FCC to investigate Dish Network’s compliance with federal requirements to build a nationwide 5G network

In a letter to Charlie Ergen, the chairman and co-founder of network operator EchoStar,  Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Brendan Carr wrote that the agency’s staff would investigate the company’s compliance with requirements to build a nationwide 5G network as per the terms of its federal spectrum licenses. EchoStar owns both  Dish Network and Boost Mobile’s wireless service.  Dish has said its 5G network covers more than 268 million people and has met all of its regulatory requirements.

In 2019, the U.S. government set several construction milestones for Dish Network to maintain cellular licenses worth billions of dollars.  The company agreed to meet specific buildout obligations in connection with a number of spectrum licenses across several different bands. In particular, the FCC agreed to relax some of EchoStar’s then-existing buildout obligations in exchange for EchoStar’s commitment to put its licensed spectrum to work deploying a nationwide 5G broadband network. EchoStar promised—among other things—that its network would cover, by June 14, 2025, at least 70% of the population within each of its licensed geographic areas for its AWS-4 and 700 MHz licenses, and at least 75% of the population within each of its licensed geographic areas for its H Block and 600 MHz licenses.

“The FCC structured the buildout obligations to prevent spectrum warehousing and to ensure that Americans would gain broader access to high-speed wireless services, including in underserved and rural areas.”

Ergen said that the company has worked collaboratively with FCC leaders since it launched its first pay-TV satellite more than 30 years ago. He added that EchoStar’s network creates American jobs and furthers a critical Trump administration priority of ensuring “the United States is at the forefront of wireless leadership and that our infrastructure is free of Chinese vendors.”   Full text of his statement is below.

Ergen is reportedly working to pivot his satellite TV business from a declining pay-TV model to a “direct-to-device” business that connects smartphones from space, among other services. Carr laid out plans for the agency to seek public comment on how mobile-satellite services could use some spectrum that EchoStar currently holds. EchoStar is among a group of satellite companies that already hold licenses to provide mobile-device links, though they lack the dense network of modern satellites that Starlink has at its disposal.

SpaceX said in an April letter that EchoStar’s spectrum in the 2 Gigahertz band “remains ripe for sharing among next-generation satellite systems.” The company urged the commission to launch a new rule-making process to add new competitors to the band.  EchoStar has accused SpaceX of a spectrum land grab.

Separately, Dish Network has spent years wiring thousands of cellphone towers to help Boost become a wireless operator that could rival AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, but the project has been slow-going. Boost’s subscriber base has shrunk in the five years since Ergen bought the brand from Sprint so it is not at all competitive with its big three U.S. cellular rivals.

Dish Network under FCC microscope, Art by Midjourney for Fierce Network

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Charlie Ergen’s Statement in Response to FCC Letter:

“We have worked collaboratively with FCC leaders since we launched our first DBS satellite more than 30 years ago. Today, we are proud to have invested tens of billions to deploy the world’s largest 5G Open RAN network – primarily using American vendors – across 24,000 5G sites, to offer broadband service to over 268 million people nationwide. Through this deployment, which is possible thanks to scores of tower climbers, engineers, and partners, we have met or exceeded all of the commitments we have entered into with the FCC to date. And our work is not yet finished as we continue to deploy and invest in our network. Not only does our network create American jobs and a competitive alternative to incumbent wireless carriers, it also furthers another critical Trump Administration priority: deploying Open RAN to ensure the United States is at the forefront of wireless leadership and that our infrastructure is free of Chinese vendors. Thanks to our nationwide pricing model and agreements with partner carriers, Boost Mobile is available at affordable prices to Americans across the country – including in rural and hard to reach communities. Indeed, our new buildout deadlines – which are consistent with FCC practice under the past two Administrations where the Wireless Bureau granted hundreds of buildout extensions – came with additional, substantial pro-competitive commitments that EchoStar has fulfilled. As we continue to invest in and expand our terrestrial network deployment, we are also working to provide Open RAN direct-to-device satellite technology, bringing additional connectivity to all Americans in the U.S. and around the world.

