What’s up with… e&, Telefónica & América Móvil, Kyivstar

• e& buys again in Europe as it ramps up full year revenues 
• América Móvil eyes Telefónica unit, reports massive growth
• Kyivstar moves closer to Open RAN deployment

In today’s industry news roundup: Following another year of substantial growth, e& is further expanding its empire in Europe; América Móvil eyes acquisition in Argentina following bumper year of growth; Veon’s Kyivstar is taking its next step towards the deployment of Open RAN solutions from Rakuten Symphony; and much more!

Middle Eastern telecom and digital technology giant e& ramped up its full year revenues by 10.1% in 2024 to 59.2bn Emirati dirham (AED) ($16.1bn) “driven by strong growth across telco and digital verticals attributable to outstanding performance and robust overall economic growth in UAE and better contribution from international markets, alongside heightened demand for digital services,” the company noted in its full year preliminary earnings report. “This funnelled down to robust operating profit growth of 26.4% year over year to AED 20bn” ($5.45bn), it added. The news came as e& further strengthened its asset base in Europe with a deal by its subsidiary, e& PPF Telecom Group, to acquire Serbian operator SBB from the United Group for €825m on a cash and debt-free basis. SBB is a cable TV and broadband service provider with more than 700,000 customers and annual revenues of about €244m (based on 2023 numbers), which will increase e& PPF Telecom Group’s total annual revenues by about 12%. “This transaction will enable e& PPF Telecom to combine SBB with its Serbian mobile subsidiary Yettel, thereby creating a leading converged operator offering enhanced mobile, fixed broadband and pay-TV services in a market with significant growth opportunities,” noted e& in this announcement. “This acquisition aligns with e&’s strategic ambition to scale up e& international in central eastern Europe, diversify revenue sources with more exposure to stable currencies, and accelerate growth in e& PPF Telecom,” it added. e& branched into Europe in 2023 when it announced the €2.2bn acquisition of a majority stake in PPF.  

As part of its overarching strategy to streamline its global operations and reduce its debts, Telefónica is divesting assets across Latin America and is reportedly particularly keen to rid itself of its subsidiary in Argentina as soon as possible – it wants to get a deal done by this summer. However, despite the haste, the disposal won’t be the panicky fire-sale of assets that it could have been. Apparently, at least five major suitors are interested and a bidding war could follow, as non-binding initial offers are expected to be made within the next few weeks, with an expected price tag of at least €1bn. Leading the pack is América Móvil, owned by the octogenarian Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim, and according to a report by the English language news site The Rio Times, other interested parties include Xavier Niel’s Iliad Group, and Liberty Global, which is already a Telefónica partner courtesy of their joint investment in UK network operator Virgin Media O2. In addition, a number of local Argentina-based companies are also reported to be in the running to buy Telefónica’s business, namely: Grupo Werthein, a powerful, long-established and still privately owned holding company with interests in the telecom, agro-chemicals, energy and insurance sectors; Grupo Olmos, also privately owned and specialising in the healthcare and pharmaceuticals markets; and Grupo Clarín, a leading media group with interests in broadband, cable, pay-TV, radio and print media. Clarín also controls Telecom Argentina, which competes head-to-head with Telefónica in mobile and fixed-line services, while América Móvil already has operations in the country under its Claro brand. That could present serious regulatory problems and greatly complicate matters if either Clarín or América Móvil submits a favourable bid. 

América Móvil, meanwhile, had a bumper 2024, reporting an 8.7% rise in full year service revenues from its various operations across Latin America and Europe to 730.45bn Mexican pesos ($35.55bn), while its operating profit (earnings before interest and tax) increased by 7.3% to 180.1bn pesos ($8.77bn). The sprawling operator ended 2024 with 322.6 million mobile customers, with Brazil and Mexico (87.1 million and 84.6 million) its biggest mobile markets. It also had 35 million fixed broadband customers across all of its territories. You can read the operator’s extensive full year financial report here.  

