A week in telecoms: New AI partnerships in Asia

KT and Microsoft join forces on AI ...

Korean operator KT and Microsoft unveiled a five-year, multibillion-dollar partnership that they said represents a ‘giant step’ to accelerate AI innovation in South Korea.

The partnership builds on an agreement signed in June, and includes an investment from KT in the areas of AI, cloud technologies, and IT business, as well as a resource commitment from Microsoft in the areas of infrastructure and people.

The two partners plan to focus on five areas: the development of customized AI solutions for South Korea, providing Korean sovereign cloud solutions, the establishment of an AI transformation-specialized service company, AI R&D capabilities advancement across Korea, and KT’s AICT transformation.

For example, KT and Microsoft aim to develop a customized version of GPT-4o and explore developing a version of Microsoft’s Phi family of small language models. In addition, KT will employ Microsoft Copilot Studio and Azure AI Studio to develop custom AI agents aimed at differentiating customer experiences. 

During the M360 APAC event organized by the GSMA in Seoul, KT CEO Kim Young Shub emphasized the need for partnerships to expand its AI capabilities. However, he also warned that it is still important to retain sovereignty in data, infrastructure and certain services.

In general, South Korean operators are betting big on AI. Earlier this year, LG Uplus set itself ambitious targets for AI services in the coming years, with the aim of reaching 2 trillion won in revenue from the business-to-business AI sector by 2028.

In addition, SK Telecom as well as Deutsche Telekom, e&, Singtel and SoftBank Corp., the founding parties of the Global Telco AI Alliance, signed a joint venture on LLMs at DTW24 – Ignite. KT has also launched Mi:dm, an LLM service for corporate clients.

... and Samsung and NTT partner to apply AI to the network

KT wasn’t the only South Korean company to announce an AI pact. South Korean’s Samsung is partnering with Japan’s NTT Docomo to “jointly research the application of AI in next-generation mobile communications technology.” The companies plan to combine their technical expertise so that they can apply AI to optimizing network quality and transition towards 6G.

Takaaki Sato, senior executive vice president and chief technology officer at NTT Docomo, said: “I believe this technological cooperation between the two companies will speed up AI-powered innovation in the telecom industry, and it will realise the common vision for future communications such as 6G.”

Samsung noted that ”currently, communication quality optimisation is conducted at the cell site level of mobile communication base stations. Moving forward, the goal is to achieve user-level optimisation through the application of AI.”

Ericsson announces a 5G deal with Viettel

Days after Nokia trumpeted its “major new deal with Viettel Group” to deploy 5G equipment for the first time nationwide, Ericsson indicated that it has been awarded the “majority share” of the operator’s nationwide 5G radio access network deployment in Vietnam.

The Swedish vendor said its 5G deployment will include the capital Hanoi and the north and central parts of Vietnam when complete. The extended partnership will also see Ericsson modernize the 4G network for Viettel across the same geographical areas.

Ericsson said Viettel is utilizing the 2.6GHz spectrum for both 4G and 5G non-standalone (NSA), and positioning itself for future 5G standalone (5G SA) deployment.

Tao Duc Thang, President and CEO at Viettel, said this year “marks a significant milestone year for Vietnam with the commercial deployment of 5G.”

Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) issued 5G licenses to Viettel and VNPT in April 2024. The two operators have committed to deploying a network and providing services no later than one year after receiving the licenses, and investing in 3,000 stations after two years.

Vietnam is also looking ahead to the next evolution of mobile technology, recently establishing a 6G Development Group to evaluate, test, and promote the research and development of 6G mobile technology.

T-Mobile hit with fine over data breaches, and Verizon suffers outage

It’s been a challenging week for T-Mobile US and Verizon for different reasons.

First, Verizon suffered a massive mobile network outage on Monday that affected multiple regions. Many Verizon iPhone customers complained that their phones had been stuck in “SOS” mode Monday morning, allowing only emergency calls via satellite.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said in a post on X that it was “aware of a Verizon outage impacting customers in parts of the country,” and it was investigating the cause and scope of the disruption.

