Press Release

Backed by major lenders, EXA Infrastructure has raised new facilities to support network expansion and M&A ambitions

EXA Infrastructure, the largest dedicated digital infrastructure platform connecting Europe and North America, has refinanced its existing facilities and raised new financing in total over €1.3bn to support continued growth ambitions and network expansion plans.

The new facility, structured over seven years, will allow EXA Infrastructure to capitalise on significant market opportunities and expand its network footprint in line with scaling customer ambitions.

Jim Fagan, CEO, EXA Infrastructure, said: “This move gives us an unrivalled ability to continue investing in our network, at a time when our customers need growing amounts of capacity across more routes, to handle an evolving set of applications and demands. Our recent investments have already shown our strategic focus, and with this refinancing, EXA Infrastructure is firmly positioned to lead in network and digital infrastructure throughout Europe and across the Atlantic.”

EXA Infrastructure announced the signing of binding agreements to acquire Aqua Comms in January, followed by strategic network deployment announcements throughout 2025, including the largest fibre backbone deployment in Central Europe and the first new subsea cable in the North Sea in 25 years.

Lenders for this refinancing process include MUFG Bank Ltd., DNB, Banco Santander, Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, Lloyds Bank, NORD/LB, Goldman Sachs International Bank, NatWest, Kookmin Bank London Branch, Woori Bank London Branch, NIBC Bank, funds managed by Allianz Global Investors, and funds managed by Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management.

Rothschild & Co is acting as debt advisors to EXA Infrastructure in connection with the refinancing, and Latham and Watkins LLP is acting as the company’s legal advisor. Simpson Thacher and Bartlett LLP is acting as the legal advisor to the lenders in connection with the transaction.

“We’re proud to have the support of such high-calibre lenders and institutions who understand not only our business   but also the wider digital infrastructure landscape,” said Kate Hennessy, CFO at EXA Infrastructure. “Such strong demand for the facility underscores market confidence in our strategy and reaffirms our desire to pursue our next stage of growth with conviction.”

Keep up to date with all of the latest telecoms news from around the world with the Total Telecom newsletter

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Viewpoint Article

Enterprises today are pushing for simplicity, no multiple portals, fragmented services or complex user experiences. What they want is mobility that works as seamlessly as the cloud: unified, scalable, and fully integrated into their IT environment.

Yet too often, telecom operators are still perceived as “just connectivity providers.” Unless this perception changes, others will fill the role enterprises truly need — the role of the tech orchestrator.

The Gap to Close

Recent GSMA Intelligence research shows that enterprises will spend 10% of their revenues on digital transformation during 2025-2030. The appetite is enormous, but the challenges are equally large: the cost of implementation and the difficulty of integrating new technologies with legacy systems.

Enterprises are asking for something far beyond “connectivity plus”: they want simplicity, orchestration, and outcomes.

Telecom Operators are in the best position to integrate mobile connectivity directly into enterprise IT ecosystems. Unlike third-party intermediaries, operators manage both the network and the service orchestration layers, ensuring a direct, secure, and cost-efficient connection between the customer’s IT systems and their mobile environment. This end-to-end integration eliminates costly middleware and manual processes, while providing real-time visibility, automated order management, and simplified governance.

The opportunity (and challenge) ahead

But the shift from telco to techno is not a marketing exercise — it represents a fundamental transformation in how operators deliver value. The focus must move from selling connectivity to enabling measurable business outcomes.

• Employee productivity. Mobility is now about empowering every worker — from the office to the field — to be securely connected and efficient.
• Transparency and cost control. Enterprises want a clear, centralised view of their mobility spend and usage.
• AI readiness. Without orchestrated, standardised data, enterprises cannot leverage AI for predictive provisioning or real-time optimisation.

Across the industry, enterprise leaders consistently share the same message: make it easier, faster, and smarter. That is the opportunity operators must seize.

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Collaboration as the Differentiator

No single operator can meet these expectations alone. Multinational enterprises demand scale, consistency, and trust across borders — and achieving this requires collaboration.

This is where alliances like FreeMove play a pivotal role. By working together, operators can provide:

• Consistency: a unified, orchestrated experience across multiple countries.
• Speed: faster time to market through shared expertise and resources.
• Customer-centric outcomes: harmonised solutions tailored to each enterprise’s digital maturity.

