The establishment of new roaming alliances and the collective power of large operator groups is changing the face of roaming with a greater emphasis on home network control and preferential partner selection. "The forthcoming European summer period is likely to see increased communications from operators to its roamer base on how to select the appropriate partner with a focus on the accompanying roaming tariff applicable with the preferential partner selection" states Mich�le Scanlon, telecoms consultant and author of Global Mobile Roaming, a new strategic report published by Informa Telecoms & Media. Recent tariff developments such as the Vodafone Passport plan are aimed at transparency of pricing and lower costs when roaming within the operator group. Other groups and alliances are expected to announce new tariff initiatives, especially in Europe that continues to dominate the global roaming market, and is subject to an ongoing European Commission investigation into roaming charges.
Few technology sectors sit as close to the center of gravity in today's artificial intelligence (AI) economy as semiconductor manufacturing. Every AI chip that trains a frontier model, every GPU that powers a data center inference workload, and every power management IC that keeps hyperscaler facilities running traces its origins back to the global Foundry ecosystem. IDC's latest market study throws that reality into sharp relief, projecting that the broadly defined Foundry 2.0 market will surpass $360 billion in 2026, a 17 percent year-over-year gain that would have seemed optimistic even two years ago. For anyone advising boards or investment committees on technology and AI infrastructure strategy, this growth trajectory demands careful consideration. Foundry 2.0 Market Development The umbrella term covers four distinct verticals: pure-play foundry, non-memory integrated device manufacturer (IDM) production, outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT), and photomask fab...