What’s up with… Telco M&A, Telenor, VMO2

• French telco €20.35bn M&A deal faces 18-month probe 
• Telenor reports tough quarter with drops in revenue and EBITDA 
• VMO2 reveals size of scam calls challenge with new index

In today’s industry news roundup: The mega-M&A deal involving all four major French telcos is facing an in-depth review that could last into 2028; Telenor has revised its full year financial expectations following a tough second quarter; Virgin Media O2 reckons as many as 18 million UK citizens were targeted by scams during a single three-month period; and much more!

The European Commission has referred the review of the planned €20.35bn acquisition of SFR (Altice France) by a consortium comprising the country’s other three main infrastructure-based telcos, Bouygues Telecom, Iliad Group and Orange, to France’s competition watchdog, the Autorité de la concurrence, which will now begin what is expected to be a lengthy investigation of the deal. The complex acquisition will see SFR split up between the three acquiring telcos, with Reuters reporting that the regulatory review process is expected to last 18 months. According to Reuters, the fact that the deal is being reviewed by the French authorities rather than EC regulators offers greater hope for the involved parties that the transaction, which would see the number of infrastructure-based telcos in France shrink from four to three, will ultimately be approved (with or without conditions or ‘remedies’).  

Telenor has reported a tough second quarter, with its group service revenues dipping by 0.7% to 14.7bn krone ($1.52bn) and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dipping by 4.8% to just short of 8bn krone ($829m). “The results reflect particularly tough year-on-year comparables, timing of commercial initiatives, phasing and step-up of robustification and transformation costs, softer market conditions in Norway, modest improvements in Finland, and challenging macro conditions in Bangladesh,” the operator noted in this announcement. It also noted that it is “currently supporting dual IT cost structures and high implementation costs related to the IT transformation, which are expected to start rolling off towards year-end and through 2027. These efforts are expected to bring substantial improvements in customer experience and efficiencies over time. From August, Telenor’s new organisational structure will take effect, supporting a more focused portfolio and a leaner operating model. Over time, the changes are expected to create a Telenor with greater flexibility, higher efficiency, improved customer value and increased return on capital.” But the short-term prospects are such that Telenor has revised its full year outlook, with its adjusted EBITDA for the group operations set to be “flat to slightly negative” compared with the previous forecast of flat-to-low-single-digit growth. 

More than 18 million Brits were targeted by scammers in just a three-month period, between April and June 2026, according to figures published by Virgin Media O2 (VMO2). The telco’s first Scam Index, which mixes its own internal data with in-depth consumer research to outline the fraud landscape, found more than a third of people say they see at least one scam every week, while 19% have been told their data was part of a data breach. Fake delivery messages are the most common scam (at 63%), with online shopping scams (58%) and fake account suspensions (56%) rounding out the top three. VMO2 says it has blocked more than 1.4 billion spam texts to date and flags more than 100 million suspicious calls to customers every month, with this number rising – in June it flagged more calls than in any previous month. Brits also believe AI is also having an impact, the report says, with 58% of under-35s who had seen a scam in the last three months experiencing a deepfake. The report was compiled by Censuswide on behalf of VMO2 – the full Index is available here.

Scaleway, the cloud and AI infrastructure vision of the Iliad Group, has been selected by Airbus, Europe’s largest aeronautics and space company, as its sovereign cloud provider. Scaleway will provide Airbus “with cloud infrastructure designed to modernise selected enterprise applications within a sovereign environment for workloads requiring the highest levels of governance, resilience and legal protection while leveraging AI-ready capabilities.” According to Scaleway, its services and platform will complement Airbus’s existing multi-cloud approach and ensure that each of the aircraft giant’s workloads are “deployed in the environment best suited to its technical, operational and regulatory requirements. To support these ambitions, Scaleway will provide a sovereign cloud platform powered by European infrastructure, open technologies and seamless interoperability,” noted the European cloud provider. For further details, see this announcement. 

French firm Airties, a provider of AI-driven software that improves the connectivity experience for ISPs’ subscribers, has announced several senior appointments, including the addition of former Bell Canada CTIO Stephen Howe to its board of directors. Howe, who has also held roles at Telus and Clearnet, spent almost two decades at the Canadian telco before stepping down as CTIO last year. He noted that he is looking forward to joining Airties and helping “operators unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth”. He isn’t the only new face at Airties, which also named former Cisco director of business development Michael Rezek as its new chief business officer. He brings more than 25 years of industry experience, having also served at Netcracker and Accedian (which is now part of Cisco). Airties recently announced the planned acquisition of Aprecomm as we reported earlier this month.

You’ve heard of direct-to-device (D2D) – now meet direct-to-vehicle (D2V)… Satellite communications provider Viasat is touting a new technology demonstration that showcased what it claims is the first automotive satellite voice call, using technology integrated into a car. Working with German carmaker BMW, Viasat’s team in Munich used an eSIM from Cubic3, a Qualcomm Snapdragon Auto 5G Modem-RF Gen 2 solution and the Fraunhofer IIS NESC AI voice codec to carry out a voice call using its L-band satellite network. It was the first time the technology has been integrated into BMW’s in-vehicle architecture, meaning the calls can be managed directly through the vehicle’s interface, instead of routing through a mobile phone or other device. This extends messaging and voice services beyond cellular coverage, allowing vehicles to remain connected for emergency assistance and critical safety applications. The test was carried out as part of a research collaboration at a meeting held in Germany this week by the 5G Automotive Association (5GAA), of which BMW, Cubic and Viasat are all members.

Singtel, other Bridge Alliance operators and Thales have partnered to launch a multi-operator enterprise eSIM connectivity network for the internet of things (IoT). In what the partners claim is a world first, the eSIM enables businesses to seamlessly deploy and manage IoT devices across multiple operators and countries through a single platform. The Bridge Alliance operators – Singtel, Optus, AIS and Globe Telecom – built the platform, which is based on the latest GSMA SGP.32 specification, on Thales’s end-to-end IoT eSIM solution. Tests have already demonstrated end-to-end orchestration across multiple devices the four operators’ systems, with plans to expand to additional operators within the 34 operator-strong Alliance.

– The staff, TelecomTV