At the recent Mobile World Live Unwrapped series, experts from the FreeMove Alliance — including Usman Javaid (Orange Business), Urs Lehner (Swisscom), and Stefan Grosse Onnebrink (Deutsche Telekom) — discussed this transformation in depth. Their shared conclusion was clear: collaboration is not a “nice-to-have”; it is the only way to deliver enterprise mobility at scale.

The FreeMove Automation Solution exemplifies this approach. Whether a customer is just beginning their digital journey or ready for full ITSM integration, the solution adapts to their needs. It reduces tools, lowers manual workload, improves transparency, and lays the foundation for an AI-driven future.

The road ahead

The choice for telcos is stark.
They can remain commodity providers of connectivity — or evolve into techno-orchestrators that simplify complexity, co-create with customers, and deliver tangible outcomes.

The future of enterprise mobility will not be defined by who owns the network, but by who can orchestrate ecosystems that deliver simplicity, trust, and measurable value.

Through initiatives like the FreeMove Automation Solution (FAS), operators enable seamless API-based integration into ITSM and procurement systems (including ServiceNow and Punch-Out interfaces), allowing enterprises to manage their global mobile fleet as part of their broader digital infrastructure.

In a context where enterprises will dedicate nearly 10% of revenues to digital transformation by 2030, operators stand out as trusted partners who can bridge the gap between connectivity and IT transformation—simplifying integration, enhancing security, and reducing total cost of ownership across multinational operations

The transformation from telco to techno is already underway, and collaboration will define its success.

To explore these ideas further, watch the full Mobile World Live Unwrapped session featuring Usman Javaid (Orange Business), Urs Lehner (Swisscom), Stefan Grosse Onnebrink (Deutsche Telekom), and Selma Avdagic Tisljar (FreeMove Alliance): https://www.mobileworldlive.com/mwl-unwrapped-webinar-beyond-borders-connecting-enterprises-globally-with-automation-collaboration/

Press Release

Paris, France, October 15, 2025 – During the NetworkX 2025 Next-Generation Optical Networking (NGON) Forum, Huawei introduced its groundbreaking Intelligent OTN solution, positioning it as the cornerstone for future-proof optical transport infrastructure. Gavin Gu, President of Optical Transport Network Domain of Huawei, detailed how this innovation addresses the escalating demands of AI-driven digital transformation in his keynote “Intelligent OTN, Intelligent Foundation.”  

AI fuels rapid transformation of the Optical Transport Industry 

The rapid construction of global AI data centers is injecting unprecedented momentum into the optical transport industry. The technology iteration cycle has accelerated from the past “10 years per generation” to the current “2-3 years per generation.” This shift drives a steeper decline in the cost-per-bit for network construction. Furthermore, the new collaborative model of real-time “Device-Pipe-Edge-Cloud” interaction in the intelligent era is shifting networks from “one-way” to “interactive,” and from “best effort” to “deterministic.” 

Mission-critical AI workloads demand unprecedented network performance. Data Center Interconnection (DCI) requires “six nines” (99.9999%) reliability and terabit-level capacity, while Data Center Access (DCA) needs millisecond-level latency with flexible bandwidth allocation for diverse applications from industrial AI to immersive experiences. 

Intelligent OTN Solution enhances network capabilities  

To better support DCI and DCA scenarios, Huawei launched the Intelligent OTN solution, focusing on two core directions – “OTN for AI” and “AI for OTN” – with multiple key capabilities. 

In the “OTN for AI” direction, addressing efficient DCI connectivity needs, the backbone network should upgrade with three key technical capabilities: The wavelength advancing towards 800G and even 3.2T in the future, significantly reducing the cost-per-bit for network construction; network architecture upgrades from C-band ROADM to C+L-band OXC, doubling switching capacity; and achieving zero packet loss transmission between computing nodes via the DC-OTN solution. For the user-side DCA scenario, four key capability upgrades enable the construction of an ultra-low latency metro network: Realizing “1ms to the data center” via mini-OXC devices; 100G to the edge, providing sufficient bandwidth for applications; the fgOTN solution supports fine-grained, hitless bandwidth adjustment starting from 10Mbps; and the enhanced WSON solution reduces service restoration time to within 50 milliseconds, significantly improving network reliability. 

