Today, reports from Bloomberg suggest that Altice USA has began looking for buyers for its cable operator subsidiary, Suddenlink. 
Altice USA acquired Suddenlink back in 2015, with the deal being valued at around $9 billion. Today, the unit Suddenlink operates fixed TV and broadband internet services in 17 states in the Midwest…

Today, reports from Bloomberg suggest that Altice USA has began looking for buyers for its cable operator subsidiary, Suddenlink. 

Altice USA acquired Suddenlink back in 2015, with the deal being valued at around $9 billion. Today, the unit Suddenlink operates fixed TV and broadband internet services in 17 states in the Midwest, southern and western parts of the US, with analysts suggesting it has around 1.8 million subscribers for its almost four million homes passed. 

The sources suggest that the unit could fetch a price tag of around $20 billion.

Goldman Sachs has been hired to help Altice explore its options. 

The decision to sell Suddenlink should not come as too much of a surprise. Back in May, Alice USA’s CEO, Dexter Goei, noted that he was open to the idea of selling Suddenlink.

“Suddenlink in itself is a great asset, great growth matrices, under-penetrated markets, less competitive areas, despite that it’s very rural,” said Goei. “But strategically, it’s not a footprint that makes you sit there and say ‘Wow, that’s the most strategic footprint out there.’ So are we sellers or restructurers of certain of our assets in other areas outside of Cablevision? We’re always open to listening to people out there if it makes sense for us to trade, swap, sell certain assets.”

In related news, Altice USA is currently in the process of uniting all of its operations under the ‘Optimum’ brand. Earlier this year, Altice made the decision to unite the Suddenlink brand with its larger brand, Optimum, having already rebranded its mobile service, Altice Mobile, to Optimum Mobile back in 2021.  

What would the sale of Suddenlink mean for the US broadband market? Find out from the experts live at the Connected America 2023 conference 

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Rakuten Symphony, Inc., a global leader in cloud-native, Open RAN telco infrastructure platforms, services and solutions, today unveiled plans to establish a new lab in Bengaluru. The Global Innovation Lab is expected to open in early 2023 and will be housed inside new engineering development facilities opening simultaneously to bring together Rakuten Symphony’s Bengaluru employee base.
Tareq Amin, Chief Executive Officer of Rakuten Symphony…

Rakuten Symphony, Inc., a global leader in cloud-native, Open RAN telco infrastructure platforms, services and solutions, today unveiled plans to establish a new lab in Bengaluru. The Global Innovation Lab is expected to open in early 2023 and will be housed inside new engineering development facilities opening simultaneously to bring together Rakuten Symphony’s Bengaluru employee base.

Tareq Amin, Chief Executive Officer of Rakuten Symphony, said, “Our operations around the world are powered by incredible Indian talent and creative innovation, so I am very proud to announce this additional investment with the establishment of our Global Innovation Lab and new engineering development facilities in Bengaluru. I am very confident that as we continue to grow here in India, our ability to provide telco solutions to the world will also grow exponentially.”

The Global Innovation Lab will be a state-of-the art facility that recreates the entire network architecture in a simulated environment, from RAN to Core to transport, enabling function and performance testing. The lab will also act as a showcase for Symworld™ platform, allowing Rakuten Symphony to demonstrate the capabilities and performance of the platform to customers. It will complement and expand upon Rakuten Symphony’s existing RAN lab in Bengaluru and the Rakuten Cloud Innovation Lab in Tokyo, allowing for global end-to-end testing of apps across the Symworld portfolio. Going forward, there are plans to set up facilities for 6G infrastructure R&D in the lab.

Narendra Narayana, Managing Director of Rakuten Symphony India said, “Rakuten Symphony India represents a key driver of innovation in the telecom space, and we are very excited to further expand our presence. We look forward to fostering local talent and working with local Indian and global partners to promote the adoption of Open RAN technologies and empower global telecom operators to build and operate secure mobile networks.”

Including locations in Bengaluru and Indore, Rakuten Symphony’s employee base in India has grown to over 3,300 in less than one year through acquisitions and organic growth, and there are plans to further expand headcount over the coming years through recruitment in the fields of Open RAN, cloud, automation, data and telecom standards. India is also an important source of new talent for Rakuten Symphony, with about 150 graduates from top engineering colleges set to come to Japan in 2022 to work for Rakuten Mobile and support the growth of Rakuten Symphony.

