What’s up with… Orange, Aduna, Mavenir

• Orange eyes in-country M&A as it reports H1
• Network API joint venture Aduna is finally a formal company 
• Mavenir completes its major recapitalisation process

In today’s industry news roundup: Orange is talking up the potential of in-country telco consolidation in France; network API joint venture Aduna is now fully capitalised and owned by Ericsson and a dozen telcos; Mavenir’s move to cut its debt pile by $1.3bn and secure $300m in new financing has completed; and more!

Orange’s CEO Christel Heydemann is on a mission to persuade French and European antitrust authorities and politicians that the sale of Altice France (SFR) to the country’s other three operators (Orange, Iliad and Bouygues Telecom), a move that would reduce the number of infrastructure-based service providers in France from four to three, would not damage competition and other aspects of the French communications sector. Patrick Drahi is keen to offload SFR to reduce the debt pile of his Altice empire and the most suitable way to do that, it seems, is to break it up and sell the telco in pieces to the country’s other three operators, a proposition that would come under intense scrutiny but one which is already being discussed by the parties involved, as has been previously reported. SFR ended March this year with 14.8 million mobile and 5.9 million fixed broadband customers and generates annual revenues of around €10bn. Heydemann noted during Orange’s second quarter earnings conference webcast on Tuesday morning that “a clear case for a four to three market consolidation” needs to be made but that this might not be easy as the benefits of such a move are “not completely obvious” to lawmakers and regulators. The Orange CEO noted that Orange believes “there's a need for consolidation – this is  true in France and for Europe… we welcome the UK decision, moving from four [operators] to three” with the recent merger of Vodafone UK and Three. “We are obviously ready to engage and there are preliminary discussions between operators on what could happen,” added the CEO, though she declined to comment on which SFR assets Orange would like to acquire and also noted that nothing can happen until SFR has completed its debt restructuring process that is set to see Altice France reduce its debt pile of about €24bn by €8.6bn. Heydemann’s comments came as Orange reported second quarter revenues of €9.94bn, flat with the same period a year ago, and earnings before taxes and other costs and changes (EBITDAaL) of almost €3.2bn, up by 4.2%. As usual, the telco’s operations in Africa, where revenues increased by 12.9% year on year to almost €2.1bn, helped to prop up the group’s financials. Full details can be found in this press release.  

Aduna, the telco API joint venture between Ericsson and a dozen telcos that was first announced in September 2024, but not given its name until January this year, has finally been established as a fully-formed and capitalised joint venture company. Ericsson owns 50%, while the other half is owned by AT&T, Bharti Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI, Orange, Reliance Jio, Singtel, Telefonica, Telstra, T-Mobile US, Verizon and Vodafone, though the size of the equity shares of each operator hasn’t been shared. It’s notable that when the joint venture was first announced last year, América Móvil was named as one of the prospective joint owners but it has since dropped out, while Japan’s KDDI joined the ranks as a stakeholder. Aduna CEO, Anthony Bartolo, stated: “The closing of the transaction is another important step for Aduna. In just ten months we have built an impressive ecosystem comprising the biggest names in telecoms and the wider ICT industry. The closing provides renewed motivation for Aduna to accelerate the adoption of network APIs by developers on a global scale. This includes encouraging more telecom operators to join the new company, further driving the industry and developer experience.” In addition to the company’s shareholders, a wide range of companies, including other telcos, has forged partnerships with Aduna. The latest operator to team up with the network API aggregation platform is Malaysia's Maxis, which announced its engagement last week. 

Mavenir has completed the major recapitalisation process announced in June that wipes out $1.3bn of the vendor’s debt, provides it with $300m of new financing and leaves Siris Capital as the controlling shareholder. Pardeep Kohli, Mavenir’s president and CEO, noted: “Mavenir has long been at the forefront of cloud transformation, and with a strengthened financial foundation, we are even better positioned to continue innovating for our global customer base. We look forward to continuing to redefine the Network of the Future alongside Siris and our lender partners.” Siris executive partner and executive chair of Mavenir, Hubert de Pesquidoux, added: “The completion of this transaction reflects Siris and the lenders’ confidence and commitment to Mavenir and its mission. With a meaningfully strengthened balance sheet and Siris’ continued partnership and support, Mavenir will continue accelerating its leading position in the software industry.”

As telcos formulate their AI strategies, they’re building key partnerships with specialists from the AI sector. The latest examples come from Bell Canada and NTT Data, the global IT, digital and communications services company that is part of Japanese giant NTT Group. Bell Canada is teaming up with large language model (LLM) developer Cohere, a fellow Canadian company, to “provide full-stack sovereign AI solutions for government and enterprise customers across Canada, and to deploy proprietary, secure AI solutions within Bell.” In late May Bell Canada unveiled its Bell AI Fabric strategy that will see the operator invest in a national network of AI infrastructure facilities “starting with a datacentre supercluster in British Columbia that will aim to provide upwards of 500 MW of hydro-electric-powered AI compute capacity across six facilities”. Meanwhile, NTT Data has hooked up with French generative AI (GenAI) developer Mistral AI, which is also working closely with Orange, to “jointly sell and deploy safe and private enterprise-grade AI solutions that are able to foster strategic autonomy for clients”. Abhijit Dubey, CEO and chief AI officer at NTT Data, noted: “Collaborating with Mistral AI to bring trustworthy, impactful AI to market aligns with NTT Data’s mission to accelerate client success and positively impact society through responsible innovation. By joining forces with Mistral AI, we will harness the power of high-performing AI models combined with NTT Data’s comprehensive AI capabilities, including our Smart AI Agent Ecosystem. In doing so, we can assure secure, scalable and sustainable deployments for enterprises across the globe.”

The Romanian Competition Council RCC) has approved the proposed acquisition of Telekom Romania Mobile (TKRM) by Vodafone Romania and Digi Romania, which struck a deal in October 2024 to each acquire parts of TKRM. The RCC has placed a number of conditions on the deal, mainly related to the retention of customer deals and commitments to improve mobile coverage. Vodafone and Digi will now work on the final details of the transaction: No purchase price details have been shared. Under the terms of the deal, Vodafone Romania is set to pick up TKRM’s postpaid customers (about 2 million), business clients, retail network and technical network infrastructure, as well as take on its staff, while Digi Romania will acquire TKRM prepaid business and customers (about 1.55 million), certain spectrum rights and part of the operator’s towers portfolio. “Vodafone has been present in Romania for the past 28 years and the approval of this transaction will enable us to strengthen our position in a competitive market, reconfirming our promise to continue to invest in providing world class connectivity to Romanians,” noted Vodafone Romania CEO Nedim Baytorun. TKRM is currently owned by Greek national operator OTE (aka Hellenic Telecommunications Organization), which in turn is majority owned by Deutsche Telekom. In 2024, TKRM generated revenues of €263.3m, down 8.2% year on year, while adjusted EBITDA fell to just €1.1m. 

– The staff, TelecomTV