What’s up with… BT, Arm & Qualcomm, Telstra

• BT switches on 100% renewable energy mobile site 
• Arm wrestles with Qualcomm
• Telstra trials Ericsson’s SMO

In today’s industry news roundup: UK’s national operator has powered up a rural mobile site with 100% renewable energy, mostly from solar and wind power; Arm reportedly threatens to cancel Qualcomm’s licence as spat escalates; Australian telco Telstra has trialled Ericsson’s service management and orchestration (SMO) solution and an associated rApp in its live network; and much more!

BT has switched on a “self-powered” mobile site in a rural area of Shropshire, a county in England, as part of a trial that could lead to the technology being deployed across hundreds of sites already identified by the UK incumbent if it can deliver the green goods. According to BT, all of the site’s power requirements will be delivered by renewable energy sources, 70% of which will be generated by on-site solar and wind. The site is expected to deliver approximately 17,000kWh of wind and solar energy per year, which BT helpfully explained was the equivalent of 100,000 hot showers. Perhaps a more interesting metric for bean counters is that the green site could result in cost savings of up to £10,000 per year. In the event of there being insufficient renewable energy source available and the battery power being fully discharged, a generator powered by Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) fuel will apparently kick-in to simultaneously provide back-up power to the mast and charge to the batteries, ensuring the site continues to deliver 4G and 5G connectivity to customers. HVO is itself classed as a green fuel, produced from a variety of waste and residual oils. “It’s paramount that we increase the energy efficiency of our networks,” remarked Greg McCall, chief networks officer at BT Group. BT has set a target of becoming a net-zero business by 2031. Its networks account for around 89% of its total energy consumption.

Mega-successful smartphone chip designer Arm is, according to Bloomberg, in the throes of scrapping a licensing deal with US tech giant Qualcomm. It’s the latest instalment of a lengthy legal wrangling between the two companies, when Arm sued Qualcomm two years ago for “breach of certain licence agreements with Arm and trademark infringement”, and one that saw Qualcomm’s share price fall by around 5%. According to a document seen by Bloomberg, Arm has given Qualcomm a 60-day notice of cancellation of their “architectural licence agreement”, which allows Qualcomm to create its own chips based on Arm’s intellectual property. Qualcomm, speculated Bloomberg, is caught between a rock and a hard place: Either stop selling products that make up most of its sales, or face a hefty damages claim from UK-based Arm. A Qualcomm spokesperson cited by Bloomberg said that Arm was trying to “strong-arm a longtime partner”. It “appears to be an attempt to disrupt the legal process, and its claim for termination is completely baseless,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement, adding, “We are confident that Qualcomm’s rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed.” The dispute hinges on Qualcomm’s acquisition of startup chip designer Nuvia in 2021 for $1.4bn. Arm’s beef is that Nuvia has been using its own designs without having the appropriate licence. 

Australian telco Telstra is very often the proving ground for close vendor partner Ericsson’s latest developments and so it has proved again this week. The companies say Telstra has successfully trialled the Ericsson Intelligent Automation Platform (EIAP), the vendor’s service management and orchestration (SMO) solution, and the Ericsson automated configuration consistency (EACC) rApp (RAN application), on a live commercial network. An important part of the EIAP is Ericsson’s non-real time RAN intelligent controller (RIC), a platform most closely associated with Open RAN developments and deployments but which is also applicable to non-Open RAN networks and can be used to help introduce new automated network management features. Non-real time RIC platforms are designed to run all manner of rApp functions, which can be developed by network operators themselves to suit their needs or by vendors and developers. Obviously in this case it is an Ericsson rApp that Telstra trialled and there are others it could try out as well, as Ericsson recently launched a repository (dubbed the rApp Directory) of about 20 such applications. According to Ericsson, the rApp that Telstra did trial, the EACC, “enables users to uncover and correct baseline configuration management consistency errors in the RAN network with the ability to rollback changes if KPIs [key performance indicators] are degraded.” In addition, the trial “has allowed Telstra to use tools and resources, such as the open software development kit (SDK) and developer portal… to develop and deploy rApps in its own commercial network. The EACC deployment makes Telstra one of the earliest CSPs to launch an rApp live on a commercial network globally on EIAP, an illustration of its commitment to industry leadership and early adoption of cutting-edge technologies. This aligns with Telstra’s goal of moving toward an intent-driven network that delivers self-optimisation, self-healing and self-assurance with minimal human intervention.” Expect to hear more about non-real time RIC platforms and rApps in the coming months and in 2025.

Aside from flat consolidated third-quarter revenue of $33.3bn year on year, there was much for Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg to feel good about in the period. “Our quarterly adjusted EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation] of $12.5bn is the highest we have ever reported, and the highest in the telecom industry by far,” he said in his opening remarks to his Q3 presentation. Total wireless service revenue was up 2.7% year on year to $19.8bn, buoyed by a more than doubling of wireless postpaid phone net additions compared with Q3 2023. That was not enough to nudge the topline upwards, though, due in part to a decline of wireless equipment sales. Verizon’s total business revenue, at $7.4bn, was down 2.3% year on year. On a cheerier note, Verizon’s fixed wireless access (FWA) continues its steep growth trajectory with 363,000 net adds during Q3. With a FWA subscriber base of now nearly 4.2 million, Verizon said that number was achieved 15 months ahead of schedule. Vestberg attributed growth to high levels of customer satisfaction. FWA Q3 revenue stood at $562m, up $215m year on year. Verizon said it plans to double the number of FWA subscribers to between 8 million and 9 million by 2028. “With these [total Q3] results, we are confident that we will not just deliver on our 2024 financial guidance, but that wireless service revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth will come in at or above the midpoint of our guided range,” said Vestberg. For full-year 2024, Verizon is guiding total wireless service revenue growth of between 2% and 3.5%, and adjusted EBITDA growth within the 1% to 3% range. Capital expenditure is slated at between $17bn and $17.5bn.

Do anything interesting over the weekend? If you put that question to Ericsson and Indian systems integrator Wipro in August you might have got a response along the lines of “yeah, as it happens, we migrated over 5 million customers of a Dutch mobile network operator onto a cloud-based billing platform”.  The mobile operator in question is Odido, which used to be known as the more staid-sounding T-Mobile Netherlands under Deutsche Telekom ownership (even after its merger with local rival Tele2) before an eventual rebranding by its new owners Warburg Pincus and Apax Partners. The migration, details of which were released by Ericsson, means all of Odido’s customers – consumer and business – are now on the supplier’s cloud billing platform, hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Wipro, a longstanding Odido partner harking back to its T-Mobile Netherlands days, helped facilitate the transition. According to the official announcement, the new billing platform allows the mobile network operator to offer “innovative 5G services”, including its newly launched ‘Klik&Klaar’ fixed-wireless access solution, “with improved operational efficiency and customer experience”. Odido’s CEO, Søren Abildgaard, said: “We’ve just done a billing migration with zero faults in it. A billing migration is like an open-heart surgery, on a marathon runner, while they run. And we managed to do that,” he puffed.

– The staff, TelecomTV