In the “AI for OTN” direction, Gavin Gu noted that OTN networks were traditionally often called “dumb pipes.” However, Intelligent OTN introduces new technologies like digital twins and AI technologies to enable upgrades throughout the entire optical network lifecycle. By building a three-dimensional digital twin model encompassing services, network, and optical fibers, the network becomes visible, manageable, and optimizable. In the planning and construction phase, service provisioning time is reduced from months to days. In the operations and optimization phase, the system can proactively identify network risks, substantially reducing potential network failures. Intelligent OTN drives the evolution of optical networks from traditional “dumb pipes” to “intelligent pipes” with self-awareness, self-decision-making, and self-optimization capabilities, advancing towards high-level autonomous networks. 

“As the intelligent era fully arrives, driven by both ‘OTN for AI’ and ‘AI for OTN,’ Huawei’s Intelligent OTN solution will provide powerful transport support for global digital development,” said Gavin Gu. “It is both the transmission artery for the intelligent era and an evolving intelligent entity, solidifying the foundation for the future of the intelligent era.  

News

The offer, announced last night, would have seen Bouygues Telecom, Iliad, and Orange divide the company’s assets between them

Late last night, reports revealed that a Bouygues, Iliad, and Orange had joined forces to put together a €17 billion offer to buy and carve up the majority of rival operator SFR’s assets.

Now, less than a day later, it seems that this approach has been ‘immediately rejected’, according to an email seen by the media that had been sent to SFR staff by Altice France head Arthur Dreyfuss.

An official statement on the rejection has yet to be published.

The proposed deal, which had been rumoured to be in the works since earlier this summer, would have seen SRF’s three national telco rivals split the majority of SFR’s assets between them, with Bouygues taking 43% of the assets, Iliad 30%, and Orange 27%.

All three operators would have taken a piece of SFR’s consumer business, including mobile and fixed broadband customers, while the B2B unit would have been divided solely between Bouygues and Iliad.

The company’s physical network assets, both fixed and mobile, and the company’s spectrum holdings, would largely have been split between all three partners.

The proposal did not include some of Altice’s smaller assets, including stakes in Intelcia, UltraEdge, and XP Fibre, and alsoAltice group’s activities in French overseas departments and regions.

In total, the deal valued SFR at around €21 billion – far short of the roughly €30 billion price point sought by SFR’s billionaire owner Patrick Drahi, which may well explain the offer’s rejection today.

This kind of tripartite carve up would not without precedent; in Brazil in 2020, for example, Telefónica, Claro Brasil, and TIM Brasil struck a similar partnership to divide the mobile unit of floundering telecoms operator Oi. However, it is somewhat unusual, potentially giving the regulatory bodies a challenge in accurately assessing the deal’s impact to consumers.

Historically, EU regulators have been reticent to allow large-scale mergers that reduce the number of telecoms players in the market, fearing that the reduction in competition would drive up prices and reduce incentives for innovation. The telecoms industry itself, on the other hand, has been calling for consolidation for many years, arguing such deals are key to unlocking long term investment in the sector. In fact, just last month, the GSMA were once again called on regulators to overhaul their merger guidelines to facilitate M&A.

Sentiment towards such mergers is thawing, however. The recent merger of Three and Vodafone in the UK and Orange and MasMovil in Spain suggests that getting regulatory approval for such a deal, while troublesome, is potentially achievable.

For now, it is unclear whether Bouygues, Iliad, and Orange will return to the negotiating table. We expect further updates imminently.

Keep up to date with all of the latest telecoms news from around the world with the Total Telecom newsletter

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New ‘Connectivity, Your Way’ approach challenges commoditisation by offering bespoke terms and agile infrastructure delivery to power growth. 

Businesses never stand still. They grow, shrink, evolve, and pivot, sometimes all in the same year. And through it all, one thing remains constant: the need for reliable connectivity that scales with change. That’s where LightSpeed Networks, a UK-based wholesale connectivity provider, makes the difference.

LightSpeed Networks agile wholesale model is built on partnership, directly challenging the industry’s trend towards commoditised transactions. The company is positioning itself as the strategic alternative for carriers, MSPs, and AltNets frustrated by the rigid, one-size-fits-all contracts typical of the national marketplace, which has already led to a 40% reduction in average contract onboarding time for new partners.

The new approach tackles a core industry challenge: the gap between the need for flexible, high-capacity infrastructure and the reality of dealing with inflexible legacy providers.

