What’s up with… Nokia & Samsung, Omdia, Wayve & Uber

• Nokia dismissive of Samsung speculation
• Omdia draws up AI risk roadmap
• Wayve and Uber drive autonomous vehicle development 

In today’s industry news roundup: Nokia brushes off rumours of a potential sale of its mobile assets, but fails to deny them too; Omida and AT&T point to privacy and data security as top considerations for telcos to consider when implementing risk management strategies for AI; Wayve and Uber are pooling their respective expertise to accelerate the development of more advanced levels of autonomous vehicles; and more!

Remember the telecoms go-go years of the 1990s and early 2000s? The days when Nokia bestrode the world like one of the Jatuli (the mythical giants of mediaeval Finnish folklore) and utterly dominated the mobile phone arena? Ah, days long gone by. Things have changed and Nokia is no longer the colossus it once was. Now the company is considering its options where its mobile networks assets are concerned – in tacit acceptance that it has lost out to other giants in places such as China and South Korea and is quite unable to compete with them. Rumours abound but the most commonly heard is that Nokia intends to divest itself of all or, (if it can’t get rid of all of it in one go) some parts of its mobile division, which is the company’s biggest unit. The only other option seems to be to spin it off and go into partnership with another company in the hope that a combined offering might confer improved market strength. According to Bloomberg, Samsung of Korea is showing considerable interest in buying what Nokia has decided it needs to sell, and the price tag is in the area of $10bn. It’s not that the mobile network assets aren’t making money for Nokia, they are. Last year they accounted for some 44% of Nokia’s total revenue. However, global spending on 5G equipment is in decline and telcos in Europe have decided to save money by putting long-planned network upgrades on the back burner for the time being. That said, Samsung, famous for its long-term strategic planning, has big ambitions in 5G in general and in 5G radio access networks (RAN) in particular. As the rumours of a possible sale percolated through the industry, Nokia’s share price rose by 7.1% on the Helsinki stock market. Samsung has refused to comment and Nokia itself issued a statement saying it “has nothing to announce in relation to the speculations.” So no outright denial then. As the old saying has it, “There’s no smoke without fire” and that haze in the air is the Finnish tundra smouldering. 

In its latest report, research company Omdia has highlighted the key regulatory considerations that telcos must address when adopting AI solutions. It noted that while most AI systems in telecoms are still under development, AI is poised to play a significant role in the sector in the mid-term. Therefore, it is essential that telcos are aware of the potential regulatory risks and challenges associated with AI adoption.“While the use of AI creates many benefits, such as improved customer service, optimised network operations, detecting new business opportunities, cost savings, and process automation, there are also numerous risks and challenges to be aware of,” said Sarah McBride, principal analyst for regulation at Omdia. Identified risks include the availability of unbiased and reliable data, liability in case of error, lack of trust in decision-making, and – of course – privacy and security. “It would be prudent for telcos to proactively implement a risk management framework within their systems before AI implementation, ensuring adherence to standards of data quality, accuracy, robustness, and non-discrimination,” added McBride. “Equally important is the adoption of an ethical, human-centric and trustworthy approach to AI.” AT&T also had words to say about AI ethics and safety, in particular with reference to GenAI for internal and external use. Writing on the company blog, Andy Markus, chief data officer for AT&T, said that: “Privacy and data security also need to be top of mind, as is ensuring the feedback you’re getting from a GenAI tool is accurate, reliable and free of bias.” He added: “I have no doubt we’ll get there, though. The opportunities are enormous.” Markus also revealed that AT&T’s software developers are seeing efficiency gains of 30% or more when using GenAI to help develop and create code. “Our internal GenAI platform, called Ask AT&T, is delivering benefits not just for our software developers, but for employees across the company and the customers they serve,” he said. 

UK-based autonomous driving software company Wayve has announced a partnership with Uber to accelerate its work with global OEMs to deliver Level 2+ “advanced driver assistance” and Level 3 “automated driving capabilities” to consumer vehicles. The two companies will also collaborate on the development of globally scalable Level 4 autonomous vehicles. Uber will make a further financial investment in Wayve, following its earlier Series C fundraising round. “Wayve is building a ‘general purpose’ driving Al that can power all levels of driving automation in any type of vehicle, anywhere in the world,” said Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve. The company, whose backers also include SoftBank and Nvidia, has developed mapless end-to-end AI technology, designed to allow automated vehicles to operate without geofenced limits. “Wayve’s advanced Embodied AI approach holds a ton of promise as we work towards a world where modern vehicles are shared, electric and autonomous,” added Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber. The SAE (originally known as the Society of Automobile Engineers) defines six levels of driving automation. They range from Level 0 – no driving automation – to Level 5 – full driving automation. There has been some recent confusion around Levels 3 and 4, as they both refer to driverless conditions – you may be in the driver’s seat, but you are not driving. However, if a Level 3 vehicle suddenly requests human intervention, then the human driver must take over; with Level 4 this will never happen. So where does that leave level 5? This autonomous nirvana applies to systems that will drive “everywhere and in all conditions”. 

