News

The FCC has approved AT&T’s $1.02 billion spectrum acquisition from UScellular on the condition that the company terminates its DEI initiatives, amid concerns over industry consolidation and its impact on rural connectivity and competition.

The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T’s $1.02 billion purchase of spectrum licenses from UScellular, conditional on AT&T’s formal commitment to end its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes.

According to the FCC, the acquisition, which transfers 1,250 million MHz-Pops of 3.45 GHz and 331 million MHz-Pops of 700 MHz B/C block licenses, will enhance AT&T’s network coverage, capacity and performance and thus improve the customer experience.

AT&T notified the FCC in a letter that it will terminate DEI activities as part of the conditions tied to the transaction, a move the company said was necessary to obtain regulatory approval. Industry reporting and the FCC statement place this decision squarely within the commission’s recent practice under Chair Brendan Carr of making cessation of DEI programmes a term of certain approvals.

The Rural Wireless Association opposed the deal, arguing it risks further consolidation and could harm competition and roaming options for rural consumers, potentially raising prices for wireless plans. The FCC acknowledged these concerns but concluded the net effect would be to strengthen AT&T’s network performance for customers.

The AT&T transaction follows a broader pattern in which major carriers have agreed to end DEI initiatives to secure FCC clearance: T‑Mobile ended DEI programmes while seeking approval for its purchases of much of UScellular’s retail operations and customers, and Verizon made similar concessions in its approval to acquire Frontier Communications’ assets.

UScellular’s investor release confirms the company has monetised a significant portion of spectrum excluded from earlier transactions with other bidders, and FCC filings provide the regulatory context by mapping MHz‑POP holdings across carriers, data used to assess concentration and potential competitive impacts.

The move is the second largescale spectrum purchase for AT&T this year, after the operator bought low-band and mid-band spectrum from EchoStar earlier this year fr $23 billion s

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News

BT has unveiled a new “sovereign platform” designed to give UK businesses and public bodies greater control over their networks, data, and emerging services such as cloud-hosted applications and AI.

The platform, announced on Monday, consolidates a suite of services that BT says will be delivered from UK-based infrastructure and supported only by staff located in the UK.

The company frames the move as a response to growing geopolitical uncertainty and a rising demand from organisations for stronger assurances over where their systems, operations, and data are controlled.

Jon James, chief executive of BT Business, described the initiative as central to adoption of new technologies.

“Sovereignty isn’t simply a matter of compliance or risk management – it’s key to unleashing the potential of AI, and ensuring resilient operations in an increasingly uncertain world,” he said. “Our pioneering launch reflects BT’s unique position as the digital backbone of the UK, and the only provider with the scale, capabilities and experience to enable true UK sovereign solutions.”

BT said the platform will underpin the phased rollout of new sovereign-branded voice, cloud and AI services “over the coming months” and that a sovereign option for a range of existing core products will be available through BT Business in the first half of 2026. The company emphasised its existing experience delivering secure services to critical public and private sector organisations and positioned the platform as a way for customers to choose levels of “sovereignty” appropriate to their needs.

The announcement comes as the UK government pushes an AI strategy focussed on the rapid growth of the country’s domestic data centre industry. BT is notably a founding member of the UK Sovereign AI Industry Forum helping to align the UK telecoms industy with this national objectives.

Industry observers say sovereign offerings are increasingly common as firms and governments seek to reduce exposure to foreign jurisdictional risk, protect sensitive information and meet tightening regulatory expectations. Critics, however, warn that claims of “sovereignty” can mask practical trade-offs , such as higher costs, reduced choice of suppliers and potential delays in accessing the latest global technologies , and that true technological independence is difficult to achieve in an interconnected global market.

BT has not published detailed technical specifications or pricing for the new platform. Customers and procurement teams will be watching for clarifications on data residency guarantees, auditability, third-party software components and whether services will be certified to government security standards such as Cyber Essentials or the UK’s upcoming standards for sovereign AI.

