What’s up with… Telefónica Deutschland, Xavier Niel & eir, Cisco

• Telefónica Deutschland hits 1.7Gbit/s with 5G SA 
• Xavier Niel tightens his grip on Irish telco eir
• Cisco linked to CoreWeave investment, bows out of LoRaWAN

In today’s industry news roundup: German operator displays the mobile data speed potential of 5G SA; Iliad’s owner is increasing his stake in eir as hedge fund stakeholder backs out; Cisco is linked to an investment in AI hyperscaler CoreWeave and has announced its exit from the IoT equipment market; and much more!

German mobile operator Telefónica Deutschland (aka O2 Telefónica) reports that it has used the full capabilities of its 5G standalone (SA) network, operational nationwide since October 2023, to aggregate capacity in four spectrum bands to achieve cellular download speeds of more than 1.7Gbit/s, “almost twice as fast as the most powerful commercial fibre optic connections currently available,” the operator boasted. The milestone mobile data speed was achieved using network equipment from Nokia and a Samsung S24 Ultra smartphone. The operator used capacity in the 3.6 GHz and 700 MHz bands (existing 5G frequencies) plus capacity in the 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz bands (normally used for 4G). By bundling these four frequency bands together for 5G connectivity using a technique normally referred to as carrier aggregation, O2 Telefónica was “able to achieve new 5G peak performances on the network,” it noted in this announcement. “O2 Telefónica is actively driving the future of digital networking for consumers and for the economy,” stated Matthias Sauder, director of networks at O2 Telefónica. “For the first time, we have bundled four frequencies in the standalone 5G network. The speeds achieved in the test illustrate the possibilities that 5G standalone offers in practice. They are a taste of further technological developments and the network expansion of the future. For our customers, the progress in 5G technology means even faster mobile internet and better network quality in the future,” he added. 

Telecom sector entrepreneur Xavier Niel, founder and owner of ambitious and growing European operator Iliad, is steadily increasing his stake in the Irish national operator eir as US hedge fund firm Anchorage Capital cashes in and reduces its holding in the telco. Iliad and one of Niel’s investment vehicles, NJJ Holding, now jointly hold a 66.7% stake. And Niel has vowed to retain ownership of eir for the long term, according to The Irish Times. “It will not be for sale, until the day I die,” Niel told the newspaper. Niel has built a European telecom empire through launches and organic growth in France and Italy and acquisitions in multiple markets, including Poland and Ukraine. Iliad and NJJ also jointly hold a near 20% stake in Swedish operator Tele2. The French tycoon is also looking to expand his empire in other territories and has been attempting to take control of Latin American telco Millicom.   

Cisco is reportedly one of the investors set to pump a fresh round of funding into CoreWeave in a move that will value the self-styled “AI hyperscaler” at £23bn, according to Bloomberg. CoreWeave, which counts Nvidia as one of its existing backers, is building a network of AI workload-focused datacentres, something that requires a lot of upfront capital. The company raised $1.1bn in its Series C round earlier this year, before securing $7.5bn in debt financing in May this year. Michael Intrator, CoreWeave CEO and co-founder, stated in May: “CoreWeave is building the infrastructure to power the AI innovations that are already changing how businesses operate in the global economy. The calibre of investors in this large debt financing round is a powerful testament to both the insatiable market appetite for AI infrastructure and their belief in CoreWeave’s ability to deliver cutting-edge innovation for the largest AI labs and innovators at scale. And we are really just getting started – our ambitions are to help reshape the cloud landscape, accelerate the AI race, and power the next generation of AI innovation that is changing the course of history,” added the CEO. Cisco, like most (if not all) tech firms, is all over AI like a rash and even set up a $1bn investment fund earlier this year to buy stakes in emerging AI startups. Cisco is also restructuring and reshaping itself as it transitions from its legacy markets into the security, software, analytics and AI sectors – an evolution accelerated by its $28bn acquisition of Splunk – and recently announced a headcount reduction of 6,300 jobs. 

As it focuses more on security, data and AI, Cisco is focusing less on its networking products and, as a result, the giant vendor is exiting the market for long range wide area network (LoRaWAN) internet of things (IoT) gateways and associated network elements that are used by enterprises to build their IoT networks. Multiple industry reports, including this one from The Register, note that Cisco, in its end-of-sale and end-of-life announcement for the Cisco LoRaWAN, is leaving customers in the lurch: “There is no replacement available for the Cisco LoRaWAN at this time.” That’s bad news for enterprise IoT users, as Cisco was one of the main players in the LoRaWAN tech space, it seems. Its customers have until the end of this year to order any additional products they need, while support for the hardware products will end on 31 December 2029: That sounds like a long time away, but now begins the troublesome and costly process of finding a replacement and investing in an alternative network. 

Back to the topic of investments, generative AI (GenAI) giant OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, this week confirmed its latest round of funding, a $6.6bn round that values the company at an astonishing $157bn. “The new funding will allow us to double down on our leadership in frontier AI research, increase compute capacity, and continue building tools that help people solve hard problems,” noted the company in this announcement. “We aim to make advanced intelligence a widely accessible resource. We’re grateful to our investors for their trust in us, and we look forward to working with our partners, developers, and the broader community to shape an AI-powered ecosystem and future that benefits everyone. By collaborating with key partners, including the US and allied governments, we can unlock this technology’s full potential,” it added. In addition, OpenAI “established a new $4bn credit facility with JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Santander, Wells Fargo, SMBC, UBS, and HSBC… This means we now have access to over $10bn in liquidity, which gives us the flexibility to invest in new initiatives and operate with full agility as we scale,” the company stated in this announcement. In his Radio Free Mobile blog discussing the $157bn valuation, analyst Richard Windsor noted that OpenAI had “capitalised on investors’ desperation to invest” and was not behaving in a manner befitting a company with that kind of market value. “The one cool head here is Apple which, according to reports, has declined to invest in OpenAI, which is also an indication that Apple Intelligence has no intention of remaining exclusive to ChatGPT.” It’s an insightful blog that is well worth checking out.  

News of some M&A action in Latin America. In Chile, competition regulator FNE has given the go-ahead for América Móvil to acquire ClaroVTR, a joint venture created in 2021 by the Latin American telco giant and Liberty Latin America (LLA), according to BNamericas. There may be further consolidation in that market, as América Móvil and Telefónica are set to team up to acquire the assets of Chilean network operator WOM, which filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, according to this announcement to investors by América Móvil (which we previously reported on in early September. And in Brazil, Telefónica subsidiary Vivo has completed the acquisition of cloud services specialist Ipnet for 230 million Brazilian reais ($42m). Ipnet will be integrated into Vivo’s Telefónica Cloud Brasil (TCloud) operation. 

UK national operator BT Group says its new Enhanced Call Protect for digital voice has “successfully blocked more than 2,430,000 scam and identified 17,700,000 spam calls to landlines since the new scam protection service from Hiya was introduced in May.” Read more. 

– The staff, TelecomTV