Towercos set to do battle for Oi’s Brazilian towers

News

A bidding war for Oi’s 8,000 towers could just around the corner, with media suggesting that giants American Tower Corporation (ATC) and IHS Towers are poised to bid

Today, Brazilian media is reporting that both ATC and IHS Towers are lining up to bid for OI’s 8,000 mobile towers, situated throughout Brazil, according to anonymous sources close to the matter.

Oi has already received a binding offer of roughly $326 million in early August for the towers from NK 108 Empreendimentos e Participacoes (NK 108), an affiliate of Brazilian infrastructure developer Highline do Brasil II Infraestrutura de Telecomunicacoes (Highline). The deal would see around $210 million paid to Oi immediately, with the rest of the sum paid up until 2026, depending on the level of infrastructure usage.

Now, according to reports, any new proposals from other potential suitors are expected to be submitted by Monday afternoon, with the minimum bid at least matching that of Highline.

All three of these tower companies have been growing at pace in recent years, with tower infrastructure becoming an ever more attractive long-term investment, particularly in today’s unstable global economy.

Highline has increased its Brazilian tower portfolio significantly in recent years through a number of acquisitions, including buying 637 towers from Oi itself last year and over 3,000 via the acquisition of Phoenix Tower Brazil back in 2020.

ATC, meanwhile, most notably acquired Telefonica’s tower unit, Telxius, last year, giving it access to an additional 30,722 mobile towers spread throughout Germany, Spain, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Argentina.

Finally, IHS Tower’s most recent acquisitions have been on the African continent, most notably paying telecoms giant MTN $412 million for around 13,000 sites in South Africa. However, IHS has also expanded its Brazilian tower holdings already this year, with its acquisition of São Paulo Cinco Locação de Torres Ltda. (“SP5”) increasing their portfolio in the country to over 7,000 sites.

The post Towercos set to do battle for Oi’s Brazilian towers first appeared on Total Telecom.

VMO2 boosting apprenticeship schemes

News

The operator says that it has launched a quintet of new paid apprentice schemes, aiming to nurture the next generation of telecoms talent

This week, Virgin Media O2 (VMO”) has announced that launch of five new apprenticeship schemes, set to focus on digital marketing, cyber security, quantity surveying, network cabling and DevOps.
These new schemes will run in addition to the 40 the company already offers in these crucial areas, with VMO2 also running alternative schemes for network engineering roles.
Apprentices will reportedly be paid a minimum annual salary of £19,000, with the company seeking to fill an additional 70 roles in total, adding to the 450 apprentices it has taken on since June 2021.
“We’re on a mission to upgrade the UK, and are recruiting talented people to make this happen,” said Karen Handley, Head of Future Careers at Virgin Media O2. “With thousands of people finishing school or college and receiving their A-Level results, there has never been a better time to join us as an apprentice where you can earn whilst you learn. Whether it’s cyber security or network engineering, digital marketing or planning, at Virgin Media O2 we’re constantly expanding our array of apprenticeship programmes to help our people develop the skills they need for the future.”
VMO2’s decision to announce this expansion at the same time as UK students receive their A-Level results is no coincidence.
This year, despite top grades falling compared to 2021, UCAS figures show that around 425,000 students achieved the grades required to go to university, the second highest amount ever in the UK.
However, in contrast to enduring popularity of going to university, recent studies have shown that teenagers are increasingly concerned about securing a career path earlier in life, potentially concurrently with their studies. An 800-person study conducted by VMO2 itself found that more than a quarter (27%) of teens aged 11 to 18-years-old felt that university was not the right choice unless it led directly towards a career. The cost-of-living crisis was also a major concern, with 31% of respondents in the study saying they felt the economic environment meant that university was not longer a good idea.
Parents, however, still view university as superior to apprenticeships and other work schemes, with 41% of parents saying they hoped their child would go to university, versus just 21% that would like to see them do an apprenticeship.
VMO2 itself suggests that this study indicates that there are still negative misconceptions attached to the idea of apprenticeships – something they hope to change with their own schemes.
“Apprenticeships are still a confusing concept to many parents and potential apprentices – but they offer a great alternative to university,” said Handley. “There is a common misconception in the UK that apprenticeships are only for traditional trades such as plumbing or hairdressing – but in actual fact, there are many opportunities available in fields as broad as cyber security, marketing, and IT.”
With finding the next generation of telecoms professionals a constant thorn in the industry’s side, VMO2 will be hopeful that the expansion of their apprenticeship programmes will help alleviate some of their recruitment pressure in the years to come, particularly in increasingly crucial areas like software development and cybersecurity.
Are UK operators doing enough to nurture the next generation of telecoms professionals? Join the experts in discussion at this year’s Connected Britain conference 

The post VMO2 boosting apprenticeship schemes first appeared on Total Telecom.