With operations across Japan, the United States, Singapore, India, Europe and the Middle East Africa region, Rakuten Symphony brings together all of Rakuten’s telco products, services and solutions under a single global banner to offer 4G and 5G infrastructure and platform solutions to customers worldwide
 

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The 5G MEC Industry Summit at the Win-Win Huawei Innovation Week focuses on industry profound insights and successful experiences on multi-access edge computing from well-known analysts, operators and industries globally. You will learn the industry trends, key technologies and business success of 5G MEC…

The 5G MEC Industry Summit at the Win-Win Huawei Innovation Week focuses on industry profound insights and successful experiences on multi-access edge computing from well-known analysts, operators and industries globally. You will learn the industry trends, key technologies and business success of 5G MEC.

– 5G dedicated network deployment sees steady growth globally

– Hyper-distributed, fully-connected MEC enables new 5G businesses

– Successful 5G dedicated network practices in China can be used for global reference

Thank you for your ongoing support, and we look forward to seeing you at the event!

 17:15-17:25: Laying a 5G MEC Infrastructure Foundation That Converges OICT to Empower Industry Digital Transformation – Tong Hailan, Senior Director of 5G B2B Business, Zhejiang Mobile

 17:25-17:35: 5G2B Business Strategy Sharing of UAE e& – Ayman Magdy Abousenna, Director of Mobile Broadband & 5G Planning, UAE e&

Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, announces the activation of spectrum capacity on Monet submarine cable system connecting Brazil to the United States. With this addition…

Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, announces the activation of spectrum capacity on Monet submarine cable system connecting Brazil to the United States. With this addition, Sparkle enhances its regional backbone providing five diversified routes between North and South America.

Monet is a new generation cable spanning 10,556 km and connecting Boca Raton, Florida, to both Fortaleza and Sao Paulo in Brazil. With the new cable, Sparkle increases the overall redundancy of its backbone that now provides five diversified routes between North and South America thanks to its extensive submarine infrastructure that includes three undersea “digital highways”: Monet and Seabras-1 in the Atlantic and Curie in the Pacific.

With the addition of Monet to its assets in the Atlantic, Sparkle further enhances its Tier-1 Seabone global IP transit service and its capacity solutions, catering the huge data demand driven by new technologies, media platforms and cloud-based services that require omnipresent internet connectivity.

With Monet, Sparkle continues the expansion of its American fiber optic network, which now counts 56 Points of Presence across US, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Peru and Venezuela, a capillary presence in Brazil and a new open landing and connectivity hub in Panama.

Want to keep up to date with all the latest developments in the submarine cable industry? Join the experts in discussion at Submarine Networks EMEA 2023

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Today, Belgian operator Telenet has announced a new agreement with utility company Fluvius to form a joint venture (JV) to deploy full fibre throughout Flanders. 
 
Telenet will own 66.8% of the JV, while Fluvius will own the remaining 33.2%.
 
The JV, with the working title of NetCo, will focus on combining the partners hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) network infrastructure and upgrading it to full fibre, aiming to reach 78% of their combined footprint in Flanders by 2038. In some areas, NetCo will instead be upgrading the HFC network with DOCSIS technology…

Today, Belgian operator Telenet has announced a new agreement with utility company Fluvius to form a joint venture (JV) to deploy full fibre throughout Flanders. 

Telenet will own 66.8% of the JV, while Fluvius will own the remaining 33.2%.

The JV, with the working title of NetCo, will focus on combining the partners hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) network infrastructure and upgrading it to full fibre, aiming to reach 78% of their combined footprint in Flanders by 2038. In some areas, NetCo will instead be upgrading the HFC network with DOCSIS technology, with the ultimate goal being to ensure that all customers have access to gigabit-capable broadband.

“Using a mixture of both HFC and fiber technologies, we have a roadmap to offer all our customers speeds of 10 Gbps. With Fluvius as a strong partner, we will continue to develop our HFC infrastructure and implement as well new fiber technology, mainly in the last parts of our network, from the street into the homes,” explained Telenet’s CEO John Porter.

A fibre-focussed tie-up between the two companies has been in discussion since at least Junee 2020, not long after Fluvius launched its first pilot fibre network in 2019. 

