Category: Communications

Israeli contract chipmaker Tower Semiconductor forecast first-quarter 2025 revenue slightly above estimates on Monday, on expectations of resilient demand for its chips from the automobile sector.

The US-listed shares of the company were up 1 per cent in premarket trading.

Tower makes analog and mixed-signal semiconductors used mainly in automobiles for “fabless” firms, which design chips but outsource their fabrication.

Despite the automobile sector struggling to clear inventory since its excessive stockpiling during the pandemic, a trend exacerbated by a slowdown in demand for electric vehicles in the past year, Tower Semiconductor has been resilient in recent quarters and has continued to supply its chips.

The chipmaker forecast first-quarter revenue of $358 million, with an upward or downward range of 5 per cent, slightly above analysts’ estimates of $357.5 million, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Tower posted fourth-quarter revenue of $387.2 million, which was in-line with estimates.

Net profit for the quarter ending December 31 was $55.1 million, below estimates of $58.7 million, due to taking on its portion of incremental costs of the greenfield chipmaking plant in Agrate, Italy.

On an adjusted basis, the company reported quarterly profit of 59 cents per share, compared with analysts’ estimates of 52 cents per share. Reuters

Investment in data centres and cloud infrastructure is still needed despite DeepSeek challenging the cost efficiency of large AI models, Baidu CEO Robin Li said.

“The investment in cloud infrastructure is still very much required. In order to come up with models that are smarter than everyone else, you have to use more compute,” Li told attendees at the World Government Summit in Dubai.

Compute refers to the hardware resources that make AI models work, allowing them to train on data, process information, and generate predictions.

Li’s comments come as Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has gained global attention for developing language models that match the performance of leading systems like OpenAI’s GPT while using significantly less computing power, raising questions about the necessity of massive AI infrastructure spending.

Baidu was among the first Chinese companies to launch AI products following OpenAI’s ChatGPT release in late 2022. However, its large language model Ernie, which Baidu claims matches GPT-4’s capabilities, has seen limited public adoption.

Li has made bold claims about China’s AI landscape in the past, including saying that it was unlikely that another OpenAI-like company would emerge from China. He had also advocated for closed-source models as the only viable path for AI development.

At Tuesday’s summit, Li acknowledged that DeepSeek’s sudden emergence demonstrated the unpredictable nature of innovation.

“You just don’t know when and where innovations come from,” he said.

Li added that U.S. chip sanctions have forced Chinese companies to innovate within computing constraints.

He also appeared to soften his stance on closed-source development, now acknowledging that open-source approaches could accelerate AI adoption.

“If you open things up, a lot of people will be curious enough to try it. This will help spread the technology much faster.” Reuters

The Kerala High Court has directed the Deputy Director, Directorate of Enforcement (ED), Kochi, to complete the probe into a case pertaining to the financial scam in the BSNL Engineers’ Cooperative Society within a year.

The court, in an order given on Monday, also directed the ED to initiate “all necessary legal action” under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against the accused in the case.

The court set the one-year deadline after the counsel for the ED informed it that an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) under PMLA was registered on March 29, 2023, on the basis of a case registered (Crime No. 81 of 2023) by the Vanchiyoor police.

The order by Justice Kauser Edappagath came on a petition filed by N.A. Abraham, convener of the BSNL Engineers’ Cooperative Society Depositors’ Forum, and Surendran Nair K.

The Vanchiyoor police had registered the case under relevant IPC sections dealing with criminal breach of trust, cheating, and criminal acts by several persons.

Further, the court has also directed the ED to hold camp sittings in Thiruvananthapuram for recording the statements of the witnesses.

The elderly petitioners had wanted the court to direct the ED to initiate prosecution measures against the accused under the PMLA. They had also urged the court to direct the ED to hold sittings in Thiruvananthapuram so that it is easier for the depositors, who are mostly elderly citizens, to give evidence.

The incident
The scam pertains to the embezzlement of depositors’ money to the tune of ₹260 crore. Several hundreds of depositors, majority of them in the 65-85 age group, who had invested in deposit schemes offered by the society, were cheated of their life savings. The inquiry report on the scam had detected “serious financial misappropriation” orchestrated through bogus Fixed Deposit receipts and ‘parallel’ registers.