As Paul Davies, Wholesale Managing Director at LightSpeed Networks, explains:

LightSpeed Networks brings experience, consistency, and ease to the national connectivity marketplace. We pride ourselves on being exceptionally clear and responsive to work with, delivering solutions that help to achieve your business goals and targets. With bespoke, agile commercials, we provide your connectivity, your way.

This dedication to partnership over mere transaction defines their entire service model, enabling partners to drive greater value and differentiation in a highly competitive market.

Empowering Partners to Innovate and Scale

LightSpeed Networks views its wholesale fibre, wavelength, and ethernet solutions as engines for innovation for its partners. Instead of pushing generic products, the company designs solutions that mitigate risk, reduce operational complexity, and ensure faster time-to-market.

Key offerings designed for true partner enablement include:

• Bespoke, Agile Commercials: Providing pricing and contractual terms that adapt to the partner’s growth trajectory and specific business needs, rather than imposing blanket volume commitments.
• Merchant Build and Operate: A critical offering that ensures network infrastructure is delivered exactly where and when it is needed, allowing partners to deploy new services without incurring prohibitive capital expenditure or facing geographic limitations.
• Advanced High-Capacity Solutions: Offering Dark Fibre for full control and capacity, and Optical Wavelengths for ultra-fast, high-bandwidth applications, enabling partners to target data-heavy enterprise and public sector contracts.
• Simplicity and Support: In a market where service quality is the ultimate differentiator, LightSpeed Networks’ promise is straightforward: “We adapt fast to your needs. We keep things straightforward, no jargon. We’re always at the other end of the phone. And above all, we deliver on our promises.”

By providing this framework, LightSpeed Networks is helping UK service providers stand out in their markets, scale their businesses, and seize the new opportunities created by the UK’s full-fibre and digital transformation agenda.

About LightSpeed Networks:

LightSpeed Networks is a UK-based wholesale connectivity provider dedicated to delivering enterprise internet and fibre solutions that empower companies to grow with confidence. Offering a suite of flexible, scalable services including Dark Fibre, Ethernet, Optical Wavelengths, and bespoke Merchant Build/Operate solutions, LightSpeed Networks works with Service Providers, Carriers, MSPs, and Local Authorities, ensuring it’s always your connectivity, your way.

To find out more about LightSpeed Networks’ wholesale solutions, visit www.lightspeed.co.uk/wholesale, call 01775 666 103, or email enquiries@lightspeednetworks.co.uk.

Contributed Article 

by Steve Adams, Managing Director at Hutchinson

Britain’s digital future depends on strong, reliable networks. For years, many of the steel structures behind that infrastructure were manufactured overseas; the question now is where they should be made.

Where those structures are made matters. Choosing UK manufacturing is a practical strategy that delivers supply-chain resilience, proven quality, skilled jobs, and long-term value. With a UK supply base, design, manufacturing, and site teams work closer to one another, respond faster and turn design changes into production quickly. UK facilities also operate to the highest recognised standards, so quality is visible and traceable from material through to final inspection.

Jobs, skills and community impact

Hutchinson, a Widnes-based manufacturer of complex steel structures for telecoms and other critical sectors, shows what a modern UK factory can deliver. The company employs around 200 people, contributes more than £9m in local salaries, pays a real living wage (average c. £46k), and has a highly experienced, long-serving workforce, with over a third of the team serving 10+ years. Eleven apprentices are currently in training, and Hutchinson is a proud member of the 5% Club (a UK employer movement whose members commit to having at least 5% of their workforce in “earn-and-learn” roles, including apprentices, graduates and sponsored students, within five years).

STEM outreach with local schools, work-experience programmes, and wider community partnerships help Hutchinson nurture the next generation of engineers from the surrounding communities. Students get exposure to real engineering environments, teachers receive curriculum support, and residents benefit from upskilling initiatives. This builds a talent pipeline that strengthens the regional economy and shows how telecoms investment flows back into the community.

Local supply also supports sustainability. Shorter logistics cut transport emissions and make progress easier to measure. Hutchinson has reduced carbon by 27% since 2023 and is committed to net zero by 2040.

Inside the factory: Standards, speed and control

Hutchinson operates to UKCA and CE requirements, including EN1090-2 Execution Class 4 for the most critical work. Across 12,000 m² of manufacturing space, robotic welding, pre-build jigs and digital quality control with live KPI boards drive right-first-time, lean production methods. End-to-end control of design, fabrication, finishing and pre-assembly means engineering changes can be adopted quickly as designs evolve.

