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Methodology

How the record is built

What Signaic reads and how often, how each record is tied to the company behind it, how source links are checked, and how to report a correction.

What is read and how often

Signaic reads 130+ primary sources across 28 jurisdictions. Each source is read on the schedule its publisher keeps, from hourly to monthly, around the clock.

A source is read through the publisher's application programming interface (API), a bulk file, a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) news feed, the publisher's own web pages, a language model reading its published documents, or a browser where a site needs one.

Most sources are read in full: each record becomes a structured row with its source, the source's own reference and the time it was retrieved. A few are watched for change: Signaic watches the publisher's index page and records each new or changed entry with its link.

  • Regulators and spectrum bodies

    What it covers
    National regulators, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the regional bodies: licenses, assignments, consultations and decisions.
    Read
    Every 6 hours, daily and weekly

  • Standards and industry bodies

    What it covers
    The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the GSM Association (GSMA), the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the operator associations: specifications, contributions and reports.
    Read
    Daily, weekly and monthly

  • Filings, newsrooms and catalogs

    What it covers
    Securities filings, operator and carrier newsrooms, launch and satellite catalogs.
    Read
    Hourly, every 6 hours, daily and weekly

  • Tenders and market reports

    What it covers
    Public procurement and the quarterly investment indexes.
    Read
    Daily and monthly

  • Industry press

    What it covers
    Trade press read for what it reports, never as a primary record.
    Read
    Hourly, every 6 hours, daily and weekly

Signed-in customers see every source, its schedule and when it was last read on the data sources page.

How records are tied to companies

Every record names a company, agency or regulator: a filer, an applicant, a contract recipient, a party to a deal. Signaic ties that name to an entity in its catalog.

It tries, in order: the exact name; a known alternate name; the name with case, punctuation and legal suffixes such as Inc. or GmbH set aside; for filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the filer's SEC identification number; and last, a close spelling match. Subsidiaries and brand names the catalog records land on the right parent.

A close spelling match is linked on its own only when its similarity score is 0.85 or higher, on a scale where 1 is identical. A match from 0.7 up to that is never applied on its own: it goes to a review queue. Very short names must match exactly.

Fixed rules work the review queue every night. A name that matches a catalog name or alternate name is linked, and the name is remembered for next time. A name the catalog records as another legal name or a subsidiary of a tracked company is linked to that company. Names of spacecraft, places, agencies the catalog does not track and the source's own publisher are set aside. Anything else waits up to 90 days for more evidence and is set aside if none arrives. A weekly check tests existing links against the same rules.

Some records name a party the catalog does not track: a supplier, a person who commented on a docket, a local government office. Those records keep the name as the publisher printed it and are not tied to any entity, rather than being forced onto the nearest match.

What the confidence tiers mean

Every record carries its source, the source's own reference, the time it was retrieved and one of three confidence tiers.

  • Verified

    Read from a structured record the publisher keeps: a regulator's, exchange's or agency's filing system, register, catalog or data feed.

  • Reported

    Read from what a publisher announces rather than from its formal record: news feeds, press releases, announcement pages and the trade press.

  • Inferred

    Extracted by a language model from a document, such as deal terms and partnerships drawn from announcements, or entries read out of a register published as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file.

Each source's tier is set in its specification. Where it is not, news feeds are reported, documents read by a language model are inferred, and everything else is verified.

How links are checked

99.6%

of source links passed their most recent check.

125,000+ links checked. Measured Oct 2, 2026.

  • What counts as a link

    Every distinct web address a customer can open as the source of something Signaic shows: filings, contracts and awards, news, company pages, orbital records, alerts and the citations in SIG/NAIC AI answers. An address cited by many records is checked once, and every record that cites it shares the answer.

  • What counts as passing

    The most recent check found that the address opens, on the publisher's own site, the document it is cited for.

  • How each link is checked

    With the strongest check that applies. Where the address is built from an identifier the publisher can confirm, the publisher's own data service or bulk file must confirm it. Where a publisher answers every address whether the record exists or not, the page's content must show the record. Otherwise a plain request, and a real browser for any address a plain request could not settle. A site that turns away automated checkers passes only when a browser loads the page or the publisher's data service confirms the record.

  • What never counts as passing

    A timeout, an error, a sign-in or verification page, a page that says the document was not found, a redirect to the publisher's home page or to another site, or a refusal that no stronger check settled.

  • Archived copies

    When a document is gone for good and the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine holds a copy, the link opens that copy, labeled as an archived copy, and counts as working.

  • Withdrawn links

    A link that fails three nightly checks in a row is withdrawn. Customers then see "Source unavailable" and the date it was last checked in place of the link, never a link that does not open. In the check of Oct 2, 2026, 539 of 126,001 links were withdrawn. The figure above measures the links still shown; withdrawn links are reported here instead, and none of them counts as passing.

  • How often

    Every night the checker takes every new record, every failing link and every link not checked in the last 7 days, oldest first.

How versions are kept

When a record changes, Signaic keeps the earlier version and the time it changed. This covers filings, source records, news, government contracts and awards, partnerships, deal terms, company records and country requirements.

Earlier versions of government award records are kept for 90 days; the others are kept in full. A read that only refreshes when a record was last fetched does not make a new version.

How corrections are handled

If a record looks wrong, write to ryan@signaic.com with a link to the record, or its title and date, and what you believe is wrong. The record is checked against its source, and when it is corrected the earlier version is kept, as above.

When a publisher corrects its own record, the next read of that source records the change.

For how the platform itself is protected, see Security.