EchoStar worked tirelessly to establish 3GPP NTN standard for D2D. With D2D 3GPP standards now complete, EchoStar has the global capability in terms of expertise, spectrum, and ITU priority to bring this to fruition. We are now testing new S-band services in both North America and Europe, and this year we launched a LEO satellite with several more planned in the coming months. We look forward to continuing this important work to help the Administration and FCC continue to deliver for the American people.”

References:

https://prod-i.a.dj.com/public/resources/documents/Carr-Ergen-letter.pdf

https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/fcc-threatens-charlie-ergens-hold-on-satellite-5g-spectrum-licenses-e2913889

https://www.fierce-network.com/wireless/fcc-questions-echostar-about-how-its-using-5g-spectrum

https://www.tipranks.com/news/the-fly/echostar-confirms-fcc-letter-to-company-ergen-makes-statement

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Analysis of Dish Network – AWS partnership to build 5G Open RAN cloud native network

Sources: AI is Getting Smarter, but Hallucinations Are Getting Worse

Recent reports suggest that AI hallucinations—instances where AI generates false or misleading information—are becoming more frequent and present growing challenges for businesses and consumers alike who rely on these technologies.  More than two years after the arrival of ChatGPT, tech companies, office workers and everyday consumers are using A.I. bots for an increasingly wide array of tasks. But there is still no way of ensuring that these systems produce accurate information.

A groundbreaking study featured in the PHARE (Pervasive Hallucination Assessment in Robust Evaluation) dataset has revealed that AI hallucinations are not only persistent but potentially increasing in frequency across leading language models. The research, published on Hugging Face, evaluated multiple large language models (LLMs) including GPT-4, Claude, and Llama models across various knowledge domains.

“We’re seeing a concerning trend where even as these models advance in capability, their propensity to hallucinate remains stubbornly present,” notes the PHARE analysis. The comprehensive benchmark tested models across 37 knowledge categories, revealing that hallucination rates varied significantly by domain, with some models demonstrating hallucination rates exceeding 30% in specialized fields.

Hallucinations are when AI bots produce fabricated information and present it as fact.                                                                            Photo Credit: More SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Today’s A.I. bots are based on complex mathematical systems that learn their skills by analyzing enormous amounts of digital data. These systems use mathematical probabilities to guess the best response, not a strict set of rules defined by human engineers. So they make a certain number of mistakes. “Despite our best efforts, they will always hallucinate,” said Amr Awadallah, the chief executive of Vectara, a start-up that builds A.I. tools for businesses, and a former Google executive.

“That will never go away,” he said.   These AI bots do not — and cannot — decide what is true and what is false. Sometimes, they just make stuff up, a phenomenon some A.I. researchers call hallucinations. On one test, the hallucination rates of newer A.I. systems were as high as 79%.

Amr Awadallah, the chief executive of Vectara, which builds A.I. tools for businesses, believes A.I. “hallucinations” will persist.Credit…Photo credit: Cayce Clifford for The New York Times

AI companies like OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek have introduced reasoning models designed to improve logical thinking, but these models have shown higher hallucination rates compared to previous versions. For more than two years, those companies steadily improved their A.I. systems and reduced the frequency of these errors. But with the use of new reasoning systems, errors are rising. The latest OpenAI systems hallucinate at a higher rate than the company’s previous system, according to the company’s own tests.

For example, OpenAI’s latest models (o3 and o4-mini) have hallucination rates ranging from 33% to 79%, depending on the type of question asked. This is significantly higher than earlier models, which had lower error rates. Experts are still investigating why this is happening. Some believe that the complex reasoning processes in newer AI models may introduce more opportunities for errors.

Others suggest that the way these models are trained might be amplifying inaccuracies. For several years, this phenomenon has raised concerns about the reliability of these systems. Though they are useful in some situations — like writing term papers, summarizing office documents and generating computer code — their mistakes can cause problems. Despite efforts to reduce hallucinations, AI researchers acknowledge that hallucinations may never fully disappear. This raises concerns for applications where accuracy is critical, such as legal, medical, and customer service AI systems.

The A.I. bots tied to search engines like Google and Bing sometimes generate search results that are laughably wrong. If you ask them for a good marathon on the West Coast, they might suggest a race in Philadelphia. If they tell you the number of households in Illinois, they might cite a source that does not include that information.  Those hallucinations may not be a big problem for many people, but it is a serious issue for anyone using the technology with court documents, medical information or sensitive business data.

