What’s up with… Orange & Mistral AI, Aduna, Telecom Italia

• Orange forges close ties with Mistral AI
• KDDI, Infobip, DT’s Arbitter hook up with telco API venture Aduna 
• Telecom Italia agrees Sparkle sale
   

In today’s industry news roundup: Orange forges a critical relationship with French artificial intelligence developer Mistral AI; telco API joint venture Aduna adds KDDI as an investor, Infobip as a partner, and Arbitter as its CCO; Telecom Italia seals deal to sell international division; and much more!

Orange has teamed up with Mistral AI to “assess the impact of large-scale, massive use of AI on telecommunications networks worldwide”, noted the telco in this announcement. The partners “will define technological roadmaps to build the networks of tomorrow and address challenges related to connectivity and GPU availability. The goal is to ensure all customers have smooth and efficient access to advanced AI solutions,” added Orange. The telco’s CTO office spent 2024 considering the way in which network architectures need to be revamped to address the growing use of next-generation AI applications, and the relationship with Mistral AI is clearly the next step in this planning process. “2025 marks the advent of omnimodal AI – an AI that integrates and analyses diverse data (voice, data, images, etc) to enrich user interaction,” explained Orange. “In this context, Orange’s infrastructures will evolve to guarantee remarkable network quality and minimal latency, close to real time. This paves the way for agentic AI, enabling instant interactions and decisions.” In addition to the joint R&D, Orange plans to integrate Mistral AI’s technologies into its infrastructure. “Orange will optimise, for example, intelligent traffic management in its networks, predictive maintenance solutions, and repairs. The use of Mistral AI will generate unprecedented gains in efficiency and competitiveness,” added the telco. Orange Business, the telco’s enterprise services division, will also integrate Mistral AI applications, such as AI assistant Le Chat Pro and generative AI model Codestral, into its service offerings.  “By joining forces with Mistral AI, we are taking a major step towards establishing Europe as a global leader in AI,” stated Orange Group CEO Christel Heydemann. “This collaboration is unprecedented as it fully incorporates the research dimension. It will promote the massive adoption of AI and enable its full potential through high-quality networks, tailored for real-time conversations. Together, we firmly believe that generative AI can positively transform businesses when technology and trust come together,” she added. Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI, commented, “We are thrilled to announce our partnership with global telecommunications leader Orang as we join forces to bring our shared vision of generative AI to life. This strategic collaboration aims to integrate AI into Orange’s operations, services and R&D initiatives. This marks a significant milestone in the deployment of AI and in preparing for the growing adoption of this transformative technology.” It’s been a busy week for French firm Mistral AI, as it also teamed up with Iliad Group’s French service provider, Free, to bundle Le Chat Pro into all of its mobile service offerings for free for a year, and forged a partnership with Cisco to develop an AI agent for enterprise users.

Aduna, the telco API joint venture announced last September and currently being formed by Ericsson (50% equity) and a number of major telcos (with the other 50% split between them), has added KDDI as an investor: The Japanese telco joins América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Reliance Jio, Singtel, Telefonica, Telstra, T-Mobile US, Verizon and Vodafone as a stakeholder in the venture. (It hasn’t been revealed exactly what size of stake each operator investor is set to hold in the venture.) KDDI will “collaborate by sharing expertise and resources, including technical skills and marketing, to enhance Aduna’s scope and impact, bolstering the venture’s goal to create open, non-discriminatory access to advanced network capabilities,” stated Ericsson in this announcement. Kazuyuki Yoshimura, KDDI’s CTO, noted: “As a pioneer in telecommunications, KDDI is proud to take part in opening the network to exciting new possibilities. By joining Aduna, we’re enabling broader access to advanced network capabilities through APIs, empowering developer platforms to drive innovation on a global scale. Each new network integrated into this unified platform helps create an ecosystem where advanced applications can flourish, bringing seamless connectivity and enhanced services to more businesses and consumers than ever before.” And major names from the communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) sector are also adding their weight to Aduna. Earlier this week, Sinch signed up as a partner and now another of the key players in the CPaaS sector, Infobip, has joined the gang. Matija Ražem, chief commercial telecom officer at Infobip, noted in this announcement: “Infobip’s solution-oriented, go-to-market strategy leverages our own and partners’ professional services, which allows us to bring CPaaS to customers for more developer-focused initiatives. We continue to extend our partner and developer ecosystem, network APIs, self-serve capabilities and advanced security features. We are excited to partner with Aduna, this historic new venture in the telecom industry.” 

