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Internet News 6 September 2025 - 12 November 2025

Beyond Starlink: Inside the New Space Race for Satellite Internet Dominance in 2025

Vodacom Strikes Starlink Deal to Accelerate African Broadband Rollout

South Africa’s largest mobile operator will integrate Starlink’s low‑Earth‑orbit capacity into its network and resell the satellite service where licensed, targeting faster connectivity and better rural coverage across the continent. Published: November 12, 2025 Vodacom Group has signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s Starlink to bring high‑speed, low‑latency internet to businesses across Africa, marking one of the highest‑profile tie‑ups yet between a major African carrier and a satellite provider. Vodacom said it will fold Starlink’s technology into its mobile network and is authorized to resell Starlink equipment and services to customers in African markets. Reuters What’s in the deal The
12 November 2025
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AI Browser Wars: Perplexity Comet vs Google Chrome in the Race for the Web’s Future

AI Browser Wars: Perplexity Comet vs Google Chrome in the Race for the Web’s Future

Introduction The humble web browser has become the latest front in the AI revolution. Google Chrome, the long-reigning titan of internet browsing, is facing a new wave of challengers built around artificial intelligence. Chief among them is Perplexity’s Comet, a newly launched browser that bills itself as “the AI browser that acts as your personal assistant.” Unlike traditional browsers, Comet’s core is an AI agent ready to answer questions, automate web tasks, and transform how we interact with the internet perplexity.ai rogerwong.me. This report provides an in-depth comparison of Perplexity Comet and Google Chrome – examining their browsing capabilities, search
5 October 2025
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You Won’t Believe What Google Did This Month: July 2025’s Biggest Stories

Google Turns 27: The Shocking Rise of a Garage Project into a Tech Titan

Origins: Stanford Project to Garage Startup In the mid-1990s, PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University built a search engine called “BackRub” that ranked web pages by link analysis. In Sept. 1997 they registered the name google.com (a play on “googol,” meaning a huge number) to reflect their mission of organizing vast information youm7.com. In 1998 they received a $100,000 seed investment and formally incorporated Google on September 4, 1998 in a modest garage in Menlo Park, California youm7.com sawtksa.com. (Curiously, Google later chose Sept. 27 as its official birthday, coinciding with its first doodle logo celebration.)
27 September 2025
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Japan’s $300 Million Undersea Cable Gamble: Inside the Global Race to Secure the Internet’s Lifelines

Japan’s $300 Million Undersea Cable Gamble: Inside the Global Race to Secure the Internet’s Lifelines

Japan’s Bold Move: Subsidizing Cable-Laying Ships Japan’s decision to bankroll NEC’s purchase of undersea cable vessels signals a major policy shift to protect the nation’s digital lifelines. According to officials, Tokyo is prepared to front hundreds of millions of dollars so that NEC – Asia’s biggest undersea cable installer – can acquire ocean-going cable-laying ships of its own tomshardware.com lightreading.com. Each such ship is a massive specialized vessel (costing about $300 million apiece) equipped to carry and slowly spool out thousands of kilometers of fiber-optic cable across ocean floors. Until now, NEC has owned zero of these, relying instead on leasing
17 September 2025
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Arm’s $65 Billion Nasdaq Debut: SoftBank’s Chip Champion Reignites Tech IPO Mania

Arm’s $65 Billion Nasdaq Debut: SoftBank’s Chip Champion Reignites Tech IPO Mania

Key Facts Arm Holdings: From UK Tech “Crown Jewel” to Global Chip Powerhouse Arm Holdings is a Cambridge, England-based semiconductor and software design company that has quietly become the backbone of the mobile computing world. Founded in 1990 as “Advanced RISC Machines,” Arm began as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple, and VLSI Technology investopedia.com. Unlike traditional chipmakers, Arm doesn’t build chips itself. Instead, it licenses its processor designs and instruction set architectures to other companies, who then incorporate Arm’s intellectual property into their own chips. This model turned Arm into a ubiquitous force in tech: its designs are
14 September 2025
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The Great AI Content Heist: How Bots Are Devouring the Internet – and How We Can Fight Back

The Great AI Content Heist: How Bots Are Devouring the Internet – and How We Can Fight Back

AI Companies Are Scraping the Web for Everything – Without Asking The rise of generative AI has kicked off an arms race for data, as AI companies seek to ingest as much online content as possible to train their models. Text from websites, images, code repositories, music – and now video – are all being vacuumed up. A bombshell report from The Atlantic in September 2025 revealed the sheer scale of this activity on YouTube: more than 15.8 million videos (from over 2 million channels) were quietly scraped and downloaded without permission as training data for AI theatlantic.com. These weren’t obscure clips either – nearly 1 million were
11 September 2025
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Global Internet on Edge: Cable Cuts, Satellite Gambits & Digital Freedom Fights (Sept 10–11, 2025)

Global Internet on Edge: Cable Cuts, Satellite Gambits & Digital Freedom Fights (Sept 10–11, 2025)

