What’s up with… Deutsche Telekom, Vodacom, Google

• Deutsche Telekom integrates AI and blockchain
• Vodacom hit by Ethiopia exposure
• Google joins the MEF

In today’s industry news roundup: Deutsche Telekom adopts blockchain for data sovereignty; problems in Ethiopia take a toll on Vodacom Group; Google deepens its involvement with the RCS community; and much more!

Deutsche Telekom, through its Telekom MMS subsidiary, has deepened its involvement in blockchains and cryptocurrencies, becoming what it claims to be the first telco to operate as a “validator” within the NEAR Protocol. The NEAR Protocol and its associated NEAR cryptocurrency are pitched as a “low-cost alternative” to Ethereum, a decentralised blockchain where ether is the native cryptocurrency. As a validator, Telekom MSS will check and approve Near Protocol transactions and so become a participant in the “proof-of-stake” mechanism carried out by the blockchain network. According to Deutsche Telekom, the partnership – which involves Telekom MMS joining the NEAR ecosystem’s Enterprise Node Operators programme – “marks a significant milestone for the institutional orientation of the NEAR ecosystem”. One of the NEAR ecosystem’s key focus areas since May 2024, according to Deutsche Telekom, is user-owned AI. By integrating AI and blockchain, NEAR purportedly extends the concept of data sovereignty to AI projects. This includes an open platform for AI projects that is “accessible to everyone” and is organised and controlled by the platform users themselves. “The cooperation with NEAR is promising and innovative, and together we are breaking new ground,” said Oliver Nyderle, head of digital trust and Web3 infrastructure at Telekom MMS. “The ecosystem shares our attitude towards greater data sovereignty and user data control for the benefit of the users.” 

Operations in Ethiopia continue to take their toll on the finances of South Africa-based Vodacom Group. In the six months ended 30 September 2024 (FY H1 2025), group earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 2.7% to 26.6bn rand (ZAR) ($1.5bn) year on year, largely because of a massive devaluation of the birr, Ethiopia’s currency, in the summer. Strip out that devaluation “and related remeasurement of foreign denominated assets and liabilities” noted Vodacom – along with a few other (and much less impactful) headwinds – and EBITDA would have grown by nearly 8.5% on a “normalised” basis. Group revenue was flat over the same period, up 1% to ZAR 74bn ($4.2bn), which Vodacom couched as something of an achievement given the unfavourable swing of the Ethiopian birr. On a normalised basis, the top line grew by nearly 10%. Vodacom Group has an indirect and direct exposure to Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia (STE), which launched telephony services in October 2022 and its M-Pesa mobile money service a year later, following the award of an operating licence in 2021. This enabled it to break the monopoly of state-owned and national operator Ethio Telecom. STE is majority owned by Kenya’s Safaricom (with a 55.7% market share), in which Vodacom Group has an effective interest of 39.4% and so is counted as an associate on its books. During the first half of 2025, Safaricom’s contribution to Vodacom Group’s operating profit was ZAR 1.3bn, down 17% compared to H1 2023. The sizeable dip was largely blamed on the devaluation of the birr and STE’s ongoing startup costs. Vodacom has a direct 5.7% stake in STE – other STE stakeholders are Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation, Vodafone, and British International Investment – and it was the Ethiopian investment that explained why operating profit plunged by more than half at Vodacom’s international business segment to ZAR 995m. On the upside, there does seem to be, as Safaricom puts it, “strong commercial momentum” in Ethiopia. As of 30 September 2024, Safaricom reported STE had 6.1 million customers, up 47.1% from six months earlier, and that the total number of “sites” built exceeded 3,000, supported by a capex of ZAR 3.9bn. As a result of the recent currency reforms in Ethiopia, however, Safaricom has pushed back STE’s EBITDA breakeven target from FY 2026 to FY 2027 and increased expected loses for FY25 earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) by 15bn Kenyan shillings (KES) ($116m) to a guidance range of between KES 58bn and KES 61bn.

Google has joined the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF). Announcing the news this morning, Dario Betti, CEO of the MEF, explained that: “2024 sees rich communication services (RCS) really coming into its own, allowing brands a more secure and dynamic way of engaging with their customers. Google’s membership of MEF aligns with our commitment to expand the community, focusing on innovation and excellence in messaging.” The forum believes that RCS is a key part of the future of business communications and that by being part of MEF, members can more easily communicate with, and receive feedback from, stakeholders across the mobile ecosystem about the role and development of RCS. A study released last week from Juniper Research predicted that RCS traffic would reach 50 billion messages globally in 2025, up from 33 billion in 2024, in part due to Apple’s first full year of support for the technology. Juniper also urged operators to prioritise onboarding their RCS services to Google’s Jibe platform in 2025, to avoid delays to global traffic growth. “Messaging is now so much more advanced,” added Betti, “and MEF has been driving innovation and best practice in messaging since the start.”