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News

The shares, purchased from the Kenyan government and Vodacom’s parent company Vodafone, give it a 55% stake in the business

This week, South Africa telecoms giant Vodacom has announced a deal to increase its stake in Kenya’s Safaricom to 55%, in a deal worth $2.1 billion.

The deal would see Vodacom acquire a 15% stake in the business from the Kenyan government and a further 5% stake from its parent company Vodafone.

Acquiring a controlling stake in Safaricom is part of Vodacom’s wider Vision2030 strategy, which aims to see the company grow its subscriber base to 260 million and greatly expand the company’s digital and financial service offerings by the end of the decade.

Safaricom is the largest mobile operator in Kenya, with around 50 million customers. In 2022, the company led a consortium to build a second national operator in Ethiopia, which has since gained around 10 million subscribers.

“This landmark transaction will mark a pivotal step in Vodacom’s journey to accelerate growth and deepen our impact across Africa,” said Vodacom Group CEO, Shameel Joosub. “Acquiring a controlling stake in Safaricom strengthens our position as a market leader, while at the same time unlocks new opportunities to drive digital and financial inclusion at scale in Kenya and Ethiopia.”

The deal is subject to typical regulatory approvals.

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Interview

At Connected Britain 2025, we caught up with Incognito Software Systems’ Sonya Goodanetz to discuss how speed alone is no longer enough for consumers

“Customers don’t buy technology. They buy products and services. You’ve got fibre and you’ve got speed – now what?”

Far from a rhetorical question, this is a major challenge facing ISPs in the UK, where strong competition is leaving providers struggling to attract and retain customers.

Speaking at Connected Britain 2025, Incognito Software Systems’ Senior Marketing Product Manager Sonya Goodanetz highlighted the rapid growth of value-added services (VAS) boosting average revenue per user (ARPU).

“We’re seeing a lot of competitive differentiation strategies, especially around value-added services,” she explained, highlighting cybersecurity offerings and traffic prioritisation for services like cloud gaming, as key areas for growth. “It’s about end-to-end quality of experience.”

Thanks to the latest technology, implementing VAS at scale is now quicker and easier than ever.

“Previously you’d put an agent on a device, test every make and model, and push it to market. By then, a year has passed and you’re starting all over again,” she explained. “The game has changed now. Being able to deploy apps onto residential gateways immediately delivers these value-added services.”

It’s imperative, Goodanetz says, that ISPs go beyond being “just a pipe” and gain a foothold into new verticals, whether that is healthcare or consumer IoT within the connected home.

Check out our full interview below:

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News

Onlookers fear the app could pose a significant threat to user privacy

Back in January, the Indian government launched its cybersecurity app Sanchar Saathi, aiming to tackle the growing challenge of mobile security and fraud.

Now, the government has scrapped an order that would have seen this app pre-installed on every mobile device sold in India.

On Monday, the government announced a new order that would give smartphone makers 90 days to ensure all devices have the Sanchar Saathi app embedded at the point of sale. For mobile phones already in shops but not yet sold, the government wants software updates to install the app within three months.

Now, after significant push back from cybersecurity experts and device manufacturers like Apple and Samsung, the government says it will no longer require pre-installation.

The Sanchar Saathi app – which means ‘communication partner’ in Hindi – is used to track lost or stolen phones and identify fraudulent mobile usage.

According to India’s Minister of Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia, the app has already delivered “strong citizen benefits” since its launch in January. These include 26 lakh (2.6 million) mobile phones traced and 7.23 lakh (723,000) successfully returned to their owners; 40.96 lakh (4.09 million) fraudulent mobile connections identified and disconnected based on citizen reports; and 6.2 lakh (620,000) fraud-linked IMEIs (International Mobile Equipment Identities) blocked to curb misuse.

To achieve this, however, the app reportedly requires permission to access phone calls, messages, call and message logs, photos, files, and the phone’s camera. These functionalities “cannot be disabled or restricted”, according to the order.

As such, watchdogs fear that the app represents a major threat to personal privacy and could ultimately be used by the government to monitor many different types of user activity, from the use of banned applications to VPNs.

