Industry News

The foreign policy of the Biden Presidency has a distinctly familiar feel to it, with a new executive order designed to boost domestic industry. As is so often the way with politics, the packaging may be different but the contents remain much the same. While Donald Trump spoke of making America great again, Biden is

New US President Biden is reportedly working on an executive order designed to make various US supply chains less reliant on China. The news comes courtesy of Nikkei, which has got hold of a draft of the order. Following the precedent set by Trump, Biden is largely circumventing the traditional law-making process by simply issuing

Telecoms.com periodically invites expert third parties to share their views on the industry’s most pressing issues. In this piece William Webb, CEO of Webb Search, looks at how things are going in the early days of 6G development. Work has started in earnest on 6G. Various bodies opine on what it should be – and

Telefónica has made its latest move to monetise some in-demand assets, this time spinning off its Chilean fibre network business and selling a 60% stake to investment group KKR. The deal values the business at US$1 billion and will enable Telefónica to reduce its debt by around $400 million, which is key to the Spanish

Two Democrat US Representatives have written to a bunch of cable and streaming providers calling on them to do something about claimed misinformation on TV news. You’re not going to believe this, but it turns out all of this misinformation is spread entirely by TV channels that are considered to have a right wing leaning.

Telecoms.com periodically invites expert third parties to share their views on the industry’s most pressing issues. In this piece Angela Logothetis, CTO of Amdocs Open Network, takes a look at the rapidly-evolving satellite communications sector. Are we at the start of a race between ground and satellite communications networks? It seems like only yesterday the industry’s

For some reason US software giant Microsoft has decided the European press needs its help in getting Google and Facebook to pay for news they link to. Europe’s press publishers, as represented by the European Publishers Council, News Media Europe, ENPA, and EMMA, have brought in their own US tech giant ringer to help them

Anyone who questioned the desirability of the US President being banned by social media companies was told they can do what they want. Does the same principle apply to Facebook in Australia? It turns out Facebook’s threat to block the sharing of news on its Australian site wasn’t a bluff. “In response to Australia’s proposed

Orange has finally announced the creation of an independent European towers company but the new business will have fewer assets than we might have expected. The France-based operator said the aptly-named TOTEM business, which is due to be up and running before the end of the year, will have around 25,500 macro sites in France

MásMóvil has launched a new range of financial services products, including personal loans of up to €60,000, putting it well on its way to becoming a bank. Spain’s fourth mobile operator this week unveiled MoneyGO, a range of financial services available to its Yoigo customers including – predictably – device financing and credit card offers

Orders put into the smartphone component supply chain indicate Huawei going to make a lot fewer devices this year due to US sanctions. The insight comes courtesy of Nikkei Asia, which has been chatting to people in the supply chain. They apparently told it that Huawei has put in orders for 70-80 million smartphones this

Orange is not looking to go it alone in the towers space. Quite the opposite, in fact: it is seeking a partnership with one or more fellow telcos, ideally Vodafone or Deutsche Telekom. When Orange published its plans to spin off its tower operations in France and Spain into the newly-christened TOTEM early on Thursday,

Cheap taxi alternative app Uber has lost its final appeal over the classification of its drivers as ‘workers’, but it’s still not clear what the wider implications will be. This marks the culmination of a legal action that started six years ago when a couple of Uber drivers – Yaseen Aslam and James Farrar –

The trading relationship between the US and China was one of the dominant themes of the Trump presidency, forcing the rest of the world to pick a team. At the start of a new administration we take a deep dive into how, if at all, the situation could change under Biden. The first part looked at

Nokia has inked a 5G core and access deal with A1 in Austria, which is obviously good news, but not necessarily a major step forward the Finnish vendor. The deal is an extension of Nokia’s longstanding relationship with the Austrian incumbent, so this is a contract it would reasonably expect to win. You could argue

Telecoms.com periodically invites expert third parties to share their views on the industry’s most pressing issues. In this piece Jonatan Matsson, Partner and Europe lead at Kearney’s Communications, Media and Technology practice, looks at the political and regulatory factors contributing to Europe’s poor 5G performance. 2021 is an all or nothing year for 5G roll

Barely a day goes by without some evidence being presented that one of Facebook, Apple, Amazon or Google has used their power to distort the market. The EU is currently investigating Google for abusing its dominant position in search and advertising, the US is regretting letting Facebook acquire its way to dominance and Apple’s power

Africa’s leading mobile operator MTN has partnered with payment platform Mastercard to add online payment functions to its mobile wallet for user across its fintech footprint. South Africa-based MTN announced that it has enter a partnership with Mastercard to enable users of MTN MoMo (mobile money) service in all the 16 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa

CSPs are obsessed with the large enterprise market and overlooking the billions of dollars available from small and medium enterprises. This is according to a new report from cloud BSS vendor BearingPoint//Beyond in collaboration with analyst firm Omdia. They point out that SMEs account for 99% of companies by number (but not by value) and

When Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi held the first meeting of his new Council of Ministers there was a very familiar name on the list of attendees. Vittorio Colao is serving as the Technological Innovation and Digital Transition Minister in the Draghi government. He is one of nine ministers without portfolio and one of 23

As the EU works to refine its massive Digital Services Act, France is publicly lobbying for greater national censorship powers and for more content to be made illegal. We know this because Cedric O, the French minister for the digital economy, chatted to the FT about it. “Getting these laws passed is a major objective

America Movil has become the latest big-name telco to announce a plan to spin off towers with a view to maximising the value of those passive infrastructure assets. The Mexican giant said it will hive off its towers in the Latin American markets in which it operates  later this year. In each case, the plan

India is up there with other major global markets when it comes to mobile data growth, according to the latest mobile broadband report from Nokia. The Indian broadband market is largely dominated by mobile, due to affordable smartphones, low data prices and ease in the provisioning of services, Nokia noted in the eighth edition of

Olaf Swantee will join Vodafone as a non-executive director this summer, provided his nomination gets the go-ahead from shareholders at the telco’s July AGM. In many ways, it’s hardly news. A seasoned telecoms professional joining a telecoms group’s board is a fairly common occurrence. But Swantee’s move to Vodafone has understandably captured headlines because, despite

UK MNO O2 spent almost a decade overcharging customers when they switched, for which Ofcom has belatedly given it a token punishment. Ofcom only started investigating this malpractice in 2019 but it still took a couple of years to get to the bottom of it. It found that between ‘at least’ 2011 and 2019 an

Millicom did its best to talk up a fairly weak full-year financial performance on Thursday, but did not attempt to conceal the difficulties it will face in its various operating markets this year. The telco, which provides services in Latin America and one African market – Tanzania – under the Tigo brand, saw revenues and

It turns out that when governments muck about with markets there are sometimes unintended consequences. Earlier this week we reported on a global chip shortage brought about, in part, by unilateral US action designed to prevent Chinese companies getting hold of semiconductors containing American intellectual property. Quite reasonably, Chinese companies such as Huawei them tried

There is apparently a trust problem around digital identities and no wonder, with talk of vaccine passports being required for previously unrestricted activities. To address it the UK government today published its draft rules of engagement regarding the future use of digital identities. The big idea is to make it quicker and easier for people

Telstra is taking back control of its network of retail outlets, many of which are currently operated under licence by third parties. The Australian incumbent said the move, which will affect a couple of hundred stores, is driven by its need to keep pace with the growing digital economy and to give it more flexibility

Swedish operator group Telia has made its big IoT move in the form of a bundle of technologies designed to take the hassle out of global implementation. The new portfolio is called Telia Global IoT Connectivity and the big claim on its behalf is that it will save companies on average 28 percent of the