11525 search results for Open RAN

Operators are investing hopes of elusive 5G revenues as well as cash in network APIs, no doubt encouraged and emboldened by a slew of optimistic forecasts – some of which stretch credulity to breaking point. This is not to denigrate the real opportunities emerging, but to instill some perspective so that overinflated early expectations do not end being dashed on the rocks of disillusionment. We are witnessing various collaborative deals between operators and major technology providers, including equipment vendors and the major hyperscalers. Google Cloud has been in the thick of it, in combination with Nokia at Orange for example, and with Ericsson at Telefonica. Meanwhile, in the USA, early activity around Ericsson’s $14 billion five year Open RAN contract…

M&A, IP, Patents­­­­ Xavier Niel is planning a $4.1 billion takeover of Latin American operator Millicom via a holding company called Atlas Investissement. The investment firm already holds a 29% stake in the operator and is considering an all-cash takeover. Millicom operates under the name Tigo in nine LatAm countries. European operator Digi Communications is bidding to acquire Telekom Romania Mobile from Greek operator OTE. The deal is subject to diligence checks. T-Mobile has agreed to buy most of the assets of UScellular for $4.4 billion. The assets include UScellular’s customer base, its retail stores and some of its spectrum licenses. Initial reports had suggested that Verizon would also buy assets, but for now T-Mobile is taking the majority. 5G…

Sustainability attempts vary wildly across the industry depending on the ethos of different firms, but all operators can be tempted to engage more with these practices by recycling network equipment. This has the joint benefit of reducing emissions and making money from retired assets. A recent survey on sustainable networking practices showed a positive view of refurbishing equipment and a damning view of the efforts of vendors to reduce emissions. About 50% of respondents were of the view that operators were doing enough to improve the energy efficiency of their networks, while 36% disagreed, and 15% were undecided. This split represents the overall approach to sustainability practices amongst operators, that is deeply divided. In some regions, MNOs have committed to…

Africa’s big three mobile operators, MTN, Vodacom and Airtel, are reaching out to partners, governments and vendors, to expedite mobile rollouts and upgrades across the continent against a challenging financial backdrop. Both the cost of infrastructure deployment and of the services for consumers have impeded rollout and take-up, with a variety of schemes being employed at both ends. On the consumer side, pay-as-you-go has long been an established model, often with bundling of financial services for cross-subsidization of packages, along with buy-now-pay-later offers for devices. On the network front, the big three have been engaging in partnerships with local or external telcos, to build coverage more quickly, upgrade to 4G, or even start deploying 5G in urban locations. Vodacom has…

Discounting some notable exceptions such as Brazil and Chile, Latin America has generally lagged behind other parts of the world over 5G auctions, but not necessarily deployments, given that some operators have launched services in spectrum they already own. That has been the case in Mexico, where both AT&T and Telcel, the mobile subsidiary of the America Movil group (owned by the family of entrepreneur Carlos Slim) have been offering 5G services since 2022. Telcel, the country’s dominant operator, with over 75 million subscribers, almost two thirds of the total, was first in February 2022 with a limited launch in 18 cities, expanding to 400 just over a year later in April 2023. This ran over 100 MHz of mid-band…

Telcos have failed to crack the large scale industrial 5G market because they lack the integration and support skills required to deliver complete packages for factories and warehouses. This is according to comments from Siemens at a recent industrial trade show in Germany. Siemens, as the world’s largest industrial automation vendor, has deployed private 5G in its own factories. The company went on to argue that large industrial companies were also proving reluctant to buy private 5G systems either from established macro cellular equipment companies such as Nokia and Ericsson, or those focused more on enterprise ICT, like Cisco, HPE and IBM. Such comments require some unpacking and calibrating, at a time when many larger enterprises are considering their connectivity…

So many hopes have been invested in the Dish brand. It promised to be the USA’s first functional Open RAN network that would deploy new architectures and leverage the cloud. But recent wranglings with creditors show how the survival of the entity is looking less and less likely, and even Dish Wireless branding is being retired in favor of Boost Mobile. The firm is bleeding subscribers, unable to pay off its large debts, and is now being sued by bondholders of Dish Network, the umbrella company of the wireless and TV units. Creditors are demanding that the overall parent company of Dish Network, EchoStar, unwinds certain transfers of assets that violate the lending terms they agreed to.  “Through a brazen…

M&A, IP, Patents­­­­ Vodafone Spain’s €5 billion acquisition of Zegona has been approved by the Spanish government and will be completed by the end of May. Vodafone will pay with €4.1 billion in cash from the deal and €900 million in stock. Infrastructure investor Actis is launching a new unit called Connectis Tower using the portfolio of towers the firm bought from Telekom Srbija in January. The 1,800 macro towers are in Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Montenegro. Indonesian operators XL Axiata and Smartfren are in early talks to merge and create a new entity which both parties have equal parts in. A merged entity would be in strong competition with other operators Telkomsel and Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison. Financials Bharti…

Microsoft has signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Brookfield Asset Management, to ensure that renewable energy powers its data centers in the US and Europe, possibly elsewhere too, in a deal spanning 2026-2030. The agreement states that the energy types involved will go beyond just wind and solar, but does not specify further. Our sister service, Rethink Energy, dived into the news. This 10.5 GW PPA figure is more than just the latest record which any sector with a 20% annual growth rate posts as a matter of routine. It is some 8x the previous biggest-ever PPA, according to Bloomberg’s BNEF tracking. It is bigger than all of the PPAs that Microsoft announced across 16 countries last year combined…

A recent scandal at the UN’s net zero advisory body, the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), shines a light on the thin vail of validity that this environmental standards body offers the telecoms industry. The SBTi is a UN-backed nonprofit that assesses corporate emissions reduction plans in line with the requirements of the Paris Agreement of 2015. It is the popular choice for most large corporates in recording emissions and setting standards and the telecommunications sector is a keen adopter. But there has been controversy at this bastion of emissions standards. Last month, news leaked that the SBTi was planning to allow companies to buy carbon credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions from their value chain – so-called voluntary carbon…

Few would dispute that the intrusion of AI-based tools into customer service has so far proved a mixed blessing. Telcos, like many other providers of services, have turned to AI, meaning some form of neural network-based machine learning, for provision of customer support via chatbots and automated responses. The motivation to cut costs has clashed with the desire to improve quality of customer service, and the former has prevailed in many cases. But the service provided by some chatbots at least is improving, and there is hope that the rapid progress being made under the banner of Generative AI will move that dial forward faster. That hope has been expressed in response to the latest iteration of Open AI’s GenAI…