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Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and BNP Paribas have been hired to manage the sale in the Indian market 

Vodafone is seeking to sell its 21.5% stake of India’s Indus Towers, which is worth around $2.3 billion, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. 

The sources said that the final stake sale remains undecided, but could be lower than 21.5% if demand is insufficient. 

Indus Towers are one of the largest tower companies in the world, with 219,736 towers and 368,588 co-locations to its name as of March 2024. 

Vodafone first announced its intention to sell its stake in 2022 (which then was 28%), but has only sold off a small percentage so far. 

Staying with the Indian market, Indian operator Vodafone Idea has issued its network equipment vendors Nokia and Ericsson with preference shares instead of payment for product orders. If approved by investors, Nokia will receive nearly 1.03 billion shares and Ericsson 634 million, giving the companies a 1.48% and 0.91% stake in Vodafone Idea respectively. 

“VIL is all set to participate in the industry growth with right investments to expand its 4G coverage and offer 5G experience to its customers while remaining focused on its execution capabilities,” said Akshaya Moondra, CEO of Vodafone Idea in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange. 

“As VIL embarks on its growth journey, support from key stakeholders is critical and the agreement with Nokia and Ericsson reaffirms these vendors as long-term partners of the Company, and sets the stage for the next phase of our growth,” he continued. 

The company has struggled with its cash flow for some time. Although the country’s third largest mobile operator by subscriber numbers, it struggles to compete with Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. The Indian government became the company’s largest shareholder last year (33.1%), but due to its debt, remains as India’s only telco yet to launch 5G services. 

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Also in the news:
Freshwave to deploy small cells in Manchester for VMO2
SGP.32: A reality check on the latest remote SIM provisioning standard
Vodafone Germany partners with FlyNex on industrial drone platform 

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to develop AI solutions for enterprises and consumers, a move for the Indonesian operator to diversify its paths to growth.

IOH has partnered with Google Cloud since 2021 and said in a statement this expansion said this expansion positions it as an “AI-native TechCo.”

The operator will tap into Google Cloud’s unified AI stack to develop such solutions that it claims will be “enterprise-grade” AI and Gen AI based.

IOH said by using “AI agents” and applications in communication services will enable it to better manage customer data privacy, and recognise patterns in data to unlock new revenue streams and efficiencies.

Under this renewed partnership, Google Cloud and IOH will focus on creating AI and Gen AI solutions that address opportunities in customer service modernisation, content generation and hyper personalisation, geospatial analytics and predictive modelling, augmented network and IT operations, and back office transformation.

Vikram Sinha, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison President Director and Chief Executive Officer, said: “As Indonesia steps into the digital era, we remain committed to Indosat’s larger purpose of empowering Indonesia by providing businesses and individuals with the essential tools and technologies needed for success.

“Our collaboration with Google Cloud is not just a pivotal milestone for Indosat, but also a significant stride in our mission to transform into an AI Native TechCo. Together, we will harness the full potential of cloud and AI to drive innovation, create new opportunities, and propel Indonesia’s digital economy forward. »

News 

This week, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has published ten responses to an issues statement that was released in May, which invited parties to provide submissions commenting on the issues and possible remedies for the merger

Among them is the response from UK incumbent BT, who released a 40-page report. The company claims that the proposed merger will “create a Merged Entity with a disproportionate share of capacity and spectrum, unprecedented in UK and Western European mobile markets, which will substantially lessen competition and deter investment.” According to the report, the merged entity would have a 61% share of the UK mobile network capacity, an unprecedented amount in UK and Western Europe mobile markets. 

BT say that the merger would result in “higher prices, poorer network quality, and reduced incentives to invest – all to the detriment of UK consumers.” 

Such comments from the UK market leader are to be expected, as the merger puts its top position under threat. Speaking to The Times, Ahmed Essam, Vodafone’s chief executive of European Markets, said that the company is not surprised by BT’s comments, but it was pleasing to see support from other big players, such as Swedish giant Ericsson, 

“Currently the UK mobile sector needs investment, with two large and two sub-scale players. We firmly believe creating a third mobile network operator, with the scale to invest and compete, will strengthen competition in the UK’s mobile market, benefiting customers and the wider UK economy,” concluded Essam. 