Then T-Mobile US learned the consequences of the multiple data breaches it has suffered in recent years. The carrier reached an agreement with the FCC to pay $31.5m and commit to changes in how it handles cybersecurity.

T-Mobile is to invest half of the amount in cybersecurity measures over the next two years, and pay half to the US Treasury as a civil penalty.

The FCC commented that the carrier has agreed to “important forwardlooking commitments to address foundational security flaws, work to improve cyber hygiene, and adopt robust modern architectures, like zero trust and phishing-resistant multifactor authentication.”

The move comes following investigations by the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau into “significant data breaches that impacted millions of US consumers.” The Bureau said the settlement resolves cybersecurity incidents suffered by TMobile in 2021, 2022, and 2023 as a result of the criminal acts of third parties.

Vodafone and Three make pricing pledge to address merger concerns

Vodafone UK and Three UK have made further commitments as part of efforts to secure regulatory approval for their proposed merger.

In their response to the Notice of Possible Remedies published by the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) alongside its summary of provisional findings earlier this month, the two operators pledged to maintain certain tariffs at £10 or below for two years from the completion of the merger.

Such prices are available under Three’s secondary brand Smarty and Vodafone’s Voxi social tariffs. With regard to concerns about the impact of the merger on mobile virtual network operators (MVNO), Vodafone and Three say they will provide a reference offer that encourages MVNOs to access additional network capacity.

Otherwise, the operators point to two “substantive commitments” they have already made: to invest £11 billion in their network, monitored and enforced by Ofcom; and the agreement to sell spectrum to Virgin Media O2 and extend the Beacon network sharing agreement.

The CMA is due to make a final decision on the merger by December 7. 

Vodafone also announced that shareholder approval will no longer be required either for the Vodafone-Three transaction or the planned sale of Vodafone Italia to Swisscom. According to the group, this is because of the entry into force of new UK Listing Rules on July 29, 2024.

EchoStar offloads Dish TV to focus on 5G open RAN network

EchoStar said it will be better placed to focus on “enhancing and further deploying its 5G open RAN cloud-native wireless network” following the proposed sale of the Dish DBS video distribution business to DirecTV.

The satellite communication services provider, which merged with Dish Network earlier this year, has agreed to sell Dish TV and Sling TV to DirecTV for just $1, with DirecTV also taking on Dish DBS’s debt.

It also said it will raise $5.1 billion of capital from existing stakeholders for investment in the open RAN network and other general corporate purposes. Notably, Dish is one of three operators building a cloud native, open RAN 5G network from scratch, the other two being 1&1 in Germany and Rakuten Mobile in Japan. 

DirecTV eventually plans to merge with Dish TV and Sling TV, to create a “more robust competitive force in a video industry dominated by streaming services owned by large tech companies and programmers.”

The move will also enable EchoStar to free up operational and financial resources that it can “dedicate to its mission of deploying a nationwide facilities-based wireless service to compete with dominant incumbent wireless carriers.”

The company said that through its Boost Mobile brand, it will be able to strengthen its position as the fourth facilities-based carrier in the United States. In addition, EchoStar aims to “further leverage its satellite assets and experience, including developing innovative direct-to-device (D2D) solutions.”

Meanwhile, it was also announced that AT&T is to sell its 70% stake in DirecTV to TPG, marking the carrier’s withdrawal from the entertainment business. 

TPG said it will invest in DirecTV through TPG Capital, its US and European private equity platform. The transaction between TPG and AT&T is expected to close in the second half of 2025 and is not contingent on DirecTV’s acquisition of Dish DBS.

Also noted…

Harmeen Mehta has stepped down from BT, while Santiago ‘Yago’ Tenorio is moving from Vodafone to join Verizon as its CTO.

OpenAI has closed its funding round at a valuation of $157 billion, with investors said to include Microsoft, Nvidia and SoftBank. 

Verizon reached a $3.3 billion tower deal with Vertical Bridge.