A week in telecoms: African fintech, FWA, GenAI, and zero carbon 5G

Welcome to the Inform weekly news round-up, where we take a look at a selection of recent CSP news and how it impacts the wider industry.

African operators tie with Mastercard; M-Pesa comes to Ethiopia

Africa’s young, under-banked population is increasingly using mobile phones to carry out financial transactions, offering opportunities for mobile operators on the continent.

Both MTN and Airtel Africa have tapped into this demand, and recently signed new deals with Mastercard to boost growth. Meanwhile, Safaricom realized long-held ambitions to introduced its M-Pesa mobile money services in Ethiopia.

MTN is in the middle of realizing its Ambition 2025 project unveiled two years ago, which outlined a strategic repositioning to separate infrastructure assets and platforms to attract third-party capital, investments and partnerships.

It has just signed an agreement with Mastercard that will see the financial services provider support the “growth and profitability” of advanced fintech services, including payments, remittance and technology infrastructure development.

Mastercard also intends to buy a minority stake in the group’s fintech business based on a total enterprise valuation of about US$5.2 billion. MTN currently markets mobile money services under the MoMo brand.

According to Bloomberg, MTN is seeking up to three more strategic investors in addition to Mastercard for its fintech unit. Group CEO Ralph Mupita told Bloomberg TV that the operator is open to selling up to a maximum of 30% of the fintech business.

Airtel Africa already has a partnership with Mastercard. The two companies recently extended their alliance by announcing the launch of a new cross-border remittance service that will enable Airtel subscribers across 14 African markets to send and receive money safely and securely.

Meanwhile, Kenya-based Safaricom, which launched voice and data services in Ethiopia last year, has now gone live with its M-Pesa offering in the country.

Safaricom introduced M-Pesa in Kenya in 2007. The service is also now offered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique and Tanzania.

Stanley Njoroge, Interim CEO of Safaricom Ethiopia, said M-Pesa “is known to be a game-changer for financial inclusion and provides services to more than 51 million customers across seven countries in Africa, offering a safe and secure platform for transactions. We will continue to broaden the services our customers receive from the M-Pesa platform.”

According to Mastercard’s 2022 Borderless Payments Report, digital payments are seeing strong growth with three-quarters of consumers who send and receive cross-border payments doing so through mobile apps.

SKT invests in GenAI firm Anthropic

Deutsche Telekom, e&, Singtel, and SK Telecom (SKT) recently joined forces to form the Global Telco AI Alliance with the aim of accelerating the use of AI within their businesses and developing AI-fuelled business models to drive growth.

Now, SKT has taken a further step towards its goal of becoming an AI-native organization. It has invested $100 million in existing partner Anthropic, a San Francisco-based company that is developing a generative AI (GenAI) platform called Claude.

Under the agreement, SKT and Anthropic will jointly develop a multilingual large language model (LLM) customized for telcos that supports languages including Korean, English, Japanese and Spanish.

In particular, Anthropic will work with SKT to fine-tune Claude to support telco use cases, including industry specific customer service, marketing, sales, and interactive consumer applications. Jared Kaplan, a co-founder and chief science officer of Anthropic, will oversee the overall direction of the industry customization as well as the product roadmap.

Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SKT, said the operator will be working closely with Anthropic to promote AI innovation.

“By combining our Korean language-based LLM with Anthropic’s strong AI capabilities, we expect to create synergy and gain leadership in the AI ecosystem together with our global telco partners,” he added.

In other telco AI news, Australia’s TPG Telecom and Ericsson announced a new multi-year agreement to build a cloud-native and AI-powered analytics tool to pinpoint and improve mobile network performance for customers.

The solution is based on Ericsson Expert Analytics and EXFO Adaptive Service Assurance and aims to provide an in-depth understanding of a customer’s experience at an individual level.

According to Ericsson, TPG Telecom is the first operator in Australia, and one of the first globally, to deploy Ericsson Expert Analytics in a commercial network using cloud-native technologies.

Reports highlight FWA growth in America

Fixed wireless access (FWA) has long been cited as an early use case for 5G networks, with CSPs offering it as a wireline replacement broadband service to customers in countries including the United States.

According to a new report from GlobalData, FWA is expected to more than double its subscription market share among US fixed broadband technologies, expanding from a 7.2% share in 2023 to 15.8% in 2028.

Tammy Parker, Principal Analyst at GlobalData, noted that easy self- installation and affordability, combined with high reliability and performance, are among FWA’s selling points thanks to 5G.

“But so is the fact that FWA offers a new service choice versus existing solutions from incumbent service providers. Additionally, FWA is suitable for both primary and backup internet service and can be deployed in locations where internet service may only be needed temporarily,” Parker added.

A separate report from Leichtman Research Group also highlighted that T-Mobile and Verizon added about 890,000 FWA subscribers in the second quarter of 2023, compared to 815,000 net adds in Q2 2022.

Bruce Leichtman, President and Principal Analyst, said fixed wireless services “have acquired over 800,000 net adds in each of the past five quarters, accounting for about 4.45 million net adds in that period.”

Ooredoo puts focus on APIs for digital transformation

Qatar-based CSP Ooredoo boosted its digital transformation efforts through new partnerships with Google Cloud and Tech Mahindra, placing a particular focus on the use of APIs to offer new digital services to customers.

The group said it plans to accelerate its digital transformation journey in six operating companies across its global footprint, although it did not name which countries it is targeting. Ooredoo is present in five markets in the Middle East, three in Southeast Asia and two in North Africa.

The aim is to adopt a platform approach using Google Cloud’s API Management Platform (Apigee), with Tech Mahindra as implementation partner.

The CSP claims that the “integral role of API” in the development of open innovation, ecosystem expansion, mobile app development, IoT, AI and data-driven insights will “vastly expand opportunities for growth across the group’s global footprint.” Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulla Al Thani, Deputy Group CEO at Ooredoo, said: “As a part of our corporate strategy, we actively seek out and foster partnerships with like-minded entities that share our dedication to innovation and technology. Through these collaborations, we aim to elevate our offerings and unleash the full potential of our APIs, enabling us to provide unparalleled digital services to our customers.”

Zain Saudi Arabia joins forces with Red Sea Global for zero-carbon 5G

Reducing carbon emissions is a goal of pretty much all major operators around the world. According to Zain Saudi Arabia, it has launched what it is touting as the world’s first zero-carbon 5G network in collaboration with tourism developer Red Sea Global.

In a joint statement, the partners noted the 5G network will be powered by 760,000 solar panels that have been built to serve a 28,000-square-kilometre area. Red Sea Global is owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

The project aims to achieve three primary goals: preserving the environment, reducing emissions by utilizing renewable energy, and mitigating visual distortion by making towers blend in with the environment. Zain also noted that the mobile towers built for the project will be shared with other operators.

According to Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Al-Deghaither, CEO of Zain KSA, the operator is “further bolstering our support for one of our nation’s crucial strategic projects, demonstrating our commitment to realizing Saudi Vision 2030’s goals for nationwide digital transformation and sustainability, including the goals to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 and improve the quality of life across the Kingdom.”

Due to open its doors to its first guests later this year, The Red Sea will consist of 50 resorts, offering up to 8,000 hotel rooms and more than 1,000 residential properties across 22 islands and six inland sites once completed. The destination will also include luxury marinas, golf courses, entertainment, food and beverages, and leisure facilities.