Turkcell (NYSE: TKC) (BIST: TCELL), Türkiye’s leading telecommunications and technology company, in collaboration with Huawei, has successfully implemented autonomous network functions within its IP Backbone Network. This milestone marks a significant advancement in the evolution of telecom infrastructure, enhancing the automation, efficiency, and intelligence of Turkcell’s network management systems.

With the integration of autonomous network functions, Turkcell delivers a green network with autonomous energy-saving capabilities. This innovation not only optimizes network performance, but it also significantly reduces energy consumption, which contributes to reaching Turkcell’s sustainability goals. Through intelligently managing power usage across the network, Turkcell ensures that its operations are environmentally friendly while maintaining the high performance that its users expect. This movement is an essential part of Turkcell’s broader green energy initiatives, which aim to minimize the environmental footprint of their network infrastructure.

Turkcell’s green network initiatives are further enhanced by the dynamic energy-saving capabilities, which make significant reductions in energy consumption without compromising network reliability. By dynamically adjusting energy use based on real-time traffic demands with Huawei NetEngine 8000 X backbone router and Network Digital Map, Turkcell is able to provide faster, more efficient services while minimizing operational costs. The 400GE backbone router supports a smooth upgrade to possess AI capabilities, and Network Digital Map provides energy-saving visualization. Green network is particularly important in the face of growing demand for 5G-A and next-generation digital services, ensuring that Turkcell remains at the cutting edge of sustainability in telecom.

“We are excited to announce the successful application of autonomous network functions in our IP Backbone Network, a key step in our journey towards a fully autonomous, intelligent, and sustainable network,” said Prof. Dr. Vehbi Çağrı Güngör, Chief Technology Officer of Turkcell. “This technology enables us to reduce energy consumption and better meet the growing demand for 5G-A and next-generation of digital services.” 

“We are proud to be partner with Turkcell in this pioneering project,” said ZuoMeng, President of Data Communication Product Line Router Domain at Huawei. “The implementation of autonomous network functions is a game-changer for the telecommunications industry, allowing Turkcell to leverage Net5.5G’s technologies to offer a more efficient, sustainable, and scalable network. This collaboration demonstrates our commitment to driving innovation and advancing telecom infrastructure in Türkiye and beyond.” In the future, Turkcell will innovatively cooperate with Huawei on the newly launched AI WAN at MWC, opening up new business opportunities.

ABOUT TURKCELL:

Turkcell is a technology and telecommunications company headquartered in Türkiye, offering a unique portfolio of voice, data and IPTV services over its mobile and fixed networks along with digital consumer, enterprise and techfin services. Turkcell Group operates in three countries: Türkiye, Belarus and Northern Cyprus. Listed on both the NYSE and BIST since July 2000, Turkcell remains the only dual-listed company on these exchanges. Read more at www.turkcell.com.tr.

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Fuelled by a newly refreshed Board of Directors, Telefonica’s incoming chairman Marc Murtra is wasting no time in reshaping the company from the top down.

Telefonica has this week announced a major executive reshuffle, marking the start of a new strategic direction with chairman Marc Murtra at the helm.

The first and most significant change is the promotion of Telefonica Spain CEO Emilio Gayo to the role of Group COO and executive director. In this role, he will oversee the Group’s operations in in Spain, Brazil, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as the B2B, Telefónica Tech, Telefónica Infra and gCTIO business units.

Gayo, who has worked at Telefonica in various roles for the past two decades, replaces outgoing COO Ángel Vilá.

Vilá will remain on the board of Virgin Media O2 in the UK and is being proposed for a board position at Telefonica Germany.

In addition to the new COO, Murtra is also leaning on ex-colleagues from his previous employer, defence firm Indra, to fill strategic positions.

Borja Ochoa, previously general director of defence and security at Indra, will replace Gayo at the head of Telefonica Spain, while the CEO of Telefonica Tech, José Cerdán, will also be replaced by an Indra alumnus, Sofía Collado.

Finally, there will also be a change of chief digital officer, with Sebas Muriel replacing Chema Alonso, who has held the role for the past 13 years.

The scale and speed of this reshuffle is worth noting. New chairman Murtra took over the position from José María Álvarez-Pallete after the latter’s surprise ousting in January. Murtra’s appointment was largely seen as relating to the Spanish government’s increasing sensitivity over Telefonica’s future, with the state having grown its stake in the business to counterbalance foreign investment from the likes of the UAE’s e&.

Since taking over the role six weeks ago, Spanish media has reported that Murtra has been dissatisfied with Vilá, with his replacement seen as the first step in a major restructure that will likely include changes to several more leadership positions.

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Also in the news:
EY launches suite of AI agents for telcos
Discussing the fate of the BEAD Program with Dr. Nathan Smith
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison Becomes First Mobile Operator in Southeast Asia to Deploy AI-RAN with Nokia and NVIDIA

New York – March 4, 2025, Lightpath, an all fiber, infrastructure based connectivity provider revolutionizing how organizations connect to their digital destinations, announced the company has completed the acquisition of WANRack’s network assets and customers in the Phoenix metropolitan market. This acquisition adds 133 route miles of fiber, including diverse paths between the Goodyear data center ecosystem and metro Phoenix carrier hotel facilities, accelerating Lightpath’s service readiness and expansion in the region.

 In conjunction with Lightpath’s recent Phoenix market entry announcement, the integration of WANRack’s assets increases Lightpath’s total network footprint in the market to 363 route miles. Upon construction completion, this infrastructure will connect 10 key data centers via underground, multi-duct conduit systems, linking emerging data center hubs in Goodyear, Buckeye, Chandler, Glendale, Mesa, and Tempe to Phoenix’s primary carrier exchange ecosystems.

Beyond the 10 planned connected data centers, the network will be strategically positioned near more than 30 additional single and multi-tenant data center campuses. While Lightpath is already service ready on 133 miles of acquired fiber, additional high priority network segments will be constructed in Q2 2025, with full network completion targeted by the end of 2026.

View a Map of Lightpath’s Phoenix Network

“WANRack’s Phoenix business is a perfect fit with Lightpath’s recent market entry and provided a solution for solving our strategic customer’s near-term requirements,” explained Rachel Stack, CFO, Lightpath. “This transaction demonstrates our creative problem solving and commitment to innovative solutions in response to customer challenges.” 

“Phoenix represents a strategic and growing market for Lightpath as we look to provide critical fiber infrastructure to customers with intensive bandwidth requirements”, stated Tim Haverkate, EVP, Major Infrastructure Solutions, Lightpath. “We look forward to partnering with WANRack’s customers to serve their growing connectivity needs and expanding Lightpath’s fiber infrastructure and customer relationships across Phoenix.”

About Lightpath:

Lightpath is revolutionizing how customers connect to their digital destinations by combining our next-generation network with our next-generation customer service. Lightpath’s advanced fiber-optic network offers a comprehensive portfolio of custom-engineered connectivity solutions with unparalleled performance, reliability, and security. Our consultative customer service means we work with you to design, deliver, and support the solution for your unique needs, faster and more easily than ever before. For over 30 years, thousands of enterprises, governments, and educators have trusted Lightpath to power their organization’s innovation. Lightpath is jointly owned by Altice USA (NYSE: ATUS) and Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners.

Follow Lightpath on LinkedIn. For more information, please visit lightpathfiber.com.

For Lightpath Media Inquiries:

JSA for Lightpath

1-866-695-3629 

jsa_lightpath@jsa.net

Subsea cable provider Seacom tapped satellite firm Q-KON to enhance its LEO satellite services, and bolster the resiliency of its network across its footprint in Africa.

The companies explained, LEO satellite solutions provide an alternative connectivity layer by routing data via satellite to teleport facilities before reaching network centres and endpoints. This has already been deployed in South Africa since early 2024.

The partnership with Q-KON will enable SEACOM customers to incorporate LEO connectivity into their digital infrastructure, particularly in industries requiring low-latency, high-reliability networks such as mining, retail, and financial services.

SEACOM Group Digital Services MD, Sajid Khan, said: « LEO connectivity allows South African enterprises to reinforce their digital ecosystems and invest in heightened network resilience and business continuity.

“The partnership showcases the co-creation between the two companies, whose synergistic relationship has allowed us to combine our in-depth understanding of terrestrial infrastructure with their specialised expertise in satellite-based networks, resulting in innovative solutions tailored to modern business challenges, » added Khan.

Dr Dawie de Wet, Group CEO of Q-KON and its African satellite service, Twoobii, commented: “The recent accelerated growth of satellite services in general for Africa, and LEO services specifically, provides Q-KON with a unique opportunity to develop Africa-centric solutions leveraging the global constellations and our in-depth system engineering capabilities.”

On Day 3 of MWC2025, James Chen, President of Carrier Business, Huawei, gave a speech focused on how AI innovation will drive value creation.

With the rapid development of 5G, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, consumers and enterprises are demanding new digital and intelligent services. The traditional business models of the telecom industry are facing profound changes, and Chen underlined three main aspects that should be reshaped.

Firstly, operators can – and indeed should – reshape their business models around value creation, expanding proactively from connectivity into more digital and intelligent services. They also need to reshape operations and maintenance, utilizing AI and Big Data to optimize them, and reshape infrastructure by advancing the integration of multi-element synergetic networks to provide strong support for innovative services.

One example is different models for differentiated experience monetization. With consumer services evolving, businesses can be impacted by 5G network congestion – for example, a livestreamer selling products during their stream. If this becomes an issue, the network can automatically send a VIP package recommendation to the user, and once they accept the offer their livestreaming business is guaranteed immediately, with ‘VIP Assurance’ displayed on the device. This is a case of operators monetizing experience.

To achieve this business model, operators firstly need to apply AI technologies to recommend the right package for the users, and then they can dynamically adjust users’ bandwidth. The differentiated experience monetization enables operators to find more opportunities in more scenarios, such as gaming, business traveling and hotspot areas.

Moving onto intelligent homes, Chen detailed how operators in Korea and China are establishing a unified intelligent home entry with an AI agent inside. The agent serves as a gateway for accessing different intelligent home devices and AI-based services, interpreting the intentions of each family member and invoking the right applications in the cloud. For example, in the instance that an elderly relative falls, the home Wi-Fi router can automatically detect it, recognize that they need help, and alert family members. Operators can use different services to meet different needs; in this way, by bundling a high-speed fiber network with an AI Agent that can invoke various cloud services, operators can begin to shift from being home broadband providers to AI services providers.

Chen explained that while AI provides opportunities in toC and toH business, it also supports digital transformation for other industries. For example, An operator from North Africa has used its existing mobile money service as an entry point for SMEs, and is utilizing its cloud as a platform to support digital transformation of vertical industries – this was the key to developing B2B business. Its cloud was built to meet the needs of local industry and integrates both local and global partners into a unified one-stop digitization platform. It provides developers with a low code environment featuring 1-click onboarding of new applications. In this way, operators can expand from connectivity into a broad range of cloud services to help local industries bridge the digital intelligence gap.

Traditional operations and maintenance also need AI-based innovation to support techco transformation. Interruption to a wireless service can be identified in under three minutes, with an AI agent assisting the field engineer throughout the repair process. The whole process is automatic, thanks to the telecom foundation model. Without it, network troubleshooting involves entire network elements and many engineers, but with the model, the troubleshooting is fully automated with an AI agent, and the Field Maintenance Engineer carrying out the repairs is fully supported by an AI copilot.  This improves the user experience, reducing the provisioning time and troubleshooting time, and helping to optimize resource allocation efficiency.

Outlining how operators can adopt this capability, Chen explained that the first step is for operators to build a digital twin of their network and its services, then integrate this with a large telecom model. Finally, they should construct and implement knowledge-based automatic O&M operations into their daily activities.

Chen explained some major changes that will be required in the sphere of infrastructure, noting that data centers will need to be upgraded to support both high-performance training and fast inference. The traditionally north-south traffic flow is being joined by an east-west flow, and network capabilities are evolving from best effort to deterministic experience. Chen outlined how a future-oriented architecture should consider the various layers of these changes:

Intelligent connections: the network should evolve to support deterministic experience and lossless connection.

Intelligent clouds: build distributed and diversified computing power to provide cloud-based services and intelligent computing services.

All elements collaboration, from planning to operation: the operators should consider collaborative construction and resource scheduling between cloud and network, and between network and computing power.

The development of AI will accelerate techco transformation, and Chen explained how Huawei can help operators from three perspectives.

Firstly, it provides AI-boosted business, which can help operators to enrich their service offerings such as connectivity + X to SMEs, Cloud platform for large industries, and a mobile money Super-app.

Next, it supports AI-enabled operation. With Huawei’s telecom foundation model operators can enable existing NOC and SOC with AI Agents and Copilots.

Finally, it helps evolve to AI-centric Infrastructure. Operators can leverage Huawei’s technology leadership to help build a synergetic infrastructure with flexible resource scheduling to meet future service requirements.

The AI era has arrived, and the best time to act is now. Chen stated Huawei’s belief that transformation is not the goal – value creation is the essence. Huawei is willing to work together with operators and partners to accelerate the transformation to techco through joint innovation and efforts, continuously creating greater value.

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Shabahat Shakeel, Head of Business Development, WaveMaker

The telecom industry is at the cusp of transformation, driven by advancements in 5G, edge computing, and IoT. At the heart of this transformation lies the concept of network APIs. … [visit site to read more]

News

This week, Vodafone and AST SpaceMobile have announced a new joint venture, SatCo, to bring space-based mobile broadband to Europe. The company said it will aim to provide “100% geographic coverage in every part of Europe”

SatCo will act as the exclusive distributor of AST SpaceMobile’s satellite services across Europe, using Vodafone’s network and AST’s low Earth orbit (LEO) technology. The collaboration is set to deliver mobile broadband directly to users without requiring additional hardware or software.  

“Vodafone’s space-based mobile broadband will mean our customers can stay connected, wherever they are. Our new satellite company will be able to offer this pioneering technology to other European mobile operators through a turnkey service that combines Vodafone’s leading network and engineering with AST SpaceMobile’s ‘antennas in the sky’,” said Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle in a press release. 

The company will be headquartered in Europe and will operate a network of ground stations to ensure secure and sovereign backhaul services. AST SpaceMobile’s satellites function as remote radio heads, maintaining core network control within MNOs.  

In January, Vodafone announced that it had successfully conducted the world’s first space-based mobile video call using AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird satellites. The demonstration showed that satellite broadband can integrate with Vodafone’s existing mobile networks. With commercial rollout planned for 2025 and 2026, the service will expand coverage to areas where traditional networks struggle, including mountains, rural locations, and open waters. 

Join us at Connected North, 23-24 April in Manchester. Get discounted tickets here! 

Also in the news:
EY launches suite of AI agents for telcos
Discussing the fate of the BEAD Program with Dr. Nathan Smith
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison Becomes First Mobile Operator in Southeast Asia to Deploy AI-RAN with Nokia and NVIDIA

Airwallex, a global payments and financial platform for growing businesses, says it has signed definitive agreements to acquire CTIN Pay, an intermediary payment service (IPS) licensed company in Vietnam.

The acquisition, subject to customary closing conditions, expands Airwallex’s existing licences across major Asia-Pacific (APAC) markets, including Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, mainland China and Japan.

This move, the company adds, deepens the global reach of Airwallex’s financial infrastructure, aiding Vietnamese merchants to its overseas expansion, and facilitating international businesses to enter the Vietnamese market.

Airwallex says that Vietnam’s economy, with its strong growth and rapid digital transformation, is well positioned as a strategic growth market for the company in the region.

