Press Release

BT has appointed Peter Leukert to the role of Chief Digital Officer, in which he will have responsibility for leading BT’s Digital unit and driving the company’s digital transformation.

Peter is currently Group Chief Information Officer at Deutsche Telekom and will join BT on 1 September this year and be a member of the Executive Committee, reporting to Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive.

BT’s Digital unit is at the heart of the company’s modernisation and transformation. It plays a critical role in the bold customer experience-led transformation underway, as we radically digitalise and simplify our internal and customer-facing systems and processes to be better for all our stakeholders. Our Digital unit is also a catalyst for digital thinking, and in how we embed data and AI in everything we do, in order for us to become the most trusted connector of people, business and society.

Peter has been Group Chief Information Officer at Deutsche Telecom (DT) since 2017 where he has led a significant and successful transformation of their IT and Digital platforms, products and services, and been a key contributor to the customer experience led transformation that has fuelled DT’s recent growth. He has held previous roles at McKinsey & Co, Commerzbank and the New York Stock Exchange in Germany and the US.

Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive, BT, said: “I’m delighted to welcome Peter to BT. He joins the business at an exciting time as we focus on simultaneously investing in the UK’s leading fixed and mobile networks while transforming our operations to radically improve how we serve our customers.

Peter Leukert said: “I’m thrilled to be joining BT. The opportunity to transform and simplify BT’s operations will improve customer outcomes and drive sustainable business growth, and I am really excited to get started.”

Until Peter joins BT in September, Howard Watson will continue to lead the Digital Unit alongside his responsibilities as Chief Networks and Security Officer.

Join the telecoms ecosystem in discussion at Connected Britain 2025, the UK’s leading digital economy event

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The three-year plan will see new telecoms equipment deployed at over 4,600 locations

This week, the US Department of Transport (DOT) has announced a new plan to upgrade the nation’s ‘antiquated’ air traffic control infrastructure.

The three-year ‘Brand New Air Traffic Control System Plan’ will includes upgrades throughout the system, from new hardware and software to the construction of six new air traffic control centres.

“Decades of neglect have left us with an outdated system that is showing its age. Building this new system is an economic and national security necessity, and the time to fix it is now,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a statement.

The update will also include a major revamp of the system’s telecoms infrastructure, including “new fiber, wireless and satellite technologies at over 4,600 sites, 25,000 new radios and 475 new voice switches”.

The financial requirements for such an upgrade were not formally announced, but Duffy said that “billions” would be required from Congress to complete the project.

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

Also in the news:
Germany appoints first ever digital minister
Signify and Cornerstone to deploy city-wide multi-operator wireless network through street lighting
BT opens new flagship Manchester office

The Indian government has reportedly granted conditional approval for SpaceX’s Starlink to begin offering satellite internet services in the country, according to a report by CNBC-TV18.

The broadcaster said a Letter of Intent was issued to the Elon Musk-owned company on May 7, signalling that a commercial launch is likely imminent. Similar letters were previously issued to Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio Satellite Communications ahead of their full licence approvals, CNBC-TV18 noted.

Starlink has faced several regulatory and political hurdles in its bid to enter the Indian market, which is among the largest in the world for internet connectivity due to its massive population. Its planned rollout encountered opposition from local mobile network operators, as well as national security concerns related to its low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation.

Ahead of receiving the government’s Letter of Intent, SpaceX had signed agreements with major Indian telecom players Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel to support the launch of its Starlink services.

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The proposed changes aim at promoting European innovation and competitiveness on the global stage

This week, the European Commission has launched a public consultation on the bloc’s longstanding merger rules, which it is hoped will encourage investment and innovation.

The review relates to the horizontal merger guidelines (HMG), which governs mergers between actual or potential competitors in the same market, as well as those that operate at different levels of the supply chain.

Seven key topics were listed as a focus of the review: competitiveness and resilience, market power, innovation, decarbonisation, digitalisation, efficiencies, defence and labour considerations.

“This is a pivotal moment for Europe, and it is only by evolving that we can ensure that our merger control policy continues to serve people, drive innovation, and strengthen Europe’s resilience and leadership,” said Teresa Ribera, executive vice president for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition. “We count on your help. We stand ready to hear the views of consumers and businesses all across Europe on how our merger review framework can be made fit for the future.”

The EU’s existing merger rules were drafted in 2004 and have received numerous updates since that time. From a telecoms perspective, these rules have long been viewed as overly restrictive, blocking consolidation in highly competitive markets. This, the operators argue, has limited their ability to invest at scale and is hindering their international competitiveness.

The national antitrust regulators, however, argue that shrinking the number of players in individual markets risks reducing competition, driving up prices for consumers, and decreasing incentive to invest in infrastructure. Regulators from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Portugal notably issued a joint statement to this effect last month.

“The narrative that fragmentation in the electronic communications sector, hindering investment and innovation, allegedly results from unduly strict competition rules is misplaced,” read the statement.