CityFibre undergoes colourful rebrand

Press Release

The refreshed brand will help cement CityFibre’s position as the UK’s second largest full fibre network

CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent full fibre platform, has today launched a major overhaul of its brand, updating its visual identity, messaging and tone of voice to reflect its status as the nation’s digital infrastructure challenger and to more effectively engage millions of people as it rolls out its new networks across the country.

Research conducted on CityFibre’s behalf demonstrates that consumer confusion is endemic in the broadband market, with 64% of consumers unaware of the difference between full fibre and part fibre broadband. The updated brand’s assets have been designed to help cut through this confusion, explaining the superior user-experience when connected to CityFibre’s network, made possible by a new, fibre-only infrastructure platform, unencumbered by legacy network or systems.

CityFibre is already directly engaging with over 2.5m homes and businesses each month through direct mails, letter drops, digital advertising and email marketing to drive awareness of the benefits of switching network and the availability of its partners’ compelling service offerings. The new messaging and brand has also been optimised to support and augment its partners’ marketing communications, helping them to drive customer acquisitions and migrate existing customers at volume.

Dan Ramsay, Chief Marketing Officer at CityFibre, said: “Thanks to years of forced-reliance on outdated copper and cable networks, people across the country are underwhelmed, confused and mistrustful of the broadband industry. Given its importance to every aspect of our lives, we don’t believe that’s acceptable.

“That’s why we’re excited to unveil our new brand identity. It’s bold and straight-talking, designed to cut through, engage and inform people that the best way to improve their experience, is to change their network.

“As the UK’s undisputed full fibre challenger, we’re showing millions of people across the country how connecting to a CityFibre network can transform their experience of living and working online.”

The brand update builds on CityFibre’s gathering momentum which has seen the company fully finance its rollout, securing over £5bn in debt and equity raises in the last year. Its rollout has now exceeded 1.9m passed homes and more than 30 ISPs, including TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen have made CityFibre their network of choice. The company’s partnership model and close cooperation with ISPs to drive awareness throughout the build process has also proved highly effective, with its most mature locations such as Milton Keynes now exceeding 20% take-up.

With the UK’s fibre rollout still accelerating, are the government’s lofty coverage goals now within reach? Find out what the experts think at this year’s live Connected Britain conference 

Also in the news:
Veon offloads stake in Omnium Telecom Algeria
INWIT board resigns as TIM stake sale closes
US Department of Defense launches trio of 5G projects

The post CityFibre undergoes colourful rebrand first appeared on Total Telecom.

Vodafone offloads Hungarian unit for €1.8bn

NEWS

The sale to ICT firm 4iG and state-backed Corvinus will dramatically alter the dynamics of the Hungarian telecoms market

Today, Vodafone has announced that it has entered into a binding agreement to sell its Hungarian unit, Vodafone Hungary, to local ICT giant 4iG and state holding company Corvinus.

The deal, worth €1.8 billion, will create “a clear #2 operator across mobile and fixed communications”, with the Hungarian government having long sought to create a “national ICT champion” for many years.

“The Hungarian Government has a clear strategy to build a Hungarian owned national champion in the ICT sector,” said Vodafone Group CEO, Nick Read. “This combination with 4iG will allow Vodafone Hungary, which has a proud history of success and innovation in the country, to play a major role in the future growth and development of the sector as a much stronger scaled and fully converged operator. The combined entity will increase competition and have greater access to investment to further the digitalisation of Hungary.”

Vodafone Hungary is Hungary’s second largest mobile player, with around three million mobile subscribers, as well as roughly 800,000 landline users, 700,000 pay-TV customers, and 700,000 fixed broadband subscribers.

For 4iG, on the other hand, the acquisition is the latest step in the company’s ongoing quest to transform from ICT company to telecoms operator.

Back in March last year, 4iG purchased Digi Communications’ Hungarian business for an undisclosed sum, gaining the company’s roughly 1.1 million fixed line subscribers. The move quickly made 4iG a significant player in the Hungarian telecoms market, with both fixed and mobile assets. However, its mobile brand lacked scale – something that the acquisition of Vodafone Hungary will instantly provide.

4iG says that it will have roughly five million customers once Vodafone Hungary is integrated with its existing business, with the company expecting synergies worth around $370 million from combined income, costs, and investment savings.

