News

Nearly five months after previous CEO Nick Read’s departure, Vodafone says it has been “impressed” by Margherita Della Valle’s efforts to steady the ship

Today, Vodafone Group has announced that it has appointed the company’s interim CEO and Chief Financial Officer, Margherita Della Valle, to serve as Group CEO.

Della Valle took over the reins at Vodafone as interim CEO at the start of 2023, following the departure of previous CEO Nick Read, who had held the position for four years.

Vodafone had been facing increasing pressure from activist investors, such as Cevian Capital, to make management changes after Read had failed to put the brakes on the telecom giant’s sliding share price.

Since her appointment, Della Valle has been at the heart of a company-wide strategic shift aiming to reverse this trend, including a greater focus on core markets and various cost-cutting measures.

Her approach has seemingly garnered her much support from investors, particularly from the company’s largest shareholder, Emirati-based e&, which has been gradually increasing its stake in Vodafone for a number of months, seemingly enticed by its depressed share price. Indeed, just earlier this week, e& announced that it had increased its stake from 14% to 14.6% for an undisclosed sum, as well as having entered into discussions with the company over its non-executive directors.

“On behalf of the Board, I am delighted to announce the appointment of Margherita as Group Chief Executive, following a rigorous internal and external search,” said Jean-François van Boxmeer, Vodafone Group Chairman. “Margherita has a strong track record during her long career at Vodafone in marketing, operational, commercial and financial positions. Over the last few months as interim Group Chief Executive, the Board and I have been impressed with her pace and decisiveness to begin the necessary transformation of Vodafone. Margherita has the full support of myself and the Board for her plans for Vodafone to provide better customer experience, become a simpler business and accelerate growth.”

In accepting the role, Della Valle acknowledged that there is still much work to be done to turn Vodafone’s fortunes around.

“I am honoured to have been appointed as Group Chief Executive. Vodafone has a unique position in Europe and Africa with strong customer relationships, networks and people,” said Della Valle. “To realise our potential Vodafone needs to change. We know we can do better. My focus will be to improve the service for our customers, simplify our business and grow.”

Della Valle will continue to also hold the role of Chief Financial Officer until a replacement can be found.

Also in the news:
Connected North 2023: The story in pictures
China Mobile mulls HKBN acquisition as it closes in on 1 billion subscribers
Smart lighting: Vodafone leans on IoT for energy savings

Lots of international items this week, here’s another set to keep up with: … [visit site to read more]

Press Release

Virgin Media O2 Business is bolstering its product line-up with a comprehensive range of market-leading cloud and security solutions, alongside network transformation services

It comes as Virgin Media O2 Business begins a new partnership with Telefónica Tech, the strategic digital business unit of Telefónica, to offer their cloud and security professional and managed services to enterprises and public sector organisations within the UK.

According to Gartner, worldwide public cloud spending is forecasted to grow 20.7% to total $591.8 billion in 2023, up from $490.3 billion in 2022. Recognising this trend and growing demand from business customers to securely migrate their data to the cloud, Virgin Media O2 Business is now offering a wide range of products and services to support businesses’ digital transformation. This includes Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) with leading Cloud Service Partners, alongside Private Cloud Hosting and Managed Detection and Response (MDR) security services. This is in addition to existing cloud networking Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) and cloud security Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions.

Customers will be supported by Telefónica Tech’s cloud professional and managed services team which is based in the UK. Telefónica Tech UK&I now has more than 1,000 highly qualified technology professionals following the acquisitions of CANCOM UK&I and Incremental.

Virgin Media O2 Business’ enhanced services offer a range of benefits to medium and large organisations. This ranges from local authorities that want to unify their data and processes; healthcare providers that want to migrate sensitive data to the cloud; and retail businesses looking to scale e-commerce opportunities in the cloud, powered by high-speed, low latency connectivity to support video conferencing and live chat services.

Jo Bertram, Managing Director, Business and Wholesale at Virgin Media O2 Business, said:

“Private businesses and public sector organisations are embracing digital transformation like never before and looking for ways to do this securely. To support this, we’re launching best-in-class cloud and security services for our customers to provide them with a comprehensive product line-up alongside our industry-leading fixed and mobile connectivity solutions.

“Our growing cloud networking expertise coupled with our new partnership with Telefónica Tech will help customers to migrate and manage their data and systems in the cloud, enabling them to be more efficient, productive and secure.”

María Jesús Almazor, CEO of Cyber Security & Cloud at Telefónica Tech, said:

“At Telefónica Tech we have a unified cyber security and cloud value proposition because we understand that migration to the cloud is the first step in the digital transformation of a business and that cyber security must be integrated from the beginning of any technological process.

“Our managed and professional cloud and cyber security services will enable Virgin Media O2 Business to offer its customers the most comprehensive threat prevention, detection and response techniques to ensure a secure digital transformation with the support of Telefónica Tech professionals in the UK and Ireland.”

