Key Facts

• Undersea Cable Sabotage? Multiple undersea internet cables were severed in the Red Sea, degrading connectivity across parts of Asia and the Middle East. NetBlocks reported outages on key subsea systems near Jeddah, affecting countries from India and Pakistan to Gulf states beaumontenterprise.com. Microsoft warned Azure cloud users of higher latency as traffic was rerouted reuters.com. Saudi and UAE telecom networks saw slowdowns, fueling speculation of sabotage amid regional conflicts beaumontenterprise.com.
• Social Media Throttled in Turkey: The Turkish government restricted access to major social platforms including X (Twitter), YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and WhatsApp on Sept 7–8. Bandwidth was throttled on multiple networks as the opposition called for protests, according to global monitor NetBlocks reuters.com reuters.com. Authorities gave no comment for the sudden slowdown, which activists decried as an attempt to quash dissent.
• Starlink’s Satellite Milestone: SpaceX’s latest Starlink launch on Sept 6 deployed 24 new broadband satellites, pushing its 2025 deployment past 2,000 satellites this year alone keeptrack.space. This rapid expansion – part of near-weekly launches – now gives Starlink a megaconstellation of thousands of LEO (low Earth orbit) satellites beaming high-speed internet to users in over 100 countries, solidifying SpaceX’s lead in the satellite internet race keeptrack.space.
• Amazon Kuiper’s First Airline Deal: Amazon’s rival Project Kuiper announced its first airline partnership, signing JetBlue to provide free inflight Wi-Fi via Kuiper’s satellite network once service begins. Starting in 2027, JetBlue will equip aircraft with Kuiper terminals to deliver faster, low-latency connectivity aloft capacitymedia.com capacitymedia.com. Amazon has 100+ Kuiper satellites already in orbit and plans to begin beta broadband service in late 2025 capacitymedia.com, after an upcoming satellite launch on Sept 25.
• New Digital Lifelines: Major infrastructure projects to boost internet capacity launched in early September. In Europe, GlobalConnect unveiled a €40 million subsea fiber project linking Sweden, Estonia and Finland with four new cables (550 km subsea and more on land), creating a 1,250 km Baltic Sea “digital ring” to increase regional bandwidth 400% capacitymedia.com capacitymedia.com. And in East Africa, a 4,100 km undersea cable dubbed “Daraja” was inaugurated to connect Kenya and Oman, aiming to lower internet costs and latency in Kenya and beyond ts2.tech.
• Internet Blackouts Persist: In Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, roughly 15 million people remain offline under a weeks-long mobile internet blackout imposed by authorities amid anti-militant operations ts2.tech. Meanwhile, Iraq continued its annual practice of nationwide internet shutdowns for a few hours each morning during high school exams to prevent cheating – a ritual that frustrates students and businesses alike as connectivity is cut across the country at dawn ts2.tech.
• Clampdowns on Online Freedom: A draconian new internet law in Russia took effect Sept 1, imposing fines up to ₽5,000 (~$65) for merely searching for banned “extremist” content – even via VPN reuters.com reuters.com. The blacklist of forbidden material spans over 500 pages and includes opposition groups and LGBTQ resources reuters.com. “The main task…is to create fear…to increase the level of self-censorship” among internet users, warned Sarkis Darbinyan of digital rights group Roskomsvoboda reuters.com. The law has drawn criticism even from some pro-Kremlin figures for its vague scope, and officials hinted that Meta-owned WhatsApp could be banned next under the “extremist” label reuters.com reuters.com.
• Inclusive Connectivity Initiatives: Efforts to bridge the digital divide saw new momentum. MTN South Africa announced it will sell 4G smartphones for just $5 to over 1.2 million low-income users still on 2G/3G networks, ensuring they’re not left offline as old networks shut down reuters.com reuters.com. In the Philippines, operators rolled out plug-and-play 5G home broadband kits to reach rural villages lacking fiber. And New York City launched a “Liberty Link” pilot to wire up public housing complexes with free gigabit Wi-Fi for thousands of disadvantaged residents by year’s end ts2.tech. Despite such initiatives, the UN’s ITU warns roughly 2.6 billion people – one-third of humanity – still lack internet access, and achieving universal connectivity by 2030 may require an estimated $2.6–2.8 trillion investment ts2.tech.