And there’s more news from Aduna, which recently announced Anthony Bartolo as its CEO. Bartolo took to the stage at Ericsson’s pre-MWC analyst and media briefing in London on Wednesday to announce the appointment of other senior executives, one of which is Peter Arbitter, who has joined as chief commercial officer. Arbitter has joined from Deutsche Telekom, where he was senior VP of Magenta API, the German telco’s network API unit. Arbitter was one of the executives involved in setting up Aduna as a joint venture, and now he has joined it! Arbitter discussed the telco API joint venture with TelecomTV late last year – you can watch that video interview here.  

Telecom Italia (TIM) has agreed to sell Sparkle, its international network operator and service provider division, for €700m to Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) and Retelit, a provider of communications and IT services to the Italian enterprise sector. The parties will sign a sale contract by 11 April and the deal is expected to close by the first quarter of 2026. The news comes a day before Telecom Italia CEO Pietro Labriola is due to report the telco’s preliminary 2024 results and provide a strategic update, when M&A is certain to be a focal point for any Q&A session, as the Italian operator is currently the subject of speculation regarding potential takeover bids – see Telecom Italia back in the M&A frame.

Not for the first time, service providers and enterprises will be heading to this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona looking for new use cases for 5G and this year Telefónica has a couple, based on 5G connectivity, edge computing and artificial intelligence (AI), to show off for the healthcare sector. The first, CatEye, “consists of a device with 5G connectivity that can determine whether the patient has cataracts to a sufficient degree to advise surgical intervention,” noted the Spanish telco in this announcement. “To do this, Telefónica has developed, in collaboration with Edgendria Innovación, a specialised optics platform with precision servomotors, applied to a specific camera that, autonomously and without the need for specialised help, takes a photograph of both eyes and sends it via 5G to an artificial intelligence that is housed in Telefónica’s edge.” 5G Intelligent Blood Monitoring, meanwhile, comprises 5G and edge computing from Telefónica and the PointCheck solution developed by the startup Leuko, “which improves the monitoring of critical patients who may suffer severe neutropenia… as can happen in oncology patients due to the effect of certain drugs or other pathologies.” Leuko’s PointCheck is a “non-invasive device that allows a video capture of the blood circulation in the capillaries of the patients’ ring finger, which is analysed by a specially trained algorithm to infer whether the patient is currently at risk of severe neutropenia or not. The integration of the 5G module in the PointCheck device allows the patient to perform this test wherever they are, reliably, securely and with sufficient latency and bandwidth to be able to transmit the video with the metadata captured during the measurement to the algorithm for analysis. In addition, in this pilot Telefónica has deployed this algorithm in its edge computing, maintaining the sovereignty and security of the medical data so that it does not leave Telefónica’s network from the time it is captured by the device until it is delivered to the medical staff,” added the telco. 

Following a number of reports that its private equity owners are looking to get a return on their investments, Dutch service provider Odido (formerly known as T-Mobile Netherlands) has confirmed it is considering an initial public offering (IPO). The operator noted in this announcement that it is “currently exploring various strategic options with shareholders to support the further growth of the company” and that “an IPO, with or without equity, is one of the possible strategic options,” though no final decision has been taken. “Odido is continuously evaluating various options that align with its strategic vision to accelerate growth, strengthen its market position and create long-term value for stakeholders and customers,” it added. A report in early January suggested that Odido’s owners, Apax Partners and Warburg Pincus, are aiming to raise €1bn from a public float of the Dutch telco’s shares on the Amsterdam stock exchange in a process that would value the service provider at about €7bn, almost 40% higher than the €5.1bn that the private equity partners paid for the operator in 2022.    

Samsung’s increasing integration of AI applications on its devices is causing tension with South Korea’s mobile operators, all of which are looking to develop AI applications that they want to promote to their customers (many of whom use Samsung devices), The Korea Herald has reported.

– The staff, TelecomTV