What’s up with… Orange, Cellnex, XL Axiata

• Orange reshuffles its top team
• Cellnex makes a play for the telco edge
• Indonesia’s XL Axiata hooks up with Google Cloud

A top level management reorg at Orange and a bold, collaborative play for telco edge business by Cellnex head up this selection of summery news snacks.

• Orange CEO Stéphane Richard has reshuffled his top exec pack to “exit the health crisis in the best conditions.” Among the numerous changes is the appointment of Michaël Trabbia, currently CEO of Orange Belgium, to the Executive Committee post of Chief Technology and Innovation Officer for the Orange Group, overseeing the Technology & Global Innovation division. “His role will be to seize the opportunities presented by upcoming technologies such as AI, data and 5G and to set-up the Group as a major player in the new innovation ecosystem.” The current CTIO, Mari-Noëlle Jégo-Laveissière, will instead “oversee Orange’s operational activities in Europe (outside France) focused in particular on the roll out of 5G and fibre.”  
• Neutral tower infrastructure specialist Cellnex has teamed up with server vendor Lenovo and orchestration software developer Nearby Computing to launch an Intel-based edge computing solution for mobile operators that could be deployed at Cellnex sites around Europe. At the end of March, Cellnex boasted 40,207 operative sites – 10,284 in Spain, 10,194 in Italy, 9,325 in France, 921 in the Netherlands, 608 in the United Kingdom, 5,270 in Switzerland, 594 in Ireland and 3,011 in Portugal – so it is well placed to play an interesting role in Europe’s telco edge market. 
• XL Axiata, one of Indonesia’s largest mobile operators, has struck two strategic partnerships with Google Cloud. First, the operator has “adopted Anthos, Google Cloud’s modern application management platform, to automate, manage and scale workloads across its hybrid- and multi-cloud environments” as part of its efforts to move 70% of its workloads to the cloud within the next three years. Second, XL Axiata has become a Google Cloud Interconnect Partner, which “sees both organizations bringing the best of high-speed connectivity, cloud services and digital growth opportunities to customers in Indonesia who can reliably transfer data between XL Axiata’s five data centers and Google’s global network.” Google Cloud appears to be ramping up its activities in telecom, having just this week announced a new partnership with Telefónica.
• BT has launched a ‘second line’ broadband service for all internet users. Its Dedicated Connection service will allow internet users to add a second broadband line to their homes, regardless of their current provider. The move follows research suggesting customers would welcome a second dedicated line for the purposes of working from home. 

- The staff, TelecomTV