What’s up with… Telefónica, 1&1, Aduna & DT

• Telefónica reportedly lines up asset sale in Mexico
• Germany’s 1&1 hit some financial speed bumps in 2024
• Aduna’s Arbitter unveils his telco API successor at Deutsche Telekom

In today’s industry news roundup: Telefónica is looking to sell its business in Mexico as well as in Argentina, according to reports; German 5G newcomer 1&1 suffered higher than expected costs, and slower customer migrations, in 2024; Deutsche Telekom’s telco API king, who is joining joint venture Aduna, identifies his successor; and much more!

It’s not just its operations in Argentina that Telefónica is looking to sell, according to Spanish newspaper Cinco Dias, which has reported that the giant Spanish telco has hired JP Morgan to sell its business in Mexico. Movistar Mexico is the country’s second-biggest operator, with about 26 million customers, while the market leader is América Móvil, which has just reported stellar results for 2024 and is reportedly one of the companies interested in acquiring Telefónica’s business in Argentina. Telefónica, which unexpectedly replaced its CEO last month, has been looking to shrink its Latin American operations for some time – in July last year it struck a deal to sell its business in Colombia to Millicom. 

Higher costs and slower progress at German 5G newcomer 1&1 hampered the full year financial results of United Internet, its parent company. United Internet reported full year revenues of €6.33bn, up by 1.9%, while EBITDA came in at almost €1.29bn, below the company’s projection of €1.38bn, with the shortfall mainly attributed to the unexpected impact of “a temporary outage of the new 1&1 mobile network in May 2024 as well as the accompanying increase in customer churn. In addition, the planned migration of existing customers to the 1&1 mobile network was temporarily significantly restricted due to an unsuspected undersizing of individual network components and could only be resumed on [a] significant scale in the fourth quarter of 2024,” noted United Internet. “As a result, the expected savings from the migration of existing customer contracts (on a wholesale basis) to the 1&1 mobile network could only be realised to a small extent in fiscal year 2024. In addition, there were temporarily higher expenses for the subsequent elimination of capacity bottlenecks identified as a result of the network outage.” In total, 1&1, which has about 16 million mobile customers, spent €265.3m on its network, which is being built and managed by Rakuten Symphony, in 2024, up from €132.4m in 2023. The operator is hoping to get compensation from the unidentified partner it blames for the technical outage in May 2024.

As we reported a few days ago, Peter Arbitter, who has (until now) been the face of Deutsche Telekom’s network API unit Magenta API, has joined telco API joint venture Aduna as its chief commercial officer (starting on 1 March). Now Arbitter, who is also a member of TelecomTV’s DSP Leaders Council, has shared some thoughts on his move via a LinkedIn post. “Leaving Deutsche Telekom to join a startup is not an obvious next step,” he noted. “While the startup is starting with zero dollars in revenue, it’s not a typical startup as it will be 50% owned by Ericsson and 50% by telecom companies”: Japan’s KDDI recently became the 13th operator to take a stake in Aduna. “Aduna continues what Deutsche Telekom started with the creation of the MACE (Magenta API Capability Exposure) business unit: A division that makes the network APIs of the telecommunications industry globally and easily accessible to all. Who needs this and for what? The target customers are programmers and business leaders who integrate new functions into business processes. After being involved in the founding of the joint venture, I wanted to leave my comfort zone and not only accompany the start of the JV but also implement it. I’m very much looking forward to working with Aduna CEO Anthony Bartolo and the Aduna team.” 

Arbitter also noted that his successor as senior VP of Magenta API from 1 March will be Dr Chathurangi Wickramasinghe (aka Schanie), who has been at Deutsche Telekom for more than 11 years and who is currently VP of fixed network and IT for SME customers in Germany.  

– The staff, TelecomTV