“The purchase of Vodafone Hungary may be the most significant domestic telecommunications transaction of the past thirty years, on a similar scale to the privatization of Matáv [now Magyar Telekom] after the regime change. With the acquisition, a mainly Hungarian-owned infocommunications company group could be created, which could become the country’s second largest service provider,” explained Jászai Gellért , the president and CEO of 4iG. “After the successful completion of the acquisition, our group of companies can have one of the largest digital infrastructures in Hungary, which, thanks to its prominent role, can become a key player in domestic telecommunications for many decades.”

Assuming regulatory approval, Vodafone says the deal should be concluded by the end of the year.

In related Vodafone news, this week the company has reportedly entered talks with Canadian pension fund Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) regarding the sale of its final 21% stake in its Indian tower business, Indus Towers.

Numerous alternative suitors have been reported for the business after Vodafone announced its intention to sell its stake earlier this year, including American Tower, Crown Castle International, and Brookfield Asset Management.


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Autonomous Networks: CSP’s new explorations for service quality improvement and revenue growth

Viewpoint Article

Digital transformation has been accelerating while the new technologies such as 5G, AI, big data, cloud etc. adopted globally

This definitely gives Communication Service Providers (CSPs) the opportunity to unblock at least $700 billion in new revenues from the verticals. As CSPs deployed the 5G networks widely and the number of connected devices will be increased from 13 billion to more than 30 billion by 2025 according to a survey report, the networks become more complex. If CSPs continue to use the manual and labor-intensive methods to operate the networks and services, they will be unable to maintain competitiveness and provide high-quality service for the customer.

Recognizing these challenges, TM Forum has proposed Autonomous Networks (AN) concept since 2019, providing a systematic approach of network automation for CSPs to simplify service deployment to deliver Zero-X (Zero-wait, Zero-trouble and Zero-touch) experience for customers.

“Currently, China Mobile Beijing has over 20 million mobile users, over 70 million IoT users, and more than 3 million wired broadband users as well as over 6 million 5G users. These have brought great challenges to network O&M (operation and maintenance)for China Mobile Beijing, for which the Autonomous Networks aim to overcome,” stated Li Changkong, Deputy General Manager of China Mobile Beijing, in his presentation at “Digital Leadership Summit – Realize the Power of Autonomous Networks in Digital Transformation” hosted by TM Forum on 28th June, 2022.

With the long-term goal of achieving a fully autonomous network, Huawei as the industry leader worked jointly with China Mobile Beijing and other CSPs to develop and trial in live networks the Autonomous Driving Network Solution. Huawei enabled the CSPs to offer Zero-X services, and also helped them maximize network asset utilization using full lifecycle automation.

By following the China Mobile Group’s strategic objective of reaching Autonomous Networks Level 4 by 2025, China Mobile Beijing has specified the objectives of achieving L3 by 2022, L3.5 by 2023 and L4 by 2025, and identified the three-step path from automation to quasi-intelligence, and finally to full-intelligence:

– In 2022, focus on NMS (network management system) planning and capability aggregation;

– In 2023, focus on improved automatic O&M and AI promotion;

– In 2025, focus on enhanced intelligent O&M and open ecosystem operations.

Implementing Autonomous Networks is a systematic project. To this end, China Mobile Beijing follows the Group’s “234 system” by referring to TM Forum’s AN architecture, which emphasizes two objectives, three closed-loops, and collaboration of four layers to build its own future-proof AN architecture.

While advancing Autonomous Networks into application, China Mobile Beijing actively carries out level evaluation based on the unified standards of AN levels developed by China Mobile Group, in which the maturity of AN is divided into six levels, from L0- L5. On top of the level evaluation system, China Mobile Beijing has built up the result-oriented effectiveness metrics system which can be used to evaluate the business benefits brought by AN. With these two systems, China Mobile Beijing can effectively and iteratively evolve to high-level autonomy as a spiral model of “evaluate-improve-reevaluate”, driven by the dual-drive of “process + result”.

“China Mobile Beijing completed two rounds of level evaluation in 2021, with the result exceeded our annual target and reached L3 in key scenarios,” said Li Changkong in his presentation.

China Mobile Beijing has achieved L3 in some scenarios, especially the experience improvement for mobile users, identification of poor-QoE (quality of experience) for home broadband services, and premium private lines for the 2B customer. That definitely benefits a lot for the customer.

By adopting AI speech recognition technology, China Mobile Beijing has improved the accuracy of user requirements identification which help to reduce the complaints by 80%. With the “1+2+N” poor-QoE standard system, which is, one objective, two leadings and N models for poor-QoE identification, China Mobile Beijing has increased the poor-QoE identification and demarcation accuracy to 90% and 95% respectively for the home broadband users.

China Mobile Beijing has built the “NEST Premium Network” to provide the high-quality private line for the enterprise and government customer. With the intelligent control and management platform deployed for network operation, China Mobile Beijing could be able to activate network services in minuets and locate the faults in seconds.