“Consolidation is broadly seen as a pivotal measure towards helping operators to attain the necessary scale for expanding their future network infrastructure,” said Ericsson’s supportive response. 

“Consequently, it should facilitate the delivery of the high-quality service, high bandwidth, and extensive coverage needed to fully harness the economic and social benefits of nationwide 5G standalone (5G SA) networks,” the response continued. 

Last month, The UK government released a “Publication of notice of Final Order” that provisionally approves the Vodafone–Three merger, subject to certain conditions. The CMA investigation, which is separate and ongoing, began its second phase in April. The results are expected in September. 

Join the conversation around UK telcos at this year’s connected Britain, 11-12 September in London. Get half price tickets this week only!

Also in the news:
Freshwave to deploy small cells in Manchester for VMO2
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Vodafone Germany partners with FlyNex on industrial drone platform 

Press Release

The collaboration will advance Indosat’s AI Native TechCo vision, empowering it to better serve more than 100 million customers across its B2B and B2C segments

Companies to develop enterprise-grade AI solutions for customer service modernization, dynamic content generation and hyper-personalization, geospatial analytics and predictive modelling, augmented network and IT operations, and back-office transformation

Jakarta, June 14^th, 2024 – Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (“Indosat” or “IOH”) and Google Cloud today announced the expansion of their long-term strategic alliance, aimed at accelerating Indosat’s transformation from telco to AI Native TechCo. This collaboration will combine Indosat’s vast network, operational, and customer datasets with Google Cloud’s industry-leading unified AI stack to deliver exceptional experiences to over 100 million Indosat customers, as well as enterprise-grade AI and generative AI (GenAI) solutions for businesses across Indonesia.

AI agents and applications, when effectively grounded in a communications service provider’s securely managed and privacy-compliant data assets, can augment human capabilities with powerful multimodal data analysis, pattern recognition, and recommendations to unlock new revenue streams and efficiencies, and elevate the customer experience. Under this alliance, the companies’ joint innovation initiatives will therefore be focused on creating tailored AI and GenAI solutions to address unique opportunities and challenges in the Indonesian market. These include:

• Customer service modernization: Google Cloud’s Contact Center AI solutions will equip call center staff with GenAI tools to enhance their productivity and effectiveness. Specifically, these tools will provide live call transcription; recommended responses derived from knowledge bases; real-time conversation analysis; and post-call sentiment analysis, leading to faster, more accurate, and more effective resolution of customer queries. In addition, GenAI-powered conversational agents will be built and deployed to offer self-service options across Indosat’s digital touchpoints. These agents will be capable of seamlessly switching between topics, addressing complex inquiries, supporting transactions, and operating 24/7.

• Dynamic content generation and hyper-personalization: Creative AI agents with multimodal and multilingual capabilities will promote relevant offerings based on a customer’s profile and specific needs. When integrated with customer relationship management and content management systems, they will assist marketers by identifying high-value leads, generating rich content (i.e., text, images, and videos), and engaging customers across channels with personalized offers and messages.

• Geospatial analytics and predictive modelling: Google Cloud’s custom machine learning (ML) models, trained on Indosat’s extensive operational datasets, will empower organizations across industries to make data-driven decisions around optimal site selection for strategic expansion; optimize asset management and maintenance based on real-time location and condition data; and model potential natural disaster scenarios to develop proactive mitigation strategies. Indosat will also leverage these tools to identify areas with high growth potential but limited network coverage, informing its strategic decisions to expand network capacity and bridge the digital divide between urban and remote communities.

• Augmented network and IT operations: Self-optimizing systems that are powered by custom ML and multimodal models will predict ROI from capital investments; reduce energy consumption; optimize asset design and utilization; and proactively detect and resolve issues. This results in cost savings, more sustainable operations, and improved service reliability. For example, AI can dynamically adjust cell tower power levels during off-peak hours, assist field technicians in rapidly diagnosing and resolving faults based on their verbal and visual inputs, and intelligently reroute network traffic to avoid faulty components while repairs are being made. Additionally, GenAI-powered agents that assist with code generation, completion, and troubleshooting will significantly increase IT teams’ development and delivery velocity, leading to faster time-to-market and time-to-value for reliable software products and services.
• Back office transformation: Custom GenAI-powered enterprise search applications will enable HR, legal, procurement, and finance teams to instantly access the precise information they need to excel in their job roles. By simply asking questions in natural language, they will receive accurate, contextually relevant answers or summaries from vast amounts of unstructured data, such as policies, contracts, financial reports, or employee records, thereby eliminating the need for manual searches, accelerating decision-making, and boosting overall productivity.

