• Spanish telcos join forces for new fibre optic giant
• Xtelify unveils Airtel Cloud for digital transformation
• O2 Daisy to offer B2B connectivity

In today’s industry news roundup: MasOrange, Vodafone Spain and GIC form FibreCo, Spain’s largest fibre network, to boost FTTH growth and efficiency; Bharti’s Xtelify launches Airtel Cloud and AI solutions to drive digital transformation for Indian businesses and global telecom operators; VMO2 and Daisy reveal O2 Daisy for the business-to-business connectivity market; and much more!

Having agreed a fibre joint venture just over a year ago, MasOrange, Vodafone Spain and global investment firm GIC have now announced an agreement to form FibreCo, which is set to become Spain’s largest fibre optic company. The joint venture will be co-controlled by the three partners, with MasOrange holding a 58% stake, GIC 25% and Vodafone Spain 17%. FibreCo will combine approximately 12 million premises and 5 million customers contributed by MasOrange and Vodafone Spain, creating a dedicated fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network for both operators. The new entity is designed to drive operational efficiencies and economies of scale, enabling faster adoption of advanced technologies, such as XGSPON, and supporting Spain’s ambition to have one of Europe’s most advanced telecom infrastructures. “This venture will provide our customers with the best premium FTTH connectivity and assure future technology upgrades,” said Meinrad Spenger, CEO of MasOrange. The joint venture has secured more than €5bn in net debt financing from around 20 global banks. Proceeds from the transaction will be used by MasOrange for debt repayment, supporting its deleveraging goals. “We look forward to partnering with MasOrange and Vodafone Spain to create Spain’s largest FibreCo,” said Boon Chin Hau, chief investment officer for infrastructure at GIC. “Spain is one of the most advanced European countries in terms of its fibre-to-the-home rollout, however, there remains significant fixed broadband penetration growth potential.” As part of the transaction, MasOrange will purchase Conexus Networks, the wholesale FTTH access provider in the north of Spain and contribute it to FibreCo. José Miguel García, CEO of Vodafone Spain, added, “This agreement is a relevant milestone in our plan, since it will guarantee our customers access to fibre optic networks and better service.” The deal is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close in quarter four 2025.

Xtelify, the digital arm of Bharti Airtel, has launched a suite of new digital solutions aimed at accelerating digital transformation for businesses in India and telecom operators worldwide. The company has introduced Airtel Cloud, a sovereign, telco-grade cloud platform built in India and designed to handle massive transaction volumes. Hosted on sustainable datacentres and managed by 300 certified experts, Airtel Cloud promises up to 40% optimisation in cloud spending for Indian businesses, offering infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), advanced connectivity and secure, scalable migration. “It is a very pivotal moment in our history as we take our world-class, home-grown platforms of Airtel Cloud and software solutions to businesses in India and telcos all over the world,” said Gopal Vittal, vice chairman and managing director of Bharti Airtel. “All controls of our cloud will reside strictly within the country, ensuring zero possibility of any entity outside India being able to access any part of this data or its working.” Alongside the cloud platform, Xtelify unveiled an AI-powered software suite intended to streamline operations, improve customer experience and increase average revenue per user (ARPU) for global telcos. The platform features a converged data engine for AI insights, a workforce management tool, and an experience platform to oversee every aspect of the customer journey. Xtelify has already secured partnerships with Singtel, Globe Telecom, and Airtel Africa to deploy these solutions. For Singtel, Xtelify will roll out Xtelify Work, equipping field teams with AI-driven tools for productivity and governance. Globe Telecom in the Philippines will implement Xtelify Serve to enhance omni-channel customer service, while Airtel Africa will utilise Xtelify’s platforms to empower its workforce and improve customer engagement across 14 countries.

