TelecomTV’s top 10 stories of 2024

• It’s been another year of major developments in the telecom sector, heavily influenced by AI
• Here are the articles that were read the most during 2024
• AT&T, BT, Ericsson, Fastweb, HPE, Juniper Networks, Mavenir, Nvidia, SK Telecom, Vodafone and Verizon all featured

At TelecomTV towers we look for three main things when we’re considering what to write about in the ever-changing world that is telecom – technology, people and money. And 2024’s most popular articles included a mix of all three, with the tech side of things not surprisingly dominated by AI. 

Interestingly, it was the specific potential of AI in the radio access network that attracted the attention of our readers this year… so let’s take a look at the 10 most read stories from the past 12 months. 

1. BT axes Digital chief Harmeen Mehta in top table revamp

27 September, 2024: Allison Kirkby, who took over as CEO at UK national operator BT Group in February, has been shaking up her top team this year and the departure of chief digital and innovation officer Harmeen Mehta as part of a revamp that saw the permanent creation of a new strategy role in September attracted a lot of attention. Since then, Marc Allera, the CEO of BT’s Consumer division (which offers its services using the EE brand), also announced his departure – he is being replaced by Claire Gillies, who joined BT’s executive committee on 10 December to work alongside Allera as part of an “orderly transition process”. Read the full story about Mehta’s departure from BT. 

2. Fastweb fires up its AI factory

9 July, 2024: Italian communications service provider Fastweb, which is part of the Swisscom group, launched its NeXXt AI Factory, which is essentially an Nvidia AI supercomputer housed in a datacentre that the CSP is offering to customers on an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) basis. In December 2023, Fastweb announced it had invested in 31 Nvidia DGX H100 systems that could be operated in a datacentre as an AI supercomputing cluster based on the AI technology vendor’s DGX SuperPOD architecture. The plan was to make the AI supercomputer available to public administrations and enterprises of all kinds so they could develop their own AI and generative AI (GenAI) applications. So-called AI factories, especially those meeting the data sovereignty needs of governments and enterprises, are set to play a key role in the AI services sector in 2025 and beyond. Read the full story. 

3. HPE confirms $14bn deal to acquire Juniper Networks

10 January, 2024: This is a massive deal that, if things go to plan, might close in the first few months of 2025 and, if it does, it will give HPE a few new strings to its bow. But as with many M&A deals these days, AI is at the heart of the rationale: Juniper Networks has been describing itself as a “leader in secure, AI-driven networks” since its 2019 acquisition of Mist Systems, which had developed AI-enabled, cloud-managed wireless networking technology for enterprise customers. Since then it has been developing a strategy and portfolio to capture the demand for AI-driven automated operations and “self-driving” networks in the enterprise, datacentre and telco sectors. And during the course of 2024, HPE has been talking up its increasing engagement with customers regarding their AI needs. Read the full story. 

4. AT&T goes big on Open RAN with Ericsson

5 December, 2023: This is how big a deal this was the for the telecom sector – even though the news broke in early December 2023, it was still being checked out by thousands of readers in 2024, making it our fourth most popular article this year. Like the HPE/Juniper story, this combined major industry names, technology and big bucks. AT&T pumped new life into the disaggregated, multivendor radio access network (RAN) sector with a five-year, $14bn plan to build out the next phase of its 5G network using the next-generation architecture, with Ericsson as its lead vendor partner for the new deployment programme. Other technology suppliers will be involved in the deployments, including Fujitsu, Dell Technologies, Intel and Corning, while Mavenir was also recently added to the vendor roster as an additional supplier of Open RAN-enabled radio units. Read the full story. 

5. AI-RAN Alliance launches at #MWC24

26 February, 2024: This was one of the big talking points at this year’s Mobile World Congress, as some of the biggest hitters from the mobile networking and AI sectors, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Arm, Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, Nvidia, Samsung Electronics, SoftBank and T-Mobile US, rocked up in Barcelona with a shiny new and very topical industry group, the AI-RAN Alliance. “The goal of the alliance is to enable and accelerate what we’re terming AI RAN – that means AI combined with the radio access network… but also, part of the focus is using AI to address new revenue opportunities, and build the capabilities and the advantages and the functional benefits of AI into the radio access network ecosystem and to build out that ecosystem, which could include new entrants as well,” noted Nvidia’s senior VP of telecom, Ronny Vasishta. Since then, Alex Jinsung Choi has been appointed as the chair of Alliance and some of the members have announced investments in AI-RAN R&D facilities and programmes. Read the full story.

