What’s up with… Dell, VMware, Onivia, T-Mobile

• Dell’s stake in VMware is the source of MA& speculation
• Spain has a wholesale FTTH player
• T-Mobile wants to revisit its California jobs pledge

Speculation swirls around Dell’s ownership of VMWare and the unveiling of a new FTTH player in Spain are the frontrunners in this race to the news finishing line.

• Dell is reportedly mulling what to do with its 80.8% stake in VMware, reports CNBC (citing the Wall Street Journal). Dell’s stake was worth $50 billion before the speculation hit the newswires – now it’s worth about $52.5 billion as VMware’s stock jumped by about 5% to $157. Dell’s share price also headed north, gaining more than 9% to $53.66 in early trading. VMware is an important technology partner to many operators as the advance their virtualization strategies, so any disruption might not be welcome by the telco (as well as enterprise) community.
• Onivia, a venture backed by Macquarie Capital (lead equity investor) and Aberdeen Standard Investments and Daiwa Corporate Investment, has launched what it describes as Spain’s only wholesale fiber access network operator. The move follows Macquarie’s recent purchase of MasMovil’s FTTH network, which now passes 966,000 Spanish premises in five cities (Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Malaga, Seville and Valencia).
• T-Mobile US is seeking to renege on its agreement with California to create 1,000 new jobs now that its purchase of Sprint is closed, reports the LA Times. This comes little more than a week after T-Mobile told some Sprint staff they were getting canned.
• There were almost 64 million 5G subscribers globally at the end of the first quarter, along with 5.43 billion 4G/LTE users, according to stats shared by the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA). 
• Internet use in the UK has surged, concludes regulator Ofcom, having looked at the numbers during the pandemic lockdown period. Given everything, you would expect the stats to have gone through the roof, but 4 hours per days per person during lockdown, compared with 3.5 hours last September, whispers ‘uptick’ rather than screaming ‘surge’. What does earn ‘surge’ is the use of video calling, which really did zoom up (geddit?): 70% of UK online adults now make video calls at least weekly, up from 35% pre-lockdown. The over-65s who make a least one video-call each week increased from 22% of that particular demographic in February 2020 to 61%, no doubt answering calls from the younger cohort for the first time. Meanwhile, here's a real Serge.
• Data center server manufacturer Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT) is the latest company to join the Open RAN Policy Coalition, which now boasts 45 members.
• Nokia’s incoming CEO Pekka Lundmark will replace incumbent Rajeev Suri on August 1, a month earlier than originally planned, the vendor has announced. 
• Managed detection and response (MDR) was highlighted as a hot security topic by IDC this week and, as if to hammer home that message, independent security research firm Hardenstance has just released a white paper, What to Expect from MDR & MDR Providers. The paper’s author, Hardenstance chief Patrick Donegan, notes that “the goal of an MDR provider is to harden an organization’s security posture and in particular to lower its Mean Time To Detection (MTTD) and Mean Time To Respond (MTTR) in a Service Level Agreement (SLA).”
• Ericsson is to be the sole supplier of 5G gear to Croatian operator Hrvatski Telekom, part of the Deutsche Telekom empire, until 2024. 
• Amazon has seeded The Climate Pledge Fund with a healthy $2 billion to “support the development of sustainable technologies and services that will enable Amazon and other companies to meet The Climate Pledge – a commitment to be net zero carbon by 2040.” Does this make Amazon a 'good' company? No. But hopefully that money will be put to good use.
• The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) believes full fibre broadband availability across the UK could “provide a real boost to communities across the country and boost labour productivity by nearly £59 billion by 2025.” Well, there’s only one way to find out!
• Colt Technology Services has launched its IP Access on Demand service in key Asian markets.

- The staff, TelecomTV