In the future, China Mobile Beijing will continue to collaborate with global industry partners to implement industry vision, carry out industry innovation and promote industry prosperity to achieve high-level Autonomous Networks to unblock the new growth from the verticals.

About Autonomous Networks

Autonomous Networks (AN) was joint proposed by TM Forum and its industry partners in 2019, aiming to provide a systematic approach to end-to-end network automation for CSPs to deliver Zero-x(Zero-wait, Zero-touch, Zero-trouble) experience to vertical’s user and consumers. It incorporates a simplified network architecture, autonomous domains and automated intelligent business/network operations for the closed-loop control of digital business, offering the best-possible user experience, full lifecycle operations automation/autonomy and maximum resource utilization.

The post Autonomous Networks: CSP’s new explorations for service quality improvement and revenue growth first appeared on Total Telecom.

Singtel mulling the sale of cybersecurity firm Trustwave

News

Sources suggest that a sale could raise up to $300 million, with both private equity and other industry players as potential buyers

Singtel first acquired Chicago-Trustwave back in 2015 for $770 million, with the operator hailing the cybersecurity firm as a step towards diversifying its telecoms portfolio amid the sluggish growth of its traditional revenues.

Since then, however, Trustwave’s performance has been mixed, with Singtel in recent years suggesting that the coronavirus pandemic has affected the company’s ability to scale up effectively.

In the latter half of 2021, Singtel booked an impairment charge of roughly $240 million for Trustwave, with Singtel’s new CEO Yuen Kuan Moon, suggesting a strategic review of its assets, most notably Trustwave and digital marketing company Amobee and Trustwave in May 2021.

Now, roughly a year later, and Singtel has just concluded the sale of Amobee for $239 million and sources suggest that Trustwave could be next on the chopping block.

Anonymous sources speaking to Bloomberg suggest that Singtel has been speaking with financial advisors regarding a sale of Trustwave, with the firm’s price tag reportedly set at around $300 million.

According to reports, Trustwave could draw interest from both within the industry and from investment funds.

Investors have been increasingly interested in the acquisition of cybersecurity firms in recent months, with the global economic situation seeing the majority of these companies slip in value. Just last week, US private equity firm KKR announced it had completed its acquisition of California security firm Barracuda for roughly $4 billion, with the head of KKR’s Technology team noting that cybersecurity remains “a highly attractive sector”.

These sales would not be the only streamlining that Singtel has undertaken of late. The company has also been monetising the assets of its Australian subsidiary, Optus, having sold a majority stake in the operator’s mobile tower unit to Australian pension fund AustralianSuper for $1.3 billion late last year.

In addition, at the start of 2022, rumours suggested that Singtel was also holding talks with potential suitors for a stake sale of Optus’ fibre assets, though no further details on any talks have yet to be announced.

 

As traditional telco revenues continue to dry up, operators are increasingly looking to new revenue streams for growth. Join us at the live Total Telecom Congress later this year to hear the operators in discussion about their rapidly evolving business models

Also in the news:

The post Singtel mulling the sale of cybersecurity firm Trustwave first appeared on Total Telecom.

ISP Giganet Get Full Fibre Capacity Boost from Neos Networks UK

ISP Giganet, which offers gigabit broadband connectivity to homes and businesses via several platforms (Openreach, CityFibre and its own FTTP network), has signed a new agreement with Dark Fibre operator Neos Networks to secure backhaul and data centre connectivity for their full fibre rollout in the South of England. At present, Giganet is busy investing […]

Hellesdon Council in Norwich Fines CityFibre for “Shoddy” Works

The Hellesdon Parish Council, which is a village and suburb of Norwich in Norfolk (England), has fined CityFibre an unspecified amount after a local councillor complained that their efforts to rollout a new gigabit-broadband (FTTP) ISP network in the area was “shoddy” and had caused “a lot of issues“. Deployment of the new network, which […]

Gov Invites Broadband ISPs to £800m UK Project Gigabit Rollout

The Government’s Building Digital UK team has published a Prior Information Notice (PIN) for their Gigabit Infrastructure Subsidy (GIS) programme, which is valued at £800m+ and reflects the part of their £5bn Project Gigabit scheme that aims to help gap-fund the rollout of gigabit-capable broadband ISP networks into rural areas. At present around 70% of […]

CityFibre Refreshes Brand – Brings Full Fibre to 1.9 Million UK Homes

Major alternative network provider CityFibre, which is currently investing over £5bn (debt and equity) to make their full fibre (FTTP) based gigabit broadband ISP network available to almost 8 million premises (c.30% of the UK) by the end of 2025 (here), has today announced a “major brand update” (i.e. they have a new logo). Now […]