6. EC report proposes fair share payments, easier telco M&A

10 September, 2024: A new report into the competitiveness of the European Union was music to the ears of the region’s major telcos, as it recommended pro-market consolidation policies and the introduction of so-called fair share financial contributions from the big tech firms to telco capex budgets. The report, The future of European competitiveness, was written by Mario Draghi,  whose CV includes stints as Italian prime minister and president of the European Central Bank. His recommendations included ones specific to the telecom sector as well as others more broadly focused on the digital infrastructure and services sector, with a particular take on how to be competitive in the AI era. Read the full story.   

7. BT's CEO unveils back-to-basics, UK-focused plan

16 May 2024: BT’s share price jumped by 12% as CEO Allison Kirkby unveiled a new strategic approach that will see the UK national operator get back to basics for the rest of this decade. “Having passed peak capex on our full fibre broadband rollout and achieved our £3bn cost and service transformation programme a year ahead of schedule, we’ve now reached the inflection point on our long-term strategy… As we move into the next phase of BT Group’s transformation, we are sharpening our focus to be better for our customers and the country, by accelerating the modernisation of our operations, and by exploring options to optimise our global business. This will create a simpler BT Group, fully focused on connecting the UK, and well positioned to generate significant growth for all our stakeholders,” stated Kirkby. Read the full story. 

8. Yago Tenorio leaves Vodafone, joins Verizon

27 September, 2024: After almost 30 years at Vodafone Group, the operator’s network architecture director, Santiago ‘Yago’ Tenorio, left the company and TelecomTV got the scoop that he had joined Verizon as the US operator’s CTO. Tenorio, a member of TelecomTV’s DSP Leaders Council who had also been the chairman of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) for five years, is well regarded, and very well liked, across the industry and in recent years had been associated with Vodafone’s Open RAN efforts, which included the development of a 5G network-in-a-box product that Tenorio unveiled at TelecomTV’s DSP Leaders World Forum event in Windsor, UK, in June this year. A few days after TelecomTV broke the news, Verizon officially announced Tenorio’s appointment, noting that he is “recognised for his expertise in architecting Vodafone’s Open RAN, cloud networking and network APIs… In his new role, Tenorio will lead Verizon’s work in advancing new 5G use cases, work with partners to lead new technology advancements and map out the next generation of technologies that Verizon will bring to customers where they live, work and play.” Read the full story. 

9. Could Tareq Amin be Mavenir's white knight?

25 November, 2024: It only took a few days for this article to make it into our top 10 as it combines money, people and the future of one of the Open RAN sector’s major players. Mavenir is reportedly on the verge of a $1bn capital investment from Saudi firm Aramco Digital, which, when the article was published, was headed up by Open RAN evangelist Tareq Amin. Such an investment would provide the US competitive mobile networks vendor, which has some fiscal challenges currently, with a much-needed lifeline. While Aramco Digital might still be involved in any such engagement, Tareq Amin will not be leading the charge, as only days after the speculation emerged he announced on LinkedIn that is no longer at Aramco Digital, as he is now the CEO of an as yet unidentified company. That LinkedIn update led to some immediate speculation that Amin might be installed at Mavenir as part of such a deal, but he has confirmed to TelecomTV that he will not be joining the vendor and that he will reveal his new role (which TelecomTV believes is focused on AI developments in the Middle East) in the new year. Read the full story.   

10. SKT unveils AI infrastructure superhighway plan

4 November, 2024: The AI drumbeat at South Korea’s SK Telecom (SKT) is getting louder by the month: The network operator’s CEO, Ryu Young-sang, put more flesh on the company’s AI strategy bones during a keynote speech at its own AI Summit in Seoul, where he presented SKT’s vision for an “AI infrastructure superhighway”. The plan is based on three pillars – build out a national network of regional AI datacentres; enhance that with edge AI infrastructure; and launch a GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) offering to enterprise and government users before expanding the reach of the resulting portfolio of AI infrastructure services into other geographic markets via high-capacity submarine network links in collaboration with partners. Read the full story. 

Here are some other popular articles from 2024:

• Vodafone issues red alert over Europe's digital future
• NTT eyes strategic stake in PLDT's datacentre business
• SoftBank and Nvidia tie revenue model to new AI-RAN solution
• Nvidia throws an AI-RAN curveball
• Huawei is still the world's biggest telecom equipment vendor
• Nokia CEO boasts network API traction
• IBM tops quantum-safe networking ranking

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV