• Nvidia pitches ‘Made in America’ 6G stack  
• Verizon CEO comes out fighting at Q3 presentation
• Euro telcos issue call for M&A leniency

In today’s industry news roundup: Nvidia plays the sovereign card with its 6G proposition; Verizon’s new CEO has fire in his belly as he presents the telco’s Q3 numbers; not for the last time, Europe’s major telcos plead with the CEO for regulatory leniency; and more!

Nvidia is playing the sovereign card as it aims to position itself at the centre of  the US AI-enabled 5G and 6G networking ecosystem. Among the numerous announcements made during its GTC Washington DC event, Nvidia not only hammered home how it is working with Nokia and T-Mobile US to ensure that AI-RAN “empowers the United States to regain global leadership in this vital infrastructure technology,” but also announced “America’s first AI-native wireless stack for 6G, including new applications to advance next-generation wireless technology, in collaboration with industry-leading partners Booz Allen, Cisco Systems, MITRE, ODC and T-Mobile US.” In its latest push to put AI-RAN at the heart of telco strategies, Nvidia stated: “As AI moves beyond smartphones to cameras, augmented-reality glasses, robots, autonomous vehicles and other devices, wireless networks face mounting demand to support billions of connections at unprecedented scale and efficiency. To meet this challenge and support transformative technologies like integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) – a critical sensing capability for connecting physical and digital environments – wireless networks must become AI-native across hardware, software and architecture. AI-native networks enable spectrum… to be used as efficiently as possible. AI-RAN architecture is at the heart of next-generation wireless communications, combining connectivity, computing and sensing via a common platform with software-defined applications.” And the time to win the battle for 6G supremacy is now, it suggested. “6G is being built from the ground up with AI at its core – unlocking extreme spectral efficiency, massive connectivity and breakthrough applications,” stated Ronnie Vasishta, senior VP of telecom at Nvidia. “Working with industry leaders, we’ve created an AI-native wireless stack with advanced features to ensure that America will play an instrumental role in the journey to 6G.” To find out more, including the role the various partners play in delivering this proposition, see this announcement. 

Cisco announced a number of product developments and engagements with Nvidia. In addition to being the provider of user plane functionality and 5G core software for the AI-native wireless stack for 6G mentioned previously, it has also unveiled the N9100 datacentre switch, designed for sovereign cloud and AI datacentre/neocloud deployments, which has been “partner-developed” with Nvidia and which is based on the AI tech giant’s Spectrum-X Ethernet switch silicon. For enterprise users, it has launched the Cisco Secure AI Factory with Nvidia, which combines compute, storage, enterprise networking options (Cisco or Nvidia Ethernet switch-based) along with security and observability/analytics across infrastructure, software and workloads. "We're at the beginning of the largest datacentre build-out in history,” stated Jeetu Patel, Cisco president and chief product officer. "The infrastructure that will power the agentic AI applications and innovation of the future requires new architectures designed to overcome today's constraints in power, computing, and network performance. Together, Cisco and Nvidia are leading the way in defining the technologies that will power these AI-ready datacentres in all their varieties, from emerging neoclouds, to global service providers, to enterprises, and beyond." For more, see this announcement. 

Recently-appointed Verizon CEO Dan Schulman came out fighting as he presented his first set of quarterly results for the US telco, which exceeded expectations for mobile customer additions and margins, according to Reuters. “We are going to take bold and fiscally responsible action to redefine Verizon’s trajectory at this critical inflection point for our company,” stated Schulman, who was named as Hans Vestberg’s replacement with immediate effect earlier this month. “We will rapidly shift to a customer-first culture, one that thrives on delighting our customers. These will not be incremental changes. We will aggressively transform our culture, our cost structure, and the financial profile of Verizon in order to put our customers first, compete effectively, and deliver sustainable returns for our shareholders,” stated the CEO, adding during the earnings call that Verizon will "no longer be the hunting ground for competitors looking to gain share," referencing (though not by name) traditional rivals AT&T and T-Mobile US as well as the cable giants Comcast and Charter, which have been gaining mobile customers with cut-price deals. "For the past few years, our financial growth has relied too heavily on price increases. Every year it gets harder to grow as we lap past price increases and experience higher churn," stated the CEO. Verizon reported third quarter total revenues of $33.8bn, up by 1.5% year on year, of which wireless service revenues came in at $21bn, up by 2.1%. Adjusted EBITDA of $12.8bn was up by 2.3%. Total retail postpaid mobile customer additions were 44,000, better than expected, driven by gains in the enterprise sector (51,000 additions) countered by a slight decline in consumer postpaid subs (down 7,000). Verizon ended September with 74.36 million wireless consumer retail postpaid phone customers and 18.88 million wireless business/enterprise retail postpaid phone customers. It also ended September with almost 10.6 million consumer broadband customers, including 3.2 million fixed wireless access (FWA) customers, and 2.65 million business broadband customers, of which almost 2.2 million are FWA users. It added 261,000 FWA customers in total during the third quarter. For further details, see this earnings press release.  

With only weeks until the European Commission unveils its Digital Networks Act (DNA), the CEOs of multiple telcos and vendors from the region, including Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, KPN, Nokia, Orange, Swisscom, Telefónica, Telecom Italia (TIM), Telenor, and Vodafone, sent a joint letter to EC president Ursula von der Leyen urging the commission to soften M&A rules and make it easier for the major telcos to consolidate the fragmented market, arguing that greater scale is needed if Europe is to develop a digital economy that can rival the US and Asia for investment and growth opportunities, reports Reuters. "The Digital Networks Act is a crucial opportunity… Unless the Commission takes bold action with a clearly stated intent to address the need for scale, European industries will continue to lack the strength to invest at the same pace as their competitors in the United States, Asia and other markets," the CEOs wrote. "The Commission must act boldly to recognise the link between scale and investment, and a much simplified regulatory framework that increases investment capacities," the grand fromages added. Will their persistent pressure pay off? They have been harping on for more than two years about the positive impact that regulatory relaxation would have on the sector, but not everyone agrees, and many lawmakers remain concerned that telco consolidation will lead to reduced competition and higher prices for customers. Let’s see how the coming months work out. 

Specifications body ETSI has announced the new leadership team for the Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) Industry Specification Group (ISG) for its second two-year release, which commences on 17 November. The group was initially set up in November 2023. “The renewed leadership team will continue the work of accelerating ISAC pre‑standardisation efforts to facilitate 6G development and contribute to forthcoming specifications in key global standards, including 3GPP and IEEE 802,” noted ETSI in this announcement. The ISAC ISG will be lead by: Alain Mourad, senior director and head of Wireless Lab Europe at InterDigital, who has been re-elected as Chair; Richard Stirling-Gallacher, research expert and team manager at Huawei Technologies, who has been re-elected as Vice-Chair; Ayman Naguib, senior manager at Apple, who has also been re-elected as Vice-Chair; and Christos Masouros, professor of signal processing and wireless communications at University College London, who (just to shake things up) has been newly-elected as Vice-Chair. ETSI noted: “Initial directions for the ISG's work programme will focus on developing advanced architecture enablers and protocols, in addition to solutions that enhance privacy, security and resilience. The group will also explore energy-efficient ISAC technologies, as well as the intersections of ISAC with AI and computing, to support the evolution of the next-generation wireless systems. To date, the ISAC ISG has already established itself as a leading forum for defining use cases, requirements, channel models, and architectures for ISAC within future 6G systems. Building on the momentum of its first release, the group will now take the work of the first release to its logical conclusion and continue to advance the enabling frameworks and protocols that will make ISAC a reality.” 

– The staff, TelecomTV