M&A & Investments Vodafone and Telenor will combine their procurement units to improve purchasing power, a move that their vendors won’t be very happy about. Together, they have a combined annual spend of €26 billion. There is little overlap between their operating regions, which means region-specific deals from vendors will be off the cards. The move will “expand [Telenor’s] reach, address common challenges, and navigate a reshaped global supplier landscape,” said a Telenor exec. Nokia has signed a licensing agreement with HPE, which will see it integrate HPE’s RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) into the Nokia MantaRay Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) platform. This is an AI-RAN expansion, and a way to leverage HPE and Juniper’s IP. No commercial terms have…