What’s up with… Deutsche Telekom, Rakuten/SoftBank, CES

• Deutsche Telekom offers cloud collaboration, linked to M&A
• Ructions in Japan’s telecoms sector
• CES 2021 has begun, Intel unit catches the eye

Deutsche Telekom’s cloud services and European assets, a skirmish involving two of Japan’s 5G service providers, and an early take on this year’s CES event lead the way in today’s industry roundup.

• Deutsche Telekom has teamed up with Nextcloud to provide a collaboration platform, as a managed service, to enterprise users in Europe. “The managed solution is based on Nextcloud hub, delivering on the needs of the collaboration of modern organizations with secure data and document exchange with online editing capabilities, chat and video conferencing as well as task and calendar management,” notes DT. The German giant says the offering will provide a resource that meets the needs of enterprises that are increasingly distributed, as many people continue to work from home, and, in line with the GAIA-X initiative, provides security and data management measures based on European standards.  
• And still with the German giant… Deutsche Telekom is reportedly in talks with private equity firms to sell its Dutch operation for up to €5 billion, reports Reuters.
• There are signs intrigue and conflict in Japan’s normally sedate telecoms sector. Bloomberg reports that a former SoftBank employee has been arrested in Japan on suspicion of illegally bringing 5G ‘secrets’ to his new employer, Rakuten Mobile, which is currently mounting a disruptive challenge to Japan’s incumbents.
• The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) show has opened its digital doors, heralding a host of announcements from technology and networking giants, with Intel’s autonomous vehicle unit Mobileye seemingly the star turn of ‘Day 0,’ during which participants announce their new developments for the media. That Mobileye impressed most is the view of Richard Windsor, the industry analyst who operates as ‘Radio Free Mobile.’ Windsor tells it like it is and I will be using him as my CES guide this year – he has got off to a cracking start with analysis of the event format and its initial content. You can check out what Windsor has to say in this article and see what Mobileye announced here. In addition, Intel announced four new processor families. 
• The raw material might be enough to make your eyes water, but next month the Icelandic telco, Neyðarlínan, will start to power the Emergency Communications System (ECS) in the capital Reykjavik via a generator that extracts clean, zero-emission hydrogen from easily available and inexpensive liquid ammonia. The technology comes from Israeli fuel cell company GenCell Energy. The GenCell A5 off-grid generator will provide uninterrupted power to the ECS to ensure continuous connectivity for critical applications such as the 112-emergency number, medical facilities, emergency service providers, e-commerce, remote work and tele-learning, together with other digital services. Alkaline fuel cells can easily operate in temperatures of -20 C to -45 C (which is just as well). The power generated will cost about the same as polluting carbon-emitting diesel oil. Iceland is to abolish the use of all fossil fuels before 2050 and will ban all new registrations of diesel and petrol vehicles from the beginning of 2030. There is growing global demand for hydrogen-based solutions to decarbonise telecoms as well as other industry sectors.​
• Starlink, Elon Musk’s low-earth orbit (LEO) broadband satellite operation, has arrived in the UK and is already being used by a few people following a limited trial offer, according to this BBC report. To get the service, consumers need to pay £439 for the satellite service receiver technology and £84 per month for the service, which will currently attract only those unable to procure a broadband connection via other services such as people living in very remote areas.  
• In more satellite comms news… Belgian service provider SatADSL has struck a partnership with Azercosmos that will see SatADSL offer Internet access services using the Central Asian beam of the Azerspace-1 satellite. For further details, see this press release. 
• Saudi operator stc has named Eng. Olayan M. Alwetaid as group CEO effective 28 March.
• Zoom is riding high off the back of a very strong year: As well as generating significant revenues and profits, It has reached 1 million customer ‘seats’ for its Zoom Phone voice service, which includes “enterprise-grade features such as centralized management, contact center integration, and global call routing” with “simplified pricing”; and is aiming to raise at least $1.5 billion by issuing new shares, taking advantage of its improved stock price to build up cash reserves (for what reason hasn’t been stated). That financial move dilutes the value of its current shares, of course, so Zoom’s share price is expected to slip slightly as a result, but at $337.71 it is more than 300% higher than a year ago, when Zoom’s shares could be bought for $74.03. 
• The US House Commerce Committee is worried that the big US ISPs may be considering a reset over their pledges not to raise prices or impose usage restrictions through the pandemic. According to The Register the pledges actually had an end-of-year kill switch and there are now signs that ISPs are looking to get their monetisation back to normal, so the Commerce Committee has sent out a letter asking for their plans on continuing with  their pledges, given that the pandemic is still raging - in fact it has become much worse over the past 10 months.
• Still in the US, Amazon, AT&T, Cisco, Comcast and Verizon are amongst the companies saying they will scale back or cut political campaign contributions to those who voted to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory, reports Reuters.

- The staff, TelecomTV