“You spend a lot of time trying to figure out which responses are factual and which aren’t,” said Pratik Verma, co-founder and chief executive of Okahu, a company that helps businesses navigate the hallucination problem. “Not dealing with these errors properly basically eliminates the value of A.I. systems, which are supposed to automate tasks for you.”

For more than two years, companies like OpenAI and Google steadily improved their A.I. systems and reduced the frequency of these errors. But with the use of new reasoning systems, errors are rising. The latest OpenAI systems hallucinate at a higher rate than the company’s previous system, according to the company’s own tests.

The company found that o3 — its most powerful system — hallucinated 33% of the time when running its PersonQA benchmark test, which involves answering questions about public figures. That is more than twice the hallucination rate of OpenAI’s previous reasoning system, called o1. The new o4-mini hallucinated at an even higher rate: 48 percent.

When running another test called SimpleQA, which asks more general questions, the hallucination rates for o3 and o4-mini were 51% and 79%. The previous system, o1, hallucinated 44% of the time.

In a paper detailing the tests, OpenAI said more research was needed to understand the cause of these results. Because A.I. systems learn from more data than people can wrap their heads around, technologists struggle to determine why they behave in the ways they do.

“Hallucinations are not inherently more prevalent in reasoning models, though we are actively working to reduce the higher rates of hallucination we saw in o3 and o4-mini,” a company spokeswoman, Gaby Raila, said. “We’ll continue our research on hallucinations across all models to improve accuracy and reliability.”

Hannaneh Hajishirzi, a professor at the University of Washington and a researcher with the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, is part of a team that recently devised a way of tracing a system’s behavior back to the individual pieces of data it was trained on. But because systems learn from so much data — and because they can generate almost anything — this new tool can’t explain everything. “We still don’t know how these models work exactly,” she said.

Tests by independent companies and researchers indicate that hallucination rates are also rising for reasoning models from companies such as Google and DeepSeek.

Since late 2023, Mr. Awadallah’s company, Vectara, has tracked how often chatbots veer from the truth. The company asks these systems to perform a straightforward task that is readily verified: Summarize specific news articles. Even then, chatbots persistently invent information.  Vectara’s original research estimated that in this situation chatbots made up information at least 3% of the time and sometimes as much as 27%.

In the year and a half since, companies such as OpenAI and Google pushed those numbers down into the 1 or 2% range.  Others, such as the San Francisco start-up Anthropic, hovered around 4%. But hallucination rates on this test have risen with reasoning systems. DeepSeek’s reasoning system, R1, hallucinated 14.3% of the time. OpenAI’s o3 climbed to 6.8%.

Sarah Schwettmann, co-founder of Transluce, said that o3’s hallucination rate may make it less useful than it otherwise would be.  Kian Katanforoosh, a Stanford adjunct professor and CEO of the upskilling startup Workera, told TechCrunch that his team is already testing o3 in their coding workflows, and that they’ve found it to be a step above the competition. However, Katanforoosh says that o3 tends to hallucinate broken website links. The model will supply a link that, when clicked, doesn’t work.

AI companies are now leaning more heavily on a technique that scientists call reinforcement learning. With this process, a system can learn behavior through trial and error. It is working well in certain areas, like math and computer programming. But it is falling short in other areas.

“The way these systems are trained, they will start focusing on one task — and start forgetting about others,” said Laura Perez-Beltrachini, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh who is among a team closely examining the hallucination problem.

Another issue is that reasoning models are designed to spend time “thinking” through complex problems before settling on an answer. As they try to tackle a problem step by step, they run the risk of hallucinating at each step. The errors can compound as they spend more time thinking.

The latest bots reveal each step to users, which means the users may see each error, too. Researchers have also found that in many cases, the steps displayed by a bot are unrelated to the answer it eventually delivers.

“What the system says it is thinking is not necessarily what it is thinking,” said Aryo Pradipta Gema, an A.I. researcher at the University of Edinburgh and a fellow at Anthropic.

