• Iliad proves there’s money to be made in telecom 
• Speculation that Telefónica will bid for Vodafone Spain intensifies
• Nvidia reports another quarter of astonishing growth

In today’s industry news roundup: European telco Iliad reports a decent uptick in sales and enviable earnings growth in the first half of 2025; the rumour mill increasingly points towards a Telefónica takeover bid for Vodafone Spain; despite losing its main source of sales to China, Nvidia still reported second-quarter revenue growth of 56%; and much more!

Pan-European operator Iliad continues to report consistent, group-wide growth, stating in its financial report for the first half of 2025 that it is “on the offensive in all of its geographies” and has “recorded the highest growth out of Europe’s top telcos for more than three years”. For the first six months of this year, Iliad, which has operations in France, Italy and Poland, reported consolidated group revenues of €5.09bn, up by 3.8% compared with the same period in 2024, including €4.69bn in services revenues, up by 4.3%, while device sales were down by 2.8% to €392m. Group EBITDAaL (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and lease-related expenses) increased by 10.1% to almost €2.05bn. In France, its main market (where it has 15.5 million mobile and 7.6 million fixed broadband subscribers), revenues were up by 2.4% to €3.27bn. Iliad claims it is “the only one of the four national telcos to post growth for the period” – its domestic rivals are Orange, Bouygues Telecom and Altice France (SFR). Iliad Group CEO Thomas Reynaud stated: “Our first-half results demonstrate how strong and unique our business model is. In a mature, ultracompetitive market, we’re the only European telco that’s seeing such robust growth momentum. This performance, driven by the dedicated work of our teams combined with a unique innovation strategy and strict cost discipline, has allowed us to once again reinforce our financial strength. This momentum means we can continue to invest heavily in the pillars of European digital sovereignty through our initiatives in the cloud, AI infrastructure and the connectivity of the future.” For the full results and breakdown of subscriber numbers in Iliad’s three main markets, see this earnings press release.  

There’s no smoke without fire, so the saying goes. So it’s worth noting that well-connected Spanish news site El Confidencial has reported that Telefónica has received the support of its major shareholders, including the Spanish state and Saudi telco STC Group, to make a takeover bid for Vodafone Spain, the Spanish operator that was acquired for €5bn in May 2024 by Zegona Communications. The move would be part of the new growth strategy being formulated by Telefónica’s new CEO Marc Murtra. The El Confidencial article comes in the wake of a report last week by Vozpopuli that Murtra was set to issue new shares to build an M&A war chest, with Vodafone Spain as the first takeover target. But as we pointed out last week, Zegona has turned around Vodafone Spain’s fortunes and its price tag would likely be well in excess of €10bn if Telefónica were to make a move. Such a move would also attract the attention of national and regional regulators, as combining Telefónica and Vodafone Spain would create a market-leading and very dominant telco and leave the country with just three infrastructure-based telcos, with MásOrange and minnow Digi the other two: But Murta will know this and no doubt will have a plan to appease the competition watchdogs. And it’s not just in Spain that Murtar has set his M&A targets – according to El Confidencial, the CEO is also considering beefing up the giant Spanish telco’s presence in Germany (where it is already a major player with O2 Telefónica) through the potential acquisition of 1&1, which is trying to become Germany’s fourth major infrastructure-based integrated telco through the deployment of a greenfield, Open RAN-based 5G network. And as TelecomTV has previously reported, 1&1 is struggling to get up to speed and cause its rivals any major competitive concerns – see MNOs in Germany: Is three already a crowd?

