News 

The acquisition was first announced last January 

The UK Competition and Markets Authority has opened an inquiry to investigate whether Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s commencing acquisition of Juniper Networks for $14 billion would cause competition concerns in the market. 

The CMA “is considering whether it is or may be the case that this transaction, if carried into effect, will result in the creation of a relevant merger situation under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002 and, if so, whether the creation of that situation may be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services,” read the official statement. It invites any interested parties to submit comments on the transaction. 

Back in January, HPE announced that it would acquire Juniper Networks in an all-cash deal of approximately $14 billion, equating to $40 per share. After the acquisition, HPE estimates that its networking business will double, as the “explosion of AI and hybrid cloud-driven business is accelerating demand for secure, unified technology solutions that connect, protect, and analyse companies’ data from edge to cloud,” the companies said. 

“HPE’s acquisition of Juniper represents an important inflection point in the industry and will change the dynamics in the networking market and provide customers and partners with a new alternative that meets their toughest demands,” said HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri in a press release. 

If approved, the combined entity will be run Juniper CEO Rami Rahim who will report to Neri. 

In a statement, the CMA confirmed that phase one of the investigation would begin on 20 June. The investigation will run until 14 August, when the CMA will decide if moving to a second phase if necessary. 

Investigations by the CMA into such large transactions are not unexpected. Back when the deal was announced, the two companies expected the deal to close by early 2025 at the latest, pending regulatory approval. 

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom daily newsletter

Also in the news: 

Global Telco AI Alliance sign LLM JV
Telenor teams up with AWS for sovereign cloud service
Nvidia and HPE team up for gen AI solution

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Taylor Allis, Chief Product Officer at Avetta

The telecommunications (telecom) sector is entering a new era, blurring the lines between the traditional definition of a telecom company and a tech company, as both industries boom with innovation. From promising 6G implementations to the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program that will fund new developments, the opportunities are endless. As the landscape rapidly evolves, a mature and secure supply chain is crucial. It is the linchpin … [visit site to read more]

Two Cameroon utilities, Cameroon Telecommunications (Camtel) and Cameroon Water Utility Corporation (Camwater), have signed an agreement to share infrastructure.

The companies say they are joining forces not just to share resources, but to amplify their collective impact, combining expertise to pave the way for faster, more cost-effective deployments of telecom and water services across the nation.

Quoted in local news resource News Upfront, Blaise Moussa, CEO of Camwater, points out that cities are expanding geographically and horizontally, and networks are submitted to high constraints, “and,” he adds, “we don’t have enough means to develop them”.

Judith Yah Sunday, CEO of Camtel, points out that infrastructure sharing is becoming a fairly common practice around the world. She explains: “Wherever Camwater is already present, we can surf on that infrastructure and vice versa and make sure that we deliver optimal services to customers and the public at large.”

Cited benefits of the agreement include cost efficiencies through reduced duplication of efforts and maximised use of existing resources. The deal should also promote environmental sustainability since less construction means less environmental disruption.

Timetables and technical details don’t yet seem to have been published. However, Judith Yah Sunday’s point about infrastructure sharing is certainly correct. In fact earlier this month a number of news outlets said that Kenya intends to use its more than 70,000 power transformers as internet hotspots across the country.

This will involve collaboration between the government and the Kenya Power and Lighting Company to use available power lines rather than laying fibre.

Press Release

[Copenhagen, Denmark, June 18, 2024] During the TM Forum Digital Transformation World (DTW) 2024 summit convened in Copenhagen, Denmark, China Mobile and Huawei were awarded the “People and Planet” Excellence Award in recognition of their outstanding innovation and implementation of a Zero Carbon Ocean 5G Coverage and Ocean Care. The awarded project demonstrates how China Mobile and Huawei have deeply integrated 5G, AI, IoT and other technologies with the marine industry, driving the high-quality development of the ocean economy and contributing to the marine ecosystem protection.

TM Forum Presents Excellence Award

The award of the “People and the Planet” Innovation Excellence Practice Project at the TM Forum is a recognition of China Mobile and Huawei ‘s innovation and contribution in the field of marine communications technologies. China is a large maritime nation, with over 32,000 kilometres of coastline, among the world’s top. Its abundant marine resources hold immense potential for local economic advancement. However, the complex and changeable marine environment, high-risk operations and the severe challenges of environmental protection have always been a difficult problem restricting the development of marine economy.