Following the merger of Virgin Media O2 Business and Daisy Group, the UK telco has now officially launched its new business-to-business (B2B) telecoms entity, called O2 Daisy, with the aim of transforming the UK’s business connectivity market. The telco says O2 Daisy will be the UK’s second-largest provider of solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses, serving customers from small office/home office (SOHO) to large enterprises and public sector organisations. O2 Daisy is fully consolidated by Virgin Media O2, with a 70/30 ownership split, and will be led by chairman Matthew Riley and CEO Jo Bertram. “Today we start on our mission to shake up the market and provide the technology needed to make every business better,” said Bertram. “By bringing together two experienced teams and supercharging them with scaled networks, agile systems and comprehensive products, we’re ready to deliver exceptional outcomes for our customers.” The company offers a suite of digital-first connectivity and managed service solutions, drawing on Virgin Media O2’s fixed and mobile networks and Daisy Group’s B2B expertise. With operational hubs across the UK and a customer base spanning hundreds of thousands, O2 Daisy is looking to position itself as a one-stop shop for data, Wi-Fi, 5G private networks, cloud services, cybersecurity and workplace tools. 

T-Mobile has officially completed its acquisition of UScellular’s wireless operations. The deal, valued at approximately $4.3bn, brings more than four million UScellular customers under T-Mobile’s umbrella. The acquisition also extends T-Mobile’s in-home broadband offerings to hundreds of thousands of new households, particularly in areas previously underserved by high-speed internet. The UScellular brand will transition in phases, while Array Digital Infrastructure (formerly UScellular) retains ownership of much of the company’s spectrum and towers, operating as a separate infrastructure entity. “Today is such an exciting one because we get to officially welcome UScellular customers to Team Magenta and we’re doing it with some pretty amazing Un-carrier gifts: America’s best network, value-packed benefits and a best-in-class experience,” announced Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile. UScellular customers will initially remain on their current plans, with the option to switch to T-Mobile’s unlimited plans as integration progresses. “For over 40 years, UScellular has been dedicated to the mission of connecting people to what matters most,” added Laurent Therivel, former CEO of UScellular. “I am proud of the entire UScellular team and grateful for their contributions to our company and their support of our customers over the years.” The company will provide further financial details in its upcoming Q3 earnings call. Read more.

TelecomTV readers who have downloaded our recent series of reports on Defining 6G Networks will no doubt be aware of the importance of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) as a future business case and the need to optimise next-generation network specifications accordingly. It’s a developing field of study, but already we are seeing parallel technology advances that could strengthen this use case. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark spotted a new research paper from Meta on contrastive language-image pretraining (CLIP). Meta’s CLIP 2 describes a larger-scale, multilingual version of OpenAI’s original CLIP model, which is a way to train a pair of neural networks to understand images and text, and map their relationships. The technology already has multiple uses in image generation and search but was restricted to English text. CLIP 2 goes multilingual and that means it is ideal for the global rollout of AI-capable sensors. This will give AI systems far better real-world sensing capabilities by being able to transfer from one domain to another (ie. between text and images). As Clark says, “The more effective and representative we make systems like this, the better they’re going to be at giving our AI systems a rich, representative understanding of the world around them.” 

The Gulf’s race to become a global AI powerhouse is in risk of drying up... thanks to water scarcity. As the UAE and Saudi Arabia pour billions into AI infrastructure and datacentres, the demand for water, which is used for cooling these massive facilities, is surging to unsustainable levels, according to an article published by Rest of World. Projections from Mordor Intelligence show that by 2030, datacentres in the region will require more than 426 billion litres of water annually, up from 119 billion litres in 2025. The UAE alone is expected to consume 61 billion litres per year. This is particularly alarming in countries already ranked among the world’s most water-stressed, with per capita consumption far exceeding global averages. “The issue of excessive water consumption for cooling in datacentres is becoming a significant environmental concern,” said Anita Nouri, CEO of Green Growth Planning Consultancy. While some operators are experimenting with alternatives like treated wastewater and closed-loop systems, adoption remains limited. The extreme summer temperatures throughout the Gulf region add to the problem, requiring the use of additional evaporation-based cooling systems. However, the reality is that the region’s governments will press ahead with their AI ambitions. “This is the land of innovation and has the will to be first and best,” added Nouri. “This region will find a way to make it happen.”

– The staff, TelecomTV