In-Depth Report

Undersea Cable Outage Shakes Asia & Mideast

A sudden severing of multiple undersea internet cables in the Red Sea over the weekend sent shockwaves through global connectivity. On September 7, monitoring groups reported that two major subsea fiber systems (the SEA-ME-WE 4 and IMEWE cables) were cut near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, dramatically slowing or disrupting internet service in countries including India, Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE beaumontenterprise.com beaumontenterprise.com. NetBlocks called it “a series of subsea cable outages” that degraded connectivity across the region beaumontenterprise.com.

Technology giant Microsoft alerted Azure cloud customers to expect increased latency for traffic routed via the Middle East due to “multiple undersea fiber cuts in the Red Sea,” although it quickly rerouted data along alternate paths reuters.com. Etisalat and Du – the UAE’s largest ISPs – saw nationwide slowdowns, with users complaining of sluggish speeds reuters.com beaumontenterprise.com. In Kuwait, authorities confirmed the FALCON cable was also severed beaumontenterprise.com. Saudi officials offered no comment on the incident, which they did not publicly acknowledge beaumontenterprise.com.

It remains unclear what caused the simultaneous cable breaks. Undersea lines can be accidentally sliced by a ship’s dropped anchor or underwater earthquakes. However, amid heightened regional tensions, concerns have grown about sabotage. The Red Sea cable route lies near conflict zones – and analysts note Yemen’s Houthi rebels had previously been suspected of targeting undersea cables as a war tactic (a charge the Houthis deny) beaumontenterprise.com beaumontenterprise.com. The latest cuts come as the Houthis wage attacks on shipping in the Red Sea in protest of the war in Gaza, and Yemen’s exiled government openly accused the rebels of responsibility beaumontenterprise.com. “What is happening today in the Red Sea should serve as a wake-up call for the international community… to protect the digital infrastructure that serves as the lifeline of the modern world,” urged Moammar al-Eryani, Yemen’s information minister, in a statement on the incident beaumontenterprise.com.

Repairs to undersea cables are notoriously slow – specialized ships must locate and haul up the fiber from the seabed. With multiple cuts to deep-sea lines, experts say full restoration of service could take weeks, during which users will face higher latency as data detours along longer routes ts2.tech ts2.tech. The Red Sea outage underscores the fragility of the Internet’s backbone: a few critical cables carry the bulk of global traffic, so deliberate attacks or freak accidents in narrow chokepoints can send connectivity into chaos. As one Middle East network operator told Reuters, even an errant anchor drop in the shallow Red Sea could sever vital links between continents ts2.tech ts2.tech.

Cyber Blackouts: From Provinces to Platforms

The Red Sea saga capped a troubling 48 hours of internet outages and cyber blackouts worldwide. In Pakistan, an ongoing government-ordered shutdown has kept the entire province of Balochistan offline for weeks, cutting mobile data for some 15 million residents amid military operations against separatist insurgents ts2.tech reuters.com. The blackout, in effect since early August, was recently extended again as officials claim militants use cellular networks to coordinate – at the cost of isolating an entire region digitally reuters.com reuters.com. Human rights groups warn that blanket shutdowns are “pushing Balochistan further into isolation” and punishing ordinary citizens under the pretext of security apc.org.

Meanwhile in Iraq, authorities imposed their annual exam-time internet curfew, shutting down internet access nationwide for 2–3 hours each morning to prevent high school students from leaking or googling answers ts2.tech. From 6AM to 8AM, virtually all networks – fixed and mobile – went dark across Iraq on exam days, in what has become a yearly ritual widely criticized as collective punishment. “School exams are no reason to block internet access,” digital rights advocates argue, noting Iraq is one of the few countries that repeatedly pulls the plug on the entire internet to curb cheating therecord.media. The blackouts disrupt not only students but also businesses, news media and everyday communications for millions of Iraqis during those hours.

Even Big Tech wasn’t immune to outages: on Sept 4, a major Google service disruption struck parts of Europe and Turkey, rendering Search, Gmail, and YouTube inaccessible for about an hour ts2.tech. Turkey’s internet regulator promptly demanded answers from Google after the unexpected downtime ts2.tech. Although service was quickly restored, the episode highlighted how even the most advanced platforms can suffer crashes, compounding the sense of instability after days of intentional shutdowns.