Welding compliance is led by an in-house International Welding Engineer and Responsible Welding Coordinator, with certified NDT capability (VT, MPI and LPI) embedded at key stages. Dimensional accuracy is assured via dedicated jigs and rigorous in-process checks. Total quality management runs from mill certificates to final inspection. For long-term performance, Hutchinson’s patented root systems and foundation details anchor structures for stability and whole-life value.

When clients choose UK-made structures, they aren’t just buying steelwork. They’re investing in predictable lead times, accountable quality, and skilled British jobs, from apprentices on the shop floor to specialist weld engineers. Every order strengthens the domestic supply chain, keeps value in our communities, and helps us build a better, more resilient network for the UK. That is the heart of our vision: A better future, engineered together.

Where should Britain’s telecoms structures be made? Here at home, for speed, quality, skills, and lasting community value.

Keep up to date with all of the latest telecoms news from around the world with the Total Telecom newsletter

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News

The Medusa submarine fiber optic cable system, owned by AFR-IX Telecom, has achieved a significant milestone with its first landing at the cable station in Marseille, France. This marks the beginning of the cable’s rollout across the Mediterranean, establishing a crucial connection between Southern Europe and North Africa.

The initial segment will connect Marseille with Bizerte, Tunisia, and Nador, Morocco, with the landings expected between late October and December 2025. The first phase is slated to be operational by early 2026, paving the way for subsequent landings planned throughout the year to expand the system across the region.

The Medusa system will span around 8,700km with 19 landing points, linking 12 countries across North Africa and Southern Europe, including Portugal, Morocco, Spain, France, Algeria, Tunisia, Italy, Malta, Libya, Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt.

The cable system will support up to 24 fibre pairs, each with a capacity of 20 Tbps.

The project also extends beyond the Mediterranean, with planned connections to the Atlantic Ocean via Portugal and the Red Sea through Aqaba, Jordan. Further expansion to Sub-Saharan Africa is planned, with Gabon scheduled to join the network in 2028.

Marseille is a major digital hub in Europe, offering critical infrastructure such as data centres and multiple submarine cable interconnections.

“By bringing Medusa to Marseille, one of Europe’s leading digital hubs, we are laying the foundation for a project that will transform communications between Europe and Africa. Medusa will act as a driver of economic growth for the region and a catalyst for knowledge exchange across the Mediterranean,” said AFR-IX Telecom’s CEO, Norman Albi.

The Medusa project, a private initiative, has attracted substantial public funding due to its strategic importance. The European Union has contributed €38.3 million through its Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) program, supporting AFR-IX projects aimed at strengthening Europe-North Africa connectivity.

A notable participant in the Medusa network is Tunisie Telecom, which has signed a strategic partnership to operate a dedicated fibre-optic link between Bizerte and Marseille with a 20 Tbps capacity. The company’s involvement underscores the collaborative nature of the project, which is co-funded by AFR-IX Telecom, Orange, and the European Union.

As the first segment of Medusa approaches operational readiness, the project stands as a landmark development in Mediterranean telecommunications infrastructure, promising to enhance digital connectivity, foster economic integration, and strengthen ties between Europe and Africa over the coming decade.

Partner Article 

As enterprises across the world ramp up their digital and AI transformations, Huawei Cloud has emerged as a partner of choice with solutions targeted for key industry verticals, such as manufacturing, finance, public services, and retail, among others.

The company announced the expansion of its AI-driven cloud portfolio at the recently concluded Huawei Cloud Industry Summit, held as part of Huawei Connect 2025. The two sessions, Huawei Cloud: The AI Pioneer in Industry and Huawei Cloud AI Summit: Unlocking All Intelligence, together highlighted the evolution of Huawei’s cloud technologies and solutions that are enabling enterprises across the world to achieve business success through AI-led intelligent transformation.

“AI is reshaping industries and our lives. To fully understand how we can make AI serve different industries, there are three pillars of computing, algorithm and data. If we use these three elements to develop AI applications and agents for our industry and life, it can support us. We promise to work around these aspects to support our global customers and partners to help them grow very fast,” said Charles Yang, Senior Vice President of Huawei and President of Huawei Cloud Global Marketing and Sales Services. He highlighted that Huawei Cloud’s industry-leading solutions have been deployed in over 500 scenarios across 30 industries.