This long-running debate has been thrown into sharp relief in recent years due to global economic instability, particularly the geopolitical clash between the USA and China which has left Europe scrambling to attain technological growth and self-sufficiency.

Following her re-election in July last year, President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wrote a letter to Ribera, outlining the need for “new approach to competition policy” to boost innovation.

The letter asked Ribera to “modernize the EU’s competition policy to ensure it supports European companies to innovate, compete and lead world-wide and contributes to our wider objectives on competitiveness and sustainability, social fairness and security.”

More specifically, it said that revisions to the HMG should “give adequate weight to the European economy’s more acute needs in respect of resilience, efficiency and innovation, the time horizons and investment intensity of competition in certain strategic sectors and the changed defense and security environment.”

These same factors were again highlighted in the newly announced review.

“This comprehensive and ambitious review of the EU merger guidelines is a unique opportunity to modernise the Commission’s framework for assessing the impact of mergers on competition. It will allow us to account for disruptive changes in our societies and our economies over the past 20 years, such as digitalisation, and enable us to ensure that innovation, resilience, and the investment intensity of competition are given adequate weight in light of the European economy’s acute needs,” said Ribera in a statement.

Interested parties have until 3 September to submit their response to the consultation.

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

Also in the news:
Germany appoints first ever digital minister
Signify and Cornerstone to deploy city-wide multi-operator wireless network through street lighting
BT opens new flagship Manchester office

Phase3 and Sonatel have activated a new terrestrial fibre route stretching 3,500km from Lagos, Nigeria, to Dakar, Senegal.

The route will provide scalable, low-latency connectivity, boosting cloud and content capacity across West Africa.

This collaboration marks the next phase of Phase3’s East-West fibre expansion, extending its Lagos-Accra corridor to reach Dakar, one of West Africa’s key digital hubs. This will provide a high-performance, land-based alternative to subsea systems, achieving latency as low as 32ms, and a much-needed layer of resilience for a region heavily impacted by the 2024 cable disruptions.

“This isn’t just a route, it’s a digital spine for West Africa,” said Stanley Jegede, Executive Chairman of Phase 3. “We’ve created a secure, high-capacity terrestrial path linking Dakar to Lagos while interconnecting our major platforms.”

By bridging networks through Benin, Togo, Ghana, and now through to Senegal, the new terrestrial path provides critical redundancy for hyperscalers, content networks, financial institutions, governments, and cloud providers. It also expands the Djoliba network from Ghana into Nigeria, while laying groundwork for Ikasira, Sonatel’s next-generation regional platform.

“We’ve designed this network for hyperscalers, CDNs, and operators that can’t afford downtime,” said Craig Lowe, Chief Growth Officer at Phase 3. “This is about data sovereignty, application performance, and cloud transformation. And most importantly, it’s about building an internet that doesn’t fail when the cables do.”

The route is engineered for financial services, enterprise cloud workloads, public sector digitisation, and media streaming, ensuring cross-border interoperability and local access to cloud zones like AWS Wavelength, hosted by Sonatel in Dakar. It also helps reduce exposure to future subsea outages, supporting national digital strategies across the region.

El Hadji Maty Sene, Managing Director of Sonatel Wholesale and International, added: “Dakar is emerging as a strategic connectivity hub for West Africa. With this route, clients benefit from diversified infrastructure, lower latency, and reliable access to global content.”

Cloud networking and security-as-a-service provider GTT Communications says it has expanded its global Tier 1 IP backbone in nine more countries in the Latin America and Asia Pacific regions.

In a statement on Wedneaday, GTT said its EnvisionCore IP network – which delivers low-latency connectivity for cloud-based applications and enterprise-grade traffic – now reaches key metro markets in Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand.

EnvisionCore serves as the backbone for GTT’s Envision platform, which provides access to the company’s suite of managed networking and security services, including Ethernet, SD-WAN, DDoS mitigation, SASE and managed firewall services.

GTT’s COO George Kuzmanovski said the expansion will boost connectivity options for wholesalers and enterprises operating in those markets, offering up to 400G speeds to handle growing demand for AI workloads and other hyperscale cloud apps.

“We’re especially pleased to expand our EnvisionCore platform to serve customers from these new locations, enhancing their network performance and improving network resiliency,” he said in a statement.

Airtel Africa returned to profit in its latest financial year driven by a rise in subscriber base despite a continued hit from currency devaluation across its markets.

In a statement, the operator highlighted an 8.7% year-on-year increase in total customers to 166.1 million, supported by a 4.3 percentage point rise in smartphone penetration to 44.8%. The number of data customers rose 14.1% to 73.4 million, with data usage per customer increasing by 30.4% to 7GB. This helped boost data ARPU by 15.4% in constant currency.

Mobile money users also grew, with Airtel Money reporting a 17.3% increase in subscribers to 44.6 million and an 11.4% growth in ARPU on a constant currency basis.