Perhaps the most striking clampdown came in Turkey the night of Sept 7, when users found they could barely access social media. Network data showed that bandwidth to X (Twitter), YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and WhatsApp was being throttled on multiple Turkish ISPs reuters.com reuters.com. The access slowdown began late Sunday and lasted into Monday, just as Turkey’s main opposition party called for nationwide rallies against the government reuters.com. By choking off popular social apps, authorities effectively stifled protesters’ ability to organize and broadcast events in real time. “It’s become a predictable playbook – when unrest brews, they strangle the internet,” one digital rights activist in Istanbul told local media. Turkey’s Access Providers Union, an industry body that carries out government blocking orders, declined to comment on the incident reuters.com. This latest restriction comes on the heels of several social media blackouts Turkey has enacted following political incidents or terror attacks in recent years, drawing condemnation from free expression groups.

Censorship and Control: New Laws Target the Web

Beyond technical outages, government censorship and surveillance efforts hit new extremes. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Russia, where a suite of sweeping Internet laws took effect on September 1, tightening the Kremlin’s grip over the RuNet. Most controversially, Russia has criminalized even searching for banned information online. Under amendments passed in July, citizens can be fined up to 5,000 roubles (~$65) for “knowingly searching” for content deemed extremist – a category that ranges from terrorist propaganda to the websites of Kremlin critics and independent media reuters.com reuters.com. Using a VPN won’t be an excuse; the law explicitly covers attempts to reach forbidden material via virtual private networks reuters.com reuters.com.

The list of “extremist” material maintained by Russia’s Ministry of Justice spans over 500 pages reuters.com. It includes not only violent or terror-related content but also the political and social bêtes noires of President Putin’s regime – from opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation to LGBTQ+ advocacy sites, and even the parent companies of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp (U.S. tech giant Meta Platforms is officially banned as an “extremist organization”) reuters.com. In essence, if a Russian user tries to find information about any banned person or group – or even access popular platforms run by those entities – they could now face a penalty simply for the act of looking.

Digital rights activists are aghast. Sarkis Darbinyan, of the NGO Roskomsvoboda, said the true intent is to instill fear so citizens self-censor long before they ever find “dangerous” content. “I think this is one of the main tasks…to create fear…to increase the level of self-censorship among the Russian internet audience,” Darbinyan told Reuters, warning that people will start unsubscribing from channels and deleting apps to avoid inadvertent violations reuters.com. Even some normally Kremlin-friendly figures have voiced concern. Yekaterina Mizulina – head of a state-allied “Safe Internet League” – blasted the law’s “vague wording”, cautioning it could unleash fraud and extortion schemes and might be expanded arbitrarily reuters.com reuters.com. The head of the Duma’s IT committee, Sergei Boyarsky, defended the measure as targeting only those “already one step away from extremism,” but the ambiguity over how authorities will determine a user’s intent leaves everyone uneasy reuters.com reuters.com.

Compounding the clampdown, Russia also outlawed VPN advertising and mandated that all new smartphones sold in the country come pre-installed with a government-approved messaging app ts2.tech ts2.tech. Officials further hinted that WhatsApp might be banned entirely, since its owner Meta is on the extremist list ts2.tech reuters.com. The march toward a tightly controlled “sovereign internet” – often called the RuNet – is accelerating. As opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin protested outside parliament, “these amendments have caused a level of resistance in Russian society that has not been seen for a long time.” reuters.com Yet the Duma passed the search censorship law by a wide margin (68% in favor), and it sailed through the upper house. With President Putin’s signature, it is now in force – marking a new dark age for online freedom in Russia.

On the flip side of state control, some governments are taking steps to expand and secure internet access. In the United States, lawmakers and regulators reacted to recent global cable sabotage fears by bolstering oversight of critical infrastructure. The U.S. House of Representatives this week approved an Undersea Cable Control Act to impose stricter vetting and security requirements on submarine fiber links that connect to America ts2.tech. The goal is to bar “foreign adversaries” like China from any role in sensitive cable projects and prevent espionage or sabotage of the 400+ undersea cables that carry 99% of international data ts2.tech reuters.com. “We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr warned, emphasizing the need to guard these undersea arteries against both tapping and cutting reuters.com reuters.com. The Federal Communications Commission moved in parallel to ban Chinese technology components in new U.S.-linked cables ts2.tech, and to streamline permits for “trusted” cable operators ts2.tech. These measures, U.S. officials say, will help fortify the internet’s physical backbone in an era of geopolitical tension.