Fluvius is the Belgian grid operator for electricity and natural gas in Flanders, as well as owning and operating a wholesale full fibre network in the region. Telenet is already a key customer for Fluvius, already provides services over Fluvius’s existing network. 

However, the partners stated that they are open to further expanding the JV’s membership with new strategic or financial partners for the JV.

Fibre JVs are becoming hugely popular in Belgium. Proximus, for example, has already formed two such companies targeting medium-population areas: Fiberklaar, covering Flanders, and Unifiber, covering Wallonia. According to the operator, the two JVs have already partnered with 37 internet service providers, with more discussions currently underway.

Regardless of the investment structure, it is clear that Belgium needs all the help it can get when it comes to putting fibre into the ground. The nation currently has one of the worst levels of FTTH penetration in all of Europe, with only around 17% of homes having access to fibre. As a result, the operators and the government have been rapidly scaling up their rollout efforts in the past two years, with Belgium today seeing the fastest fibre deployment rate in Europe. 

Beyond its fiberisation efforts, Telenet is also advancing its mobile ambitions. Last month, Telenet secured 5G spectrum in the 700 MHz, 900 MHz, 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz, and 3.5 GHz bands at the national spectrum auction, spending €264.3 million. 

Telenet first launched commercial 5G back in December 2021 using temporary 5G spectrum allocated by the regulator. 

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Today, the UK government has announced that it has given the greenlight to ‘Project Skyway’, a plan to create a ‘drone superhighway’ between the Midlands and the Southeast.  
The proposed drone corridor will be the longest in the world, spanning around 165 miles and connecting Reading, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Coventry, and Rugby. It will be built and developed over the coming two years, with plans to extend the corridor all the way to Ipswich and Southampton if early trials prove successful…

Today, the UK government has announced that it has given the greenlight to ‘Project Skyway’, a plan to create a ‘drone superhighway’ between the Midlands and the Southeast.  

The proposed drone corridor will be the longest in the world, spanning around 165 miles and connecting Reading, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Coventry, and Rugby. It will be built and developed over the coming two years, with plans to extend the corridor all the way to Ipswich and Southampton if early trials prove successful. 

One completed, the corridor will allow for various drone trials on a scale unattainable anywhere else in the UK.

The project is led by UK-based drone specialist Altitude Angel, who is working alongside UK telecoms operator BT and numerous tech start-ups. 

Altitude Angel will provide their Unified Traffic Management (UTM) solution, a holistic system for drone management during flight, similar to an automated air traffic control system.  

UTM hardware from Altitude Angel and the rest of the Skyway consortium will be deployed along the planned route, being integrated with BT’s mobile network infrastructure assets where possible.

BT, meanwhile, will provide the mobile connectivity over which the drones communicate. 

In essence, this will allow for a ‘superhighway’ of network of sensors that will provide real-time location data about everything in the local airspace and direct the drones their location.

This is the reverse of current drone flight, which typically requires an operator to pilot the drone using cameras on the drone itself. 

“Cellular connectivity, and a secure, resilient 4G and 5G mobile network, will continue to enable the rapid growth of the drone market. Through our EE network, BT is providing the UK’s largest and most reliable network to Project Skyway, to keep drones connected to ARROW® so they can receive greater situational awareness and tactical collision avoidance instructions from the autopilot system, and stream key video feeds such as search and rescue footage back to control rooms,” explained BT’s Director of Drones, Dave Pankhurst.

This reliance on relatively ubiquitous mobile connectivity and a largely autonomous UTM system should allow unpiloted drones to fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), a crucial step in preparing for services like drone delivery, private drone fleets, and long-distance search and rescue operations.

“The social and economic potential of drones is immense and requires close industry collaboration to fully unlock these opportunities in a safe and responsible way. It’s an exciting time to be part of such a powerful consortium. Project Skyway will be crucial to showcase how the UK can not only lead the creation of new jobs and public services, but form the backbone of how we integrate drones into our daily lives,” said Pankhurst.

Of course, there remain a myriad of logistical and legal challenges to be overcome before commercial drone services take to the skies, but the creation of a testbed of this size is nonetheless a huge asset for the advancement of drone technology. 