Confronting these challenges, China Mobile and its Jiangsu Provincial Branch, with Huawei’s support have actively explored the application of mobile communication technology in the marine domain, providing innovative solutions to the digital transformation for the maritime industry.

Through the pioneering solution of “Land/Sea/Windmill Site + Resources Sharing + Intelligent Platform”, the joint team successfully constructed offshore 5G base stations, overcoming the obstacles of site selection, power supply, and backhaul in the offshore scenarios. By leveraging renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, and AI-based power storage optimization solution, the joint team achieved Zero Carbon 5G coverage across the maritime expanse. Furthermore, they have actively explored collaboration with satellite companies, creating an integrated “Space-Sky-Sea” network to provide full wireless coverage to boats and people off the coastline. This innovative initiative not only furnishes basic communication, social entertainment, and entrepreneurial opportunities for offshore workers, tourists, and fishermen, but also supports the deployment of a series of B2B innovative applications such as marine IoT, smart waterways, and intelligent patrols, while also constructing a marine emergency communication lifeline.

The “People and the Planet” Excellence Award at the TM Forum is a recognition of the innovation and contribution of China Mobile and Huawei in the field of marine communications technologies. It further demonstrates that China Mobile, as the industry leader, has made great achievements in the following aspects under the sustainable development strategy of “Three Energy and Six Green.” Drive the global communications industry to upgrade towards green, digital, and intelligent innovation.

News 

A Memorandum of Understanding to form the JV was signed last year 

The founding partners of the Global Telco AI Alliance, Deutsche Telekom, SK Telecom, e&, Singtel and SoftBank have this week signed a joint venture for telco AI development. 

Specifically, the five companies have agreed to develop Large Language Models (LLMs) that are specifically designed to meet telco needs, in areas such as improving customer interactions via digital assistants and chatbots. The LLMs will be tailored to the needs of the five companies in their respective markets, allowing them to reach a combined customer base of around 1.3 billion people in 50 countries. The LLMs will be multilingual in languages such as Korean, English, German, Arabic and Bahasa, among other languages. 

Each company will invest in the JV equally, “to support its initial working capital requirements to develop the Telco LLM” explains the press release. 

The Alliance was established in July last year, with the aim of collaborating on the use of AI to create new customer experiences and business opportunities. At the Alliance’s inaugural meeting at Mobile World Congress Barcelona back in February, the founders announced their intention to establish the JV within the year. 

“Our shared goal is to redefine industry paradigms, establish new growth drivers through AI-powered business models, and pave the way for a new era of strategic cooperation, guiding our industry towards an exciting and prosperous future,” said the companies in the announcement’s press release. 

The second Global Telco AI Roundtable was held this week at DTW 2024 in Copenhagen, where the parties each demonstrated their potential applications of an LLM for telcos, focussing on contact centre and infrastructure use cases. 

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom daily newsletter 

Also in the news:
Nokia and Google Cloud expand partnership for telco APIs
Telenor teams up with AWS for sovereign cloud service
Nvidia and HPE team up for gen AI solution 

Chile’s Movistar Empresas, the business-focused division of operator Movistar, has announced the deployment of an LTE-M network in the country, which, it says, will allow organisations of various sizes to connect their Internet of Things (IoT) devices with greater energy efficiency.

LTE-M is a type of low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) radio communication technology standard developed by standards group 3GPP for machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

As its name suggests, it is deployed over the 4G network. Movistar Empresas  says that, compared to other technologies in the LPWAN family such as NB-IoT, LTE-M allows similar functionalities of extended coverage and optimisation of battery life, but is superior in terms of maximum data transfer speed, minimum terminal reaction times and allowing data transfer to be maintained on moving devices.

Rodrigo Rivera, Marketing Manager of B2B Digital Services, explains: “The deployment of the Movistar LTE-M network is the next step in the evolution of cellular communications between M2M devices, on the path towards massive IoT.”

