A week in telecoms: Open RAN gets funding in the US
Welcome to the Inform news round-up, where we take a look at a selection of recent news and how it impacts the wider industry.
Sales rumors abound, and CK Hutchison cancels WindTre network sale
A small flurry of headlines dealt with latest speculation about potential sales in the CSP sector, with Altice and TalkTalk both in the spotlight.
Altice Group, known to be mulling the sale of assets to help reduce its almost $60 billion debt burden, is believed to be at a fairly advanced stage in talks over its assets in Portugal.
According to Bloomberg, Iliad, stc Group and Warburg Pincus are on the shortlist of potential bidders, although there is said to be a fairly wide gap over price expectations, with Altice apparently seeking between €8 billion and €10 billion.
Bloomberg also reported that KKR and Macquarie Group are among the suitors that have been shortlisted in the bidding for XpFibre, part of Altice France. Other bidders are said to include pension fund Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec and Global Infrastructure Partners.
In the United Kingdom, Virgin Media O2 (VM O2) has reportedly revived takeover talks with TalkTalk. According to the Telegraph, executives at the two companies have held discussions over a potential deal that would see VM O2 take control of TalkTalk’s consumer division. VM O2 and TalkTalk abandoned plans for a full takeover two years ago.
Meanwhile, CK Hutchison confirmed it has abandoned its plan, at least for now, to spin out Italian operator WindTre’s network and other assets into a separate company and sell 60% of the new entity to EQT Infrastructure. The transaction was first announced on 12 May 2023, but reportedly encountered problems linked to separate network agreements with Iliad and Fastweb.
Open RAN gets funding in the US; Vodafone expands open RAN collaboration with Samsung
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) gave open RAN a shot in the arm in the United States with the announcement that it has awarded $42.3 million to a consortium to help drive the development of the technology.
The consortium comprises U.S. carriers, foreign carriers, universities and equipment suppliers to establish a testing, evaluation and R&D center in the Dallas Technology Corridor and a satellite facility in the Washington, DC area.
AT&T and Verizon will lead the project. NTT DoCoMo and India’s Reliance Jio are also founding members of the consortium but will not have access to the funding. The University of Texas at Dallas will assist in the maintenance of the Dallas center, while Virginia Tech, Northeastern University, Iowa State University and Rutgers University will provide neutral laboratory support.
The full name of the project is the Acceleration of Compatibility and Commercialization for Open RAN Deployments, or ACCoRD for short. The suppliers for ACCoRD include Microsoft, Nokia, Radisys, Airspan, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Rakuten, Samsung, Mavenir, VMWare, RedHat, Wind River, Ciena, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Amdocs, Keysight, and VIAVI.
South Korea-based Samsung also had more open RAN news to impart this week. In collaboration with Vodafone and AMD, the vendor said it successfully demonstrated an end-to-end call with the latest AMD processors enabling open RAN technology.
The move follows Samsung’s appointment as Vodafone’s strategic partner for open RAN in 2021.
Verizon collaborates with Vonage on 5G network APIs
Verizon added a new dimension to its API strategy by announcing that it will make use of Ericsson’s Vonage platform for existing and yet-to-be-developed 5G network APIs, and make them available to the wider developer community.
The US operator said the plan to integrate its network services into Vonage’s platform “will enable enterprises to create deeper engagement with consumers across the customer journey to drive a better overall experience and brand loyalty.”
It spoke of the need for network APIs to “unleash the full potential of the 5G network, speed digital transformation within enterprises and create incremental monetization of network assets.”
Srini Kalapala, Senior Vice President of Technology and Product Development at Verizon, said the operator welcomes collaboration with companies like Vonage, “who share our passion to make network capabilities available to developers for the advancement of the connected world. Working with global partners to make network capabilities available on a wider scale will provide exceptional value for enterprises and consumers.”
Verizon noted that it has been offering APIs for several years. For instance, the operator created a Digital Enablement Platform (DEP) to help enterprises to automate how they manage multiple digital supplier relationships.
