• Liberty Global offloads Slovakian operation
• NGMN urges backhaul energy monitoring unity
• Germany’s 1&1 meets 5G coverage deadline

In today’s industry news roundup: Liberty Global is selling its business in Slovakia to part of the growing e& PPF Telecom empire; NGMN calls for greater harmonisation in monitoring energy consumption in mobile backhaul infrastructure; German 5G challenger’s 5G network now reaches 25% of the country’s households; and much more!

Liberty Global is in divestment mode. The company, which has telecom operations in multiple European markets, including Belgium (Telenet), Ireland (Virgin Media Ireland), the UK (via its 50% stake in Virgin Media O2) and the Netherlands (via its 50% stake in VodafoneZiggo), is selling its last remaining central European operation, UPC Slovakia, to O2 Slovakia for €95m. UPC Slovakia provides broadband, pay-TV and telephony services to 375,000 customers (2024 figure) in 80 towns and cities across Slovakia, of which about 140,000 are fixed broadband and 150,000 are pay-TV customers. It generates annual revenues of about €50m. O2 Slovakia, which is part of the e& PPF Telecom Group, boasted annual revenues of €363m in 2024 and is the mobile market leader in the country, with about 2.4 million mobile customers. It also has 92,000 broadband and 27,000 pay-TV subscribers. O2 Slovakia CEO Igor Tóth noted: “The year 2025 fully reveals the potential of the telecommunications operator O2, which has achieved several significant milestones in its history this year. We are a long-term leader in the availability of the 5G network, which is now available to 99.76% of people in Slovakia. This year, we also completed the process of unique network sharing with our partner, which contributes to increasing the overall quality of our network. However, the biggest event was the completion of the success story of our brand, when we became the number one in [terms of] the number of active SIM cards in Slovakia, while we have been building our company practically from scratch since its entry into the market in 2007. We have managed to achieve all of this so far only through organic growth. However, now the time has come to further strengthen the O2 brand in Slovakia through the acquisition of the major telecommunications operator UPC, which has a long and successful history in Slovakia based on a wide and popular offer of fixed services… The potential of combining talents from both our companies can multiply innovations in products and services across the entire product portfolio,” stated the CEO. The acquisition is subject to various regulator approvals and is expected to close during the first half of 2026. The e& PPF Group, in which Middle East digital services giant e& is the controlling shareholder, currently boasts more than 12 million mobile, 1.1 million fixed broadband  and 1 million pay-TV subscribers across four markets – Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia – and generates annual revenues of more than €2.1bn and EBITDA of more than €1bn. Earlier this year it struck a deal to acquire Serbian operator SBB from the United Group for €825m. 

That’s not the only M&A deal announced by Liberty Global this week: Its European datacentre joint venture, AtlasEdge, announced the sale for an undisclosed sum of nine datacentre facilities to Templus, a regional datacentre operator formed in 2024 by investment firms Intermediate Capital Group (ICG) and Teras Capital. The nine centres acquired by Templus are in Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Zurich, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Leeds and Copenhagen. “For AtlasEdge, the sale reflects its strategic focus on larger sites with significant long-term growth potential, such as its current sites in Germany, Austria and Portugal, where it is already scaling its footprint,” the company noted. For Templus, the deal “unlocks significant synergies in key Spanish markets, and starts its international expansion. Templus will manage a portfolio of more than 60 megawatts and 750 customers distributed across high-growth colocation markets,” the companies noted. 

The Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN) has published “new operator-driven guidance calling for the creation and harmonisation of energy metering standards across 5G RAN transport networks.” Mobile network operators (MNOs) “urgently need accurate, standardised methods to measure energy consumption and to improve energy efficiency across front-, mid- and backhaul networks – a critical step in reducing operational costs and meeting sustainability targets,” the industry body noted. Energy consumption and efficiency “remain insufficiently addressed due to a wide landscape of telecom standard development organisations (SDOs) and further standardisation bodies working on energy metering standards,” the NGMN added in its report, Green Future Networks: Metering in RAN Transport Networks. Laurent Leboucher, NGMN chairman and Orange Group CTO and executive VP of networks, stated: “From both cost and carbon footprint perspectives, energy consumption is one of our industry’s biggest challenges. As we move further towards virtualised and cloud-native architectures using shared compute, we need industry-wide standards to measure energy use consistently and transparently. The NGMN’s recommendations towards standards in this area are a key first step,” he added. The NGMN suggests that “further standardisation is needed, particularly in defining harmonised data models and key performance indicators that allow energy efficiency to be derived at device, network function and 5G slice level.” The body “also emphasises the need for aligned APIs [application programming interfaces] across SDOs to enable operators to expose and manage energy-efficiency metrics consistently.” Read more. 

