• Telecom Italia and Open Fiber strike a telling deal
• Deutsche Telekom is on a roll
• Verizon adds to its international Private 5G roster

An agreement of potential strategic and political importance in Italy, a positive start to the year by Deutsche Telekom and some UK Private 5G action for Verizon are at the front of today’s new queue.  

Has TIM (Telecom Italia) just taken a step closer to forging a national fibre network operator in Italy? The Italian national operator announced today that it has struck an agreement with FiberCop (its fibre access network unit that has external investors) and Open Fiber, the rival wholesale fibre network operator that might one day be merged with FiberCop, that “allows for the reuse of the network infrastructures in what are termed the ‘white areas’, where the development of a TLC infrastructure under concession has been financed by public funding.” As part of the agreement, Open Fiber will pay €200 million to use FiberCop’s “aerial infrastructures and access connections to the customer’s home,” and FiberCop “is committed to making Open Fiber's optical fibre available to its customers in white areas. This will enable the activation on the Open Fiber network of at least 500 thousand customers asking to use FTTH (Fiber To The Home) technology,” noted TIM. The operator’s CEO, Pietro Labriola, noted: “The agreement marks the start of a new phase in the relations between the main Italian infrastructure operators, and aims to ensure a more efficient use of resources, with a view to speeding up coverage for the country with VHCNs (Very High Capacity Network)... I am proud of this agreement, which represents a further step forward in the execution of our asset enhancement strategy.” Labriola is hopeful that, ultimately, FiberCop and Open Fiber will merge – this kind of agreement, if it is successfully implemented, can only help that cause. Read more. 

Deutsche Telekom said it is “holding its course” after recording a more than 6% year-over-year rise in revenue to hit €28 billion in the first quarter of this year. Revenue from services was particularly strong, growing by 10% in the period. Net profit was €3.9 billion, four times higher than the same period in 2021, largely due to the sale of a 50% stake in FTTH company GlasfaserPlus and completing the divestment of T-Mobile Netherlands. In the US, the company touted a slight revenue increase of 1.9% in Q1 and 1.3 million new mobile post-paid customers in the period. It also raised its guidance for synergies from the Sprint merger for 2022 to between $5.2 billion and $5.4 billion, up from the previous range of between $5 billion and $5.3 billion. “This was a strong start to the new year. We are continuing to grow on an organic basis and are therefore in a position to raise our guidance for 2022”, commented Deutsche Telekom CFO Christian Illek. The group expects EBITDA AL of more than €36.6 billion in 2022, slightly up from previous guidance of around €36.5 billion. See more here.

The business division of US operator Verizon has added to its private 5G engagements in the UK with news of a deployment at a “technology-led center dedicated to accelerating the adoption of connected healthcare technologies for patient-centric care.” The facility, based in the south-east English county of Kent, has been set up with health technology specialist Visionable as well as Juniper Networks and Capgemini. The news comes only a week after Verizon Business boasted of increasing interest across Europe in its private 5G deployment capabilities. Read more. 

Where does this rank on the irony scale? Elon Musk’s latest tweet sent Twitter’s share price into freefall… The world’s richest person, who had a $44 billion takeover offer for Twitter accepted late last month, today posted, “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.” That statistic stems from a Reuters article first published on 2 May (11 days ago!), to which Musk has linked in his post: The article noted that Twitter had shared in a stock exchange filing that “false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.” The news that Musk has suspended his takeover process wiped 7.6% off the value of Twitter stock as the share price slumped to $41.65, some way off the $54.20-per-share that Musk had offered to pay to buy the company. Cue multiple conspiracy theories…. most of which will be found on a certain micro-blogging site… 

Amdocs just keeps on getting bigger.... The telecom software and professional services vendor reported record quarterly sales of $1.15 billion in its fiscal second quarter, operating income of $163.7 million and a slew of new customer engagements, including deals with Three and Virgin Media O2 in the UK.