Despite being unable to sell its relatively low-end H20 GPU (graphics processing unit) to customers in China during its fiscal second quarter that ended on 27 July because of US government trade sanctions, Nvidia once again reported astonishing revenues, this time of $46.7bn, up by 56% year on year, while its operating profit jumped by 53% to $28.44bn for the quarter. Revenues in the current (third) quarter are expected to hit $54bn. The US government noted in July that it would grant Nvidia licences to sell its H20 product to customers in China if it handed over 15% of those sales to the government, but no such agreement has been reached, mainly because such an agreement is fraught with legal difficulties, as Yahoo Finance reported. There is also growing uncertainty about whether Chinese companies will be discouraged from buying Nvidia chips, as some reports suggest China’s government has instructed companies to turn to local alternatives to help drive the country’s domestic chip sector. The uncertainty about Nvidia’s business in China – which the vendor’s CEO Jensen Huang estimates could be worth $50bn in 2026 if all trade sanctions and hurdles were removed by both the US and Chinese administrations – is likely to persist, but ultimately Nvidia is likely to benefit if the Chinese authorities force companies such as Tencent, Baidu and ByteDance to buy only domestic chips, suggests veteran technology sector analyst Richard Windsor in his latest Radio Free Mobile blog. In the meantime, companies, including telcos, wanting to deploy AI infrastructure technology will continue to turn to Nvidia as the rest of the market tries to match or even better not only the vendor’s GPU technology but also the capabilities of its supporting software and networking technologies. Currently, that seems like a long way off.      

The volume of global smartphone shipments in 2025 is expected to grow by 1% year on year to 1.24 billion units, according to research firm IDC, which notes that the forecast is slightly better than previously expected due to stronger than anticipated demand for Apple devices. The total addressable market (TAM) has increased slightly, as the current exemption by the US government on smartphones shields the market from the negative impact of additional tariffs, noted IDC. “While tariff volatility continues to pose high uncertainty, for now it is just background noise for the majority of smartphone vendors,” stated Nabila Popal, senior research director for IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. “OEMs must push forward their diversification and production plans to ensure there are enough shipments to fulfill demand which remains healthy in most markets, in select segments. Strong growth in the US and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) of 3.6% and 6.5%, as well as 0.8% growth in Asia Pacific excluding China (APeC) in 2025, will help offset the 1% decline in China expected this year. China’s forecast was reduced from previous 3% year-on-year growth, as the government subsidies phase out and are no longer expected to significantly stimulate demand amidst ongoing economic challenges.” IDC expects the market to grow by 1.2% in 2026 and by 2.1% in 2027 – for more details see the graph included in this press release.

South African enterprise connectivity service provider DFA and Ciena are claiming a “landmark breakthrough in fibre capacity”. According to the companies, DFA successfully achieved a 1.6 Tbit/s data transmission rate over a single optical wavelength, more than four times the performance of previous trials. The transmission was achieved using Ciena’s WaveRouter and WaveLogic 6 Extreme products over a 40km network connection on DFA’s transport network between Isando and Midrand: The route chosen replicates a previous trial that had demonstrated 400 Gbit/s capability, according the Ciena. Andreas Uys, CTO at Maziv, DFA’s parent company, stated: “This greatly enhances the capability of DFA’s existing network and gives us the confidence that we can meet the growing digital demands of our customers. We can seamlessly onboard next-generation connectivity services in selected regions before scaling them nationwide,” he added. 

T-Mobile US is seeking to take further advantage of its 5G standalone (5G SA) network and the direct-to-cell (D2C) services it is offering through its T-Satellite plan with a new mobile service for the enterprise sector called SuperMobile. The operator has combined network slicing – enabled by its 5G-Advanced network capabilities that build on its 5G SA core – plus advanced network security settings and the T-Satellite services made available through the operator’s partnership with low-earth orbit (LEO) operator Starlink to target business customers. The launch of the service came just as T-Mobile US announced it is looking for a new senior executive to head up its B2B services division as Callie Field, the current president of the operator’s Business Group, is stepping down from the role on 30 September as part of a broader shake-up of the T-Mobile US top executive team.  

Sparkle, the international network operator that is being sold for €700m by Telecom Italia (TIM), has increased the number of its European points of presence (PoPs) to 89 with the launch of a new network node in Helsinki, Finland. “Located at Digita Data Center, a state-of-the-art and fast-growing internet hub, the new PoP in Helsinki follows… the one in Stockholm and will address the strong demand for IP Transit services from the Nordic and Baltic countries” with a 400 gigabit Ethernet-enabled router, the operator noted in this announcement. “Besides increasing the company’s presence in northern Europe, the new node is fully integrated with Sparkle’s Tier 1 global IP backbone, Seabone, and allows network operators, ISPs, OTTs, content delivery networks, and content and application providers to benefit from reliable, low-latency IP transit services with throughput in the range of terabits per second,” the operator added. 

– The staff, TelecomTV