NTT Docomo Ventures has invested in dhost Global, which operates an indoor infrastructure sharing (i.e. neutral host) business in Indonesia and other South-east Asian countries. Tokyo-headquartered dhost Global builds, operates and maintains indoor antennas and related equipment on behalf of telcos at an unspecified number of sites in South-east Asia. The company says that it currently has the largest number of facilities and installation sites in Indonesia. dhost is a subsidiary of Japan’s EXEO Group, which specialises in managed services, engineering and infrastructure facility construction. In addition to the investment deal, dhost has also concluded an agreement with NTT East to investigate the possibility of collaboration in general infrastructure sharing in the South-east Asia region. Read more.

Over the past few years, Ireland has carved out a lucrative niche for itself as a willing host to datacentres for clients around the world. There are now more than 80 of them dotted around Dublin and other parts of the the Emerald Isle and the Irish media has been making much of the latest development – Google’s plans to build a massive (and massively expensive) datacentre at Grange Castle Business Park in South Dublin, on the outskirts of Ireland’s capital city. Planning permission has already been granted for at least 30 more. Reaction to the proposal has been mixed with some welcoming the project as a boost to the local and national economy while others protest of Google’s “greenwashing” of the project and that the nation’s power grid will buckle under the strain of demand for the huge amount of electricity that will be required to run and cool the gigantic 72,000 square metre edifice. The American Football pitch, at 5,350 square metres, is commonly used globally as some sort of a comparator of size. The Google data centre would accommodate almost 13.5 of them. As reported by the Irish Times newspaper, South Dublin County Council has stopped the almighty Google in its tracks by refusing the application on the grounds that there is “insufficient capacity in the electricity network” to permit construction of the datacentre, a circumstance that will be compounded by “lack of significant on site renewable energy” to power it by its planned operational date of mid-2027. It is almost unbelievable, but true, that datacentres now drain 21% of all electricity generated in Ireland. The national grid is the responsibility of EirGrid and, it says, “rolling blackouts” will become the norm for the Irish people if the number of overseas technology companies parking their power-hungry datacentres on Irish land continues to grow. The general feeling is that there are too many of them already and, although they do provide local employment and make some (but only some) contributions to the national exchequer, it is necessary to call time on the construction of even more. The latest estimates from AirGrid are that, by 2026, datacentres will gobble-up 32% of all electricity generated in the Irish Republic. Meanwhile, the Irish National Trust has calculated that, if the construction of Google’s datacentre were to be allowed, it would add an extra 224,250 tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum. That equates to close to half of a percent of Ireland’s total output of carbon dioxide from just one building. Google has indicated that it “may” appeal the decision. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? It would be no skin off Google’s nose if rolling blackouts have Irish citizens reading by candlelight while a monstrous power-guzzling carbuncle uses the electricity they should be getting. This is unsustainability writ large. 

Singtel is collaborating with AI cloud platform company Nscale to build out a more comprehensive GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) offering globally, ensuring that their customers benefit from the flexibility of a wider geographic footprint and robust infrastructure support. The strategic partnership should also drive greater utilisation in their respective GPU clusters. Singtel will leverage Nscale’s AMD and Nvidia GPU capacity in Europe, while Nscale will be able to tap into Singtel’s Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPU capacity in the South-east Asian region for their customers’ workloads through an integration with Singtel’s orchestration platform, Paragon. “As we continue to augment our GPUaaS offerings, we are forging a series of strategic partnerships to grow our ecosystem and broaden our service availability for our customers,” said Bill Chang, CEO of Singtel Digital InfraCo and Nxera. “Our partnership with Nscale will allow our customers to tap into their high-performance GPU resources on demand, unlocking new possibilities for innovation and efficiency.” Singtel first announced back in February that it would be launching its GPUaaS this year. It also recently announced a partnership with Vultr in the US and a strategic partnership with Bridge Alliance that will bring its GPUaaS offerings to enterprises across South-east Asia. See also SK Telecom to deploy Nvidia GPU cluster with Lambda. Read more.

And finally, an extra quantum of news courtesy of Juniper Networks as it has announced a strategic investment in Quantum Bridge Technologies, which specialises in distributed symmetric key exchange (DSKE) for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) networks. This investment (amount undisclosed) should enable the Toronto-headquartered Quantum Bridge to scale its DSKE solution. In addition, the two companies will collaborate through Juniper Beyond Labs’ pathfinding projects. Quantum Bridge has developed a patented DSKE technology that provides the industry’s first symmetric key distribution solution. According to professional services firm Qureca, the quantum key distribution (QKD) market is projected to grow from $6bn to $13bn by 2030. “Our collaborative efforts with Quantum Bridge have demonstrated the ability to translate theoretical advancements into practical implementations, positioning them as a frontrunner in securing digital infrastructures against quantum attacks,” said Raj Yavatkar, CTO at Juniper Networks. If you need a bigger fix of quantum technologies, then we have a whole website full of content for you right here.

– The staff, TelecomTV