The unique and differentiating aspect of Huawei Cloud solutions is that they are designed for the particular requirements of different industry verticals.  at every stage of deployment. “AI has become the most influential general-purpose technology. In cloud native, Huawei Cloud containers have been recognized as a global leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. Then we move to data and AI convergence and here Huawei’s big data and data warehouse ranked number one in market share in China. In addition, our Pangu models lead several major industries in China for AI,” said Joy Huang, Vice President of Huawei Cloud, in his keynote speech, `Accelerating Intelligence with Huawei Cloud’.

“To fast-track the intelligent transformation of our customers, Huawei Cloud will continue to innovate in the areas of cloud architecture, processes and tools, solutions and excellence operations,” added Huang. He also announced the launch of Enterprise Architecture Bench (EAB), a framework leveraging Huawei’s experience, methodologies and practices of deploying in over 500 AI scenarios, to help enterprises build and run AI solutions simply and efficiently.

Huawei Cloud recently announced the launch of its AI Compute Service powered by CloudMatrix384, a next-generation AI infrastructure solution designed for large-scale AI model training and inference.

“We launched CloudMatrix 384 Supernode in the first half of this year, marking our entry into the Supernode era for AI compute services. In terms of training, this allows us to scale up to 432 nodes into a single AI cluster, supporting as many as 160,000 chips, capable of training trillion-parameter models. With full-stack failure perception, we can now identify 95% of failures and recover from them quickly, maintaining stable training for up to 40 days and pushing MFUs above 55%,” said Bruno Zhang, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Huawei Cloud, in his keynote address on Huawei Cloud AI: Reshaping Industries with All Intelligence.

Leveraging Rich Experience to Gain New Capabilities

In both sessions of the Huawei Cloud Summit, several prominent global enterprises from varied industries shared their experience of deploying Huawei Cloud to accelerate their business growth and digital transformation.

“Dubai Municipality is driving the development of a digital transformation to enhance services across Dubai. By leveraging advanced tools like the 3D Digital Twin Engine and combining GIS data with AI technologies, the Municipality is implementing innovative solutions in human interaction, transportation, and tracking systems, with Huawei providing key technological support,” said Eng. Maitha Ali Al Nuaimi, Director of GIS at Dubai Municipality.

Huawei is empowering several enterprises, across different industry verticals, to transform their operations so they are better placed to take advantage of the new market opportunities. In her address, Xu Yue, General Manager Assistant at Conch Cement, highlighted how the company is using Huawei Cloud Stack, including Pangu prediction, to create an AI operating system that brings together central training, edge, inference, cloud-edgy synergy and optimization. It is able to leverage existing data for real-time data analysis and autonomous learning to improve quality control and equipment management, among others.

“The design process is typically very long, slow and inefficient. With the help of Huawei’s solution, we are able to use AI to generate background, size etc, to fast-track the process. We use Huawei Cloud AI Token Service to develop an AI-driven creative community for designers,” revealed Mi Qipei, Chief Product Officer at Gaoding (Xiamen) Technology.

On the other hand, XCMG, a leading manufacturer, shared insights into its partnership with Huawei Cloud, focusing on the integration of AI into manufacturing for autonomous vehicles and machinery. In the same vein, Faraz Arshad, Chief Technology Officer at Starzplay, the Middle Eastern streaming giant, highlighted how Huawei Cloud’s serverless scalability helped it to develop a high-performance content distribution and intelligent operations platform. Starzplay was able to enhance its platform’s user experience and scale the growth of its streaming platform. In Brazil, Itaú Unibanco was able to accelerate its multi-cloud strategy and cloud migration by leveraging Huawei Cloud’s solid foundation with security and automation capabilities.

In conclusion

These case studies effectively highlight how Huawei Cloud is enabling a range of industries to grow by helping them streamline their operations, acquire new capabilities, and foster innovation. Huawei Cloud is emerging as a leader in AI-powered, industry-specific cloud solutions, combining advanced infrastructure, software tools, and enterprise partnerships. Several successful deployments effectively demonstrate how it is helping enterprises streamline operations, enhance capabilities and drive innovation.

News

The plug-in-and-play SafetyCase emergency connectivity solution is designed to be deployed rapidly when terrestrial connectivity is unavailable

This week, Orange Business has announced it is incorporating Eutelsat’s OneWeb satellite services into its SafetyCase solution.