Satellite Internet Race Revs Up

High above the terrestrial turmoil, the satellite broadband race is reaching new heights. SpaceX’s Starlink project notched a major milestone over the weekend with its 113th launch of 2025, adding another 24 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit keeptrack.space. That launch, from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sept 6, pushed SpaceX to over 2,000 Starlink satellites deployed this year keeptrack.space – a blistering pace that underscores Elon Musk’s head start in blanketing the skies with internet-beaming craft. By some estimates, Starlink now has well over 4,500 active satellites in orbit (out of 8,000+ launched to date) and is serving millions of customers in dozens of countries ts2.tech. From rural Alaska to ships at sea, previously disconnected users are buying Starlink kits to get online at fiber-like speeds. SpaceX has leaned on its reusable Falcon 9 rockets to sustain this frenetic rollout, sometimes launching batches of Starlinks multiple times per week spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com. With the latest mission, SpaceX also quietly hit an industry record: its 500th rocket booster landing, reflecting the reuse revolution that enables such rapid deployment spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com.

Not to be outdone, Amazon’s Project Kuiper is racing to deploy its own LEO constellation and start service. Amazon confirmed that it has more than 100 Kuiper satellites in orbit so far, after early prototype launches in 2023 and 2024 capacitymedia.com. The company has a critical launch coming up on September 25, when a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will carry the next 27 Kuiper satellites into space aboutamazon.com. If all goes well, Amazon plans to begin beta testing its satellite internet by late 2025, inching toward full commercial rollout in 2026 ts2.tech. This week Amazon also announced a splashy customer win: JetBlue Airways will become the first airline to use Kuiper’s service for free inflight Wi-Fi capacitymedia.com. Starting in 2027, JetBlue will equip at least 200 aircraft with Kuiper terminals to beam down broadband from Amazon’s satellites, dramatically boosting speeds for passengers’ devices capacitymedia.com capacitymedia.com. “Staying connected is part of everyday life, even when you’re traveling,” said Panos Panay, Amazon’s Devices & Services SVP. “With Project Kuiper, we’re working to ensure customers can enjoy fast, reliable internet wherever they are – at home or 35,000 feet in the air – and we’re pumped to bring that to life with JetBlue.” capacitymedia.com capacitymedia.com The deal is a strategic coup for Amazon, which is leveraging its deep pockets – and cloud expertise – to court airlines, cruise ships, and government clients for Kuiper. Industry analysts note that airline partnerships give satellite providers a high-profile showcase and a steady revenue stream to help amortize their multi-billion dollar constellation investments.

Elsewhere in the satellite arena, OneWeb – now merged with France’s Eutelsat – is steadily expanding its footprint in the race to connect the globe. OneWeb’s nearly 650 satellites (a fully deployed first-generation) have primarily focused on enterprise, maritime, and government broadband links. During this period, OneWeb has been moving from deployment to service activation in new markets. In South Korea, officials said OneWeb is installing ground equipment and is expected to launch LEO internet service by the end of September, in partnership with Hanwha Systems and KT SAT samenacouncil.org samenacouncil.org. Over in India, OneWeb and its parent Eutelsat struck a major agreement on Sept 1 with the Tata Group’s satellite arm Nelco. The joint venture – OneWeb India – will deliver secure low-latency LEO connectivity for customers on land, air and sea across India’s borders and remote regions orbitaltoday.com. “This new service will strengthen India’s digital infrastructure and national security, while ensuring reliable connectivity in underserved areas,” said Neha Idnani, Eutelsat’s APAC regional VP, calling the partnership a vital step for India’s connectivity ambitions orbitaltoday.com orbitaltoday.com. Interestingly, India’s own Bharti Enterprises is a major OneWeb shareholder – yet Bharti’s telecom arm Airtel is also embracing SpaceX Starlink. In fact, Bharti Airtel recently signed a deal with SpaceX to market Starlink services in India (pending final licensing), even as it partners with OneWeb, reflecting the view that the Indian market is big enough for both LEO players orbitaltoday.com orbitaltoday.com. “The Indian market is vast, offering ample space for both Starlink and OneWeb to grow,” a Bharti executive remarked of this unique dual strategy orbitaltoday.com.