Key Facts Undersea Cable Cuts Cripple Connectivity from Asia to the Middle East A sudden undersea cable crisis struck in early September, severing two key fiber-optic lines that carry internet traffic between continents. On Sept 7, network monitors at NetBlocks detected that the SEA-ME-WE 4 (SMW4) and IMEWE submarine cables were cut near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia reuters.com. The impact was felt across multiple countries: India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others all experienced drastically slowed internet speeds or partial outages as data traffic was forced onto alternate paths reuters.com reuters.com. Connectivity in parts of East Africa was also reportedly affected, given
11 September 2025
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Internet Under Siege: Cable Chaos, Satellite Surges & Digital Divide Drama (Sept 9–10, 2025)

Internet Under Siege: Cable Chaos, Satellite Surges & Digital Divide Drama (Sept 9–10, 2025)

Sources: Global news reports and press releases from Sept 9–10, 2025 (Reuters, Al Jazeera, Times of India, StateScoop, TS2 Space, and others) were used in compiling this roundup timesofindia.indiatimes.com aljazeera.com space.com reuters.com reuters.com prescottenews.com prescottenews.com prnewswire.com statescoop.com, along with statements from officials and industry leaders aljazeera.com aljazeera.com. Each development reflects the rapidly evolving landscape of global internet access – from physical infrastructure challenges and cutting-edge satellite deployments to the ongoing battles over digital rights and inclusion. The 48 hours of news around September 9–10, 2025, make one thing clear: the push to connect the world’s population continues to face both
10 September 2025
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Lightning-Fast Internet Finally Arrives in Tonga’s Far-Flung Islands? A Deep Dive into Tonga’s Connectivity Boom and Challenges

Lightning-Fast Internet Finally Arrives in Tonga’s Far-Flung Islands? A Deep Dive into Tonga’s Connectivity Boom and Challenges

Key Facts 1. Overview of Internet Access in Tonga Tonga – a Polynesian kingdom of over 170 islands – has seen dramatic improvements in internet connectivity over the past decade. Prior to 2013, Tonga’s internet was limited to expensive, slow satellite links, resulting in low penetration and high costs. This changed when the nation’s first submarine fiber-optic cable went live in August 2013, delivering affordable high-speed internet to Tongans “for the first time ever” worldbank.org. The 827 km Tonga Cable connects Nuku’alofa (the capital on Tongatapu) to Fiji, where it links into global networks worldbank.org. This milestone was heralded as
8 September 2025
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Samoa’s Internet Revolution: From Undersea Cables to Starlink Skies

Samoa’s Internet Revolution: From Undersea Cables to Starlink Skies

Current State of Samoa’s Internet Infrastructure Samoa’s internet infrastructure has transformed significantly in the past decade. The backbone of connectivity is now fiber-optic submarine cables. The first major cable, Tui-Samoa, went live in 2018, linking Samoa to Suva, Fiji (with branching units to Wallis & Futuna and Samoa’s second island, Savai’i) ssccsamoa.com ssccsamoa.com. This cable dramatically increased international bandwidth and reduced Samoa’s dependence on satellites for backhaul. A second international cable, the Manatua One Polynesia cable, was completed around 2020, connecting Samoa to neighboring Polynesian islands (Niue, the Cook Islands, and French Polynesia) subtelforum.com. Having two separate cables improves resiliency
7 September 2025
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Global Internet Access Shockwaves: Cable Cuts, Censorship & Broadband Booms (Sept 6–7, 2025)

Global Internet Access Shockwaves: Cable Cuts, Censorship & Broadband Booms (Sept 6–7, 2025)

Massive Outages and Network Disruptions On September 6, a sudden multi-cable break in the Red Sea sent shockwaves through global connectivity. Several undersea fiber-optic cables (including the SMW4 and IMEWE systems) were simultaneously cut near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia beaumontenterprise.com. The impact was felt across continents – internet traffic between Europe/Asia and the Middle East slowed to a crawl, and countries like Pakistan and India experienced degraded service beaumontenterprise.com. Microsoft’s Azure cloud warned users of increased latency as data was rerouted onto backup paths beaumontenterprise.com. In the Gulf, UAE customers on du and Etisalat noticed sluggish speeds beaumontenterprise.com. While the exact
7 September 2025
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Internet Access Chaos: Blackouts, Crackdowns & Broadband Breakthroughs (Sept 5–6, 2025)

Internet Access Chaos: Blackouts, Crackdowns & Broadband Breakthroughs (Sept 5–6, 2025)

Major Outages and Internet Shutdowns In early September 2025, multiple outages and deliberate shutdowns disrupted internet access for millions across different regions. In the United States, a major Verizon network failure on August 30 demonstrated the fragility of even advanced telecom systems ts2.tech. Starting around midday (Eastern time), Verizon mobile users from California to New York suddenly lost service, with their phones stuck in emergency “SOS only” mode instead of connecting to any network ts2.tech. By mid-afternoon, outage reports spiked above 23,000 as people complained they couldn’t make calls or use mobile data ts2.tech. Verizon attributed the blackout to a
6 September 2025
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