What’s up with… 9Mobile, Ofcom, Radisys

• Nigeria’s 9Mobile has a new owner 
• UK regulator tackles overseas scam calls
• Radisys lands open broadband deal in US

In today’s industry news roundup: Nigeria’s fourth-largest, and still struggling, mobile operator has a new owner; Ofcom is upping the ante in its efforts to tackle scam calls that originate from outside the UK; Radisys lands an open broadband systems deal in the US; and much more!

The smallest of Nigeria’s four main mobile operators, 9Mobile, has a new owner, according to local reports. Following approval from from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), UK-registered LH Telecommunication has acquired shares for an undisclosed sum that give it a 95.5% stake in struggling 9Mobile, the brand name for Emerging Markets Telecommunication Services (EMTS). The investment was also approved by the African Export Import Bank (AFREXIM), which is the main lender to EMTS. According to This Day Live, a Nigerian news site that has seen an announcement about the investment, LH Telecom has appointed a new board and a new CEO in the form of Obafemi Banigbe, who has more than 24 years’ experience in Africa’s mobile sector, having held senior executive posts at the likes of Airtel Nigeria and Millicom (when that particular operator group, which is now focused on Latin America, still had operations on the continent). 9Mobile used to be part of the Etisalat group, but the Middle East giant abandoned the Nigerian market in 2017 and its operation eventually transitioned to become 9Mobile. But the operator has continued to struggle and has always been much smaller than its main rivals, namely market leader MTN, Airtel and Glo Mobile. According to the national regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission, there are about 221 million mobile lines in the country, of which 9Mobile had only about 13.7 million at the end of September last year, equivalent to a market share of just over 6%, though local reports suggest 9Mobile’s subscriber base has since shrunk to about 11.7 million. 

UK telecoms watchdog Ofcom is stepping up its efforts against scam calls by introducing stricter measures for operators. Phone companies will now have to identify and block calls from abroad that imitate UK landline numbers. Ofcom explained that such fraudulent calls display a false ‘presentation number’ (a number that identifies who is making the call and is shown to the recipient). According to the regulator’s findings from a consultation, the new blocking measures will have “a significant impact on protecting the public from scam calls”. “Under our strengthened industry guidance, millions more scam calls from abroad which use spoofed UK landline numbers will be blocked – with similar plans underway for calls which spoof UK mobile numbers. We’re also challenging the industry and other interested parties to provide evidence on the best solutions to tackle mobile messaging scams,” noted Lindsey Fussell, Ofcom’s group director for networks and communications.

There’s lots of broadband action in the US currently, including multibillion-dollar deals, as we reported last week. But there are also much smaller and technically interesting deals to ponder too. Just as the Linux Foundation forms LF Broadband, a new initiative focused on open-source, disaggregated broadband models and technologies, one of that initiative’s founding members, Radisys (part of Indian giant Jio Platforms), has landed a deal to supply Watch Communications, a rural broadband network operator in the rural midwest of the US (Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio), with its Connect Open Broadband portfolio of flexible broadband solutions. “Using the open APIs and cloud-native microservices included in Radisys’ Connect Open Broadband solution, Watch can efficiently deploy rural broadband infrastructure capable of enabling modern services while minimising operational costs,” noted Radisys in this announcement. Chris Daniels, CEO and president of Watch Communications, stated: “Radisys is the only solution provider that met all of our technical requirements at a cost that achieves a desirable return on investment for the upgrade of our legacy equipment to a broadband access network that meets the bandwidth requirements of our rural communities. The elimination of recurring costs on the RMS [Radisys Management System] software distinguishes Radisys from competitors, while its open disaggregated solutions empower us to reduce vendor lock-in, ultimately driving down expenses and enhancing our margins and profitability.”

Still with the US broadband sector… Frontier Communications claims it is the “first company in North America to successfully trial record-breaking broadband speeds of 100Gbit/s, 50Gbit/s, 25Gbit/s, and 10Gbit/s passive optical networks (PON) technologies simultaneously, all on our existing network.” The enabling technology? Nokia’s Lightspan MF Fiber PON platform. “We are proud to partner with Nokia to lead the industry in successfully trialling ultra-fast speeds enabled by 100G PON technology,” stated Veronica Bloodworth, chief network officer at Frontier, in this announcement. “As demand for faster broadband continues to grow, we have demonstrated our ability to achieve these speeds using our existing fibre network. This trial reinforces our commitment to operational excellence and features the advanced technology created by our Fiber Innovation Labs team, who are always pushing the boundaries of what’s possible for our network and our customers.”

Vodafone has reiterated the risk of the UK falling behind with its nationwide 5G plans if the company is prevented from finalising its proposed merger with domestic rival Three UK. Speaking to The Guardian, the telco group’s CEO, Margherita Della Valle, warned that the new British government under the ruling Labour Party would fall short of its pledge to achieve nationwide 5G coverage by 2030 if the merger is blocked. What’s more, Vodafone’s chief reportedly warned that such a scenario would also be an obstacle to AI development in the UK, and would impact other sectors, given the importance of telco networks for economic growth. And there’s more: Vodafone, which has been undergoing a significant restructure, including job cuts, since Della Valle took the helm at the operator in April 2023, would be forced to cut investment even further if the merger with Three UK were not approved, according to The Guardian, as the telco claims it does not have the financial scale to fully invest in an optimal 5G network. The planned merger is currently under investigation by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over competition concerns. These concerns are also shared by rival operator BT, which opposed the deal, claiming that a merger between Vodafone and Thee UK would create an 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”. Meanwhile, the other major network operator in the UK market – Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) – seems happy with its recent spectrum deal with Vodafone UK, which “addresses the issues we have voiced and the CMA outlined in its initial decision”, according to VMO2 CEO Lutz Schüler.

Still in the UK… The British arm of European neutral host giant Cellnex has struck a new deal to continue providing Vodafone UK and Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) with tower infrastructure and associated services. As part of a new long-term deal, the two telcos will have access to Cellnex’s tower infrastructure across the UK, in a move that facilitates the separate agreement on network sharing that the operators recently signed. “The new agreement, forged through great collaboration between our organisations, will enable the efficient sharing of our infrastructure today and the flexibility to support the growth of our customers’ networks in the future. Cellnex will provide related services and share our capabilities, thereby becoming a valuable partner to help Vodafone and Virgin Media O2 achieve their objectives,” said Gianluca Landonlina, Cellnex UK CEO. Vodafone UK’s chief network officer, Andrea Donà, added that the move will allow it to “expand and maintain our reliable network in all corners of the UK, not only now, but also in the future.” Jeanie York, CTO of VMO2 expressed a similar notion, stating that the partnership with Cellnex will help it “maintain and upgrade our existing sites across the country and ensure we continue to provide our customers with the fast and reliable mobile connectivity they increasingly rely on.” Find out more.

Investments in Open RAN-enabled mobile network systems are set to increase significantly during the next five years, according to a new forecast from Juniper Research, which expects annual operator investment into Open RAN to rise from $2bn this year to $11bn in 2029. In its ‘Global Operator O-RAN Strategies, 2024-2029’ report, the analyst firm explained that cellular data usage will more than double in the next four years on the back of new 5G services expansion, alongside the use of 5G for internet of things (IoT). “To enable telecommunications networks to efficiently process this increased data, the report identified AI-based traffic steering as a crucial service enabled by Open RAN. Traffic steering enables operators to maximise the efficiency of networks through the automated routing of cellular traffic to maximise network resources,” the team at Juniper Research noted. Telcos are urged to “leverage AI-based traffic steering” so that they can “intelligently” steer traffic based on applications. Read more.

- The staff, TelecomTV