What’s up with… Airspan, UK & US love-in, Plume

• Airspan ramps ahead of its SPAC listing
• UK and US add 6G to their ‘special relationship’
• Plume secures German partnerships

A pre-listing business ramp for Airspan, another international 6G tie-up and some plum relationships for Plume top today’s news bill.

Open RAN systems vendor Airspan has reported a 67% year-on-year increase in first quarter revenues to $45.9 million ahead of its stock market listing via a merger with New Beginnings Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The company, which is in line to raise $166 million from its re-entry to the stock market, reports “significant momentum across 5G, Open RAN and fixed wireless access (“FWA”) in both new and existing customer deployments, including private enterprise.” For more on its first quarter results, see this announcement, and for more on its SPAC-induced listing, see Open RAN vendor Airspan preps second public listing.)

The UK and US leaders are having something of a love-in currently, praising each other to the skies and announcing all sorts of partnerships and collaborations, which include an agreement to “deepen ties on science and technology and create a new era of strategic cooperation in the field,” including AI, quantum tech and 6G. The partnership “will see the countries work towards a new statement of intent to help realise the full potential of quantum technologies, which use the properties of quantum physics to dramatically improve the functionality and performance of devices, develop proposals on future technology such as 6G and strengthen collaboration on digital technical standards.” Read more. 

Smart home software developer Plume, which raised $270 million in February, has struck two important relationships in the German broadband market, one with rural fibre network builder Deutsche Glasfaser Group and the other with BREKO, the broadband industry association that represents more than 200 German ISPs. Read more.

Orange has teamed up with Sanofi, Capgemini and Generali to create a joint venture to launch Future4care, which they describe as “Europe’s only health-focused startup accelerator program. The objective is to stimulate the development of e-health solutions and their go-to-market, for the benefit of both patients and health professionals.” Read more.

Verizon Business has launched On Site 5G, its “first commercially available, private 5G network solution in the US.” The service enables large enterprise and public sector customers to bring Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband capabilities to indoor or outdoor facilities even if the locations are beyond the coverage reach of Verizon’s public 5G Ultra Wideband service.  On Site 5G is “a non-standalone private network that combines 5G Ultra Wideband small cells with the LTE packet core and radios of On Site LTE, which means On Site LTE customers can upgrade to On Site 5G with ease,” notes the operator. Read more.

Dutch national operator KPN and APG have named their newly-created fibre broadband network joint venture Glaspoort. The venture, which aims to invest €1 billion during the next five years, aims to reach 750,000 households and 225,000 businesses with fibre connections. That target is even higher than the goals set when the joint venture was first announced in March (with APG’s pension fund ABP). For more on Glaspoort, see this announcement.

The SK Telecom board has approved the operator’s plan to split into two companies – the “surviving” SK Telecom and the spin-off SKT Investment – to maximize the value of its operations. Read more.

Disruptive Asia is reporting a kerfuffle between India’s mobile operators and the satellite industry over the carve-up of the 28 GHz band for 5G. The satellite guys are urging India’s Department of Telecommunications not to allocate half of the 28 GHz band to Indian telcos. There’s one refusenik in the satellite bunch in the form of OneWeb, which plans to launch services in India next year, and which says it’s happy with the plan. The fact that it’s being backed in India by the country’s number two telco, Bharti Airtel, is probably just a coincidence…