New research highlighted by TechCrunch indicates that user behavior may exacerbate the problem. When users request shorter answers from AI chatbots, hallucination rates actually increase rather than decrease. “The pressure to be concise seems to force these models to cut corners on accuracy,” the TechCrunch article explains, challenging the common assumption that brevity leads to greater precision.

References:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/technology/ai-hallucinations-chatgpt-google.html

The Confidence Paradox: Why AI Hallucinations Are Getting Worse, Not Better

https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/05/06/why-ai-hallucinations-are-worse-than-ever/

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/18/openais-new-reasoning-ai-models-hallucinate-more/

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Google X spin-out Taara and Digicomm International partner to offer high speed wireless communications

Taara, a Google X “Moonshot Factory” spinoff, has chosen Colorado-based Digicomm International, a leading telecommunications distributor and manufacturer, to stock and expand the deployment of Taara’s innovative wireless optical (speeds) communication technology which is generically called Free Space Optics (FSO).  Taara has been successful in FSO deployments with fiber and mobile operators in more than a dozen countries (see use cases below).  The company has focused on the middle-mile market and intends also to pursue the last-mile connectivity arena, hopes to scale up its reach with operators even further following a new value-added reseller deal with  Digicomm which will primarily focus on the North America market.

Taara Lightbridge is a wireless terminal that’s about the size of a traffic light and weights 14 kilograms.  It uses beams of light to deliver fiber optic-like speeds through the air, providing an ideal solution for middle-mile connectivity, network resilience, and rapid service restoration.  Taara’s core technology traces back to Project Loon, a one-time Google X initiative that explored how to create floating cell towers via the deployment of stratospheric balloons hovering at about 66,000 feet that connected with FSO technology. Taara CEO Mahesh Krishnaswamy, who worked on Project Loon, later decided that Loon’s core connectivity technology could be applied to terrestrial use cases. That idea spawned Taara which was spun off from Google X (Alphabet’s innovation hub) on March 17, 2025.

Taara uses free space optics technology in the unlicensed infrared band (193THz) and eye-safe 1535-1565 nanometer wavelength to deliver low-latency, bidirectional speeds of up to 20 Gbit/s across distances up to 20 kilometers.  “It’s almost like a fiber, but it’s in the air,” Krishnaswamy told Light Reading.

By adding Taara Lightbridge to its portfolio, Digicomm says it will strengthen its commitment to provide customers with innovative and scalable products that address today’s growing broadband demands.  Digicomm and Taara first connected at last year’s Fiber Connect show, according to Digicomm CEO Rob Donziger.

“Partnering with Taara marks an exciting milestone for Digicomm and our customers,” said Jennifer Nelson, FTTx and Wireless Sales Leader at Digicomm International. “Taara’s Wireless Optical Communication technology is a perfect complement to our extensive wireless, HFC, and FTTx offerings, empowering service providers to expand faster, more efficiently, and at a lower cost.”

“We’re excited to welcome Digicomm as our Master Value-Added Reseller in the Americas region,” said Sanjay Nagpal, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Partnerships at Taara. “Digicomm’s deep regional expertise and strong ecosystem of relationships will accelerate the deployment of Taara’s high-speed wireless optical technology where it’s needed most. This partnership marks a significant milestone in our mission to expand affordable, reliable internet access with partners seeking innovative, fiber-equivalent solutions.”

FSO has been around for decades, but its success in the market has been limited by weather issues, such as rain, fog and vibration-inducing winds, that can cause service disruptions and reduce overall reliability. Krishnaswamy said Taara isn’t immune to those conditions. However, he said that the company has developed ways to compensate for them, including a pointing-and-tracking system that keeps the beam between terminals centered despite movement and vibrations.

Taara also boosts reliability with the use of automatic repeat request (ARQ) techniques that quickly resend data when, for example, a bird flies in front of the beam or connectivity is impacted by rain droplets. Fog presents a more difficult scenario, but Taara can use a “hybrid” approach – such as creating a redundant path via a different frequency and the use of microwave technology as a failover – to compensate, Krishnaswamy said.