Here’s one for science fiction and/or conspiracy theory aficionados. One of the UK’s oldest satellites, Skynet-1A, which has been in orbit since just after the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, has mysteriously disappeared from its original geostationary slot above the Indian Ocean just off the coast of East Africa. It has been found 36,000 kilometres away (that’s 22,369 miles) over the Pacific coast of South America  – and it didn’t wander off over there all by itself. Someone or something made it move, and there’s no record of who or what did. (Cue the X Files theme). Skynet-1A’s primary role was to permit secure, encrypted communications between UK military headquarters and agencies at home and British forces ‘east of Suez’. The satellite was a joint build-and-launch project between the UK and the US, and America had control of the satellite while in-orbit software testing took place. Thereafter, it was fully handed over to the British authorities. Skynet-A1 broke down after 19 months in orbit when all its travelling-wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs) successively failed. It has been surmised that the solder on high-voltage joints was not strong enough and the TWTAs cracked because of the extremes of temperatures to which the solder was continually exposed. Since the first satellite failed, four subsequent generations of Skynet have been launched. When Skynet-A1 gave up the ghost at 40 degrees east, it would slowly have drifted out of its original position and should eventually have meandered away in an easterly direction and further across the Indian Ocean towards the so-called ‘gravity well’ at 75 degrees east. Instead, it went the other way and has wound up in another gravity well at 105 degrees west where it is bobbing around like a cork circling a drain. Strange. As Commander Scott of Star Trek was fond of telling anyone who would listen, “Ye cannae change the laws of physics”, therefore, Skynet-A1’s thrusters must have been fired at at some time or another. Speculation has it that it was by the Americans, probably at some point in 1977 when the UK authorities “lost sight” of the satellite.. However, as the BBC reports, some of the satellite’s status logs (dating back for half a century and more) are incomplete so it is not possible to ascertain what happened, when or why. The most likely explanation is an attempt to push the satellite into an “orbital graveyard” – a dead area in space where defunct ‘birds’ are parked far away from the orbits of operational comms (and other) satellites. However it happened, Skynet-1A is now moving about in close proximity to where active satellites regularly pass on their orbits. A collision at some time is feasible and the situation is “being monitored”.

The latest whitepaper from 5G Americas looks at The Programmable 5G Network and API Ecosystem, highlighting the industry’s shift toward software-defined networks and the role of application programmable interfaces (APIs). It details how cloud-native architectures, virtualisation and open APIs are paving the way for service-oriented, scalable 5G networks. Key areas of the whitepaper cover the development of service-oriented architectures and API-based service frameworks; how the emergence of business models, such as network-as-a-service (NaaS) and communication platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) can open up new revenue streams; and a closer look at ecosystem collaboration through initiatives, such as the GSMA Open Gateway, the Camara project, and TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture. “This shift is not just about connectivity; it’s about creating intelligent, scalable systems that can adapt to the ever-evolving needs of our digital world,” said Bob Everson, director of mobile architecture and ecosystem at Cisco. “5G’s transformation into a programmable, API-driven ecosystem is a game-changer for our industry and will play a critical role in unlocking the full potential of this technology.” Dan Druta, lead member of technical staff at AT&T and leader of the 5G Americas working group, added that: “Programmable networking has long existed, but only now can CSPs fully realise its benefits through a service-oriented architecture that enables ‘as-a-service’ capabilities. To achieve this, operators must provide application developers with a ‘franchise-like’ framework offering consistent capabilities based on uniform standards, specifications, and processes.” The whitepaper also explores advances in API security and regulatory compliance that maintain consumer trust and network integrity, as well as examines continuous innovation and development in user endpoint devices to meet evolving connectivity needs.

Liberty Global has disclosed that it has now completed the previously announced spin-off of its Swiss business, Sunrise, into a separate publicly traded company. The completion follows the approval of the transaction at a special meeting of Liberty Global shareholders, which took place at the end of October. Liberty Global will continue to own and operate its Liberty Telecom businesses in Belgium, Ireland, Slovakia, the UK and the Netherlands. “The successful completion of the spin-off marks an important milestone in our ongoing strategy to unlock value for Liberty Global shareholders,” said Mike Fries, CEO of Liberty Global, and incoming chairman of Sunrise, “allowing them to directly participate in the future performance of Sunrise with its strong capital structure, attractive equity story, future cash-generation potential and scope for dividends. Under the leadership of its experienced management team, Sunrise is well positioned to continue to deliver innovative solutions and superior connectivity to Swiss consumers and businesses.” Sunrise is the second-largest mobile network operator in Switzerland with a market share of approximately 25%. It also has around 27% of the fixed broadband market. In both businesses, it ranks behind incumbent Swisscom.

– The staff, TelecomTV