Key operational highlights for the year included the deployment of 2,583 new mobile sites and the rollout of approximately 3,300km of fibre to expand network capacity across its footprint.

However, full-year revenue fell 0.5% to US$4.96 billion, dragged down by currency devaluation -although in constant currency, revenue increased by 21.1%. Growth was strongest in the final quarter, buoyed by Nigerian tariff hikes and signs of macroeconomic stabilisation.

EBITDA dropped 5.1% to US$2.3 billion, with the margin narrowing to 46.5% from 48.8% the previous year. Capital expenditure totalled US$670 million, below guidance, but the operator plans to raise this to between US$725 million and US$750 million in the coming year.

Net profit reached US$328 million, a sharp turnaround from a US$89 million loss in the previous year, when earnings were hit by significant foreign exchange and derivative losses, particularly in Nigeria.

Indian data centre firm RackBank says it has broken ground on a campus in the city of Nava Raipur in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Spanning 13.5 acres, the development will be Chhattisgarh’s first data centre campus.

RackBank says that the facility will be built in four phases. The first will offer 80MW of capacity and will be capable of running 100,000 GPUs. It will offer 160MW of capacity at full build-out. The facility will use liquid immersion cooling solutions provided by RackBank itself.

The facility will be located in a newly built, 2.7 hectare Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for AI-based services. SEZs provide incentives and exemptions to encourage investment.

The company has stated that the facility was built on an initial investment of about US$12 million, scalable to US$36 million within five years. Precise rollout and development timings have so far not been provided.

Rackbank provides data centre infrastructure, cloud computing, and AI services. It currently operates a colocation facility in Indore and a hyperscale facility in Chennai, while facilities in Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Noida are currently in development.

In fact it was as recently as late 2024 that RackBank announced the launch of India’s first state-of-the-art, purpose-built AI data centre near Indore, a city in west-central India. This facility is said to be capable of housing 60,000 GPUs, with 80MW power.

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The private mobile network will allow for the widespread use of autonomous vehicles, drones, and real-time IoT monitoring

In partnership with Italian software company Lepida, Fastweb+Vodafone are set to transform the Port of Ravenna, in Italy, into a ‘smart port’, having won a contract to deploy a private 5G network.

The private network will cover the entirety of the port, which spans a roughly 15km long canal, providing ultra-fast, low latency connectivity. This will enable a variety of new use cases, including advanced video surveillance, autonomous vehicle, and drone usage for cargo monitoring.

In addition, the widespread integration of IoT sensors will provide numerous benefits, including the integration of renewable energy systems near the port (including solar and wind power), monitor fuel consumption of vehicles in real time, and collect environmental data such as salinity and pollution levels to support territorial protection policies.

Combined, the new connectivity infrastructure and various use cases will enhance logistics, safety, and sustainability across the site.

The Port of Ravenna is the country’s busiest port for the handling of solid bulk and general cargo and is currently undergoing a €10 million digital upgrade.

The deployment of this private mobile network is one of the first major enterprise projects being undertaken by the newly merged Fastweb+Vodafone.

The two companies were formally combined at the start of this year, following the acquisition of Vodafone Italia by Fastweb’s parent company Swisscom for €8 billion.

The merger has created one of the largest converged operators in Europe, with around 20 million mobile customers and 5.6 million fixed line connections.

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

Also in the news:
Germany appoints first ever digital minister
Signify and Cornerstone to deploy city-wide multi-operator wireless network through street lighting
BT opens new flagship Manchester office

MTN has announced that it will offer up to 1.2 million of its prepaid subscribers an option to buy a 4G smartphone for just ZAR99 ($5.42).

The move comes as South Africa prepares to shutter 2G and 3G services by the end of 2027 in a bid to free up spectrum for 4G and 5G services. This has been met with criticism from some corners, with Reuters reporting that critics claim it could worsen the digital divide among low-income demographics.

In a bid to ensure that users in such areas can afford smartphones that can be used with 4G and 5G networks, operators including MTN are encouraging the uptake of such devices. MTN South Africa CEO Charles Molapisi stated: “As the country transitions to technologies like 4G and 5G, it is vital that we take proactive steps to connect as many South Africans as possible”.

Three stages are planned for the initiative, which will commence this month and run until the end of 2026. The first stage will primarily target users in the Gauteng province, with around 5000 “carefully selected” customers being offered 4G devices based on an evaluation of several criteria, including spending, usage, and how long they have been with MTN.

The second stage will expand the initiative nationwide to over 130,000 customers, with the third stage increasing this to 1.1 million customers. The devices available must be used with an MTN SIM card as part of the agreement, and will feature pre-loaded applications focused on digital services.

MTN has partnered with Smartphone For All to facilitate distribution. The group’s founder and CEO Babatunde Osho said: “By making smartphones more accessible and affordable, we are unlocking opportunities for millions who have been left behind in the digital economy.”