What’s up with… Jio & Starlink, Orange, Samsung & Nvidia

• India’s Jio joins the Starlink satellite broadband club
• Orange strikes LEO satellite deal with Telesat
• Samsung and Nvidia bang the AI-RAN drum

In today’s industry news roundup: Reliance Jio takes Bharti Airtel’s lead and also announces a partnership with SpaceX’s Starlink to offer satellite broadband services throughout India; Orange hooks up with low-earth orbit satellite operator Telesat; Samsung is collaborating with Nvidia on AI-RAN developments; and much more!

Only a day after its main domestic rival, Bharti Airtel, announced a satellite broadband services partnership with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to offer Starlink’s satellite broadband services in India, Reliance Jio has unveiled a largely identical relationship with the low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite operator. Jio Platforms, of which Reliance Jio is the network operator and services unit, has unveiled an agreement to “explore how Starlink can extend Jio’s offerings and how Jio can complement SpaceX’s direct offerings to consumers and businesses. Jio will make Starlink solutions available through its retail outlets as well as through its online storefronts.” Jio will leverage “Starlink’s position as the world’s leading LEO satellite constellation operator” – it currently has 6,750 satellites in orbit – “to deliver reliable broadband services across the country, including the most rural and remote regions of India,” added Jio, which is India’s largest telco. Like Airtel, Jio noted that the partnership is contingent on SpaceX securing authorisation from the Indian authorities to provision Starlink satellite broadband services in India, but that now looks like a formality. Mathew Oommen, Reliance Jio’s group CEO, stated: “Ensuring that every Indian, no matter where they live, has access to affordable and high-speed broadband remains Jio’s top priority. Our collaboration with SpaceX to bring Starlink to India strengthens our commitment and marks a transformative step toward seamless broadband connectivity for all. By integrating Starlink into Jio’s broadband ecosystem, we are expanding our reach and enhancing the reliability and accessibility of high-speed broadband in this AI-driven era, empowering communities and businesses across the country,” he added. Jio already offers a fibre broadband service called JioFiber (though only in limited urban markets) and is using its national 5G network to offer a 5G-enabled fixed wireless access (FWA) service called JioAirFiber, which has proven popular. “We applaud Jio’s commitment to advancing India’s connectivity,” said Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of SpaceX. “We are looking forward to working with Jio and receiving authorisation from the government of India to provide more people, organisations and businesses with access to Starlink’s high-speed internet services.” As mentioned in our coverage of Airtel’s partnership with SpaceX, the telling detail will be the pricing of the Starlink service in India. The potential for reliable, widely available satellite broadband in India is enormous, given the size of the country – in terms of both geography and population – and its lack of traditional fixed broadband service availability, but tariff strategies are crucial. The JioAirFiber FWA service, for example, is available from just 1,499 rupees ($17.20) per month – how low can Starlink go? Scale will help the financials if demand is strong but this is going to be an interesting test, not least because the service will be marketed by Starlink itself as well as by Airtel and Jio, so comparing the offers will also be intriguing once the service hits the market. 

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has just released the latest industry stats, which show that the country ended 2024 with just over 1.15bn mobile connections. Reliance Jio has 465.14 million mobile connections for a market share of 40.4%, Bharti Airtel has 385.31 million (33.49% market share), Vodafone Idea has 207.26 million (18.01% market share) and state-owned BSNL has 91.73 million (market share of 7.99%).  

Sticking with satellite/telco relationships… Orange and Canadian satellite operator Telesat have “joined forces to offer new satellite connectivity options through a strategic commercial partnership,” Orange has announced. Telesat is a long-time geostationary (GEO) satellite operator that added LEO satellites to its portfolio about eight years ago: In September 2024, it announced $1.9bn in funding for an advanced LEO constellation (Lightspeed) that is designed to deliver high-speed satellite broadband services to enterprises, telcos, government bodies, maritime companies and more. Now, as part of its relationship with Orange, a Telesat Lightspeed Landing Station will be hosted at the French telco’s teleport in Bercenay-en-Othe, France, and connected via an Orange Wholesale International Private Line (IPL) to Telesat’s point of presence (PoP) in Paris. In addition, Orange Wholesale signed a capacity commitment for Telesat’s Lightspeed carrier Ethernet service, “which will be integrated into its global portfolio of services for businesses and telecom operators,” noted the telco. Telesat’s chief commercial officer, Glenn Katz, stated: “This strategic partnership highlights our commitment to delivering resilient connectivity solutions through our advanced, fully integrated space and terrestrial infrastructure. We are honoured that Telesat Lightspeed will help improve connectivity in remote areas for Orange’s customers in Europe, Africa and other locations throughout the world. Our Telesat Lightspeed solution has been designed to meet telco standards and we are pleased to count Orange, one of the largest global telcos, as a Telesat Lightspeed strategic partner.” Orange noted that the “Telesat Lightspeed Carrier Ethernet services will deliver reliable, robust connectivity that’s backed by service-level agreements. Telecom operators can configure and monitor services in real time, redirecting capacity as needed without satellite operator intervention. The resilient enterprise-class network features a Zero-Trust Security Architecture that is aligned with the latest security industry standards.” The LEO satellite services sector is set to become one of the most keenly fought in the coming years as telcos around the world hook up with LEO constellation partners to deliver all manner of connectivity services, including satellite-to-smartphone and satellite broadband (connecting to special dish receivers) in areas where terrestrial fixed and mobile networks are either unable to reach or are uneconomic to build and run. What might be good news for the digital divide, though, might be bad news for the star-gazing community.