“The problems deepen when we look at the scope and safeguards. The order invokes ‘telecom cyber security’ as a catch-all justification, but it does not define the functional perimeter of the app,” explained Apar Gupta, founder director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, to The Telegraph Online.

He added that there was a significant risk of ‘function creep’, where solutions evolve far beyond the scope of their original intent.

In response to this criticism, Scindia clarified earlier this week that users would be able to delete the pre-installed Sanchar Saathi app.

“There is no snooping and no call monitoring. If you want #SancharSaathiApp, keep it. The choice to activate, keep, or delete the app rests entirely with the user,” he said in a post on X (Twitter).

This reassurance, however, has seemingly done little to stem the criticism facing the government.

Most significantly, reports suggest that both Apple and Samsung were resistant to the order, with Apple telling Reuters it would not comply and “would convey its concerns to Delhi”.

Government apps being preinstalled on consumer devices is far from the norm; the only major markets where this is routinely practiced are China and Russia.

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News

The LLM will be carefully trained on Ukrainian data in an attempt to avoid undue Russian influence

Kyivstar and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation have chosen Google’s Gemma model and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI to form the technical backbone of a national large language model (LLM) intended to capture the breadth of Ukrainian dialects, terminology, and history.

The project, announced today, will be operationally led by Kyivstar, the country’s largest mobile operator and a unit of telecoms group VEON.

Kyivstar and the WINWIN AI Centre of Excellence at the Digital Ministry said the model will be trained on curated Ukrainian datasets and will keep sensitive national data stored and processed within Ukraine, an explicit priority for future use in government, healthcare, and financial services.

“We are building the Ukrainian LLM on a ready-made open-source model. The main task in development is to train it on our unique data further. When choosing a model, we focused on how well it already handles Ukrainian-language texts and how controllable it is during additional training. This will help minimize linguistic and ethical risks in our LLM,” said Danylo Tsvok, Chief AI Officer at the Ministry of Digital Transformation and CEO of the WINWIN AI Center of Excellence.

Google’s Gemma was selected after an “extensive evaluation”, the partners said. Google Cloud’s Vertex AI will provide the computing infrastructure for large-scale training. Krzysztof Kaziów, Director Customer Engineering CEE at Google Cloud, commented: “We are honored that the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Kyivstar have selected Gemma as the foundation for the Ukrainian national LLM. This choice underscores Gemma’s strategic value, offering an optimal balance between performance and resources alongside its strong multilingual support. Leveraging its proven success as the base for leading Ukrainian LLMs, we are committed to supporting this vital initiative to enhance digital experience in Ukraine.”

VEON described the project as part of a broader strategy to develop local-language AI across its markets, pointing to prior initiatives such as KazLLM in Kazakhstan and an Urdu LLM in Pakistan. “Kyivstar and the Ukrainian Digital Ministry have taken a major step forward today. With a sovereign Ukrainian LLM, Ukrainian consumers, businesses and government institutions will be empowered to integrate cutting-edge technologies using augmented intelligence that truly speaks Ukrainian and understands Ukraine,” said Kaan Terzioglu, CEO of VEON Group. “We have a responsibility to bring the benefits of augmented intelligence to the countries we serve , through large language models trained not only on words, but on local context.”

Technical work will include optimising Gemma for Ukrainian, refining its tokenizer, and creating benchmarks for fine-tuning and application-specific adaptation. Intended use cases span regulatory and legal analysis, education, finance and healthcare.

While not explicitly stated by the partners, project’s cultural significance for Ukraine should not be understated. Much of the data used to train existing Ukrainian LLMs was produced under substantial Russian influence, leading to significant bias. A domestically-led LLM could correct this influence, creating a model that better represents Ukrainian linguistic, historical, and civic perspectives.

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News

Vodafone says the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) has not followed key procedural rules in its investigation and has acted with bias

Vodafone has formally challenged the Bundeskartellamt over its investigation into the operator’s alleged anti-competitive behaviour towards rival 1&1. The conflict centres on Vodafone’s supposed obstruction of 1&1’s efforts to build its own 5G network, a move crucial for establishing the company as the country’s fourth major mobile network operator.