He continues: “The LTE-M network covers the needs of companies in different sectors, as it allows the transfer of small data packets with low latency, coverage in hard-to-reach areas, savings in device costs and longer battery life, contributing to the operational efficiency and sustainability of our clients. »

Potential use cases in Chile are likely to include fleet management, smart lighting, precision agriculture, connected meters, and various smart city applications, among others.

This LTE-M network is available to traditional M2M connectivity customers, allowing different devices and systems to communicate and share data with each other without direct human intervention. This new network will be complemented by the Telefonica Tech KITE managed connectivity platform, with which companies can control and monitor their connected devices in real time, remotely and from anywhere in the world.

Movistar Empresas has more than 6 million IoT connections in Latin America, 1.5 million of them in Chile.

News 

In the first year of the collaboration, Telenor has said that it will invest 100 million NOK ($9.4 million) in the project

Norwegian telco Telenor has announced that it will expand an existing partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to expand its sovereign cloud capabilities. 

The investment will see the implementation of AWS’s sovereign-by-design technology in Skygard – a data center currently under construction in Oslo, which is a joint venture between Telenor, renewable energy company Hafslund, and investor HitecVision. 

“Telenor is strengthening its collaboration with AWS to power our next wave of growth and innovation,” said Amol Phadke, Telenor’s Executive Vice President and Group Chief Technology Officer in a press release. 

“Building on our sovereign cloud posture, Telenor will unlock new opportunities to drive value for our customers and wider society,” he continued. 

“Telenor and AWS have a shared commitment to innovation”, said Jan Hofmeyr, VP AWS EC2 Edge. 

“We are excited to strengthen our collaboration by accelerating Telenor’s cloud transformation on AWS, and modernize Telenor’s data centres with AWS infrastructure, starting with Sweden and Finland,” he continued. 

Telenor will scale its cloud footprint across Sweden, and then expand into Finland. 

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom newsletter 

Also in the news:
Nokia and Google Cloud expand partnership for telco APIs
Nvidia and HPE team up for gen AI solution
Microsoft to invest $7.16 bn in Spanish data centres 

A subsea project, some AI network work, and some 5G xHaul interoperability: … [visit site to read more]

News 

“Never before have Nvidia and HPE integrated our technologies so deeply,” says Nvidia boss Jensen Huang 

Nvidia and HPE have announced a partnership to co-develop AI solutions and joint go-to-market integrations to help businesses accelerate their adoption of generative AI. The partnership is a deepening of a decades-long collaboration between the two companies. 

The announcement was made in Las Vegas at HPE’s Discover event by HPE’s President and CEO Antonio Neri, who was joined on stage by NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang. One of the key offerings is HPE Private Cloud AI, which will integrate Nvidia’s software and computing technologies with HPE’s storage solutions, which will allow customers to run generative AI workloads efficiently and securely. The companies say that this is the first time the companies have integrated their solutions so fully. 

“Generative AI holds immense potential for enterprise transformation, but the complexities of fragmented AI technology contain too many risks and barriers that hamper large-scale enterprise adoption and can jeopardize a company’s most valuable asset – its proprietary data,” said Neri. 

“To unleash the immense potential of generative AI in the enterprise, HPE and NVIDIA co-developed a turnkey private cloud for AI that will enable enterprises to focus their resources on developing new AI use cases that can boost productivity and unlock new revenue streams,” he continued. 

According to the announcement’s press release, the HPE Private Cloud AI will offer: 

• Support for inference, fine-tuning and RAG AI workloads that utilise proprietary data.
• Enterprise control for data privacy, security, transparency, and governance requirements.
• Cloud experience with ITOps and AIOps capabilities to increase productivity.
• Fast path to consume flexibly to meet future AI opportunities and growth.

“Never before have NVIDIA and HPE integrated our technologies so deeply – combining the entire NVIDIA AI computing stack along with HPE’s private cloud technology – to equip enterprise clients and AI professionals with the most advanced computing infrastructure and services to expand the frontier of AI,” confirmed Huang. 

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom daily newsletter 

Also in the news:
Nokia and Google Cloud expand partnership for telco APIs
Microsoft to invest $7.16 bn in Spanish data centres
Vietnam suffers three subsea cable outages