What’s up with… Telecom Italia’s Sparkle, China’s LEOs, Lumen

• Telecom Italia’s Sparkle bolsters its quantum-safe networking credentials
• China puts its first LEO satellites into orbit
• Lumen’s Q2 shows why it needs new business

In today’s industry news roundup: Sparkle, the international networks arm of Telecom Italia, has completed another important quantum-safe networking services trial; China’s Qianfan initiative, which many are referring to as the country’s equivalent of Elon Musk’s Starlink, has launched its first low-earth orbit communications satellites; Lumen Technologies may have billions of dollars of new deals in the bag, but its second-quarter earnings report shows how much the company needs that business lifeline; and much more!

Sparkle, the international division of Telecom Italia (TIM), has further bolstered its quantum-safe networking credentials with the completion of a network-as-a-service (NaaS) proof of concept (PoC) based on a quantum-safe internet use case. For the trial, the company partnered with Adtran, Intel and Arqit Quantum, the quantum-safe encryption specialist with which Sparkle collaborated earlier this year on a cross-border quantum-safe networking test. The NaaS test was carried out on Sparkle’s metropolitan fibre optic network in Athens and, according to Sparkle, “demonstrated the agile and fully automated implementation of an on-demand MEF internet access service secured by post-quantum cryptography”. The company plans to commercially launch its NaaS/quantum-safe internet (NaaS/QSI) offering later this year, and has other use cases for its NaaS suite in the pipeline. As we have previously pointed out, quantum-safe networking is set to be a big deal for telcos in the coming years, so this is a timely and encouraging move by Sparkle and its partners. The PoC completion comes as TIM CEO Pietro Labriola recently expressed confidence that the operator will soon reach a deal to sell Sparkle as part of a wider asset disposal, which aims to raise a total of €1bn.

China has reportedly launched its first batch of low-earth orbit (LEO) communications satellites as part of an ambitious project to deploy a mega-constellation and provide global connectivity. China Daily reported that the nation launched 18 satellites from a launch centre in the province of Shanxi on Tuesday, the first deployment of the so-called Qianfan network. China is aiming to have as many as 10,000 satellites in orbit as part of the network before the end of 2030, in a bid to deliver “high-speed, secure and reliable broadband internet services” to users around the world. The first group of satellites were built by the China’s Innovation Academy for Microsatellites in Shanghai, which has been contracted to build another 306 satellites for the Qianfan network, according to the China Daily, which added that nearly 650 satellites are due to be deployed by the end of 2025. For more on China’s Qianfan strategy, see this Ars Technica article.

We reported earlier this week that US network operator Lumen Technologies has secured $5bn in new business deals to help it address the major demand for connectivity fuelled by AI. That would be a great boost for any service provider, but it’s a boost that’s particularly needed by Lumen, as its second-quarter earnings report shows. Lumen’s group revenues totalled $3.27bn, down 10.7% compared with the same period a year ago, and its adjusted EBITDA (excluding most one-time costs) dropped by 22.4% to $875m. Its sales have dipped year on year across all of its lines of business except for public sector, which increased by 8% to $448m. The operator also updated its full year outlook, which included a drop in expected adjusted EBITDA to the range of between $3.9bn and $4.0bn from the previously stated outlook of $4.1bn t o$4.3bn. But CEO Kate Johnson, who was appointed in late 2022 to implement a new strategy and help get the company out of a large financial and debt-ridden hole, has plenty of fire in her belly and the announcement of the new business deals, plus the recently struck AI-based partnership with Microsoft Azure, is giving her the chance to put a positive spin on Lumen’s future. “The rising demand of AI is requiring greater connectivity between datacentres, and Lumen’s world-class fibre network and forward-thinking digital services are positioning us to help drive the AI growth wave,” stated the CEO. “We feel confident in our future growth and business transformation as we look to enable the AI economy,” she added. And it seems the company’s investors are happier now than they have been for some time, as despite the shrinking numbers and outlook, Lumen’s share price jumped by almost 46% to $7.29 in early trading on the NYSE on Wednesday morning. That’s the highest price the stock has commanded in almost two years, roughly since Johnson’s appointment, so she’s clearly doing quite a lot right: All the CEO needs now is for all of these financial numbers to start swinging back up.  

MásOrange, the Spanish operator created in March by the €18.6bn merger between Orange Spain and MásMóvil, has reportedly agreed to sell some of its spectrum in the 3.5GHz band to Telefónica, a deal that will give the two operators about the same amount of 5G capacity as each other in the important mid-band (and each of them more than rival Vodafone Spain), reports Spanish newspaper Expansion.

Patrick Drahi’s Altice International, which is desperately trying to flog assets to raise capital that can be used to lessen its debt load, has struck a $1bn deal to sell its global media platform subsidiary Teads to New York-based online content recommendation engine specialist Outbrain. Altice, though, is still struggling to finalise a deal to sell Altice Portugal, the national telco it is hoping to divest for more than €8bn: It came close earlier this year to striking a deal but ultimately couldn’t agree terms with Saudi telco giant STC.  

State-owned Indian telco BSNL, which has suffered decades of under-investment, is on course to have 80,000 4G base stations up and running by October this year and 1,000 by the end of March next year, India TV News has reported, citing comments from the country’s communications minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia. According to the report, BSNL has also started testing 5G services. This is all certainly progress for the telco, but it doesn’t even scratch the surface of what it would need to do to properly compete with the country’s three privately owned operators, Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, which have been providing 4G services for years and, in the case of Jio and Airtel, launched 5G services more than a year ago and already have more than 180 million 5G users between them. As of the end of May this year, BSNL had 86.3 million mobile users, according to data collected by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), giving it just a 7.4% share of India’s mobile market, and those numbers are slipping by the month as Jio and Airtel continue to add customers and market share. The Indian government will need to invest a lot more in BSNL if it is to ever be a true competitive threat to the country’s big three telcos.  

Norwegian service provider Lyse is aiming to improve its customer experience capabilities by deploying cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) business support systems (BSS) from CSG. The service provider, which had about 880,000 mobile customers at the end of 2023, is to use the vendor’s Ascendon revenue management system, which runs on the AWS cloud platform, as well as CSG’s customer engagement tools. “As the digital landscape rapidly evolves, we are committed to keeping our customers at the heart of our evolution,” said Jan-Erik Hvidsten, SVP of technology at Lyse. “Partnering with CSG is a pivotal step in our journey to revolutionise our service offerings and expand our reach across markets. By leveraging CSG’s advanced SaaS solutions, we are confident in our ability to scale the business as we grow and deliver unparalleled value to our mobile customers for generations to come. Together, we will make a difference.” Read more.     

Ericsson is teaming up with rural broadband systems integrator NRTC, Southern Linc (the wireless services subsidiary of utility firm Southern Company) and critical communications infrastructure specialist Anterix to “deliver cutting-edge private network solutions to electric cooperatives [co-ops] of all sizes and service terrains across the US,” the vendor announced in this press release. “This strategic partnership aims to provide reliable, resilient, and secure network infrastructure, empowering co-ops to meet the challenges of modernising the grid infrastructure and ensuring uninterrupted service delivery to communities nationwide,” stated the vendor. 

- The staff, TelecomTV