1&1 Drillisch won 5G mobile spectrum at auction back in 2019 with the intention of building out its own network and becoming Germany’s fourth national operator. By 2021, 1&1 had signed a deal with Vantage Towers (in which Vodafone holds a 50% stake) to access up to 5,000 of the towerco’s existing mobile sites, allowing them to more rapidly deploy their burgeoning 5G network.

The contract specified that 3,800 sites were to be made available by 2025.

By the end of 2022, however, it was becoming clear that access to this may sites by 2025 would be unlikely, with 1&1 saying it had been granted access to just five sites. In 2023, 1&1 formally complained to the Bundeskartellamt , who subsequently launched an investigation into the source of Vantage’s delays in providing the agreed upon infrastructure.

Now, Vodafone is claiming that the Bundeskartellamt is conducting proceedings in a biased and procedurally improper manner, exceeding its authority. Vodafone has sought interim legal relief at the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf, arguing that the accusations lack substantive merit and that 1&1 has unduly influenced the investigation.

“I’ve never encountered anything like this in my more than 25 years of professional experience,” said Vodafone’s lawyer, Walther Graf, who provided a 65-page letter to the Bundeskartellamt with the allegations.

The Bundeskar­tellamt, however, insists that it is conducting its investigations impartially. It noted that its president, Andreas Mundt, maintains regular contacts with all relevant industry leaders, including both 1&1’s CEO Ralph Dommermuth and Vodafone’s executives. The authority dismisses Vodafone’s claims of partiality and unusual procedural conduct as unfounded.

1&1 has also denied any improper coordination with the Bundeskartellamt.

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The Australian technology giant is considering “a range of potential funding alternatives” to support the project

Earlier this week, Macquarie Technology Group revealed to investors that it was exploring funding options for a new 150MW data centre campus project, aiming to meet the expected boom in demand for AI and cloud computing.

The new campus would require between $2.5 billion and $3 billion in capital, excluding land value.

Speaking to investors on Tuesday, CEO David Tudehope said that the company was currently exploring its options for financing the data centre build out at the optioned location. One possibility would be to recycle capital by selling off a stake in the company’s more mature data centre assets. Alternatively, Macquarie could also partner with a third-party to create a joint venture.

“Funding for the new campus […] will come from recycled capital from the existing data centres and/or a development partnership,” said Tudehope, as reported in the Financial Review. “Both of those ideas are quite common overseas but are less common in Australia.”

The tech company has already struck a deal for the required land in Sydney for $240 million earlier this year, to be funded through cash reserves and debt.

Macquarie has been investing in data centres since 2018, with its flagship project taking place at the Macquarie Park Data Centre Campus in Sydney. Phase 1 of the site’s development, known as Sydney IC3 East, was completed in 2020, providing over 12MW of capacity. Phase 2, will see the site scaled further with the construction of the IC3 Super West data centre, bringing total capacity to 65MW.

Construction on C3 Super West began last year and is expected to be complete by Q3 2026. Macquarie extended its loan facilities to $450 million last year to facilitate this expansion.

Combining these existing assets with the planned 150MW would make Macquarie one of the largest data centre providers in Australia.

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[RIGA, LATVIA / HELSINKI, FINLAND, November 26, 2025] Skyfora and LMT have demonstrated Europe’s first real-time, rapid-update, kilometer-resolution GNSS weather observation grid, built on LMT’s 5G network and other GNSS receivers in Latvia and showcased during NATO’s Digital Backbone Experimentation (DiBaX).

Instead of installing new weather stations, Skyfora’s technology turns existing GNSS receivers at 5G sites into high-precision weather sensors. This converts the telecom network into a dense atmospheric observation grid that delivers continuous updates at kilometer-scale resolution – in real time, across large areas.

“We are turning existing 5G towers into the world’s densest weather observation network – with a software update,” said Fredrik Borgström, CEO at Skyfora. “With dense, real-time observations of atmospheric humidity, AI weather models can finally reach the accuracy that defence, critical infrastructure, energy and other weather–affected industries have been waiting for.”