Ukraine’s largest telco Kyivstar, part of international telco group Veon, is to conduct lab tests of Open RAN and cloud-native solutions from Rakuten Symphony as the next step in their Open RAN collaboration. “The testing phase underlines Veon and Kyivstar’s commitment to delivering robust, high-performing connectivity to its 24 million mobile subscribers, and is being undertaken to yield learnings that will form a key part of Ukraine’s long-term strategy for the deployment of critical digital infrastructure,” noted Rakuten Symphony in this announcement. Kaan Terzioglu, CEO of Kyivstar’s parent company Veon, noted: “We believe in the potential of Open RAN to rebuild Ukraine’s digital infrastructure for the future. We are delighted to partner with Rakuten Group, bringing in their cutting-edge technological expertise to Ukraine’s digital connectivity landscape. The start of in-country testing is a critical milestone, and we hope to accelerate our collaboration further upon its successful completion.”

Bharti Airtel has turned to Nokia and Qualcomm to source the network technology needed for the expansion of the 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) and Wi-Fi networks it is building out to “facilitate high-speed internet access to millions across India”, the operator noted in this announcement. Nokia will supply Airtel with its 5G FastMile FWA outdoor gateway receiver (which can serve two properties concurrently) and its Wi-Fi 6 Access Point, which is based on Qualcomm Modem-RF and Wi-Fi 6 chipsets. “This initiative will enable Airtel to provide superior broadband services in areas where fibre connectivity is either scarce or challenging to implement,” noted Airtel. “The deployment of fixed wireless broadband access via 5G networks stands out as a significant application of 5G technology, especially in India, which faces low fibre penetration and a high demand for digital services,” the operator added. Sandy Motley, president of fixed networks at Nokia, stated: “India’s vast size and population density presents unique challenges for broadband connectivity. In those communities where fibre is difficult to deploy, FWA can be used to provide reliable wireless broadband connectivity. With our 5G FWA and Wi-Fi 6 solutions built in collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies, Bharti Airtel will be able to provide customers with fibre-like speeds, which are becoming essential in today’s digital economy. We look forward to supporting Bharti Airtel in its vision to connect more communities to high-speed broadband access.” At the end of 2024, Bharti Airtel had 9.2 million home broadband customers (fibre broadband and FWA).  

Rootmetrics, the well-respected network monitoring outfit based in Washington state, has just published its latest State of the Mobile Union report for the US market, which covers mobile service performance over the course of the second half of 2024. The report is based on the results from 3 million tests that Rootmetrics conducted to measure the real-world mobile performance of the three major mobile carriers in the US. The report covers network performance at the national level, across all 50 states, and 125 of the nation’s biggest metropolitan markets. AT&T either won or shared six of the awards that Rootmetrics conferred in the national testing category. Thus, Ma Bell won outright for overall performance, reliability, speed, and data performance and came in equal first in terms of call and text performance. Meanwhile, Verizon won four US RootScore awards and came second in every category where it didn’t win outright. Where state-specific testing is concerned, AT&T garnered 278 State RootScore Awards to eclipse Verizon’s total of 264. AT&T absolutely trounced the self-proclaimed Un-carrier T-Mobile US, which came in with a mere 73. Verizon came out on top in terms of 5G availability and delivering the best 5G experience: It earned 874 Metro Area RootScore Awards compared with 513 for AT&T and 463 for T-Mobile US. It also pipped T-Mobile US at the post to win in the fastest 5G category. Verizon also won the 5G reliability laurels for the eighth time in succession. Meanwhile, T-Mobile US is lauded for its 5G availability and speeds, particularly in big US conurbations where it achieved median download speeds of more than 200 Mbit/s in 22 out of 125 cities tested, easily outstripping both AT&T and Verizon, which came out with 67 Mbit/s and 61 Mbit/s, respectively. T-Mobile US was third in a field of three in the six national categories but is recognised for its consistent achievements in data speeds, delivering an aggregate median download speed of 350.9 Mbit/s, which was more than double the speeds of both AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile was also the only carrier to hit over 500 Mbit/s in 22 different individual markets

Ooredoo Qatar, which has more than 3.4 million customers, is deploying a new mobile core platform from Nokia to “enable the delivery of more advanced services, using network slicing and the integration of AI and machine learning capabilities that strengthen network performance, reliability and the overall customer experience.” Read more. 

– The staff, TelecomTV