Our globe is hyper-connected by an elaborate network of high-capacity fiber optic cables. These strands of fiber, each about the dimension of a human hair, make up the backbone of the Internet and allow us to transmit millions of text, audio and video communications at the speed of light. When this network suffers an outage without warning it sets off … Read More
The “old Bibi” would never have allowed the country to spiral into the unprecedented crisis it now faces. For Israel’s sake, let’s hope some of him still remains. Op-ed published in The Times of Israel I’ve never liked Benjamin Netanyahu. I never thought he was the right person to lead Israel. It is therefore no surprise that I have never … Read More
As with most revolutionary inventions, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain weren’t seeking to rewrite history. The pair of American physicists were merely aiming to improve telephone callsy developing a smaller electrical device that consumed less power than vacuum tubes. But 75 years ago, on Dec. 16, 1947, they made a breakthrough that ushered in a new era, one that revolutionized … Read More
Over two autumn days, in a quiet New York University campus, Nokia took a glimpse into the future – highlighting the key technologies that will define the next era of advanced wireless communications. The Brooklyn 6G Summit brought together around 250 of the most creative minds in the business for one of the most distinguished gatherings of the communications industry. … Read More
For over a hundred years, doctors have been examining our middle ear essentially the same way. They’ve seated us down, inserted an otoscope or a similarly cold metallic device into our ear canal, pressed their eye against it and started to probe. To further test our hearing, they’d sometimes play various frequencies and ask us to verbalize how they had … Read More
Establishing and operating a cellular network in outer space is no simple matter. It requires taking already complicated technologies and adjusting them to otherworldly conditions. That’s the enormous undertaking of Nokia Bell Labs, which, along with NASA, is seeking to establish the first such network on the Moon. In previous blog posts, we examined the challenges of deploying an LTE/4G network on the … Read More
Nokia Bell Labs is boldly going where no one has gone before, building the first-ever LTE/4G network on the Moon. Working with NASA, Nokia aims to demonstrate how commercially available cellular technologies can be used and adapted for future space exploration and pave the way to a sustainable human presence on the Moon. But it’s not the first time that … Read More
The Bennett government collapsed because of baseless fearmongering, a tribal devotion to Likud and a cult of personality surrounding its leader on trial for corruption. Op-ed published in The Times of Israel Throughout the year-long tenure of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s unity government, there has been a common refrain coming from supposed Israeli hardliners. This was a dangerous experiment … Read More
How an awkward German refugee helped liberate southern Israel in the 1948 war of independence. Published in Tablet Magazine. It was a crucial turning point in Israel’s fight for survival. After ten days of intense fighting, the warring parties agreed on July 18 to the second, and final, cease-fire of the 1948 Mideast war. The ensuing three months would prove … Read More
The country’s current reality doesn’t merit the panicked reaction to a recent wave of attacks. Op-ed published in The Times of Israel Anytime Israel endures a spate of terrorist attacks the country seems to digress into a sad, visceral ritual. The latest manifestation has just played out in response to the three deadly attacks that killed 11 people within a … Read More
Naftali Bennett is an entrepreneur, a product of Israel’s vaunted high-tech startup nation. It’s a culture where high-risk and high-reward ventures are encouraged and where only the most daring score big. Op-ed published in The Times of Israel Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s stunning weekend gambit in Moscow, where he became the first Western leader to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin since … Read More
A version of this story was published in Telecom Drive. Like the prospectors of old who dug deep into the ocean floor in search of oil and natural gas, today’s pioneers are on a quest to uncover this era’s great resource: data. It’s an apt analogy since data, like oil, is a reserve that proves valuable only if properly extracted … Read More
With the world trending authoritarian, will Trump turn out to be the first of his kind while the moderate Biden in fact be the last of his? Op-ed published in The Times of Israel For much of Donald Trump’s chaotic, dysfunctional and norm-defying four-year presidency, traditional liberals comforted themselves with the belief that he was, essentially, an aberration. Trump’s election, … Read More
Published in The Canadian Jewish News on Remembrance Day 2021 For most of his life, my grandfather, Mickey Heller, tried to put the memories of the Second World War behind him. After two years in Europe as a navigator in the Royal Canadian Air Force, he returned home to Toronto in 1944, married his sweetheart, started a family and a … Read More
It was about three years ago that Guy Shemesh gazed around his office before a hiring drive and was struck by an unsettling realization: nearly all his Nokia colleagues looked alike. As with most high-tech offices around the world, the work force was very homogenous. In Israel, that translated into white, male and secular. Shemesh quickly grasped that something had … Read More