Earlier this month, the High Court had sought a status report from the ED on the progress of investigation. The Hindu

Breaking a growth run witnessed between 2016 to 2022, a lucrative period that saw Jammu and Kashmir registering regular growth in terms of addition in mobile phone subscribers, as per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data, frequent monthly marginal decline in subscriber base has been recorded in the UT during the last two years.

Costlier mobile phone bills, led by a tariff hike by almost all telecom service providers, after the 5G spectrum auction in June last year, is said to be one of the main reasons for a fall in the subscriber base, of late.

In October 2024, as per latest TRAI data, the UT had 12244383 subscribers which slipped to 12133600 in November 2024, thus losing 110783 customers.

This decrease in mobile subscribers in J&K comes at a time when a decline in wireless subscribers on national level was seen from 1,150.41 million subscribers in October, 2024 to 1,148.64 million subscribers in November 2024.

Mobile phone subscribers say that costlier cell phone bills are proving to be a burden. Besides, unlike prepaid service, which provides flexible recharge options, post-paid service is comparatively heavier on the pocket, mobile phone users have lamented.

“A monthly bill of Rs 500 may not be a huge amount for someone with a handsome earning but what about the common man. The price hike has certainly proved to be a burden on commoners,” said Khursheed Ahmad, a Srinagar resident.

Ahmad said the decline in mobile phone subscribers amid a tariff hike, is an economic indicator on how despite a growing demand for use of data services, owing to popularity of mobile internet, states and UTs have been losing mobile subscribers.

The adverse impact of a tariff hike on cell-phone users started showing signs last year.

As per TRAI data, there was a fall in mobile phone subscribers in J&K during December, 2023 by 0.14 per cent. Besides the UT, only Maharashtra and West Bengal had seen a decline in wireless subscribers, while all other states and UTs had logged a growth in subscriber base.

Notably, Bharti Airtel, a leading telecommunications service provider, in a statement issued last month, said it maintained its dominance in the wireless subscriber market in the Jammu and Kashmir circle for October 2024.

According to the data released by the TRAI, Airtel’s subscriber base in the region stood at 6,101,786 as of October, 2024. However, this has seen a slight decrease to 6,100,700 in November, 2024 as per TRAI data.

Despite all odds on the economic front, Jammu and Kashmir had logged 15 per cent mobile subscriber growth during 2016-2022. This growth curve which started its upward trajectory in 2017 was quite significant as the UT had slipped to a total of 95,738,52 mobile subscribers in 2016 due to a long communication shutdown back then. Greater Kashmir

India is set to develop its own generative AI model, joining the ranks of global players like ChatGPT and DeepSeek, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced at the Utkarsh Odisha Conclave. The initiative will be powered by the India AI Compute Facility, which has secured 18,000 GPUs to drive the development of a Large Language Model (LLM) tailored for the country’s needs.

Vaishnaw also revealed plans to establish AI data centers in Odisha, marking a significant step toward strengthening India’s AI ecosystem and digital infrastructure.

The Indian government has been actively investing in AI research and infrastructure, aiming to reduce dependence on foreign AI models and establish a self-reliant digital ecosystem. The India AI Compute Facility is a critical part of this mission, providing high-performance computing resources for the country’s AI initiatives.

“With 18,000 GPUs in place, India is well on its way to building a homegrown AI model that will cater to the unique linguistic, economic, and social requirements of the nation,” Vaishnaw said.

The announcement also highlighted Odisha as a key hub for AI development, with upcoming data centers that will play a role in accelerating AI innovation. This move aligns with India’s broader strategy of decentralizing technology infrastructure beyond metropolitan cities.

The Indian government has been pushing for AI adoption across sectors, from healthcare and governance to education and financial services. The development of a native generative AI model could help ensure data security, local language support, and better regulatory control compared to international AI platforms.

With the rise of ChatGPT (OpenAI) and DeepSeek (China), the race for AI supremacy is intensifying. India’s Large Language Model is expected to compete with these established platforms, focusing on localized AI applications and enhancing digital accessibility for Indian users. Business Today

According to a newly published report by Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, security, networks, and data center industries, predicts that the Broadband Access Equipment market is forecasted to grow 0.8 percent on average for the next five years (2024-2029), with total revenue expected to peak in 2028, as cable operators and fiber ISPs complete major DOCSIS 4.0 and rural broadband expansion projects.

