TeleGeography Explains the Internet

On this episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet, Rohit Jha, co-founder of Transcelestial, explains how his company is using laser links to bring fiber-like speeds to places where digging trenches isn't practical, from storm-damaged Taiwanese villages to chronic outage sites in the U.S.

He also lays out the vision behind its planned orbital ring, a network of satellites meant to work like an undersea cable in space and to reshape connectivity for island telcos and AI data centers by the end of the decade.

This conversation covers:

The "internet distribution problem": How Transcelestial aims to fix under-connected regions that have slow speeds, high costs, and high latency to the cloud.

Terrestrial laser links as a fiber alternative: The company's first product, Centauri: a shoebox-sized laser terminal that works as "wireless fiber."

Telecom and ISP use cases: Including greenfield deployments that relieve RF congestion on 5G towers with 10x to 100x more bandwidth and brownfield deployments that provide spectrum-free backup when fiber is cut by construction, typhoons, or earthquakes.

Enterprise applications: Such as on university campuses, smart factories, mining, and government and defense.

Disaster recovery and resilience: How Transcelestial’s laser terminals are used to quickly restore critical connectivity following natural disasters.

The orbital ring network: The company’s project to build an "undersea cable in space" by creating a ring around the planet to act as a global transporter network for routing laser-based connectivity.

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As artificial intelligence transitions from broad hype to practical application, enterprise network managers are asking a critical question: How does AI actually fix my day-to-day workflow?  

In this episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet, host Greg Bryan sat down with Dennis Thankachan, CEO and Co-Founder of Lightyear, to explore how agentic AI is transforming the notoriously painful processes of telecom sourcing, provisioning, and lifecycle management.

They discuss:

The AI Data Problem: Why standard Large Language Models (LLMs) fail at telecom networking, and how Lightyear uses its proprietary historical data to deliver accurate, context-specific results without exposing customer data.

The Shift to Agentic AI: How Lightyear is evolving from a traditional software platform into an "agentic platform" for full telecom life cycle management.

The Launch of Layer8: Why Lightyear is creating a new conference specifically tailored to the physical network and enterprise WAN managers.

The Future of Network Engineering: How small network teams can leverage AI tools to achieve 10x to 50x productivity improvements as the Wide Area Network (WAN) becomes "cool again."

Show Notes

Learn more about Lightyear.

Register for Layer8

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🎧 About the Podcast: https://www2.telegeography.com/telegeography-explains-the-internet-podcast

Today's guest is Carlie Carson, Research Analyst on the enterprise team at TeleGeography.

Carlie and host Greg Bryan consider:

How has AI inferring impacted the enterprise network?

Is SD-WAN still relevant?

Has MPLS disappeared from the enterprise WAN?

The pair leverage their own Enterprise Network Trends and Strategy Report to bring actual data to the trends we often talk about on the pod.

Carlie and Greg discuss the shifting underlay landscape as MPLS usage drops and Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) takes center stage, why enterprises choose DIA over business broadband, and the real impact (or lack thereof) that AI is having on current enterprise bandwidth demands.

They also unpack the reality of satellite connectivity adoption, the evolution of SD-WAN, SASE, and Zero Trust, and why Network as a Service (NAS) is still struggling to gain widespread traction.

 

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As we look at the massive AI boom sweeping across the globe, what does it actually take from a physical standpoint to keep these models running?

Why are submarine cable operators building networks just in case a surge of traffic arrives, and how is local power grid availability dictating exactly where the next major hubs are being built?

What role are legacy crypto-mining data centers playing now in AI infrastructure?

Today we're joined by a trio of TeleGeography experts to close out our series on the impacts of AI on global telecom. Host Greg Bryan sits down with Alan Mauldin, Patrick Christian, and Jon Hjembo to tie together the network, cloud, and data center layers of this infrastructure puzzle.

The group weaves together three TeleGeography research areas that have direct impacts on each other and the expansion of AI services:

The Long-Haul Network Buffer: Alan provides a crucial perspective on international bandwidth demand, reminding us that heavy networks cannot move at the speed of software. He explains why providers are securing fiber right now purely as a risk-mitigation strategy against future uncertainty.

The Rise of NeoClouds/GPU-as-a-Service: Patrick breaks down how a post-ChatGPT surge overwhelmed hyperscalers, leading to a boom in specialized "NeoCloud" providers—many of which evolved from legacy crypto-mining facilities located far from population centers.

Data Center Realities and Power Grids: Jon takes us inside the data center, revealing how a 35% pipeline surge between 2024 and 2025 has collided with intense local regulatory, water, and power bottlenecks in markets ranging from Dublin to Malaysia. We also dive into the fascinating "Pax Silica" geopolitical chip alliance.

This special episode is sponsored by Layer8 by Lightyear.

This new event will bring together enterprise WAN operators, network engineers, and other IT/infrastructure leaders on November 4 at the Arlo Williamsburg in New York City. Notably, it's free to all enterprise end-users. Learn more and save your spot here.

 

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The TeleGeography Explains the Internet podcast welcomes Jezzibell Gilmore, General Manager, Service Provider at Kentik.

She discusses the profound impact of artificial intelligence on global network infrastructure, and how networks are evolving to handle new technological demands.

Key topics covered:

The Strain of AI workloads: The explosion of AI and GPU-heavy tasks is exposing the criticality of physical network infrastructure by demanding higher capacity, strict reliability, and ultra-low latency.

The rise of network intelligence: As global networks become increasingly complex, the industry is shifting from passive monitoring to "network intelligence," which uses AI to synthesize massive amounts of data and provide actionable insights for operators.

Shifting economic dynamics: The traditional expectation of constantly decreasing telecom prices is being upended, as the high demand and limited supply for AI-capable network capacity are actually driving prices up.

Physical limitations and the future: Overcoming unchangeable physical constraints—like the speed of light and the distance to new power generation sites—requires extreme network optimization, ultimately pointing toward a future goal of fully autonomous, self-healing networks.

Podcast HQ: https://www2.telegeography.com/telegeography-explains-the-internet-podcast
TeleGeography Resources: https://resources.telegeography.com/
Our Research: https://www2.telegeography.com/en/our-research