• Veon strikes decade-long deal with Amdocs
• CityFibre plots “acquisition drive”
• GSMA publishes India next steps ahead of IMC

In today’s industry news roundup: Veon signs a 10-year deal that sees Amdocs manage and modernise its core technology operations; CityFibre shares financial plans that include strengthening its capital structure and prepping for an acquisition drive; as the 10th Indian Mobile Congress kicks off, the GSMA releases three new reports on the next steps for mobile in the country; and much more!

Veon has signed a 10-year agreement with Amdocs that will see the vendor modernise and manage Veon’s core technology operations as part of the operator’s strategy to reposition itself as a digital services operator across Eurasia. Amdocs will operate alongside QazCode, which is Veon’s software and AI subsidiary, to continuously modernise Veon’s operations with the aim of providing long-term cost predictability for the firm. The vendor will deploy its recently launched agentic operating system, aOS, to transform Veon’s operations, customer experiences and digital services, which already account for around 27% of Veon Group’s revenues. Veon CEO Kaan Terzioglu said: “QazCode has helped us build the technology and talent to bring better digital experiences to the millions of people who rely on us every day, and adopting Amdocs’ aOS capabilities is a natural next step in that journey. Our strategic partnership with Amdocs creates a strong foundation to keep improving people’s lives through digital and AI innovation over the next decade.”

Major UK fibre access altnet CityFibre, which now passes 4.8 million premises with its wholesale FTTP network and boasts more than 1.1 million live connections via its ISP customers, has provided a financial update as it makes plans to “strengthen its capital structure” and prepare for an “acquisition drive”. During the first nine months of 2026, the operator generated revenues of £164m and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of £60m, up by 36% and 290% respectively compared with the same period in 2025. Simon Holden, CEO of CityFibre, stated: “Our performance demonstrates the ongoing, fundamental strength of CityFibre’s business. We continue to grow our customer base and revenues while delivering significant improvements in profitability and maintaining a disciplined approach to costs and capital allocation. We also recognise that our capital structure needs to evolve to support our acquisition drive and unlock the next phase of CityFibre’s growth. With the continued backing of our shareholders, including a £900m new equity commitment, we are in discussion with our lenders to establish a strong, long-term capital structure for the business. This will enable CityFibre to accelerate consolidation in the sector creating a larger business with the funding and financial flexibility to deliver its long-term plan and establish the third national network the UK needs.”

The 10th Indian Mobile Congress (IMC) has opened its doors in New Delhi, so expect to hear a bit more than usual from and about that giant market over the next few days. As an update, India, the biggest country in the world by population (1.48 billion), had more than 1.15 billion wireless subscribers (excluding machine-to-machine connections) at the end of August, of which about 450 million are 5G users. According to the Indian government, some 85% of the population can be reached by 5G services, which is a testament to the dramatic 5G network rollout undertaken by the country’s mobile market leaders, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, in recent years. In addition, 98.7% of villages in India now have 4G connectivity, “reflecting the rapid expansion of digital connectivity across the country”.

To mark the start of the event, the GSMA has published three new reports that focus on the next steps that India can take as its communications services sector evolves. “The GSMA’s new research identifies the next priorities needed to achieve India’s digital advancement: AI-ready networks, faster enterprise digitisation, greater trust in digital services and open, interoperable global standards for 6G,” noted the industry body in this announcement. In a speech delivered during the opening day of the IMC, Vivek Badrinath, director general of the GSMA, noted: “India has demonstrated that it can deliver digital scale. The opportunity now is to turn that scale into innovation, enterprise growth and trusted digital services. India’s next decade will be defined not simply by how many people are connected but by what they can achieve through that connectivity. Digital trust is not simply a safeguard. It is infrastructure for growth.” 

Here’s a viewpoint that will raise the heckles of the European telcos that have for years been calling for less restrictive M&A regulations in the region so they can consolidate the market, gain the greater scale needed for financial security and invest more in their networks. BEREC (Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications), the industry body that represents Europe’s telecom regulators, notes that one of the main conclusions to be drawn from its latest fact-finding report is that “the current EU framework allows operators to pursue consolidation, both across borders and within member states, where transactions do not harm competition. Examined cases demonstrate that, should operators deem greater scale as indispensable for the pursuit of their business cases, it can be achieved under the existing merger-control framework, sometimes with remedies designed to preserve competition,” notes BEREC. Most pointedly, BEREC explains that “the evidence does not show that greater scale automatically leads to more investment, innovation or competitiveness. BEREC points to the recent downsizing of several large operators’ international portfolios as an indication that scale may have diminishing benefits beyond a certain point. The evidence reviewed also points to potential trade-offs for consumers. Greater competition is associated with lower prices, whereas evidence from mergers indicates that prices increase in the short to medium term following the mergers, even with remedies in place. On this basis, the report finds no clear evidence that consolidation, by itself, delivers stronger investment or innovation outcomes.” Ouch!

Dublin, Ireland-based Beyond Now, one of the companies that features in TelecomTV’s most recent free-to-download report, The AI-Native Evolution of OSS/BSS, has launched its Agentic Revenue & Ecosystem Orchestration Platform, which the vendor says “connects capabilities traditionally fragmented across siloed IT and BSS environments and makes them available for people, systems and AI agents to act on through one commercial foundation.” The headless architecture platform boasts a shared catalogue, single data model and centralised commercial rules that, according to the company, “connect customers, products, partners, pricing, orders and services, giving people and agents the context to turn customer intent into personalised propositions, execute across the revenue lifecycle and increasingly transact agent to agent”. The platform is commercially available and is already being used by Hrvatski Telekom, part of the Deutsche Telekom empire. 

Pre-paid mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Always Connected has partnered with independent global Tier 1 carrier Ibasis to launch a new eSIM-based service across Europe. The MVNO will leverage the Ibasis Travel eSIM Platform to launch downloadable eSIM profiles to support a wider range of devices, including MiFi routers, tablets, dongles, security cameras and GPS trackers. “The iBASIS Travel eSIM Platform has enabled us to extend our unique data-only offering to eSIM-compatible devices with the same flexibility and affordability our customers expect,” said Richard de Boer, CCO at Always Connected. “The integration of iBASIS’s connectivity management platform (CMP) into our self-developed MySim environment allows us to offer advanced features, such as SIM card management, data usage insights, SMS functionality, and GPS tracking – all within our own platform and under our full control.”

– The staff, TelecomTV