German 5G challenger 1&1 says it has achieved “the first coverage target set for the company by the Federal Network Agency” ahead of the end-of-year deadline by achieving 5G coverage of 25% of German households. The operator, which is building an Open RAN-based network with Rakuten Symphony, noted it completed the migration of all existing customers previously served under wholesale contracts to its own network in early November. “On 8 December 2023, we launched mobile services in the 1&1 O-RAN. In the meantime, our 12.5 million mobile customers are using our network – Europe’s first fully virtualised 5G network based on the innovative Open RAN technology,” stated 1&1 CEO Ralph Dommermuth in this announcement. The operator noted that all voice and data connections are now processed in its own core network, and where it doesn’t yet have its own antennas, customers are connected to its core via Vodafone Germany’s radio access network. Next year will be an interesting one for 1&1 and the German market in general as, on top of existing pressure from rivals, Telefónica is believed to be considering a takeover bid for 1&1 to gain greater scale in the country as part of the Spanish telco giant’s new strategy that focuses on its four main markets – Spain, Germany, the UK and Brazil. 

Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) has struck a 10-year, $1bn deal to outsource its IT operations to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the giant Indian tech services and systems integration firm, according to Indian financial news service Mint. The UK operator already works with TCS and Google Cloud on its data management processes. Details of the new IT outsourcing deal are expected to be made public in the coming weeks.

Airtel Africa, in partnership with low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite operator Starlink, is to start offering direct-to-device (D2D) services in all 14 of its markets starting in 2026 with “select applications and text messaging”, the operator has announced. “This agreement also includes support for Starlink’s first broadband direct-to-cell system, with next-generation satellites that will be capable of providing high-speed connectivity to smartphones with 20-times improved data speed,” noted the operator (though without suggesting what kind of data throughput will be enabled). Starlink VP of sales Stephanie Bednarek noted: “For the first time, people across Africa will stay connected in remote areas where terrestrial coverage cannot reach, and we’re so thrilled that Starlink Direct-to-Cell can power this life-changing service. Through this agreement with Airtel Africa, we’ll also deliver our next-generation technology to offer high-speed broadband connectivity, which will offer faster access to many essential services.” News of the impending service launches follows the initial agreement between the companies that was unveiled in May. Airtel Africa CEO and managing director Sunil Taldar stated: “Starlink’s direct-to-cell technology complements the terrestrial infrastructure and even reaches areas where deploying terrestrial network solutions are challenging. We are very excited about the collaboration with Starlink, which will establish a new standard for service availability across all our 14 markets.” Airtel Africa ended June 2025 with almost 170 million mobile customers across all of its markets. 

Telefónica Tech, the division of the Spanish telco that provides digital and connectivity services to enterprise customers, says the number of internet of things (IoT) devices connected to its network in Spain has increased by about 240% this year, from just over 5 million at the end of 2024 to 17 million at the end of November. “The main catalysts for this growth are the V16 connected beacons, which will replace emergency triangles as hazard warning devices in Spain from January onwards, and the numerous functionalities that IoT connectivity is offering to key sectors, such as healthcare, industry and utilities (water and gas),” noted the operator in this announcement. 

Through the use of “energy management programs and two AI solutions deployed to almost 20,000 network elements across the country,” Philippines operator Globe Telecom reduced its energy consumption by 11.3 million kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2024, resulting in savings of 125m pesos ($2.3m), the company announced. The AI tools “optimise energy use, including adjustment of power consumption at the cell site level, and adaptation according to changing network demands,” noted the operator. 

Vodafone Business, the enterprise services arm of Vodafone Group, says that, in partnership with small business network Enterprise Nation, it has now provided free digital skills training to 1 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK. The operator’s ‘business.connected’ initiative was first announced in 2021. 

– The staff, TelecomTV