Vodafone Business joins NYU WIRELESS as the research center expands its work on network resilience. Vodafone Business, the enterprise arm of VodafoneThree, joins the affiliate roster at NYU Tandon's wireless research center that includes Nokia, Apple, Ericsson, Qualcomm, and others. Published: November 3, 2026 Vodafone Business has joined NYU WIRELESS, the research center at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, as an industrial affiliate, in a partnership that will connect NYU's Brooklyn and London locations with the UK's largest mobile operator. The partnership is being announced at the Brooklyn AI-Native 6G Summit, an annual gathering of telecom, technology, and policy leaders hosted by Nokia and NYU WIRELESS. Mobile networks carry emergency calls, payments, and critical infrastructure, and they must keep working through storms, cable cuts, jamming and cyberattacks. Following its merger last year, VodafoneThree is investing £11 billion to build the UK's best network, designed to meet the growing demands being placed on connectivity. The partnership with NYU WIRELESS will complement this investment, drawing on its expertise across wireless communications, cybersecurity, and AI to explore how networks can become even stronger and more resilient. The two organizations will co-author a series of white papers on topics including spectrum, UK sovereignty, and the future of resilient communications, written for government, regulators, and industry. The work will explore how industry, academia, and policymakers can help build more resilient networks as reliance on digital connectivity continues to grow. They will also collaborate on joint research projects, drawing on NYU Tandon expertise. NYU London, the university's academic center in the UK, will be the partnership's UK home. It will host events and programs that bring Vodafone Business and NYU researchers together with leaders from the UK government, industry, and academia and will support joint research as the partnership grows. "NYU WIRELESS helped lay the groundwork for 5G. The next challenge is to keep networks running robustly and securely, even when something goes wrong," said Juan de Pablo, Executive Vice President for Global Science and Technology at NYU and Executive Dean of NYU Tandon. "With NYU London as a base in the UK, we can work with VodafoneThree on both sides of the Atlantic, test innovative ideas against real conditions, and get them into use faster." Vodafone Business joins an affiliate group that includes Analog Devices, Apple, Ericsson, JMA Wireless, Keysight, MediaTek, Nokia, Qualcomm, Sharp, and UMC. Its membership means NYU WIRELESS can connect service providers with academic researchers and with the network vendors, device makers, chip designers, and test-equipment companies that build the technology those providers run. "Wireless research usually gets tested in simulations and labs," said Sundeep Rangan, Director of NYU WIRELESS and a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "Working with an operator that runs a national network shows us which ideas hold up under real conditions, from severe weather to deliberate jamming, and points us toward the problems that matter most to the people who depend on these networks." "Telecom networks are a national security asset, underpinning our economy, critical national infrastructure, public services, and defense," said Nick Gliddon, Business Director, VodafoneThree. "Their resilience is fundamental to the UK's security and prosperity. Together with NYU WIRELESS, we're combining world-class research with VodafoneThree's operational experience to tackle the toughest connectivity challenges and turn new ideas into practical solutions." Ted Rappaport founded NYU WIRELESS in 2012, and its early millimeter-wave research helped make 5G possible. Today, under Rangan, who became director in 2025, the center's more than 20 faculty and roughly 30 PhD students study how mobile networks can share spectrum with satellites, resist jamming and attacks, and use AI. NYU WIRELESS' recent federal awards include nearly $10 million from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to develop chips and antenna arrays for upper mid-band spectrum and nearly $4.7 million from the National Science Foundation for technology that keeps drones connected when signals weaken or are jammed. These, and other projects at NYU WIRELESS, focus directly on the resilience of next-generation networks, a key requirement for operators such as VodafoneThree.

Lenovo, Ericsson and Nokia face patent suits over former AST assets. Newly formed Long Horizon Technologies is asserting three patents against six companies in East Texas, targeting cloud computing, industrial edge and firmware technologies Get news, unique commentary, expert analysis and essential resources from the IAM experts. Angela morris. Deputy editor

France network outage puts Nokia under scrutiny as EU pushes to phase out Huawei, ZTE gear. A failure involving one of Europe's two main telecoms equipment suppliers feeds into debate over network resilience and vendor diversity. Further Reading Discover MORE stories on Published: 3:00pm, 30 Oct 2026 Updated: 3:34pm, 30 Oct 2026 A mobile network outage in France this week has raised questions about the reliability of Finnish telecoms giant Nokia's products against the backdrop of continued European Union efforts to phase out Chinese suppliers Huawei Technologies and ZTE over security concerns. The problem first hit the network of France's biggest telecoms provider Orange at 11.37am on Monday and lasted until 8.30pm, resulting in outages of up to nine hours for some customers, Orange France CEO Jerome Henique told French newspaper Le Figaro. At the core of the outage was a software bug in Nokia's code, Henique said, adding that the flaw was new to Orange and "extremely complicated to find". The bug affected Orange's mobile core network as well as equipment designed to provide redundancy for the core network, making the situation exceptional, according to him. While 4G and 5G services were disrupted, the 3G network remained functional, allowing customers to continue making phone calls and preventing a complete shutdown of services, Henique said. The number of affected customers has yet to be confirmed, but Orange's biggest trade union, CFE-CGC Orange, estimated that 70 per cent of the group's 22 million mobile lines were impacted. "The incident raises questions in particular about network resilience, the diversity of backup solutions, fault detection and crisis communication," the union said in a statement on Tuesday. Orange was seeking several million euros in compensation from Nokia, most likely in the form of discounts on future equipment or services, French media outlet L'informe reported on Wednesday. In a statement to the South China Morning Post on Thursday, the group said its contractual relationships with suppliers and any discussions that could take place remained confidential. Nokia did not respond to a request for comment from the SCMP. While the reported compensation claim would be financially manageable for Nokia, whose annual net sales were around €20 billion (US$22.4 billion) in 2025, the reputational fallout was a bigger concern, according to Tommi Saarinen, an analyst at Helsinki-based research firm Inderes. "The bug was in the mobile core, the most critical part of the network, and it took the backup systems down as well," Saarinen said. "Operators will ask Nokia harder questions about software quality and resilience." Connect Europe - the region's main telecoms industry association which counts Orange among its members - has repeatedly warned about the risks of Brussels' proposed revision of the EU Cybersecurity Act. SCMP Plus is a new premium news platform that gives you an all-inclusive edge to stay ahead on China news. To access our exclusive content you'll need to subscribe. The revised law, known as CSA2, would require operators to remove equipment from "high-risk" suppliers - in practice Huawei and ZTE - from the bloc's telecoms networks. By narrowing the choice of vendors, CSA2 could hinder European providers' ability to ensure network resilience and security, "prolonging or exacerbating systemic risks associated with over-reliance - especially in the event of network-wide failure - that could lead to customer harm while hampering diversification efforts", the group said in a report published in July. Nevertheless, Saarinen said the outage was unlikely to change the vendor landscape in Europe, as operators replacing Chinese equipment still only had two realistic choices: Nokia or Swedish company Ericsson. "The more likely consequence is stricter resilience requirements, such as backup systems that cannot fail for the same reason as the primary ones," he said. Xiaofei joined SCMP in 2025 after four years at CNN's Paris bureau where he covered the rise of far-right forces in France, the economic fallout of the war in Ukraine and many other subjects. Xiaofei has a master's degree in French History from the University of Chicago. related topics