Taara also has developed a planning tool based on years of weather data to help partners predict when weather-related issues might surface. Weather is not the only FSO culprit. In earlier deployment days in India, for example, outages were caused by monkeys jumping on towers and making them sway. The new pointing-and-tracking system resolved that issue by compensating for that movement and keeping the connection stable, Krishnaswamy added. He likened Taara’s technical and operational approach as a “second coming” for free space optics, believing it’s now “primed and ready for the real world.”

Taara was spun out from Google X after there was a “clear signal” that the company’s technology had matured to a certain level and that there was enough traction to support a sustainable business. Taara is now “ready to scale and go to the next stage,” Krishnaswamy said.

Taara currently employs fewer than 100 people and is not yet profitable. However, it has been racking up deployments in more than a dozen countries for a wide range of use cases in both rural and urban areas. Those use cases include bringing fiber-like speeds where fiber can’t (because of factors such as cost and difficult terrain), enterprise connectivity – for portable, redundant connectivity when a service provider experiences a fiber cut – and disaster recovery.

Taara’s technology “has been very versatile and we’ve been very surprised at how customers have been teaching us on how best to use this product,” Krishnaswamy noted. Examples of Taara’s early deployment partners include Liberty Latin America (redundancy and island-to-island connectivity), Airtel (connecting multiple dwelling units and 4G/5G tower backhaul), T-Mobile (portable 5G connectivity), Liquid Telecom in Nairobi (connecting surrounding towns from existing fiber) and Digicel (service failovers).

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With decades of experience delivering advanced broadband technologies, Digicomm’s logistical capabilities and customer reach make it an ideal partner to scale deployment quickly and effectively. Digicomm will stock and support Taara Lightbridge wireless optical solutions, offering link planning services, rapid order fulfillment, and customer service to meet the unique needs of broadband network operators.

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About Digicomm International:

Founded in 1993, Digicomm is an industry-leading, value-added broadband distributor and manufacturer – and a key strategic partner to its customers helping them meet the rigorous demands of broadband network operations. Service providers around the world depend on Digicomm’s extensive inventory of Wireless, HFC, and FTTx products, representing trusted manufacturers such as AOI, PPC, Commscope, Tarana Wireless, and many others. Digicomm also designs and manufactures products including EDFAs, optical passives and more.

For further information, visit www.digicomm.com

About Taara:

Taara is a moonshot for connectivity, with a mission to extend and amplify the global communications network with beams of light. Born at X, Google’s Moonshot Factory, the team combines expertise across disciplines to tackle the world’s toughest connectivity challenges. Taara is now deploying wireless optical communications with industry partners in over a dozen countries, expanding access to fast, reliable connectivity.  The company is located in Sunnyvale, CA.

Following about seven years in the incubation phase, Taara spun-out of the Google X Moonshot Factory in March 2025.  It has Alphabet and Series X Capital among its financial backers.

Projects such as Wing (lightweight drones to deliver goods), Project Loon, Dandelion (the use of geothermal energy to heat and cool homes) and Waymo (the autonomous vehicle company spun out in 2016) also started at Google X.

Learn more at www.taaraconnect.com

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References:

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250505836500/en/Digicomm-International-and-Taara-Partner-to-Bring-Wireless-Optical-Communications-to-Broadband-Enterprise-and-Municipal-Networks

https://www.lightreading.com/wireless/taara-a-google-moonshot-spin-out-seeks-scale-for-its-fiber-over-the-air-platform

After 9 years Alphabet pulls the plug on Loon; Another Google X “moonshot” bites the dust!

Ultra-secure quantum messages sent a record distance over a fiber optic network

Unlike binary bit based digital communications, quantum information is transmitted in qubits, which can store multiple values at once, making quantum communications more secure.  A recently published article in Nature states that scientists have sent quantum information across a record-breaking 158 miles using ordinary computers and fiber-optic cables.  It’s the first time coherent quantum communication—an ultra-secure means of transmitting data—has been achieved using existing telecommunications infrastructure, without the expensive cryogenic cooling that is typically required.