SafetyCase is a rapidly deployable emergency connectivity solution that creates a temporary bubble of Wi-Fi through the ‘intelligent hybridisation’ of available networks – i.e., combining available mobile and satellite network capacity – for emergency situations where terrestrial networks are unavailable. The solution has its own power source, allowing for deployment anywhere.

The solution comes in two formats: a ‘Mobile Unit’ that can be operational in seconds and the, presumably more powerful, ‘Crisis Center’ model, which takes 30 minutes to deploy, but provides up to 20 hours of connectivity to crisis cells or command centers.

It is unclear exactly when Orange Business launched SafetyCase, but the company says the solution saw usage during the severe flooding in Valencia, Spain, and during Cyclone Chido in Mayotte at the end of last year.

OneWeb’s low Earth orbit satellite constellation already provides coverage across France, adding additional network capacity to the SafetyCase wherever it is required.

Orange also stressed the sovereignty element of the partnership, highlighting that it’s choice of a European satellite operator allowed for greater trust for users, particularly emergency service and security service personel.

“With Eutelsat’s OneWeb, we reinforce the promise of SafetyCase: restore communications when everything stops. This European, sovereign advance gives firefighters, security forces, and local authorities a decisive capability: rapidly recreating a reliable network to coordinate, treat, alert, and decide. It’s a key building block of national resilience, powered by Orange’s network excellence and our new Defense & Security Division, at the service of safety and emergency,” explained Nassima Auvray, Defense and Security Director at Orange Business.

Orange has a long history of working with OneWeb, having initially signed an initial deal with the company back in 2023 to provide satellite fronthaul and backhaul services across the Group’s international footprint. The operator expanded this partnership earlier this year.

Keep up to date with all of the latest telecoms news from around the world with the Total Telecom newsletter

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News

Ofcom has confirmed that all three of the UK’s mobile operators – EE (BT), Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), and VodafoneThree – have been given the greenlight to participate in the upcoming auction

This week, UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has approved all three of the UK’s mobile operators to participate in the upcoming auction for spectrum in the 26GHz (25.1-27.5GHz) and 40GHz (40.5-43.5GHz) bands.

In total, 5.4 GHz of the spectrum will be available in 200MHz lots, with 68 licences available covering ‘high density’ areas across the country. For areas outside the remit of these licences, the UK’s Shared Access licensing framework will apply, meaning operators can attain permission to use the spectrum on a first-come, first-served basis.

The spectrum, often known as mmWave spectrum, has qualities that make it both appealing and challenging for the operators. On the one hand, it can support multi-gigabit-per-second peak data rates, with massive capacity and low latency. This makes it ideal for supporting large numbers of users simultaneously in dense environments like stadiums and city centres, as well as providing a ‘fibre-like’ broadband experience for Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) users.

On the other hand, the spectrum has a much shorter range than the mid-band (generally 1GHz–6 GHz) spectrum typically used for 5G, hence more base stations are required to support an equivalent area, driving up deployment costs. It also has poor signal penetration, meaning it can be blocked by common obstacles, including walls, windows, and even the human body itself.

As a result of its limitations and inherent expense, mmWave deployments worldwide so far have been patchy.

At the dawn of 5G, the US quickly emerged as the poster child for mmWave, spending billions of dollars on relevant spectrum licences, with Verizon even targeting nationwide coverage. The reality, however, was underwhelming. While the spectrum has found some success in targeted urban environments and for FWA, deployment at scale has proven difficult, with the spectrum’s value sliding in response.

Indeed, this deployment challenge is being felt around the world. Even in South Korea – one of the most advanced mobile markets in the world – the country’s three national mobile operators were forced to surrender their mmWave licences to the regulator, having failed to meet minimum deployment targets.

This raises the question of how the UK mobile operators plan to use mmWave spectrum effectively – and how much they will be willing to pay for it.

Ofcom’s auction has reserve prices set at £2 million for lots in the 26GHz band and £1 million for those in the 40GHz bands. Given the relatively large amount of spectrum available and the expensive rollout of 5G Standalone the operators are already undertaking, it seems unlikely that they will be willing to shell out huge sums of money for mmWave.

While no official date for the auction has been given, it has long been planned for this month, with Ofcom saying that it will take place “soon”.

Keep up to date with all of the latest telecoms news from around the world with the Total Telecom newsletter

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