What’s up with… Vodafone, Iliad, Comcast

• Vodafone creates new procurement and roaming services unit
• Iliad closes datacentre investment deal with InfraVia
• Comcast has acquired a NaaS specialist 

Vodafone Group has created a new Luxembourg-based unit, Vodafone Procure & Connect, that brings together its procurement unit and its voice and roaming services divisions. The procurement unit is enormous – it manages an annual spend of €19bn for Vodafone’s operating companies in Europe and Africa, partner market operations, joint ventures and third-party companies, working with 8,000 global suppliers. Vodafone Voice and Roaming Services, meanwhile, is “one of the world’s leading global providers of services enabling mobile customers to roam onto other networks, and businesses and individuals to make and receive voice calls across international borders,” working with over 700 mobile network partners and managing 25 billion voice minutes and more than €1.5bn in roaming and voice trading volume annually, the operator explained in this announcement. Ninian Wilson, Vodafone Group’s supply chain management director, who will be CEO of Vodafone Procure & Connect, stated: “The launch of Vodafone Procure & Connect marks an important milestone, which simplifies our offering and enhances our innovation capability by combining the strengths of two divisions into one trusted partner. We now have enhanced scale to support our customers to manage their costs and grow their businesses in an ever-evolving landscape.”

Xavier Niel’s Iliad Group has completed the sale of a 50% stake in its OpCore datacentre subsidiary to European private equity firm InfraVia: Financial terms were not disclosed but a 50% stake in OpCore is believed to be worth about €430m. The proposed deal was first unveiled in early December 2024. “This strategic partnership is aimed at developing OpCore into a major independent European hyperscale datacentre platform,” noted Iliad. “Through this partnership, the Iliad Group and InfraVia provide OpCore with the financial structure it needs to capitalise on the booming European hyperscale data market, by developing new 100 MW+ datacentres in France and Europe with several construction projects already underway,” the operator added. Iliad Group CEO Thomas Reynaud stated: “Europe needs independent datacentre platforms more than ever before as these infrastructures, dedicated to storing and processing vast amounts of data, are essential enablers for a thriving made-in-Europe AI ecosystem.” The partners intend to invest up to €2.5bn in OpCore over the next decade. Iliad recently reported full year financial results that suggest it is one of the best-run telecom companies in Europe – see Iliad’s success proves telecom is viable.

Comcast Business has completed the acquisition of Chicago-based network-as-a-service (NaaS) specialist Nitel from private equity firm Cinven for an undisclosed sum. “The acquisition expands Comcast Business’ presence in connectivity, secure networking solutions and advanced technology, and enhances Comcast’s ability to serve enterprise clients,” noted the US B2B service provider in this announcement. Nitel provides integrated managed network and security solutions to 6,600 businesses across the US, “with a strong focus on mid-size enterprise clients, including those in financial services, healthcare and education”, according to Comcast. Edward Zimmermann, president of Comcast Business, noted: “The completion of the Nitel acquisition is a significant milestone for Comcast Business. It strengthens our ability to deliver advanced, reliable connectivity solutions and enhances our channel distribution strategy. By combining these two great teams, we are poised to offer even more robust network, cloud and cybersecurity solutions, empowering enterprises of all sizes.” 

South-east European telecom and media network operator United Group has completed the sale of cable TV and broadband service provider SBB Serbia to e& PPF Telecom, a subsidiary of Middle Eastern telecom and digital technology giant e&. The €825m deal was first announced in February and will give e& PPF Telecom an extra 700,000 customers and annual revenues of €244m (based on 2023 numbers). e& PPF Telecom will now integrate SBB with its Serbian subsidiary Yettel, which has 3 million mobile customers (as well as 121,000 fixed broadband and 107,000 pay-TV customers) to create “a leading converged operator”. e& PPF Telecom reported full year revenues of €2.1bn for 2024, up by 7.5%, and ended the year with 12.2 million mobile subscribers (including machine-to-machine connections), 416,000 fixed broadband and 251,000 pay-TV customers. 

New breakthroughs in quantum computing are coming in thick and fast at the moment. The latest, from the University of Oxford research group led by Dr Peter Leek, and as reported by Quantum Insider, is the result of experiments demonstrating a fundamental increase in the speed of the controlled-Z two-qubit (2Q) gate. The novel approach saw superconducting qubits reach a fidelity of 99.8% in just 25 nano seconds (ns). The results of the new approach, presented by Dr Simone Fasciati at the American Physics Society’s Global Physics Summit (APS) in Anaheim, California, also showed a simultaneous reduction in errors. In quantum computing, gate fidelity (also called ‘error rate’) measures the accuracy with which a quantum gate operation is performed and is often expressed as a percentage. Higher gate fidelity indicates that the quantum gate closely matches the intended operation, with fewer errors introduced during the process. Thus fidelity is the metric for building hardware for genuinely useful quantum computers. The further the fidelity is above a fault-tolerance threshold (typically 99% to 99.5%), the more efficiently remaining errors can be corrected using quantum error correction. The gates are also very fast, so that in enabling high fidelities via reduced decoherence, the gate speed determines how fast a useful quantum computation can be performed. This breakthrough achieves this high fidelity and speed with a particularly simple circuit design, requiring less hardware complexity than leading 2Q gate implementations based on tuneable couplers. The research is of significance for commercial superconducting quantum computers.

– The staff, TelecomTV