Will mobile networks be the backbone to the drone services of the future? Find out how the operators are utilising drones at this year’s live Connected Britain conference 

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Today, a report from Sky News suggests that Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) has approached TalkTalk with an offer of £3 billion to takeover the UK ISP. 
Sources suggest that the indicative bid was submitted over the last few weeks…

Today, a report from Sky News suggests that Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) has approached TalkTalk with an offer of £3 billion to takeover the UK ISP. 

Sources suggest that the indicative bid was submitted over the last few weeks, with ongoing discussion being held on a ‘non-exclusive basis’.

TalkTalk Is the fourth largest ISP in the UK, with around 4.2 million subscribers, roughly 2.4 million of which are for fibre broadband. For VMO2, the acquisition would make them and even greater rival to BT in the broadband space, leaving Sky in a distant third place.

TalkTalk was taken private in 2020 and, ever since then, has been the subject of much speculation in the UK telecoms industry. Earlier this year, multiple reports suggested that TalkTalk had received takeover interest from both Vodafone and Sky, though no deal ultimately materialised.  

It was around this time that TalkTalk announced it had appointed investment bank Lazard to review their options with regards to any potential suitors. 

Now, it remains to be seen whether this new interest from VMO2 will inspire Vodafone or Sky to relaunch their own takeover bids for TalkTalk.
 

How would this acquisition of TalkTalk by VMO2 reshape the UK telecoms market? Find out from the experts at this year’s live Connected Britain event   

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Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s premier communications solutions provider today announced successful trial of India’s first 5G Private Network at Bosch Automotive Electronics India Pvt Ltd (RBAI) facility in Bengaluru.
Airtel’s on-premise 5G Captive Private Network was built over the trial 5G spectrum allocated by the Department of Telecom (DoT). Airtel has implemented two Industrial grade use cases for quality improvement and operational efficiency at Bosch&’…

Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s premier communications solutions provider today announced successful trial of India’s first 5G Private Network at Bosch Automotive Electronics India Pvt Ltd (RBAI) facility in Bengaluru.

Airtel’s on-premise 5G Captive Private Network was built over the trial 5G spectrum allocated by the Department of Telecom (DoT). Airtel has implemented two Industrial grade use cases for quality improvement and operational efficiency at Bosch’s state of the art manufacturing facility, utilising the trial spectrum. In both the cases, 5G technology such as mobile broadband and ultra reliable low latency communications drove automated operations ensuring faster scale up and reduced downtimes.

The private network set up on trial spectrum at the Bosch facility has the capability to manage thousands of connected devices along with delivering multi- GBPS throughput.

The Private 5G network provides greater reliability, enhanced security and huge flexibility, freeing the operations from wire-dependency to enable Bosch in achieving the benefits of automated operations. In any manufacturing set up, quality and efficiency are very important tools to measure.

With Airtel 5G Captive Private Network, Bosch Manufacturing Execution System was able to significantly reduce the time taken to asses the quality through Automatic Optical Inspection (AOI) of surface mounted devices.

The process was made efficient by ensuring faster transfer of data over highly reliable and secure network to an AI/ML server for real-time decision making by Bosch Manufacturing Execution System (MES).

The blazing fast, low latency, high speed, Airtel 5G also helped Bosch shop floor managers and operators identify and resolves issues in real time thus reducing the Mean Time To Repair ( MTTR ) and Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF).

Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO – Airtel Business said, “Airtel is committed to India’s digital transformation and supporting the development of its enterprise as they seek to acquire global scale. We believe that Airtel has the world class infrastructure, partnerships and expertise to deliver Captive Private Network Solution in any part of the country and to enterprise of any size.”

Subhash P, Head of Technical Functions, Bosch Automotive Electronics India states: “The low latency and reliable connectivity provided by the Airtel Private 5G network at our facility which was experienced during the proof of concept is enabling us to enhance our efficiency and our productivity .Usage of 5G will significantly reduce IT wired infrastructure and enhance the operational effeciency.”

Airtel is spearheading the 5G technology in India, testing various vertical industry use cases with multiple partners and at several locations as a part of its #5GforBusiness.

Last year, Airtel successfully demonstrated India’s first 5G experience over a live 4G network in Hyderabad. It has also demonstrated India’s first rural 5G trial as well as the first cloud gaming experience on 5G. As part of #5GforBusiness, Airtel has joined forces with leading global consulting and technology companies and brands to test 5G based solutions.