It adds that by expanding its financial infrastructure across Southeast Asia, Airwallex is well-positioned to support businesses in Vietnam, enabling them to scale internationally with greater ease.

Airwallex is strategically acquiring companies to strengthen its global presence and build a robust financial foundation for businesses worldwide. The acquisition in Vietnam follows the completion of Airwallex’s purchase of MexPago, a Mexico-based payment service provider with an Institution of Electronic Payment Funds (IFPE) licence. 

Founded in Australia in 2015 and now headquartered in Singapore, Airwallex has achieved significant growth across the APAC region in recent years. Globally, Airwallex has exceeded US$600 million in annualised revenue and US$130 billion in annualised transaction volume – a testament, it says, to the growing demand for its cross-border payment solutions and global financial infrastructure.

Contributed Article

The evolution of mobile networks will transform how people connect, work, and interact with technology. At this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona, Huawei’s Corporate Senior Vice President and President of lCT Sales & Service, Li Peng highlighted the role of 5G advancements in improving the user experiences and creating new business opportunities, in his keynote speech

“We’re rapidly entering a fully intelligent world. Intelligent applications are spreading everywhere, placing new demands on networks,” said Li. “By embracing and evolving 5G, we can unlock the infinite potential of mobile networks. Huawei is willing and ready to work with carriers and industry partners around the world to promote digital enablement, reinforce network foundations, and bring AI to all. Together, we can shape the D.N.A for an intelligent world.”

Improving mobile networks

Li emphasised how the way people interact with technology is changing. With the rise of voice assistants, cloud-based applications, and smart services, mobile networks must offer faster speeds and lower latency. As mobile experiences become more interactive (such as AI-powered voice and visual assistants) networks also must evolve to meet these increased demands.

To be able to do this, networks need to transition from 5G NSA (non-standalone) to 5G SA (standalone) and eventually to 5G-A. Key technologies like Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS), which separates control and user data traffic to improve network efficiency, and Guaranteed Bit Rate (GBR), which ensures a minimum data rate for specific services, will be essential to improving network responsiveness and efficiency.

Managing increased network traffic

Li also discussed the rapid growth of digital content production and distribution. As high-quality videos and interactive media become more widely used, mobile data usage is expected to rise to an “unprecedented” level, again highlighting the need for more spectrum, more network capacity, and greater upload and download bandwidth.

Expanding coverage for smart devices and IoT

As smart devices and cloud services become more widespread, the demand for fast, reliable network coverage continues to grow. By 2030, over a billion people are expected to rely on cloud-based services, which will require seamless access to data and applications. Additionally, smart vehicles and other IoT devices will need continuous network coverage across cities, highways, and rural areas. Carriers will need to continue expanding 5G networks to provide the coverage necessary for these increased needs.

Improving network management with smarter operations

With networks becoming more complex, Li emphasised the importance of smarter operations and maintenance (O&M) systems. Many carriers are already using AI-powered tools to enhance efficiency, predict network issues, reduce downtime, and optimise network traffic in real time. By making these improvements, carriers can provide better service reliability and faster response times, ensuring a more seamless and consistent mobile experience. Some carriers who are already using AI agents, and those with self-learning capabilities can increase troubleshooting efficiency by 30%, by predicting and locating faults in just a few seconds.

New business opportunities

Li also highlighted how carriers can explore new ways to generate revenue. By offering premium services based on network speed, reliability, and custom features, telecom operators can cater to different customer groups. In China for example, telcos have partnered with industries like insurance and hospitality to offer new communication services through Open APIs, leading to increased revenue growth from business clients.

Li predicted that the combination of 5G-A and AI technologies could lead to double-digit growth in Data of Usage (DOU) and Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), creating big opportunities for carriers to monetise their networks.

“The opportunities are huge,” concluded Li. “And the time to act is now. Pioneers are already scaling up fast in over 200 cities around the world. They’re taking solid steps forward, unlocking incredible new value.”

A new subsea cable, some dollars for data centers, a new infrastructure division, and fiber to the middle of a frozen lake: … [visit site to read more]