What’s up with… T-Mobile US, Telenor, Harmeen Mehta

• T-Mobile US splashes $600m on digital advertising specialist 
• Telenor rejigs its top team (again)
• Former BT digital chief Harmeen Mehta lands new industry role

In today’s industry news roundup: T-Mobile US is acquiring Vistar Media to add to its existing advertising solutions business; Telenor’s new CEO continues to revamp her top team; Harmeen Mehta is now a strategic advisor to telco API developer Sekura.id; and much more!

T-Mobile US is to acquire Vistar Media, a developer of technology solutions for digital-out-of-home (DOOH) advertisements, for $600m in cash and combine it with its existing advertising solutions unit, the mobile operator has announced. T-Mobile US will gain Vistar’s “intelligent marketplace and technology solutions for buying, selling and managing media campaigns across a global network of more than 1.1 million digital screens provided by nearly 370 OOH media owners and serving more than 3,000 brand partner advertisers,” noted the giant US operator. “This combination will help transform the DOOH industry by leveraging Vistar’s end-to-end ad-tech platform and scale, together with T-Mobile’s unique customer insights and data,” it added. JP Colaco, senior VP and chief T-Ads officer at T-Mobile US, stated: “T-Mobile is always envisioning new ways to deliver for consumers and we see a tremendous opportunity to provide more relevant and personalised advertising. Combining T-Mobile’s customer-centric approach and its expertise as one of the nations most scaled marketers with Vistar’s leading out-of-home technology means advertisers can easily place their ads where they know their audience will be, improving every step of the customer journey. Together with Vistar, T-Mobile will deliver advertising solutions built by marketers, for marketers.”

The top table revamp at Telenor continues under new CEO Benedicte Schilbred Fasmer, who took over as the telco’s chief on 2 December last year. Only weeks after her arrival, the CEO unveiled Jonas Edén as the new head of Telenor’s Swedish business. Now Schilbred Fasmer has appointed Sigvart Voss Eriksen, who is currently the CEO of Omny (an industrial cybersecurity company owned by Aker and Telenor), as head of Telenor Nordics. “I am excited to return to Telenor and apply my expertise in telecommunications and secure, scalable, digital infrastructure. I look forward to joining a strong team and continuing the great work of delivering secure, reliable services and driving value through innovation, simplification and efficiency through continued transformation. Our remarkable platform has enabled us to achieve impressive growth, even as an incumbent in the Norwegian market,” he noted. Voss Eriksen will take over from Jon Omund Revhaug, who has been appointed as the new head of Telenor Asia, a role for which he is very well suited: Revhaug previously served as the CEO of Telenor Myanmar and headed up the merger integration of dtac and True in Thailand, as well as commanding several other roles in the Nordics, central and eastern Europe, and Asia. “I am excited and looking forward to returning to Asia to lead our operations in a dynamic region. The next few years will be pivotal as we execute on our strategy of scale and building leading telco operators in Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh. I am eager to reunite with exceptional colleagues in Asia to continue the journey of being a good owner of telco assets, creating a positive impact and value for all stakeholders,” noted Revhaug who, like Voss Eriksen, is due to start his new role before the end of April. Telenor is also due to appoint a new permanent CTO: Cathal Kennedy, Telenor Group’s senior VP of cloud and AI, took on the role of interim group CTO in November last year after Amol Phadke stepped down for personal reasons.  

BT’s former chief digital and innovation officer, Harmeen Mehta, who left the UK national operator in September last year, has been appointed as a strategic advisor to mobile identity verification software developer Sekura.id, which provides its code to more than 70 mobile operators. The Norfolk, UK-based company is focusing its telecom sector R&D efforts on developing applications that conform to the GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative – it has developed its ‘Open Gateway in a Box’ solution and was awarded Open Gateway SIM Swap Certification in October 2024 – and is already working with multiple telcos, including KPN, on the deployment of their APIs. Mehta “joins Sekura.id at a crucial time as we expand our Open Gateway initiatives, transforming telecom operators into tech innovators (telcos to techcos). Her focus? To help us grow and scale while bringing mobile identity solutions to a larger audience,” noted the company’s head of global marketing Matt Cooper in this blog. Mehta commented: “In today’s world of ever more rapid technological advancements, establishing true identity is the cornerstone for individuals and organisations to harness innovation safely and securely while protecting customer rights. I am deeply passionate about the transformative power of identity and Sekura.id’s pivotal role in this space. My focus will include expanding Open Gateway APIs as a vital new revenue stream for telcos, while also ensuring mobile identity solutions reach a broader audience, empowering businesses to thrive in the digital age.”

Vodafone Group has completed the sale of its remaining 3% stake in Indian infrastructure firm Indus Towers and used the proceeds of 19.1bn rupees ($221m) to increase its stake in the country’s third-largest operator, Vodafone Idea (Vi), to 24.39% (from 22.56%). That stakebuilding was enabled by Vi issuing 1.69 billion shares to Omega Telecom Holdings and Usha Martin Telematics, both of which are local units of Vodafone Group. 

European towers giant Cellnex is prepping the sale of its 72% stake in its subsidiary in Switzerland, where it has about 5,500 sites, according to Spanish newspaper Expansion. According to a recent report, Cellnex has hired JP Morgan to find a buyer willing to pay €1.1bn for the stake. The move would be the latest in a series of divestments that tie in with the company’s new strategy of becoming more financially stable (mainly by reducing its debt pile): Over the past year or so, Cellnex has already sold its business in Austria, a 49% stake in its operations in Sweden and Denmark and agreed the sale of its unit in Ireland. 

Self-styled “AI hyperscaler” Coreweave, which is developing a GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) offering in multiple markets, has announced that two of its initial UK facilities – one in Crawley, near Gatwick airport, and the other in London Docklands – are now operational. “These sites will host some of Europe’s largest Nvidia AI platform deployments powered by Nvidia H200 GPUs and scaled with Nvidia Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking, seeking to meaningfully advance the UK’s high-performance compute capability,” noted the company in this press release. 

Telefónica is the latest telco to suffer a data breach. Infosecurity has reported that three members of a ransomware group called Hellcat stole 2.3 Gbytes of data, including internal strategy documents and the email details of 24,000 staff, from the Spanish telco’s servers. Telefónica says it has blocked the hackers and is now investigating the extent of the “incident”. Telco cybersecurity is currently in the news due to the extensive breach of telco systems in the US by Salt Typhoon hacking group. 

– The staff, TelecomTV