A week in telecoms: AWS details European sovereign cloud

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

AWS details European sovereign cloud

Amazon Web Services provided an update on its plans to provide an AWS European sovereign cloud for government and customers in highly regulated industries and said it said will be separate from, and independent of, the eight existing AWS Regions already open in Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Milan, Paris, Stockholm, Spain, and Zurich.

According to an AWS blog, the sovereign cloud will provide “additional options for deployment,” while providing AWS services, APIs, and other tools. “The design will help you meet your data residency, operational autonomy, and resiliency needs,” the public cloud provider added.

“Only EU residents who are located in the EU will have control of the operations and support for the AWS European sovereign cloud,” AWS said.

The AWS European sovereign cloud will be operationally independent of the other regions, with separate in-region billing and usage metering systems. It will launch first in Germany and make its service available to all European customers.

CSPs report solid Q3 figures

This week saw multiple third-quarter (Q3) results announcements from communications service providers (CSP) around the world as we examine in our article Are telcos turning the tide on growth?

Orange Group presented its Q3 figures early in the week, with a slight 1.8% increase in revenue to €10.99 billion. Verizon and T-Mobile US reported better-than-expected results this week, following AT&T last week. Telenor also beat expectations in Scandinavia, as did its regional rival, Telia last week.

Meanwhile, the three major operators in China showed similar trends for the first nine months of 2023, with profit growth and modest revenue gains.

Deutsche Telekom and SK Telekom team on LLM

Longstanding partners Deutsche Telekom (DT) and SK Telecom (SKT) announced plans to jointly develop an industry-specific language model (LLM) that they said will be tailored to the requirements of digital assistants in customer service.

As noted by DT, the move also marks the start of the Global Telco AI Alliance of DT, e&, Singtel and SKT that was announced in the summer. The aim of the alliance is to accelerate the use of AI within their businesses and develop AI-fueled business models to drive growth.

Claudia Nemat, Member of the Board of Management for Technology and Innovation at DT, said to maximize the use of AI, especially in customer service, “we need to adapt existing large language models and train them with our unique data. This will elevate our generative AI tool.” You can read our interview with Jonathan Abrahamson, Chief Product & Digital Officer at Deutsche Telekom, to find out more.

In separate GenAI news, Qualcomm Technologies launched new Snapdragon PC and mobile platforms that are designed to foster generative AI experiences.

Orange signals progress with Masmovil merger

The proposed merger between Orange Spain and Masmovil has yet to gain regulatory clearance from the European Commission, but Orange Group expressed hope that proceedings will be completed by the end of 2023, enabling the transaction to be closed in the first quarter of 2024.

During the France-based operator’s Q3 2023 earnings call, Orange Chief Executive Christel Heydemann conceded that the EU regulatory process is taking longer than initially hoped, but indicated that negotiations on potential merger remedies remained ongoing.

Orange signed a merger agreement with Masmovil in July 2022, with the aim of creating a 50:50 joint venture in Spain. Heydemann said the planned synergies would help “create value in Spain for Spanish customers and create room for investment in infrastructure and to compete as a leader in the Spanish market against Telefónica.”

Digi Communications has already said it may be interested in acquiring any assets that have to be offloaded to smooth the merger process. Meanwhile, Vodafone Spain continues to attract attention from bidders, although UK-based Zegona Communications is the only company to have confirmed talks with Vodafone over a potential takeover.

Argentina completes 5G auction

America Movil-owned Claro, Telefónica’s Movistar and Telecom Argentina’s Personal all secured spectrum for the provision of 5G services in a tender carried out by the government. According to the National Communications Entity (Enacom), the auction raised $875 million.

A total of 250MHz was auctioned in the 3.3GHz-3.6GHz band, in two lots of 100MHz each and one of 50MHz.

Claro acquired a 100MHz block in the 3.3GHz-3.4GHz band and Personal a 100MHz block in the 3.4GHz-3.5GHz band. Meanwhile, Movistar secured a 50MHz block in the 3.55GHz-3.6GHz band. The regulator reportedly confirmed that another 50MHz block in the 3.5GHz band remained vacant.

Prior to the auction, the three operators had slammed the auction terms, saying that 5G will be “impossible” to deploy under the current proposal.

The GSMA also noted that the prices were “very high in relation to the economic situation of the country and the income of the industry.”

Vodafone backs 6GHz to avoid 5G capacity crunch

Vodafone tested mobile spectrum in the upper 6GHz frequency band and claimed that enabling this band for mobile use will avoid a “mobile capacity crunch caused by soaring demand for bandwidth.”

Vodafone engineers in Spain achieved download speeds of up to 5 Gbps and on average 2 Gbps across various indoor locations.

Furthermore, the operator said it demonstrated that the technology has the potential to achieve comparable coverage levels to today’s 5G networks.

Vodafone and other mobile network operators are calling for the upper 6GHz spectrum band to be allocated to International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT).

Alberto Ripepi, Vodafone’s Chief Network Officer, said: “Without a fair and balanced allocation of 6GHz spectrum, mobile users worldwide could face a major capacity crunch within just five years. Additional 5G spectrum would boost the digital transformation of businesses and public sector organisations, and support the European Commission’s ambition to have fast connectivity within reach of all populated areas by 2030.”

The World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-23) takes place in Dubai next month and will decide the future use of this spectrum resource.

Also noted…

• The European Commission appears to have put to one side the controversial “fair share” debate, instead focusing on a broader vision for the overhaul of the telecom sector and considering future legislation called the Digital Network Act.
• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has voted in favour of re-establishing net neutrality rules.