In addition to implementing these solutions across Indosat’s business operations, Indosat and Google Cloud will also explore joint go-to-market initiatives to empower Indonesia’s digital ecosystem. They will look to provide micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME), startups, enterprises, and public sector organizations with access to these solutions, alongside Google Cloud’s AI-optimized infrastructure, unified data platform, and unified AI development platform.

Vikram Sinha, President Director and Chief Executive Officer, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, said: “As Indonesia steps into the digital era, we remain committed to Indosat’s larger purpose of empowering Indonesia by providing businesses and individuals with the essential tools and technologies needed for success. Our collaboration with Google Cloud is not just a pivotal milestone for Indosat, but also a significant stride in our mission to transform into an AI Native TechCo. Together, we will harness the full potential of cloud and AI to drive innovation, create new opportunities, and propel Indonesia’s digital economy forward.”

Karan Bajwa, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Google Cloud, said: “Indosat’s early adoption of cloud-native architectures and an AI-ready data analytics platform exemplifies its forward-thinking approach. This strong foundation, established through our collaboration from 2021, is now enabling Indosat to pursue a wide range of high-value ML and GenAI use cases at scale—and we’re excited by the possibilities. These initiatives will not only demonstrate the transformative power of AI in telecommunications, but also serve as a blueprint for other sectors seeking to harness this technology to drive growth and nationwide impact.”

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Anil Kollipara, Vice President of Product Management at Spirent Communications

Check the numbers, and 5G network adoption looks to be absolutely humming. According to GSMA Intelligence, there were 1.6 billion 5G connections worldwide by the end of 2023. All told, more than 261 operators offered commercial 5G services as of February 2024, representing the fastest new network generation rollout ever. Of course, Telecom Ramblings readers know that those figures need an asterisk. … [visit site to read more]

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News

A contract worth billions of dollars will provide U.S. Navy agencies with T-Mobile equipment for years to come

This article was originally released by our sister publication Broadband Communities

T-Mobile has been selected for a $2.67 billion defence contract that will make them a wireless solutions provider for the U.S. Navy for the next decade.

The contract replaces a previous iteration, known as Spiral 3, which expired in May.

With the new Spiral 4 contract, all agencies under the U.S. Department of Defence umbrella will have the ability to place orders for wireless services and equipment for the next 10 years with T-Mobile.

An announcement from T-Mobile, released Thursday, explained how the company has grown its range of services for government operations since 2017, when the provider began participating in Spiral 3.

T-Mobile’s release cited the company’s advanced 5G network solutions, which includes applications that can “meet specific performance needs of government agencies,” as an advantage.

David Bezzant, a VP of sales with T-Mobile’s government division, said the Spiral 4 contract award is a testament to T-Mobile’s network and emphasis on solutions.

“With a cutting-edge product portfolio, a proven track record and a clear vision for the future, we’re ready to take government innovation to the next level,” he said, according to T-Mobile’s release. “It’s an honor to serve those who serve this nation.”

Major carriers like T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T were all involved with the Spiral 3 contract vehicle, which allowed agencies to place orders against the contract.

T-Mobile’s release called the Spiral 4 contract a ” comprehensive, multiple-award contract” that includes solutions for voice, data, fixed wireless access, Internet of Things and mobility management.

In the future, according to T-Mobile, the government could also leverage the company’s partnership with Starlink.

In January, T-Mobile celebrated the launch of Starlink satellites with Direct to Cell technology.

According to T-Mobile, the milestone, part of the Coverage Above and Beyond Initiative, “aims to bring connectivity nearly everywhere in the U.S.” for T-Mobile customers.

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

Also in the news:
Freshwave to deploy small cells in Manchester for VMO2
SGP.32: A reality check on the latest remote SIM provisioning standard
Telefónica Germany and Ericsson renew core network partnership  

Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
Subscribe to our FREE weekly email newsletters for the latest telecom info in developing and emerging markets globally.

Four infrastructure projects, three in the southern hemisphere and one not so far from the equator: … [visit site to read more]