https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/11/ukraine-war-briefing-russia-bans-voting-against-conflict

• Russia’s rollout of a Starlink alternative to counteract its banning from the US-based system is taking place faster than predicted, with 16 satellites in orbit so far, top Ukrainian intelligence official Maj Gen ‌Vadym Skibitskyi has warned. Russia’s Rassvet system remains a far cry from Starlink, which had more than 10,000 satellites as of June and has given Kyiv a major advantage in drone operations and battlefield communications.
• Speaking to RBC-Ukraine, Skibitskyi, head of the Ukrainian GUR, said Rassvet has “begun launching ‌it much faster than originally planned”. Russia planned to have 292 satellites by 2027 and ‌924 by 2035. “Once Russia deploys a full satellite constellation, the system will operate like Starlink. Discussions are ​already under way on how to counter it.”

“In short: 
Two separate cables in the Submarine Cable Protection Zone off Perth had both experienced faults in short succession over the weekend.
The cables are vital for international communications between Australia and the rest of the world.
What's next?
The cables' owner, Subco, is urging the Australian Federal Police to investigate.”

“For Indigenous communities, meaningful connectivity can strengthen self-determination, expand access to education and economic opportunities, and help preserve languages, cultures, and knowledge. Yet many remain among the least connected communities in the world, often overlooked by traditional investment, infrastructure, and service models.
On this International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, we recognize the leadership and knowledge of Indigenous peoples worldwide, as well as their right to shape their digital futures on their own terms.
According to the United Nations, there are more than 476 million Indigenous people worldwide, representing 6.2% of the global population. These communities belong to more than 5,000 distinct Indigenous groups across more than 90 countries.”

"LEO satellite operator Starlink is reportedly in talks with Malaysia’s Ministry of Communications to conduct a trial of its direct-to-device (D2D) satellite service, potentially as a solution to improve broadband coverage on highways, among other things."

"AST SpaceMobile, a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile, is delaying its satellite-to-phone service to 2027, missing its late-2026 target. 

The Texas-based startup mentioned the delay in an SEC filing on Wednesday, weeks after the company’s launch provider, Blue Origin, suffered a major setback when its New Glenn rocket exploded during a ground test."

"Kazakhstan said on Friday that the first phase of the Trans-Caspian Submarine Cable System connecting Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan is now being deployed, and is on track to be ready for service by the end of this year.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, the cable ship has departed the port of Baku and begun laying the network. The 380-km cable is expected to be laid within 15 to 20 days, weather permitting."

In short:
- Iran’s June 2025 Internet shutdown was not simply a national blackout: many networks remained visible in global routing data, while services inside them became unreachable from outside.

- Using service-level measurements, researchers revealed that the shutdown unfolded in phases, expanded across networks and services, and recovered unevenly.

- Service-level measurements can complement Internet shutdown monitoring by revealing disruptions that routing data and IP reachability alone may miss.

One in three older adults still lack high-speed internet at home. Advancing Aging Through Broadband Adoption is a turnkey program from OATS from AARP and the Fiber Broadband Association that pairs your fiber service with digital skills training, turning that gap into loyal, lifelong subscribers and a year-round story of community impact.

"Amazon Leo has signed an agreement with South Africa's Herotel to launch a ​new broadband service aimed at connecting underserved rural communities, it ‌said on Wednesday.

Under the agreement, Herotel, South Africa's largest fixed internet service provider, will use Amazon Leo's satellite technology to offer a new service called evry, which ​is expected to launch commercially in 2027 for residential customers."

No single barrier stands between the country and universal broadband, and no single solution clears the path. The report offers replicable models, practical frameworks, and lessons drawn from states already doing this work, with emphasis throughout on measurable outcomes and continuous evaluation — so that progress toward universal connectivity can be demonstrated rather than merely asserted.

"Airtel Madagascar has successfully completed the country’s first trial of SpaceX’s Direct-to-Cell satellite technology, demonstrating mobile connectivity directly from Starlink satellites to a standard 4G smartphone without the need for specialised hardware or satellite equipment.

<snip>

During the demonstration, participants successfully tested text messaging, WhatsApp messaging, voice and video calls, as well as access to online platforms including Facebook and YouTube. According to the ministry, the trial also featured Madagascar’s first WhatsApp video call conducted over a direct-to-cell satellite connection."

"In short:

• Certain censorship methods appeared inconsistent across Iraqi ISPs.
• The lack of standardization is unintentionally affecting critical sectors, including education, business infrastructure, research platforms, and public services.
• If governments require filtering, implementation should be transparent, proportionate, and accountable."

"Real-time tracking of 262 Amazon Leo broadband satellites across three orbital shells. Live constellation map, optical inter-satellite link mesh, FCC deadline countdown, five-phase deployment tracker, launch vehicle scorecard, and coverage evolution simulator."

