• Bidders line up (again) for Altice France’s FTTP asset 
• Pakistan’s PTCL gets spectrum licence green light
• Thaicom teams up with Amazon Leo

In today’s industry news roundup: Four bidders have reportedly made it to the next round of bidding for Altice France’s stake in XpFibre; Pakistan’s PTCL gets approval to take on Telenor Pakistan’s spectrum licences; Amazon Leo finds a friend in Thailand; and much more!

Major French telco Altice France (aka SFR) has lined up four bidders for the 50.01% stake it holds in XpFibre, a French fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) infrastructure provider that passes 7 million premises with its high-speed wholesale broadband network: Altice France owner Patrick Drahi has been trying to offload the stake for a few years in order to reduce his telecom empire’s debt pile, which stands at about $50bn. According to this Bloomberg report (subscription required), Altice owner Patrick Drahi has selected infrastructure investment firms DigitalBridge, Brookfield Asset Management and Vauban Infrastructure Partners, as well as private equity company KKR, for the next round of bidding, which is set to take place in May. Drahi is hoping for bids that will value XpFibre at between €8bn and €9bn. Don’t hold your breath for a deal to be finalised, though: Drahi had reportedly lined up multiple hopeful bidders for the XpFibre stake (including KKR) in early 2024, but nothing came of that process. Meanwhile, Altice France itself is also up for grabs, with France’s other main operators – Orange, Bouygues Telecom and Iliad – having teamed up to jointly acquire the telco and then share the spoils in a way that won’t upset national and regional regulators. 

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has approved Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL)’s acquisition of Telenor Pakistan’s licences, subject to conditions aimed at protecting consumers and maintaining competition. In its decision (published here), PTA said that e&-backed PTCL, which operates as Ufone, can legally complete its takeover of Telenor’s unit so long as both brands continue to operate independently until the legal merger is completed. Then Ufone will become responsible for all of Telenor’s existing licensing obligations, and must also maintain all franchise and retailer agreements for at least six months. The regulator also ordered the telco to inform customers of the merger and restrict automatic subscription renewals without user consent. It also stated the merged entity must provide non-discriminatory access to its network to Pakistan’s other mobile operators and submit a detailed network integration plan within 60 days. The $530m merger, which was agreed in December 2023 and closed in January, marks Telenor’s exit from Pakistan, where the country’s mobile operators are now battling for 5G dominance following the country’s recent spectrum auction.

Thaicom has partnered with Amazon Leo to bring low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband services to Thailand. The Asian satellite operator, through its subsidiary TC 142 Company, will become an authorised distributor and landing-rights holder for Amazon’s satellite service in Thailand, allowing it to sell LEO-powered connectivity to downstream distributors, and consumers and businesses across Thailand. Amazon Leo, which began deploying its constellation in April 2025, has completed nine missions to date and now has more than 200 satellites in orbit.

In an effort to “rebuild public trust” after a string of damaging cybersecurity incidents, South Korea’s telcos have pledged to the country’s government that they will improve security, ensure that high-quality communications services are available to all and invest further in AI and next-generation telecom infrastructure, reports The Korea Herald. “Today’s discussion is about how the telecom industry can regain public trust, support people’s daily lives and define its role going forward,” stated deputy prime minister and ICT minister Bae Kyung-hoon during a meeting with SK Telecom CEO Jung Jai-hun – appointed in late 2025 in the wake of its massive cyber breach – KT Corp. CEO Park Yoon-young – appointed only days ago after its own cybersecurity failings – and LG Uplus CEO Hong Bum-shik in Seoul. “Recent hacking incidents have affected both telecom operators and the public. We need to make sure this doesn’t happen again – and that means a fundamental shift in how we approach things,” added the minister.

The UK government has proposed Sir Ian Cheshire, the former chairman of TV broadcaster Channel 4, as the preferred candidate to be appointed as chair of communications regulator Ofcom. If his appointment is approved by a parliamentary group (as seems likely), Cheshire would bring “extensive experience of senior leadership across the private and public sectors, with a strong track record in governance, consumer-facing regulation and organisational change,” according to this announcement. Cheshire is on course to begin his four-year tenure at the start of May, when he would succeed Lord Michael Grade, whose term as the current chair concludes at the end of this month.

It’s a big week for large language models (LLMs)! Following news of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos model and its formation of Project Glasswing, Meta has unveiled Muse Spark, which it says is the “first in a new series of large language models built by Meta Superintelligence Labs” and a step towards the availability of “personal superintelligence: An assistant that can help anyone, anywhere with the things that matter most to them.” Meta notes that over the past nine months, Meta Superintelligence Labs has “rebuilt our AI stack from the ground up, moving faster than any development cycle we have run before”, but that pace and Muse Spark’s capabilities have not impressed tech sector analyst and AI industry watcher Richard Windsor, who writes in his latest Radio Free Mobile blog that Meta’s latest LLM “remains unremarkable and there is a long way to go before Meta could be considered to be a leader once again”. 

Intel has joined Terafab, the $20bn chip-building project announced by three Elon Musk companies – SpaceX, xAI and Tesla – in March, which aims to produce processors for use in terrestrial and space-based deployments. The chip giant noted in this LinkedIn post: “Intel is proud to join the Terafab project with SpaceX, xAI and Tesla to help refactor silicon fab technology. Our ability to design, fabricate and package ultra-high-performance chips at scale will help accelerate Terafab’s aim to produce 1 TW per year of compute to power future advances in AI and robotics.”

– The staff, TelecomTV