It did this by creating, certifying and exposing a suite of TM Forum Open APIs, which enable enterprise customers to consume multiple interlinked services using code.
In addition, Verizon supports the GSMA Open Gateway initiative, announced at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023, for the development of CAMARA network APIs.
In November, TM Forum members also began developing new “Operate APIs” to complement CAMARA network APIs, with a goal of providing a standardized way for mobile operators to make the interfaces commercially available to aggregators and developers.
Moreover, the TM Forum has launched Gen5 Open APIs to drive future growth, speeding up ‘time to value’ and accelerating the deployment of new services and products by enabling plug-and-play software integration.
Airtel Africa launches wholesale provider Telesonic
Airtel Africa has created a wholesale unit called Telesonic to meet the growing demand for wholesale data in Africa.
The operator’s fiber assets and submarine cable systems will be brought into the new unit, including 75,000 kilometers of terrestrial fiber across Airtel Africa’s 14 markets. Additionally, the company has invested in the 2Africa submarine cable system.
Segun Ogunsanya, CEO of Airtel Africa, said the establishment of Telesonic underscores the group’s commitment to addressing Africa’s needs, “by providing cutting-edge fiber-optic solutions that will empower businesses, education, healthcare, and communities at large.”
“No doubt, Africa is experiencing a digital revolution, with surging demand for data across various sectors especially by the continent’s growing youth population. Our investment signifies not just a technological advancement but also a catalyst for progress, connecting people and ideas across borders,” Ogunsanya said.
In December, Airtel launched a new data center business called Nxtra, which aims to build one of the largest network of data centers in Africa.
According to ITWeb Africa, analysts expect that data traffic in African countries will more than treble in the next five years, accelerating the race for digital infrastructure. Other groups to have invested in fiber include Cassava Technologies-owned Liquid, Vodacom Group, MTN Group and Bayobab.
DT joins the Fetch.AI Foundation
Deutsche Telekom (DT) has joined the Fetch.ai Foundation as part of ongoing efforts to drive developments in the fields of artificial intelligence, blockchain, and Web3.
The group’s digital services unit, Deutsche Telekom Multimedia Solutions (DT MMS), has also become a validator of the Fetch.ai blockchain network.
DT is the first corporate partner of the non-profit organisation, whose members currently include founders Bosch and Fetch.ai. Peter Busch, Head of Distributed Ledger Technology Mobility at Bosch and Chair of the Board of the Fetch.ai Foundation, said DT is “contributing its infrastructure and expertise as a telecommunications provider” to the foundation.
Dirk Röder, Head of the Web3 Infrastructure & Solutions Team at DT MMS, added that the collaboration between Bosch, DT, and Fetch.ai will seek to combine industrial applications with the Internet of Things (IoT). “Autonomous agents will automate industrial services, simplify processes and make them secure and scalable thanks to blockchain technology,” Röder said.
5G developments at European CSPs
The past few days have seen a number of 5G network developments, including the launch of a new 5G standalone (SA) service and a 5G edge network slicing trial.
The 5G SA launch came in Finland after CSP Elisa began marketing services under 5G+. The move came days after the operator, in collaboration with Ericsson and Qualcomm, achieved upload speeds of 230 Mbps in a live 5G network using uplink carrier aggregation.
According to the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), at least 46 operators in 27 countries and territories are understood to have launched or deployed public 5G SA networks as of January 2024.
Elsewhere, Austrian operator A1 teamed with Nokia on a 5G edge cloud network slicing trial with Microsoft. The deployment utilized Nokia’s 5G edge slicing solution integrated with Microsoft Azure managed edge compute on A1’s live commercial network in Vienna.
Nokia remarked that with edge cloud network slicing, “A1 can bring enterprise cloud applications to mobile users over a high capacity, secure and low latency network.”
Meanwhile, Vodafone Romania appointed Ericsson as its 5G RAN partner for the next six years. Ericsson will provide its RAN technology to advance Vodafone Romania’s existing network, including products from the Swedish vendor’s radio system portfolio and massive MIMO technology.