What’s up with… Vodafone, Iliad, Telia Carrier

• Vodafone holding up well, stock leaps
• Italy proves fertile ground for Iliad
• Telia Carrier pumps up its US capacity with Ciena

We found some encouraging news for this daily roundup!

• Vodafone reported a 3% increase in full year revenues to €45.0 billion, “supported by improving commercial momentum in Europe,” and helped of course by the integration of the Liberty Global cable assets it acquired last year. It also reported an operating profit (compared with a loss in the previous year) and improved cash flow for the financial year that ended in March. However, it also noted that the “economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in our markets, whilst uncertain, is likely to be significant… We are experiencing a direct impact on our roaming revenues from lower international travel and we also expect economic pressures to impact our customer revenues over time. However, we are also seeing significant increases in data volumes and further improvements in loyalty, as our customers place greater value on the quality, speed and reliability of our networks.” Overall, investors were happy as the operator’s share price jumped by more than 8% in morning trading on the London Stock Exchange to 122.5 pence. For the full story, check out this lengthy report.
• Iliad, the alternative operator that reshaped the French telecoms services market, is proving a hit in Italy too. It has reported a near 7% year-on-year increase in first quarter revenues to €1.38 billion as sales in Italy grew by 85%, despite the impact of Covid-19 on number portability. Iliad now has 5.8 million mobile customers in Italy and 13.3 million in France, where it also has 6.5 million fixed broadband customers. For more details, see this financial report. 
• International wholesale carrier Telia Carrier is using Ciena’s 6500 Reconfigurable Line System (RLS) to double the usable spectrum on its US network connections. See this announcement for more details.
• Danielle Royston, the CEO at BSS specialist Optiva, has quit the company in the middle of a turnaround strategy that involves $100 million of planned investment to develop BSS tools that run on public cloud platforms. She will leave in August. The company says her resignation “followed recent compensation requests from Ms. Royston that the Board of Directors of the Company declined to meet.” The news came as Optiva announced its first quarter results: Its revenues declined year-on-year by 23.7% to $19 million as it shifted away from legacy system customer engagements.
• SoftBank, the Japanese operator that earlier this week reported stable financials, has made the promotion of initiatives that can enable a more “sustainable society” as a “top managerial priority.” As a result, it has established a Promotion Committee focused on Sustainable Development Goals, as this announcement reveals.
• The staff, TelecomTV