At DiBaX in Latvia, LMTs 5G sites powered with Skyfora’s Weather Engine, streamed continuous measurements of humidity derived from small delays in the GNSS signals as they pass through the atmosphere. This provides a detailed, real-time view of how storms, extreme rainfall, flood risks, and heat stress are emerging and evolving.

“For LMT, this project demonstrates how our network act as a sensor by transforming existing infrastructure into a source of real-time, high-resolution weather intelligence. Together with Skyfora, we’re turning cutting-edge innovation into practical, dual-use solutions that create new value for defence, energy, critical infrastructure, and other weather-sensitive sectors.” said Armands Meirāns, Head of R&D at LMT Defence.

New weather intelligence for defence and industry

The Latvian demonstration shows how telecom-powered GNSS meteorology can support:

• Defence and security – improved situational awareness for mission planning and operations.
• Civil protection and infrastructure – earlier, more precise alerts for storms, flash floods and heat stress on cities and critical assets.
• Energy trading and renewables – sharper short-term forecasts for wind, solar and electricity grids improve trading and asset protection.

Designed for rapid national scale-up

Skyfora’s solution for telecom operators is designed to scale quickly:

• No new hardware – uses GNSS receivers already existing in 5G infrastructure.
• Software-enabled – deployed as a software and data-processing layer on top of the existing network.
• AI-ready data feed – continuous, high-resolution weather observations in real-time that directly fuel advanced forecasting models.

By combining Skyfora’s GNSS meteorology with advanced 5G networks, operators can convert their telecom infrastructure into next-generation weather and climate intelligence, strengthening both national resilience and defence preparedness.

About Skyfora

Skyfora, a company dedicated to pushing the boundaries of meteorological innovation, transforms the future of meteorology with unique, high-resolution weather data. Skyfora´s patented solutions extract atmospheric data from GNSS receivers in existing infrastructures like telecom networks, unlocking previously untapped data sources to power state-of-the-art AI weather models. By delivering a continuous flow of high-resolution weather intelligence, Skyfora boost AI forecasts enhancing climate resilience and supporting critical decision-making across weather-sensitive industries – from renewable energy to critical infrastructure, transport & logistics and insurance. Skyfora is redefining what’s possible in weather forecasting on a global scale

Skyfora media contact:

Fredrik Borgström, CEO, fredrik.borgstrom@skyfora.com, https://www.skyfora.com/

About LMT Defence

LMT Defence specialises in the development and integration of cutting-edge technologies to strengthen and advance the defence sector. By harnessing big data analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the latest communication innovations, LMT Defence consistently delivers mission-critical solutions that drive operational excellence.

News

The outage left around 14,000 customers unable to contact emergency services

Optus has suffered yet another network outage, this time impacting around 14,000 customers in southeast Melbourne.

The outage, which took place on Wednesday, was reportedly caused by an “aerial fibre break” caused by thieves stealing copper from from the local underground access chambers.

“We do have that photo evidence and it’s clear that there had been a cut made,” Optus spokesperson Jane McNamara told ABC Radio Melbourne. “We know copper has been removed from the pit and we have contacted police.”

The fibre cut left affected customers without mobile service, including to emergency services, for a number of hours.

“Customers will only be able to call emergency services if they are within coverage of another mobile network or are able to call via WiFi,” warned the company on its website.

Full services have since been restored, with emergency services confirming that they are unaware of any failed emergency calls during the outage

While this outage was not caused by Optus, it nonetheless comes at a sensitive time for the operator. The company has suffered multiple significant network outages this year, the most significant of which, in September, saw 631 people unable to connect to emergency services when needed. Four people are known to have died as a result.

The repeated network outages have saw some politicians calling for a review of Optus’s licence.

“There must be an urgent review of Optus’ licence. They are clearly not capable of providing this essential service and keeping Australians safe,” said Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, the Greens spokesperson for communications and Chair of the Senate Inquiry into the emergency services outage.

So far, the government has not moved to formally review Optus’s licence, but has announced plans to create an independent body, the ‘Triple Zero Custodian’ to oversee Australia’s emergency call services.

Steeper fines are also expected to be enforced.

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