What’s up with… T-Mobile US, Telefónica, Rakuten Mobile, STC

  • T-Mobile US exceeds 2024 expectations, predicts further growth  
  • Telefónica, Rakuten Mobile launch GenAI services for enterprises
  • STC lands monster $8.7bn deal

In today’s industry news roundup: T-Mobile US had a bumper 2024, adding millions of postpaid customers and boosting its sales and margins; Telefónica Tech and Rakuten Mobile launch plug-and-play and Japanese culture-savvy GenAI platforms for enterprises respectively; Saudi telco STC has been handed a massive government deal; and much more!

Only days after announcing the appointment of a new chief operating officer, T-Mobile US has reported strong growth for 2024, with full year revenues increasing by 3.6% to $81.4bn, and full year adjusted EBITDA hitting $31.86bn, up by 8.3%. Full year service revenues increased by 4.6% to $66.2bn. The operator added 6.1 million postpaid customers during the year and, as part of its guidance for the coming year, said it expects to add between 5.5 million and 6 million additional postpaid customers during 2025. T-Mobile US also added 1.65 million fixed wireless access (FWA) customers, to take its total number of high-speed internet service users to 6.43 million. The operator ended 2024 with a total customer base of 129.5 million. “In 2024, more new postpaid customers chose the Un-carrier than ever before, and we had our lowest ever full-year postpaid phone churn, leading to our third year of more than 3 million postpaid phone net additions,” stated CEO Mike Sievert. “Now, building on this incredible momentum, 2025 is poised to be even more exciting and, because of this, we’re issuing the strongest start-of-year postpaid net additions guide in our history. We’ve already hit the ground running on our ambitious plans to give customers the kind of new, transformative experiences no one else can, and we’re just getting started.” Investors liked what they saw, as the telco’s share price gained more than 7% to $236.69, giving the company a market valuation of $276bn. Full year 2024 capital expenditure (which the operator describes as “cash purchases of property and equipment”) came in at $8.8bn: That figure is set to rise in 2025 to about $9.5bn. For the full details of T-Mobile US’s fourth-quarter and full year financial performance, see this earnings press release

Telefónica’s digital enterprise services unit Telefónica Tech, which offers cloud, cybersecurity, AI and data analytics services to business users, has launched its own GenAI platform to “help organisations create customisable virtual assistants capable of solving complex queries, automating repetitive tasks and optimising internal processes through a clear and intuitive interface.” The system, developed with Altostratus, a cloud services consultancy that Telefónica Tech acquired in 2021, is a plug-and-play system that “does not require complex configurations and offers customers access to the most advanced versions of the main large language models (LLMs), providing power, adaptability and flexibility without compromising control of the information”, according to the operator. Elena Gil Lizasoain, director of AI and data at Telefónica Tech for Spain and the Americas, noted: “This new platform was created with the aim of boosting the use of generative AI in all types of organisations, regardless of the size and technical level of the users, and to popularise the use of personalised virtual assistants to transform businesses and make them more efficient and resilient”. Read more.

Rakuten Mobile has launched Rakuten AI for Business, a generative AI (GenAI) service that is “optimised for Japanese culture, regulations and business customs” and is designed to “support a wide range of business activities for corporate clients. Featuring superior language comprehension and task-processing capabilities, the AI service quickly displays the most suitable responses to user requests and supports business tasks, such as document creation, translation, brainstorming, analysis and research via a chat interface,” noted the Japanese operator. Read more

Saudi telco STC has landed a mammoth long-term contract with the country’s government worth 32.64bn Saudi riyal ($8.7bn). The contract, which involves STC having to “build, operate and provide telecommunications infrastructure services”, gives STC 18 months for “preparation and execution” followed by “15 years of project operation”. STC noted that the “financial impact will be positive” but that it won’t be able to start reporting revenues from the deal until at least the fourth quarter of 2026. 

Telefónica has reportedly appointed investment bank JPMorgan to see if it can sell its operations in Argentina, according to Reuters. Millicom, which has operations across much of central and Latin America, in countries such as Colombia, Bolivia and Paraguay, has been identified as a potential buyer for the business, which has more than 16 million customers.  

Scientists at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have, for the first time, demonstrated quantum teleportation over standard fibre cables operationally busy with routine internet traffic. The successful exercise, first reported in the academic journal Optica, is another step along the road to near-instant communication across long distances without the need for the deployment of the complex, expensive specialised infrastructure currently required for distributed quantum sensing and computing. Fibre cables already transmitting communications traffic carry many millions of light particles and, hitherto, the single photons of quantum data required for quantum teleportation have simply been overwhelmed and lost in all the blazing light. The new study actually quantified the scattering of light particles and determined places where quantum teleportation photons could safely be isolated from interference. The Northwest University team, led by Prem Kumar, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and director of the Centre for Photonic Communication and Computing, constructed a 30 kilometre-long fibre-optic cable for the study. Quantum data and regular internet traffic was transmitted through the cable on a less crowded wavelength of light, while filters were used to limit the ‘noise’ from the regular internet traffic. The quality of the quantum data at the receiving end of the 30km link was tested while the teleportation protocol was applied to make quantum measurements at the 15km mid-point of the cable. It was found that the quantum information made it through, uninterrupted and unimpeded, in spite of the welter and proximity of the internet traffic being transmitted alongside it. The method works by exploiting the property of quantum entanglement, whereby two particles are linked regardless of the distance between them, be that across the universe or at either end of a 30km fibre-optic cable. Thanks to that “spooky action at a distance”, as Einstein called it, the entangled particles do not physically travel to deliver information, they just deliver it instantaneously without having to physically transport it, which takes time (albeit a very short amount of time). It is mind boggling. Einstein thought the action “spooky” because it became apparent that two separated particles remain  connected without being in direct contact and able to communicate seemingly faster than the speed of light, something that Einstein had calculated, and proven, to be impossible. Only massless particles, such as photons, can approach the speed of light, which is 300,000km per second. Einstein said that to accelerate anything beyond light speed would take an infinite amount of energy and, therefore, it cannot be done. Maybe where quantum entanglement is concerned, he was wrong. Time will tell. Kumar commented: “This is incredibly exciting because nobody thought it was possible. Our work shows a path towards next-generation quantum and classical networks sharing a unified fibre-optic infrastructure. Basically, it opens the door to pushing quantum communications to the next level.” The next step in the research programme will be to use two pairs of entangled photons to demonstrate entanglement swapping, another vital component in the development of distributed quantum applications. Later experiments will run over commercially operational fibre-optic cables. As Kumar says, “Quantum teleportation has the ability to provide quantum connectivity securely between geographically distant nodes, but many people have long assumed that nobody would build specialised infrastructure to send particles of light. If we choose the wavelengths properly, we won’t have to build new infrastructure. Classical communications and quantum communications can coexist.” Quite brilliant!

– The staff, TelecomTV!

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