TELECOM – THIS WEEK (2448)
1.???? Amazon steps up its arms race in artificial intelligence
Amazon will maintain its position as a minority investor and will be Anthropic's primary training partner for AI models, the startup said. Anthropic said Friday that Amazon, a longtime backer of the company, had invested an additional $4 billion in the artificial intelligence startup, doubling its investment in the firm known for its chatbot GenAI Claude. According to Xira data, 82 percent of companies are investing or looking to invest in AI this year. Currently, 37 percent of companies are already investing in AI, 32 percent are planning to invest, and 17 percent are looking to invest.
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2.???? Huawei wants 100,000 apps on Harmony OS within a year
China's Huawei, blacklisted by the U.S., said on Saturday it is targeting 100,000 applications for its Harmony operating system in coming months as it seeks widespread help to achieve self-reliance. The tech giant has more than 15,000 applications based on Harmony that can meet consumers' basic needs, but the ecosystem requires more personalised and boutique apps, Huawei Chairman Xu Zhijun told a conference.
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3.???? Mavenir risks default or restructuring after failure to crack 5G
Financial problems loom for Mavenir, which has made no visible progress in a shrinking RAN market where telcos still prefer single-vendor deals. Among the various western challengers to the giant vendors of radio access network (RAN) products, Mavenir has perhaps been the noisiest and looked the most promising. A dedicated practitioner of open RAN, the Frankenstein-like stitching together of different vendor parts, it used to revel in denunciations of proprietary technologies and their owners, pushing hard to gain industry acceptance and land deals with major telcos. Operators bold enough to combine openness with virtualization could pocket gazillions in cost savings, the vendor previously claimed.
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4.???? AT&T to discontinue NB-IoT, will migrate users to LTE-M network
AT&T has confirmed reports that it will stop selling narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) data plans. Initially revealed AT&T told the publication it has begun the process to decommission its NB-IoT network in the US entirely.
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5.???? Could Tareq Amin be Mavenir’s white knight?
Mavenir is reportedly on the verge of a $1bn capital investment from Saudi firm Aramco Digital, which is headed up by Open RAN evangelist Tareq Amin, in a move that would provide the US competitive mobile networks vendor with a much-needed lifeline.?Mavenir, one of the early pioneers of Open RAN technology, has long hoped that investments in disaggregated multivendor radio access network deployments would flourish and provide it with a growing revenue stream. While views vary on the current status and prospects for Open RAN, it’s clear that it hasn’t taken off as many had hoped. The major early Open RAN investments were in greenfield networks in the US, Japan, and Germany, where new telcos emerged to compete with the incumbents, but these investments have not been followed by much in the way of Open RAN spending by traditional mobile operators.
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6.???? Expect more telco M&A in 2025 – Deloitte
Europe will be a hotbed of telecom takeover activity in 2025, a trend that will lead to a year-on-year increase in the number of merger and acquisition (M&A) deals struck worldwide in the sector to around 400, according to the team at professional services firm Deloitte.?
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7.???? BT launches a new managed SASE service powered by Fortinet
BT announced an expansion of its managed?secure SD-WAN solution?for business and public sector customers in the UK with new SSE (Security Service Edge) capabilities, leveraging technology from?Fortinet, the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security. The expanded software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) service will help customers seamlessly transition from managed SD-WAN to secure access service edge (SASE), and forge ahead with their digital transformation by protecting access to their applications and data in the cloud.
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8.???? China to upgrade data infrastructure 5G network to 5G-A
China has unveiled draft guidelines for country’s data infrastructure construction, including upgrading its 5G network to 5G-A-standard and promoting 6G-related research, development and innovation. According to the document released by the National Data Bureau, China will balance the deployment of international communication gateways across its eastern, central and western regions, and expand international submarine and land cable information channels.
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9.???? Nokia Secures Big 5G and Data Deals
Nokia statement:?“Nokia is proud to be T-Mobile’s long-standing partner in Radio Access Networks (RAN). We are confident in our industry-leading portfolio which has helped us grow market share with many of our existing RAN customers as well as to win completely new ones. We continue to support our global customer base with best-in-class field performance, technology, software, and services.?
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10.? Nokia gets new telecom contract from Deutsche Telekom, replacing Huawei
Nokia has signed a contract with Deutsche Telekom?to roll out a mobile network using Open Radio Access Network (ORAN) in more than 3,000 sites in Germany, the Finnish telecom equipment maker said in a statement on Wednesday. The new deal formally marks Nokia's return as a supplier to Europe's largest network after Deutsche Telekom chose Ericsson equipment for parts of its network in 2017.
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11.? Nokia’s data center push is starting to pay off
Cisco, you’ve officially been put on notice. Nokia is coming for you. Or, more specifically, your data center market share. After spending the last few years stealthily bulking up its product lineup and go-to-market machine, Nokia is ready to flex its muscles on the main stage. Its goal? Supplant Cisco to sit alongside Arista Networks as a leader in the data center networking arena. And it looks like things are already headed in the right direction.
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12.? World’s first Level 4 autonomous network makes comms history
Tsinghua University?in Beijing began operating its network in autonomous mode, also known as “Level 4 network autonomy,†in September this year. It’s an impressive achievement. But reader, I come bearing a second bulletin of autonomous network news — and this one will cause a sharp intake of breath among Western comms vendors, service providers and governments.?China Mobile?recently completed successful trials of Level 4 autonomous networking in Guangdong province (population: 122 million) and will begin its three-year program to deploy it nationwide in 2025.
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13.? Tech Mahindra and AWS Collaborate to Transform Telecom Networks with Generative AI
Tech Mahindra, a leading global provider of technology consulting and digital solutions to enterprises across industries, has signed a multi-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop an?Autonomous Networks Operations Platform?(ANOP) designed for Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and enterprise customers. This platform by Tech Mahindra is built on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and generative AI (GenAI) services powered by AWS, enabling customers to transition their network operations from an on-premises infrastructure to a real-time proactive and preventive model operating on a hybrid cloud.
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14.? An Update on Recent Cyberattacks Targeting the US Wireless Companies
Like the entire telecommunications industry, T-Mobile has been closely monitoring ongoing reports about a series of highly coordinated cyberattacks by bad actors known as “Salt Typhoon†that are reported to be linked to Chinese state-sponsored operations. Many reports claim these bad actors have gained access to some providers’ customer information over an extended period of time – phone calls, text messages, and other sensitive information, particularly from government officials. This is not the case at T-Mobile. To clear up some misleading media reports, here is what we’re currently seeing, much of which we believe is different from what is being seen by other providers.