Across the developing world, satellite companies are striking similar alliances to reach the unconnected. In Africa, Airtel Africa (operating in 14 countries) inked a deal with SpaceX this year to roll out Starlink broadband across its footprint, targeting rural communities, schools and healthcare centers that lack reliable internet mobileworldlive.com mobileworldlive.com. Starlink has already secured licenses in 9 African markets and is seeking approvals in the rest mobileworldlive.com. “Through this partnership we’ll enhance connectivity for enterprises and social-economic communities like schools and health centres,” said Airtel Africa CEO Sunil Taldar, highlighting a shared mission with SpaceX to promote digital inclusion on the continent mobileworldlive.com mobileworldlive.com. Starlink’s Chad Gibbs noted the service is now available in 20 African markets and growing fast mobileworldlive.com. Meanwhile, OneWeb (Eutelsat) has been deploying ground stations in Africa – recently launching a new earth station in Angola – and partnering with pan-African operators to extend coverage. These parallel efforts by competing constellations signal that the satellite internet “space race” is truly global: from Alaska to Zambia, providers are scrambling to sign up airlines, telecom carriers, and governments, all eager to close connectivity gaps via the sky.

Fiber, 5G & the Future of Connectivity

On the ground, traditional telecom infrastructure is also seeing significant upgrades and investments announced around September 7–8. In Europe’s north, Scandinavia and the Baltics got a boost with the launch of four new subsea fiber-optic cables under the Baltic Sea. Operator GlobalConnect revealed on Sept 5 that it has started construction on a €40 million project to link Sweden, Estonia and Finland with high-capacity undersea cables, plus several hundred kilometers of new terrestrial fiber in Estonia capacitymedia.com capacitymedia.com. One 300 km subsea segment will connect Sweden’s Gotland island to Estonia’s islands (Saaremaa and Hiiumaa) and onward to Tallinn, then across the Gulf of Finland to Helsinki capacitymedia.com. Another 500 km undersea route between Stockholm and Helsinki (announced in July) will be completed by 2026 capacitymedia.com. Together these links form a 1,250 km “digital ring” in the Baltic Sea, which GlobalConnect says will quadruple its network capacity and add much-needed route diversity in a region reliant on aging 30-year-old cables capacitymedia.com. The EU’s Connecting Europe Facility is co-funding €15 million of the build capacitymedia.com, reflecting the strategic importance of resilient cross-border connectivity. “We’re seeing a rapid increase in demand for secure, high-capacity infrastructure – driven by the growth of data centers and AI hubs in the Nordics,” noted Pär Jansson, GlobalConnect’s Carrier SVP capacitymedia.com. Sweden’s digital minister highlighted that adding redundancy is especially crucial given the “worsened security situation” in the region, alluding to concerns over potential Russian sabotage of critical cables capacitymedia.com. The new fiber ring, slated for completion by 2027, will ensure lower latency and greater resilience for Scandinavian and Baltic internet traffic.

Africa is also expanding its fiber highways. This week in Kenya, Safaricom and partner Meta (Facebook’s parent) officially unveiled the “Daraja” undersea cable, a 4,100 km system running from Mombasa to Muscat, Oman ts2.tech. Daraja (which means “bridge” in Swahili) vastly increases East Africa’s international bandwidth and will serve as an additional route to complement the region’s existing cables. It is expected to drive down internet costs in Kenya, Uganda and neighboring countries by injecting more competition and capacity. Further north, Djibouti Telecom announced an extension of its DARE-1 submarine cable down the African east coast. The 3,300 km addition will, by 2028, connect Djibouti through Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar and South Africa, opening a new high-speed corridor along the Indian Ocean shoreline ts2.tech. These investments underscore that even as satellites grab headlines, fiber-optic cables remain the workhorses of global connectivity – and new routes are being laid to serve booming data demand and to hedge against choke-point failures like the recent Red Sea cuts.

In the mobile arena, countries that lagged in adopting 5G are finally gearing up. Pakistan announced it will auction its first 5G spectrum in December 2025, after years of delays ts2.tech. The government approved over 600 MHz of mid-band frequencies (2.6 GHz, 3.5 GHz, etc.) for bidding, with the Prime Minister directing that the auction wrap up by year’s end so that 5G services can launch in 2026 ts2.tech. Pakistan’s rollout had been slowed by regulatory hurdles and disputes over how to allocate spectrum, but authorities now appear keen not to fall too far behind regional peers. Likewise, Turkey – one of the last major economies without commercial 5G – finally set an inaugural 5G spectrum tender for October 16, 2025 ts2.tech. Turkish officials plan to auction 11 frequency blocks in the 700 MHz and 3.5 GHz bands, aiming for carriers to begin rolling out 5G by April 2026 ts2.tech. The minimum auction prices total about $2.1 billion ts2.tech. Until now Turkey has relied on an enhanced 4G (“4.5G”) network, but with this step it looks to catch up and not miss out on the next-gen mobile revolution.

