How data finds its way to you
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The newest Networking stories from the daily feed, explained in plain language.
The Guardian
Coordinated universal time is kept by atomic clocks, which are steadier than the Earth's rotation. Officials have added 27 leap seconds since 1972 to keep the two in sync, but a minute with 61 seconds can confuse computers. Delegates from 69 countries voted to replace leap seconds with a leap hour, allowing up to an hour of drift, which is not expected to be needed for thousands of years.
Khaleej Times
Etisalat UAE switched on a smartphone feature that sends data on two streams at once and combines capacity across frequency bands, which it says triples upload speeds on its 5.5G network. Uploads matter more as AI assistants and cloud tools need your device to send photos, files or camera views before they can answer. The operator says it is the first to offer this setup commercially for phones.
Innovation News Network
Satellites use many different connectors for power, data and heat, so failing hardware usually means the spacecraft is abandoned, adding to the debris problem. An EU-funded project called SPACE USB built a Common Passive Interface that locks into place in minutes and tested it against Europe's three rival docking standards. A robotic test bench attached it to a dummy satellite for different jobs.
Frontier India
Satellite internet links a ground terminal to satellites overhead, and Russia is now showing hardware for its Rassvet network. Bureau 1440 introduced three terminals: a flagship for industrial sites that it says reaches up to 700 Mbps, one for trains moving at up to 400 km/h, and a small unit that runs about 100 Mbps; Starlink's residential speeds run 100 to 200 Mbps.
Ars Technica
Satellite signals pass poorly through walls, so SpaceX is buying ground-based spectrum to give Starlink Mobile an indoor coverage layer. It agreed to buy up to 14 megahertz of low-band 800 MHz licenses, airwaves that travel far and penetrate buildings, adding to mid-band spectrum it is buying from EchoStar as it aims to take on big US carriers.
TechCrunch
GPS satellites beam faint signals that are easy to jam and often unavailable indoors, with accuracy measured in meters. Startup Xona is launching six satellites this month for Pulsar, a commercial service it says will be accurate to centimeters, reach inside buildings, and work with existing receivers after a software update.
Ars Technica
Amazon is just weeks away from offering commercial satellite internet, through a project called Amazon Leo, with launches coming on the Vulcan rocket. Its factory took six months to make the first 27 satellites, and now it can build 27 a week, the company says. It will compete with SpaceX's Starlink, and Delta has agreed to use it on planes.
UK Defence Journal
A UK spin-out navigated an uncrewed boat through the Solent using radar instead of satellite positioning. The system matches live radar echoes against stored maps of the coastline with particle filter algorithms, estimating both the vessel's position and how confident it is in that estimate. The trial is part of a push for navigation that keeps working when GPS is jammed, congested or contested.