Also in the news:
Connected North 2023: The story in pictures
China Mobile mulls HKBN acquisition as it closes in on 1 billion subscribers
Smart lighting: Vodafone leans on IoT for energy savings

On the regional infrastructure front, two network buildouts, an edge data center, and an equipment upgrade. … [visit site to read more]

News

The test was carried out with support from AT&T, Vodafone, and Rakuten Mobile in what the satellite operator claims to be an industry first

Today, US based AST SpaceMobile has announced the results of a successful test that saw it conduct the world’s first ever voice call over satellite using unmodified smartphones.

The call took place in Midland, Texas, over AT&T’s network, using AST SpaceMobile’s BlueWalker 3 satellite to connect to the recipient on Rakuten Mobile’s network in Japan.

“Achieving what many once considered impossible, we have reached the most significant milestone to date in our quest to deliver global cellular broadband from space. While we take a moment to celebrate this tremendous accomplishment, we remain focused on the path ahead and pivotal next steps that get us closer to our goal of transforming the way the world connects,” said Abel Avellan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AST SpaceMobile. “I am immensely proud of our team and our incredible partners, whose unwavering dedication and tireless efforts have brought us to this pivotal moment.”

Additional tests were also performed to verify the transfer of SIM information to BlueWalker 3, as well as to test the uplink and downlink rates of 4G and 5G signals.

The BlueWalker 3 low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite itself was launched in September last year and serves as a protype for AST SpaceMobile’s planned commercial satellites, called BlueBirds. Ultimately, AST hopes to deliver direct-to-mobile satellite services to customers around the world using these BlueBirds and has already secured contracts with numerous operators to this effect.

AT&T itself partnered with AST in December last year, saying the planned satellite constellation would help boost the operator’s coverage across rural America.

For now, it is unclear whether access to the satellite for connectivity would be included in existing mobile packages or would come at an extra cost, with AT&T previously said it was “too early” to make such a decision.

The US telecoms space race appears to be well underway, with all three of the American wireless giants having already struck partnerships with LEO players.

For AT&T, their primary partner is UK-based LEO OneWeb, while rival T-Mobile is partnered with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to use the Starlink satellite constellation. Both of these companies already have satellites in orbit; Starlink has around 4,000 satellites circling the Earth so far, while OneWeb is just one launch away from achieving the total number of devices it needs to provide global coverage.

Verizon, on the other hand, has a deal to use Amazon’s fledgling satellite programme, Project Kuiper, which is aiming to launch its first satellites into orbit in 2024.

How will satellite connectivity impact the US connectivity landscape? Join the experts in discussion at upcoming Connected American 2024 conference

Also in the news:
Connected North 2023: The story in pictures
China Mobile mulls HKBN acquisition as it closes in on 1 billion subscribers
Smart lighting: Vodafone leans on IoT for energy savings

A significant public sector deal, a cybersecurity partnership, a new data center, and a new edge IX: … [visit site to read more]

Press Release

The IMDEA Networks Institute, in collaboration with Telefónica, NEC Corporation and BluSpecs, is proud to announce the launch of the ENABLE-6G project. This ambitious initiative aims to address the challenges that will be faced by future 6G networks, such as increased connectivity, higher performance demands, and advanced object and environment detection and communication.This project is funded by the European Union-NextGenerationEU and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, in the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR).

As 5G technology continues to be the driving force behind edge computing and autonomous vehicles, researchers and industry experts are already looking towards the future and the development of 6G technology. With challenges in capacity, energy efficiency, latency, and data security and privacy, the development of the ENABLE-6G project has become crucial. It’s necessary for 6G networks to become more adaptable and intelligent to enable the realization of a future vision that will contend with greater levels of complexity, contextualization, and data traffic while consuming less energy and offering stronger security and privacy measures. Such advancements are crucial to instil the necessary level of trust required for widespread implementation of next-generation devices and nodes.

One of the main objectives is to ensure advanced privacy protections are built into the architecture, as precise mapping and sensing, data privacy and security have become major concerns, and has also become a major benefit for new use cases. Another strategic objective is the design and implementation of software-defined networks that can operationalise optimized edge-to-cloud
processing to facilitate time-critical and geo-distributed network orchestration (e.g., via the application of control-task algorithms). The ENABLE-6G project represents a major step forward in the
new technologies into 6G to improve wireless communications, provide environmental sensing and significantly reduce the energy footprint per device to avoid a large overall increase in network power consumption. We are excited about the potential impact of this project and look forward to collaborating with our partners to bring it to fruition.

Telefónica is one of the leading private R&D centers in Spain, aiming to explore and develop new technologies and solutions that can improve the company’s existing products and services, as well as identify and create new business opportunities in the telecommunications and technology sectors. One of the big companies joining this project is NEC Corporation, with a great capacity has a strong commitment to research and development and invests heavily in new technologies and innovative solutions. ENABLE-6G counts on the excellent IMDEA Networks scientists, one of the best innovation and development centres in Spain, with a variety of experts from all over the world. Finally, this project will count on the consultancy of BluSpecs, facilitating the digital transformation of private and public organisations through the application of knowledge, data, and methodologies in the field of strategy, implementation of new technologies and innovation.

Also in the news:
Connected North 2023: The story in pictures
China Mobile mulls HKBN acquisition as it closes in on 1 billion subscribers
Smart lighting: Vodafone leans on IoT for energy savings