Finally, innovative initiatives launched over the past few days seek to make internet access more affordable and inclusive. In South Africa, MTN – the nation’s second-largest carrier – is tackling the affordability barrier head-on by providing ultra-low-cost smartphones to those still using basic 2G handsets. The company will sell Android smartphones for just R99 (US$5) to 1.2 million selected customers in low-income communities reuters.com. The goal is to migrate these users onto 4G before 2G/3G networks are shut off in 2027. The giveaway-priced devices (retailing around $40 normally) will be rolled out in phases through 2026, ensuring even impoverished households can enjoy mobile broadband. “As the country transitions to 4G and 5G, it is vital we take proactive steps to connect as many South Africans as possible,” said Charles Molapisi, MTN South Africa’s CEO. “We are committed to going the extra mile to ensure that no one is left behind in the digital era.” reuters.com Local digital rights advocates, who had warned that phasing out 2G could exacerbate the digital divide, applauded MTN’s move as a model for public-private collaboration to promote digital equity.

In the Philippines, where geography leaves many remote islands without fiber or cable, leading telco Smart Communications rolled out “5G Home” wireless broadband kits on Sept 4. These easy-to-install routers, bundled with unlimited prepaid data, allow rural families to get high-speed internet over the air without waiting for fiber lines to reach them ts2.tech. And in the United States, New York City announced a pilot program called Liberty Link to bring free gigabit Wi-Fi to underserved urban communities. The project, unveiled September 5, will wire up 35 public housing developments in the Bronx and Harlem, reaching roughly 2,200 low-income households by the end of 2025 with no-cost high-speed service ts2.tech. The city, along with federal grants, is funding the effort, which also provides digital literacy training for residents – a holistic approach to closing connectivity gaps in inner cities.

Outlook: Toward a Connected Future

From the ocean floor to low Earth orbit, the first week of September 2025 showcased the high stakes and rapid progress in connecting our world. We saw the internet’s Achilles’ heel exposed by undersea cable cuts, and authoritarian regimes again using the “off switch” to control information. Yet we also witnessed remarkable advances – rockets launching satellites by the dozen, new fiber highways spanning continents, and creative initiatives to bring marginalized communities online. The tension between connectivity and control was on full display: Will the future internet be defined by greater access or greater restrictions?

For millions still offline, new lifelines are being thrown – whether through a cheap smartphone in South Africa or a Starlink dish in rural Asia. Broadband infrastructure is growing in both scope and diversity, from community mesh networks to mega-constellations in space. But huge challenges remain. According to the UN’s International Telecommunication Union, roughly 2.6 billion people (32% of the global population) still lack any internet access ts2.tech. Bridging this divide by 2030 will require trillions in investment and sustained political will ts2.tech. As of today, funding commitments are nowhere near that scale – only a few tens of billions have been pledged toward universal access so far ts2.tech.

Nonetheless, the flurry of developments on Sept 7–8, 2025, offers hope. Even as wars rage and governments censor, engineers and entrepreneurs are pushing the boundaries of technology to make the internet faster, cheaper, and more ubiquitous. “Digital lifelines” – whether a new undersea cable or a swarm of satellites – are coming online to connect places that were previously dark. And citizens worldwide are increasingly vocal that internet access is a fundamental necessity, not a luxury. The stories of these two days underscore that the quest for global internet access is truly a global effort: fraught with setbacks and conflict, yet propelled by innovation and an enduring vision of an open, connected world.

Sources: Reuters reuters.com reuters.com reuters.com reuters.com keeptrack.space capacitymedia.com capacitymedia.com capacitymedia.com capacitymedia.com; AP/Beaumont Enterprise beaumontenterprise.com beaumontenterprise.com beaumontenterprise.com; TS² Space ts2.tech ts2.tech ts2.tech ts2.tech ts2.tech; Orbital Today orbitaltoday.com orbitaltoday.com; Capacity Media capacitymedia.com capacitymedia.com; MobileWorldLive mobileworldlive.com mobileworldlive.com; ITU ts2.tech.