MWC25 might be over, but the AI-RAN announcements keep on coming… Samsung has announced it is working hand in hand with AI chip giant Nvidia to show how the South Korean vendor’s radio access network technology can be integrated with servers running Nvidia processors. That the two companies are collaborating on AI-RAN developments shouldn’t come as a surprise, as both are founding members of the AI-RAN Alliance, which launched a year ago with the mantra of AI and RAN, AI on RAN, and AI for RAN. Samsung claims it has achieved interoperability between its Open RAN-ready virtual RAN (vRAN) solution and Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) “accelerated computing” platforms: The vendor stated it had “successfully demonstrated a proof-of-concept to verify how Nvidia’s accelerated computing can be seamlessly integrated into software-based networks to help enhance AI capabilities… Samsung can seamlessly deliver AI-RAN by integrating its vRAN (virtualised distributed unit, vDU) with Nvidia’s accelerated computing into a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) server where Samsung’s vRAN software is installed.” June Moon, executive VP and head of R&D for the Networks Business at Samsung Electronics, noted: “While AI is reshaping the telecommunications landscape, Samsung is helping operators to build the right network architecture and environment where AI can thrive, all powered by our proven and AI-powered vRAN. This collaboration with Nvidia signifies our continued efforts to expand [the] GPU and CPU [central processing unit] ecosystem, and we look forward to exploring more possibilities in the future.” Ronnie Vasishta, senior VP for telecom at Nvidia, added: “AI-RAN is a critical technology that delivers transformative gains in network utilisation, efficiency and performance, while enabling new AI services. Samsung is a frontrunner in AI-RAN development. Their vRAN expertise and software integrated with the NVIDIA’s AI accelerated computing will accelerate the path to AI-native wireless networks,” he added. That’s all very well, but for more network operators to seriously consider the deployment of AI-RAN systems, a host of independent cost analysis and power consumption data, as well as deployment blueprints, will need to be shared and analysed – this is, at least, the verbal feedback that TelecomTV has received from multiple telcos recently. But there’s no doubt that the concept of AI-RAN is appealing and, of course, a few network operators (mainly SoftBank and T-Mobile US) are extolling the virtues and potential of such systems. We can expect to hear more about AI-RAN when Nvidia convenes for its annual GTC conference next week (17-21 March). 

Verizon saw its share price crash by 6.6% to $43.43 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday after it warned that its consumer postpaid mobile customer base was expected to suffer higher-than-normal churn (users switching to rivals) during the first quarter of this year due to “recent pricing actions” and that its total postpaid consumer mobile customer additions would be “flat to slightly down” compared with the same quarter last year. The US operator noted in this investor filing that it expects to achieve its financial goals for this year and that, for the full year 2025, it will add more postpaid consumer mobile customers than it did last year, but that wasn’t enough to stop investors selling off the telco’s stock. Verizon’s chief revenue officer, Frank Boulben, told attendees at Deutsche Bank’s Media, Internet & Telecom Conference that the operator withdrew some customer incentives this year following a “promotion-heavy” fourth quarter of 2024, but some rivals continued with their offers. Verizon’s woes put pressure on the share prices of AT&T and T-Mobile US – which were down by 5.3% and 4%, respectively, with AT&T’s CFO, Pascal Desroches, also highlighting an uptick in churn during January in his presentation at the Deutsche Bank event. Industry analyst Paolo Pescatore, founder of PP Foresight, told Reuters that a saturated US mobile market means there are few opportunities for major growth while competition is intense, with cable operator giants such as Comcast marketing their mobile services at very aggressive prices in order to build a converged services customer base. 

South Korea’s three mobile operators, SK Telecom, KT Corp and LG Uplus, have been fined a total of 114bn won ($78.5m) by the country’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) for collusion over mobile number portability. The trio were found guilty of gaming the sector in a way that resulted in very little change to market shares or increased competition between November 2015 and September 2022, according to the Korea Times.  

Vodafone Business, the enterprise services division of Vodafone Group, has been making moves to boost its presence and business in the US. It has struck a strategic channel agreement with technology and communications services firm Intelisys to offer fixed and mobile services to US companies that have international operations. “Partnering with Intelisys is a significant milestone in our strategy to leverage strategic partners to reach more international businesses, introduce them to our evolving services portfolio and build new end-to-end IT solutions,” noted David Joosten, president of Vodafone US. “By joining forces with a premier technology services distributor like Intelisys, this is another step forward to provide US-based businesses with global connectivity solutions,” he added. The move comes only weeks after Vodafone Business announced a similar partnership with managed services provider Advantage Communications Group. 

– The staff, TelecomTV