“Quietly, broadband access networks are evolving into large-scale edge compute platforms, with the ability to enable service convergence far more quickly and easily than ever before,” said Jeff Heynen, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “This evolution means that the revenue mix for broadband equipment is shifting over the next five years, with spending on traditional hardware and software now being supplemented by spending on AI and machine learning tools to facilitate convergence and service reliability,” added Heynen.

Additional highlights from the Broadband Access & Home Networking 5-Year January 2025 Forecast Report:

• PON equipment revenue is expected to grow from $10.5 B in 2024 to $12.1 B in 2029, driven largely by XGS-PON deployments in North America, EMEA, and CALA, as well as FTTR (Fiber to the Room) and 50 Gbps deployments in China.
• Revenue for Cable Distributed Access Equipment (Virtual CCAP, Remote PHY Devices, Remote MACPHY Devices, and Remote OLTs) is expected to peak at $1.3 B in 2028, as operators continue their DOCSIS 4.0 and early fiber deployments.
• Revenue for Fixed Wireless CPE is expected to peak in 2025 and 2026, dominated by shipments of 5G sub-6 GHz and a growing number of 5G millimeter wave units.
• Revenue for Wi-Fi 7 residential routers and broadband CPE with WLAN will reach $8.9 B by 2029, as the technology is rapidly adopted by consumers and service providers alike.

NewsBit Bureau

DeepSeek said it’s restricting signups for new users to people with a mainland China telephone number, claiming that its system had been targeted in “large-scale malicious attacks.”

DeepSeek’s services have been overwhelmed with demand since the weekend after it unveiled an artificial intelligence chatbot that it says can rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT and was developed at a fraction of the cost of competing products.

The Chinese startup sparked a $1 trillion rout in US and European technology stocks after its service surged to the top of smartphone app download charts, prompting investors to question bloated valuations for some of America’s biggest companies.

“Currently, only registration with a mainland China mobile phone number is supported,” the company posted earlier on its status page. DeepSeek did not specify whether the signup curbs are temporary or how long they will last.

An earlier service incident was resolved as of 9:32 p.m. in China on Monday, a little over an hour after the company first disclosed it, DeepSeek said. The startup’s status page also shows problems with its API earlier in the day and on Sunday.

It was the company’s longest major outage since it started reporting its status and corresponds with the app rocketing to popularity in the Apple and Android app stores. DeepSeek, which was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, has said it’s produced a chatbot that competes with the latest technology from OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc. at a fraction of the cost. Bloomberg

AT&T’s fourth-quarter wireless subscriber growth surpassed expectations on Monday, fueled by strong demand for its discounted premium plans combining 5G mobile with high-speed fiber data services.

The US telecom giant added 482,000 net monthly bill-paying wireless phone subscribers in the holiday quarter, outpacing analysts’ estimated gains of 424,550, according to Visible Alpha.

As the pool of potential new wireless customers shrinks in the United States, AT&T’s strategy of bundling high-speed fiber internet with wireless phone services has helped drive growth for the company.

Its fiber business added 307,000 new customers in the fourth quarter, higher than 226,000 additions in the prior quarter, marking its best fourth-quarter fiber net additions.

The last three months of the year are typically strong for telecom operators, driven by factors such as Black Friday promotions, trade-in deals for new iPhone launches and the gift-giving season around Christmas, all of which contribute to higher subscriber additions.

Rival Verizon reported its best quarterly wireless subscriber growth in five years on Friday, with 568,000 monthly bill-paying wireless subscribers added in the fourth quarter.

AT&T expects annual adjusted profit between $1.97 and $2.07 per share, excluding the contribution from its 70% stake in DirecTV, which the company is selling for $7.6 billion. It was not immediately clear if the range could be compared with the estimate of $2.18 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.

AT&T said last month that it expected free cash flow to be more than $18 billion in 2027 and would reach more than 50 million locations with fiber by 2029.

Excluding items, it reported a profit of 54 cents per share, higher than analysts’ estimate of 50 cents per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Total revenue rose about 1% to $32.3 billion, compared with an estimate of $32.04 billion.

AT&T began offering bill credits for network outages from Jan. 9, part of a new initiative to attract customers in a highly competitive market. Reuters

The inability of Meta’s AI chatbot to identify the current president of the United States was elevated to urgent status by the Facebook owner this week, requiring a fast fix, a person familiar with the issue said.

Republican Donald Trump was inaugurated as president on Monday, succeeding Democrat Joe Biden. Yet on Thursday, the Meta AI chatbot was still saying that Biden was president, according to the source and to a Reuters test of the service.