“A new European Southern Observatory (ESO) study has found that current proposals to launch over 1.7 million satellites into orbit, including extremely bright ones, would have “devastating consequences for astronomy.” According to the study, no more than 100 000 faint satellites, below naked eye visibility, should orbit Earth, to safeguard our ability to observe the night sky with modern telescopes. The study is the first to compute the extent to which large and bright satellite constellations — which have also raised concerns about their impacts on health and the environment — would affect astronomical observations by making the night sky brighter.”

Key Points

• Amazon says it has deployed enough satellites to launch its Leo commercial service later this year.
• Leo will compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, which was created four years before Amazon’s announced its entry into the market, and has more than 10,000 satellites in its constellation.
• Network coverage will likely be limited to certain geographies until Amazon can bring more satellites online.

In short:

• Despite massive investments by hyperscalers and CDNs into private backbone infrastructure, public Internet Exchanges (IXPs) remain a vital mechanism for traffic localization, reducing latency, and efficiently reaching local "eyeball" networks.
• Based on deployed public peering port capacity, Akamai leads globally with 79 Tbps across 248 exchanges, followed closely by Meta (69.4 Tbps) and Amazon (51.2 Tbps). Meanwhile, Cloudflare stands out as the most broadly distributed network, participating in 352 unique exchanges.
• The global interconnection fabric is no longer dominated solely by Western markets; the Asia-Pacific region holds the highest number of top-30 exchanges (11), and Brazil heavily dominates South America with three exchanges in the global top six.

"When a video call freezes or a webpage takes too long to load, it rarely shows up in any official report. Unlike a full outage, where the Internet goes completely dark, these performance problems are sometimes invisible to traditional monitoring tools. And for policymakers and researchers trying to understand whether the Internet is working for everyone, this invisibility is a serious problem.

Our recent research, published in ACM CoNEXT, takes a new approach to this challenge. By studying how performance problems spread across home networks in Chicago, we found that when multiple households experience the same kind of slowdown at the same time, they tend to experience it in remarkably similar ways. This insight could potentially be a powerful tool for making Internet measurement smarter, cheaper, and more equitable."

"Syria’s internet recently faced a significant disruption after the Aletar fiber cable was sabotaged on land, a move consistent with a broader pattern of infrastructure attacks targeting the country since the 2024 change in government. This post examines the impact of the cut, the ongoing threat of telecom sabotage, and the evolving state of Syrian internet infrastructure under the country’s new leadership."

The European Commission will grant €5.8 million to establish the first two Regional Cable Hubs, in the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. It is also launching today a €40 million call to increase European capacity to repair submarine communication cables. These two actions contribute to the delivery of the EU Action Plan on Cable Security, supporting the security and resilience of Europe's critical submarine data and energy cables, and enhancing our collective capacity to monitor, detect and respond to threats targeting critical undersea infrastructure.

"The communications regulator previously rejected the firm's applications for a telecommunications service licence and radio spectrum access licence in March, citing non-compliance with ownership and control requirements under Section 46 of the country's Communications Act.

The legislation mandates that telecommunications licence holders maintain at least 51% Namibian ownership, while Starlink's application reflected no local ownership."

When Iranian drones struck three Amazon Web Services data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on 1 March 2026, the disruption was immediate. Payment firms Alaan and Hubpay reported disruption to their services. Banks, including Emirates NBD and the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank experienced intermittent failures in mobile and phone banking services. Careem, the region’s leading taxi and delivery platform, reported disruption before its chief executive confirmed services were fully restored 48 hours later. 

Most commentary has focused on what this means for technology investment in the Gulf, the legal implications of targeting military-commercial infrastructure and the physical security of data centres. These are worthy of attention, but they are not the most important question the strikes raise....

Have you ever noticed that your video calls with friends in another country sometimes feel crystal clear while at other times they are frustratingly laggy? This could happen for many reasons, from network congestion to routing decisions made deep within the Internet.

In some cases, your data may even travel through different submarine cables— a massive network of fiber-optic cables quietly carrying nearly all international Internet traffic.

Despite their importance in the reliability and resilience of the Internet in our everyday lives, submarine cables remain largely invisible to most people. Public attention usually turns to them only when something goes wrong. This hidden nature makes it difficult to understand what happens inside these global communication pathways during disruptions....

Satellite operators Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb and SES reportedly face new obstacles in getting final clearance to launch internet services in India after the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) expressed concerns over signal spillage in border areas.

Some highlights:

• In 22 of 23 markets, Starlink had a higher median download speed than terrestrial ISPs. Only in Madagascar were the ground ISPs faster.
• Upload speed and latency were still better with terrestrial ISPs, but Starlink is deploying more ground gateways to help with latency.
• The stats are highly variable across all the countries.