoneStar Advisory & Research | "Ask Will" is a Denser AI beta agent trained on a subset of the formal published work of Will Townsend. It generates responses based on vast data inputs and lacks critical thinking, so it can't guarantee factual accuracy and may produce content that's incorrect or misleading.
American Airlines CEO lays out his vision to close a more than $3 billion profit gap
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom has a math problem. The airline has more flights than any U.S. airline - 25% of the 2026 schedule, according to Cirium. But the airline makes just a tiny fraction of the profit that its large airline rivals Delta and United make. American says its working on closing that gap. To get there it needs to get customers to pay more for its flights (and fly to places where that's possible), fix its reliability and increase loyalty program revenue.
Three Big Takeaways From Microsoft Security’s Project Perception Event
I recently attended Microsoft Security’s Project Perception launch event in San Francisco. The software giant continues to refine its broad cybersecurity platform, offering a diverse set of defensive capabilities across its Entra identity, Defender endpoint, email, and cloud-native application protection suite, Sentinel security operations, Purview data security, and secure service edge network security offerings – all informed by Microsoft’s deep threat intelligence.
Beyond the Network – Episode 6
© 2026 LoneStar Advisory & Research | "Ask Will" is a Denser AI beta agent trained on a subset of the formal published work of Will Townsend. It generates responses based on vast data inputs and lacks critical thinking, so it can't guarantee factual accuracy and may produce content that's incorrect or misleading.
Fortinet Architects The Convergence Of Firewall And SASE Services
Many solution providers are charting a path of reimagining SASE services, and it is a logical evolution. With the rapid adoption of agentic AI applications and proliferation of corresponding workloads, SD-WAN and security will have to support the requirements of both human users and agents. It is anticipated that agents will generate far more network traffic than humans through persistent, around-the-clock MCP server, API, task, and orchestration calls across the infrastructure.
HPE delivers industry’s highest-density performance for AI-driven science with supercomputing powered by 6th Gen AMD EPYC processors
AMD is firing all on all AI cylinders and its current stock price is a reflection of its efforts. At the company's recent Advancing AI 2026 event, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced a number of compute platforms that incorporate AMD silicon.
Q2 2026 Highlights | Will Townsend
Nokia delivered solid financial results for the current quarter with AI and cloud sales doubling YoY with healthy margin expansion. Lots of upside with continued investment in optical and IP networking and taking some significant writeoffs in the current quarter paves the way for improved future profitability. $NOK Today we announced our Q2 2026 financial results, demonstrating solid performance and clear momentum, particularly in AI & Cloud.
Q2 2026 - Ericsson.pdf
Our second quarter highlights disciplined execution, robust cash returns 📊 and real-world AI breakthroughs. Our key Q2 results include: 📈 Adjusted gross margin of 48.4%, driven by solid operational execution and improved Mobile Networks performance. 💰 Strong net cash position fueling continued investments and shareholder returns; SEK 8.2 billion returned in Q2.
2Q26 Highlights | Will Townsend
AT&T registered an impressive 1M adds across fiber, fixed wireless access, and post paid in the current quarter. The company also exceeded expectations with its free cash flow, and it is executing well on its converged broadband and mobility growth - up 50 basis points YoY. I see lots of headroom for further growth with the company's continued investment in fiber, Dynamic Defense "on the wire" security, and AI to deliver better mobile customer experiences.
T-Mobile's magenta machine continues to deliver positive results in the current quarter. Top line revenue was a miss, but earnings per share were well above expectations. I really like the company's… | Will Townsend
Another quarter of putting customers first! Because of YOU, this quarter we: 🌟 Achieved our highest-ever NPS of 46 📱 Welcomed 277K net postpaid accounts 💜 Delivered 9% service revenue growth YoY, showing that putting customers first is also good for business 🏆 Extended our network leadership with top honors from Ookla, Opensignal and P3 🚀 Continued investing in AI, broadband and the experiences that keep customers coming back Thank you, Team Magenta and thank you to every customer who see...
Infineon’s Smart Power Fab Paves A Road To European Semiconductor Sovereignty - LoneStar Advisory & Research | Will Townsend
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2025 Living Progress Report
AI is reshaping our world at a pace unlike any technology before it. With that opportunity comes a responsibility to build and deploy it thoughtfully. At Hewlett Packard Enterprise, we believe progress depends on infrastructure that is efficient, secure, and built to scale responsibly. That foundation enables organizations to simplify complexity, accelerate innovation, and create lasting value for customers, communities, and society.
Nokia Stakes Its Claim To Being First To AI-RAN Commercialization
Nokia is on a path of reinvention. The company is making bold moves under chief executive, Justin Hotard, to extend its reach across mobile network operator and enterprise markets. The acquisition of Infinera last year strengthened its already well-established optical networking portfolio that is optimized to facilitate AI data center clustering.
Last week, Ericsson invited me and a small group of journalists to tour its 5G Smart Factory in Lewisville, Texas. I've had the opportunity over a decade as an industry analyst to tour large-scale… | Will Townsend
Last week, Ericsson invited me and a small group of journalists to tour its 5G Smart Factory in Lewisville, Texas. I've had the opportunity over a decade as an industry analyst to tour large-scale manufacturing sites with Huawei, John Deere, Samsung Semiconductor and many others. What strikes me as impressive is the company's balance of leaning into private 5G, automation and AI to not replace staff, but rather to augment their capabilities.
AT&T and Ericsson Demonstrate Drone Detection Outside of AT&T Stadium | Will Townsend
I had the opportunity to attend the sensing demonstration with AT&T and Ericsson on Friday, July 10th. What impresses me is that both companies aren't waiting for 6G or for NVIDIA to supply a tech stack. Realistically - commercialization is still a few years out, but the drone detection demo went far to highlight how a mobile network can function as a sensor and not require incremental RAN infrastructure to do so.
#verintengage #engage26 | Will Townsend
Verint has experienced a lot of change over the past several months. Its acquisition by Thoma Bravo late last year, merger with Calabrio and a new chief executive are big moves for the company. However, it is fueling a transformation from workforce and customer engagement software provider to delivering measurable AI business outcomes when many other AI solutions are stuck in proof of concepts.
Three Big Takeaways From HPE Discover U.S. 2026
I recently attended Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Discover in the United States, meeting with its executive leadership and product teams. This year’s event was especially significant, highlighting HPE’s progress with integrating its hotly contested acquisition of Juniper Networks, which was finally approved by regulators last July.
Beyond the Network – Episode 5
© 2026 LoneStar Advisory & Research | "Ask Will" is a Denser AI beta agent trained on a subset of the formal published work of Will Townsend. It generates responses based on vast data inputs and lacks critical thinking, so it can't guarantee factual accuracy and may produce content that's incorrect or misleading.
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