Asked by Reuters on Thursday to name the president, Meta AI replied:

“The current president of the United States is Joe Biden. However, according to the most recent information available, Donald Trump was sworn in as the president on January 20, 2025.”

The issue prompted Meta to initiate an emergency procedure it uses to troubleshoot urgent problems with its services, known within the company as a SEV, or “site event,” according to the person familiar with the work.

Asked to comment, Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said: “Everyone knows the President of the United States is Donald Trump. All generative AI systems sometimes return outdated results, and we will continue to improve our features.”

He did not comment on what emergency procedures, if any, Meta had implemented.

It was at least the third emergency procedure Meta has experienced this week related to the U.S. presidential transition, the source told Reuters.

The incidents drew widespread complaints from social media watchers scrutinizing Meta’s platforms for signs of politicized shifts after CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared at Trump’s inauguration on Monday and instituted a series of changes in recent weeks aimed at mending relations with the incoming administration.

Those changes included scrapping its U.S. fact-checking program, elevating Republican Joel Kaplan as its new chief global affairs officer, electing a close friend of Trump’s to its board and ending its diversity programs.

In one incident this week, Meta appeared to be forcing some users to re-follow the profiles of Trump, Vice President JD Vance and first lady Melania Trump on Facebook and Instagram, even after the users had unfollowed those accounts.

That issue cropped up during the company’s normal practice of transferring official White House social media accounts to new control when a presidential administration changes, the company said on Wednesday.

In this case, an error occurred because the transfer process was prolonged and the system failed to log “unfollow” requests from users while it was under way, prompting a top priority SEV1, the person said.

Another emergency procedure involved an issue in which Meta’s Instagram service blocked searches for the hashtags #Democrat and #Democrats for some users, while turning up results without issue for #Republican.

A Meta spokesperson acknowledged the problem on Tuesday but said it affected “people’s ability to search for a number of different hashtags on Instagram – not just those on the left.” Reuters

In order to compete with foreign AI foundational models that form the base of many applications like ChatGPT and Gemini, India is calling for proposals for building its own foundational model, said Abhishek Singh, additional secretary, Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) during his visit to GIFT City in Gujarat, Monday.

“One key issue has been, how does India build a foundational model? Currently, all the foundational models which we are using — whether it is ChatGPT or Llama 3 or Gemini or Claude — are foreign. Now China has also come up with Deepseek and other models. We need to invest and provide funding support to build an Indian foundational model. The foreign foundational models are trained on western data sets and are not aligned to Indian languages and Indian situations, and sometimes give wrong or inappropriate responses,” said Singh while speaking at the inauguration of an AI Centre of Excellence (CoE) at GIFT City at Gandhinagar where Chief minister Bhupendra Patel was also present.

“To ensure that we are able to compete with the world’s best, we are coming up with a call for proposals for building a foundational model in India. I am sure some of the start-ups and innovators present here today will be joining this challenge to build an Indian foundational model ,” Singh added without disclosing a timeframe for the proposals. Foundational models are a type of artificial intelligence model, capable of performing a wide range of tasks. These models are created by training on vast and diverse datasets, enabling their use across various applications.

A lot of risks
“While AI has a lot of potential, it has a lot of risks. We have seen how deep fakes, misinformation works and how wrong responses from AI can cause problems. For this, we are building tools for building safe, trusted, responsible, ethical AI. Researchers and institutions are building tools for detecting algorithmic biases, misinformation in AI, detecting deep fakes. These tools will also be available to CoEs and all start-ups building it,” the official added.

Pointing out that India was involved “globally in the development of AI governance guidelines,” Singh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be travelling to Paris on February 10-11 where both India and France will be co-hosting the AI Action Summit. The official also said that India is looking to set up 18000 Graphic Processing Units or GPUs under the IndiaAI Mission to build a high-end scalable AI computing ecosystem to support start-ups, researchers, students and academicians.

“India has very few GPUs compared to other countries. So under the AI Mission we have floated tenders and in partnership with the industry and our objective was to set up 10000 GPUs. We opened the financial bids last week and we are hoping for 18,000 GPUs at very competitive rates. And these GPUs will be available to all start-ups and researchers at a further subsidised cost. The start-ups working in the CoE will also benefit from this,” he added. The Hindu BusinessLine