“Our equipment was running alongside the fibers that we use for regular communication literally buried underneath the roads and train stations,” said Mirko Pittaluga, a physicist and lead author of the study. Pittaluga and his colleagues at Toshiba Europe sent quantum information from regular computers hooked into the telecommunications network at data centers in the German cities of Kehl and Frankfurt, relaying them through a detector at a third data center roughly midway between them in Kirchfeld. The three-location setup enabled the group to extend the distance the messages were sent more than 150 miles, an uninterrupted distance only ever achieved in a laboratory environment.

Pittaluga said that his team’s work is critical to solving the problem of keeping sensitive data out of the reach of hackers.  One means of fixing this problem, Pittaluga said, is through quantum cryptography, which relies on the physics of quantum mechanics rather than mathematical algorithms to generate encryption keys. But to use quantum encryption keys, you have to successfully distribute them across meaningful distances, a task that has stymied researchers outside the lab for decades.

Quantum data was sent over an ordinary telecom network with fiber-optic cables.© julie sebadelha/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Integrating the technology into existing infrastructure using largely off-the-shelf equipment is a key step in expanding the accessibility of quantum communication and its use in encrypting information for more secure transmission of data, according to multiple physicists and engineers who weren’t involved in the study.

This is about as real-world as one could imagine,” said David Awschalom, a professor of physics and molecular engineering at the University of Chicago who wasn’t a part of the new work. “It’s an impressive, quite beautiful demonstration.”  Working at these types of distances, Awschalom said, means that quantum information could be sent across entire metropolitan areas or between nearby cities, making it useful for hospitals, banks and other institutions, for which secure communications are paramount.

“The likelihood of them being able to reverse engineer a quantum key, which is the number you would need to decrypt your information, is vanishingly small,” according to Awschalom.

Other groups in the U.K. and U.S., including researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, are also working on extending the distances achievable by quantum communication.

Today, bank statements, health records and other data transmitted online are protected using mathematically formulated encryption keys. These keys are the only means of unlocking the data, keeping it secure from cyber thieves. For conventional computers, breaking these keys takes an impractically long time, but quantum computers are up to the task, and as they become more powerful, encryption keys become vulnerable to attack.

“Anything meaningful that’s over the internet can be tapped, recorded and saved for the next decade, and can be decrypted years later,” according to Prem Kumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern University, who wasn’t a part of the new work. “It’s what’s called harvest now and decrypt later.”

Internet and telecommunications infrastructure are based on optical fibers all over the world that carry pulses of light containing photons. Classical bits of information are sent as a single impulse of light carrying tens of millions of photons.  Quantum information, stored in qubits, is sent in a package of a single photon.

Efficiently detecting single photons usually requires expensive superconducting detectors that cost on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars. These high-efficiency sensors must be cryogenically cooled, using liquid helium, to super low temperatures below minus 454 degrees Fahrenheit, making the technology expensive and incompatible with existing infrastructure.

Pittaluga and his colleagues at Toshiba got around this by using cheaper detectors known as avalanche photodiodes, which cost just thousands of dollars and can run at or just below room temperature, like today’s traditional internet equipment.

Such detectors hadn’t been used for coherent quantum communication before, as they can be nearly an order of magnitude less efficient at detecting single photons and are affected by what is called the afterpulse effect—when the current detection is frustrated by leftover echoes from an earlier transmission. Superconducting detectors aren’t affected by afterpulsing, Pittaluga said.

To address the effect in the more practical and cost-effective photodiodes, his group employed two separate sets of the detectors, using one to read the signal and the other to remove the environmental noise from that signal.  The goal of this setup is to bring us one step closer to a quantum internet, with incredibly secure information, Pittaluga added.

Yet despite this innovation, the technology remains expensive and difficult to implement compared with current encryption systems and networks—for now. “My personal view is that we’ll be seeing quantum encryption of data sets and metropolitan-scale quantum networks within a decade,” Awschalom added.

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Why quantum computers are faster at solving problems:

Quantum computers are faster than traditional computers for optimization problems, such as finding the more efficient options for supply chains.

A traditional computer tries each combination individually.  A quantum computer tries all combinations at once.

Source: Google Quantum AI
Peter Champelli/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

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References:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08801-w

https://www.wsj.com/science/in-a-first-scientists-sent-quantum-messages-a-record-distance-over-a-traditional-network-9124412f

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