Want to keep up to date with the latest developments in the world of telecoms? Subscribe to receive Total Telecom’s daily newsletter here
Also in the news:
Planes, trains, and automobiles: Starlink gets FCC greenlight for moving vehicle internet
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Today, MTN Group has announced it has entered into negotiations to acquire Telkom South Africa, telling shareholders to ‘exercise caution’ when dealing with the company’s securities until further announcements have been made.
Financial details of the potential takeover have not been announced…

Today, MTN Group has announced it has entered into negotiations to acquire Telkom South Africa, telling shareholders to ‘exercise caution’ when dealing with the company’s securities until further announcements have been made.

Financial details of the potential takeover have not been announced, but MTN says it is seeking to purchase the entirety of Telkom, either by offering equivalent shares in MTN or by a combination of shares and cash.

MTN has been interested in purchasing Telkom for many years. Back in 2014, the South African Competition Commission had blocked an offer from MTN to buy Telkom’s radio access network due to its impact in reducing market competition, and since then murmurs of a takeover have been rife. Most recently, rumours were circulating in November 2021, with sources suggesting that Telkom had rejected a takeover offer.

Since then, however, Telkom’s chief executive has changed, with former MTN executive Serame Taukobong replacing the outgoing Sipho Maseko. This perhaps explains Telkom’s apparent willingness to engage in overt talks with MTN.

Nonetheless, MTN and Telkom were quick to stress that negotiations are only just beginning, with no deal yet finalised.

“Discussions are at an early stage and there is no certainty that the transaction will be consummated,” said the companies in a joint statement.

The merger would create a new mobile market leader, combining MTN’s 31% market share with Telkom’s rapidly growing 15% share. Current market leader, Vodacom, dominates the market with a 42% share.

As a result, the South African competition regulators would be sure to heavily scrutinise any potential deal and would likely impose strict conditions to ensure that healthy competition is maintained within the sector.
 

Want to keep up to date with the latest developments in the world of telecoms? Subscribe to receive Total Telecom’s daily newsletter here
Also in the news:
Planes, trains, and automobiles: Starlink gets FCC greenlight for moving vehicle internet
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Today, Deutsche Telekom has announced that it has agreed to sell a majority stake in its tower unit to Brookfield and DigitalBridge, after the pair submitted a late bid of €17.5 billion.
 
The duo will subsequently own 51% of the tower unit, with Deutsche Telekom retaining the remaining 49%.
  « We crystalise the value of our tower assets…

Today, Deutsche Telekom has announced that it has agreed to sell a majority stake in its tower unit to Brookfield and DigitalBridge, after the pair submitted a late bid of €17.5 billion.

The duo will subsequently own 51% of the tower unit, with Deutsche Telekom retaining the remaining 49%.

« We crystalise the value of our tower assets, thereby creating value for our shareholders, » said Deutsche Telekom CEO, Timotheus Höttge, noting that this could open the door for further consolidation of the European tower market.

The unit has roughly 40,600 sites across Germany and Austria, supported by roughly 800 staff.

Deutsche Telekom first began the process of selling a stake in Deutsche Funkturm back in March, initially drawing much interest not only from private equity but from a rival tower companies like Vodafone’s Vantage Towers and Orange’s TOTEM.

At the time, it appeared to onlookers that the withdrawal by Cellnex left just one suitor in contention for the tower unit: a KKR-led consortium backed by fellow private equity firms Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and Stonepeak.

However, reports late last night revealed Brookfield’s new bid alongside DigitalBridge, seemingly sweeping the rug from underneath KKR and co at the last moment. 

According to Deutsche Telekom, the deal will allow them to reduce their debt pile of roughly €136 billion by around €10.7 billion, as well as helping them fund the further rollout of 5G and fibre in various markets. 

In addition, the money will also be used to fund the purchase of further shares in T-Mobile US, with Deutsche Telekom inching ever closer to a controlling stake in the business over the past few years.

Telekom currently owns a 48.4% in the US giant, having paid $2.4 billion to SoftBank Group back in April to increase their stake by 1.7%. 

Naturally, the deal with Brookfield and DigitalBridge deal is subject to all the typical regulatory approvals, with an anticipated closing date yet to be announced.