What’s up with… DT, Kerv, KPN

• Deutsche Telekom’s going gangbusters on 5G
• Kerv joins UK’s managed services throng
• KPN confident Dutch won’t ban Huawei

Deutsche Telekom’s accelerated 5G rollout and a Kerv ball are the early pitches in today’s news innings.

• Deutsche Telekom has been rolling out its 5G network at a fair lick, having upgraded 18,000 more antennas for 5G services during the past five weeks, taking the total to about 30,000. DT says it can now offer 5G services to more than 40 million people (about half of the population) in 3,000 towns and municipalities and aims to further extend that coverage to cover two thirds of the German population by the end of the year.
• Here’s a new name to watch in the managed services market: Kerv, which describes itself as a next-generation ‘customer-first, cloud-first’ managed services provider, has been formed from the merger (valued at £30 million) of three UK managed services firms -- DoubleEdge Professional Services (UC, voice, data, mobility and compliance), Foehn (R&D team, Cloud UC and Contact Centre provider), and Metaphor IT (Cloud Services, Digital Workspaces and IT Managed Services). Each of these is currently boasting double-digit growth and it’s envisaged that more businesses will be added. Kerv, which says its mission is to help mid-market customers navigate agile ways of working post-pandemic, is the brainchild of Six Degrees Group founder and former CEO, Alastair Mills, and Mike Ing, former Six Degrees COO. The driver for the business model is the recognition that enterprise solutions are increasingly delivered by a combination of multiple cloud-based applications. so Kerv plans to integrate proprietary and third-party cloud applications using a development team based in Spain. Kerv comes to the market with current annual revenues approaching £20 million and a team of 100 across offices in central London, Richmond (Greater London) and Vigo, Spain. 
• KPN, which is due to switch on its 5G services tomorrow, says it’s not expecting the Dutch authorities to ban the use of Huawei technology, which would be good news for the operator as it has been deploying gear from the Chinese vendor in its 5G radio access network rollout. That view was shared by CEO Joost Farwerck as the operator presented its second quarter results, which showed a slight year-on-year dip in revenues to €1.29 billion. “The second quarter was also the first in which we saw the full effect of COVID-19 on the Dutch economy. While impacting performance in some areas, this dynamic also underlined the importance of KPN’s continuous efforts to improve and enhance the quality of the Netherlands’ digital infrastructure through large scale investments. We believe that digitalization can be a catalyst for the country’s economic recovery that simultaneously helps to address the ecological and social challenges of the post-COVID world,” the operator noted in its earnings report.
• Nokia is working with network operator Vivo (Telefônica Brasil) to deliver private 4G/LTE wireless services to mining company Vale. 
• Still in Brazil… The plan agreed by TIM Participacoes (Telecom Italia’s Brazilian operation), Vivo and Claro (part of América Móvil) to jointly acquire the mobile operations of struggling Brazilian telco Oi have been placed in jeopardy by Colony Capital, which has reportedly secured itself the role of preferred bidder, according to Bloomberg. Oi’s mobile business is valued at more than $2.9 billion. 
• Ericsson and Oordeoo Qatar say they have achieved mobile broadband throughput of 4.2 Gbit/s over 200 MHz of mid-band spectrum in a trial of the vendor’s spectrum sharing technology that combined 4G and 5G airwaves.

- The staff, TelecomTV