What’s up with… Verizon, Ericsson, Telia

• Verizon appoints a new CEO with immediate effect 
• Ericsson lands private 5G deal with Airbus
• Telia on track for rail network gig

In today’s industry news roundup: Verizon’s lead director replaces Hans Vestberg as CEO; Ericsson deploys private 5G networks in Germany and France for Airbus, with more in the pipeline; Telia gets its ticket stamped by Swedish train operator SJ; and much more!

Verizon has unexpectedly replaced its CEO of more than seven years, Hans Verstberg, with immediate effect. His replacement is the telco’s independent lead director Dan Schulman, the former CEO of PayPal who has been a member of the US telco’s board since 2018. Mark Bertolini, who has taken over from Vestberg as chairman of the Verizon board, noted: “The board is thrilled to have Dan as Verizon’s next CEO and embark on a new chapter of growth and sector leadership. Dan is a seasoned and decisive leader with a unique set of experiences and a proven record of transformative leadership and operational excellence. He is the right leader to chart Verizon’s next phase of increased customer focus and financial growth,” which is something the new CEO knows about. During his tenure as PayPal’s CEO, Schulman grew the global payments platform’s annual revenues from $8bn to $30bn. Vestberg, meanwhile, will serve as “special advisor” for the next year, during which time he will be “focused on ensuring a smooth transition” and help to manage the  integration of Frontier Communications, the broadband network operator that Verizon is acquiring for $20bn – that M&A deal is set to close during the first quarter of 2026. “Hans Vestberg has been an extraordinary leader for Verizon, leading a new era of network investment and creating an innovative culture,” noted Bertolini. “Our company is better for his passion and vision. Having created a network that is unmatched and with the upcoming close of the Frontier transaction, the board and Hans discussed that now is the right time for a CEO transition. On behalf of the entire board, we thank Hans for his outstanding service to all of Verizon’s stakeholders.” As you’d expect, Shulman, who has previously also worked at AT&T and Virgin Mobile US, is pumped about his new job. “I believe in Verizon and its future, and I am honoured to be chosen to serve as CEO,” said the new head honcho. “Verizon is at a critical juncture. We have a clear opportunity to redefine our trajectory, by growing our market share across all segments of the market, while delivering meaningful growth in our key financial metrics. We are going to maximise our value propositions, reduce our cost to serve and optimise our capital allocation to delight our customers, and deliver sustainable long-term growth for our shareholders. I want to thank Hans for his remarkable leadership and all he has contributed to Verizon. I deeply appreciate his friendship and support in this transition. I look forward to working with our employees, our regulators, our partners and the board to do the hard work it takes to regain our leadership in our sector across mobility and broadband.” And, as you’d expect, Vestberg is stepping down gracefully. “Over the last eight years, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside some of the most talented and dedicated people in the industry, and together we’ve built a network that truly connects people to what matters most. As the board and I discussed, with the pending acquisition of Frontier, it is a good time to pass the baton to Dan. I do this with immense pride and deep gratitude. Verizon’s future is in excellent hands and I’ll be cheering the team on every step of the way,” he stated.

The scramble for relevancy in the communications and technology services and infrastructure sectors, and the importance of relationships with large multinational companies, is laid bare in a couple of announcements made on Monday. Swedish vendor Ericsson has deployed a private 5G network at the Airbus production site in Hamburg, Germany, and has another deployment with the aeronautics and space company in Toulouse, France. “This initiative forms part of Airbus’ ambitious digitalisation strategy, aimed at strengthening manufacturing automation, traceability and operational efficiency, while meeting the sector’s strictest safety and security standards,” noted Ericsson in this announcement. “With a fully operational private 5G network now live in Hamburg and deployment at Toulouse underway (to be completed by 2026), this rollout is part of a broader roadmap to extend private 5G across Airbus’s strategic sites in Europe, including further locations in Spain, the United Kingdom, and internationally, with projects in the United States pending,” added Ericsson. Hakim Achouri, 5G expert at Airbus, stated: “Our objective is to migrate all our industrial networks towards 5G to ensure unified, ultra-reliable connectivity from the operator’s workstation to the aircraft cabin. This deployment accelerates projects involving 3D simulation, augmented reality, improved traceability for parts, and predictive maintenance for our assets. The standardisation and scalability made possible by this architecture allow us to replicate the solution easily across further sites in Europe and worldwide.” The deal is noteworthy not only because it’s an important engagement for both parties but because private 5G network deals are prized by telcos, infrastructure vendors such as Ericsson and systems integrators (SIs) alike, and the battle is intensifying over which suppliers are selected as the lead partners. 

Another sector where vendors, SIs and telcos are battling for prime partner status is the railway industry. In Sweden, Telia has landed a long-term contract with the country’s largest train operator SJ to “deliver high-quality communications services covering SJ’s entire operations and train fleet,” the telco has announced. The deal includes the provision of mobile connectivity, internet of things (IoT) solutions and a crisis management platform. “Under the agreement, Telia will deliver mobile connectivity across SJ’s complete footprint, including on-board Wi-Fi for all trains travelling through the Nordic region and to and from Germany, as well as mobile devices,” noted the operator. “Furthermore, Telia’s advanced IoT solutions will connect SJ’s systems and collect real-time data to support more efficient and sustainable train operations,” it added. 

Telefónica is lining up a new redundancy programme that is set to impact at least 6,000 staff, about 6% of the Spanish telco’s workforce, according to Spanish newspaper Expansion. Telefónica CEO Marc Murtra is set to unveil a new strategy for the company on 4 November following a lengthy and in-depth review of the telco’s operations. 

Did you know that the original name of what eventually became Amazon was going to be ‘Relentless’? Well, it was and Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon has, multiple times, proven himself to be relentless in making the company one of the most far-reaching and pervasive on the planet. But that’s not enough. Last Friday, at the Italian Tech Week event in Turin, during an on-stage ‘public conversation’ with John Elkaan, who is the chairman of both Ferrari and Stellantis (the French-Italian-US automaker that plans to invest some $10bn in the US in the next year or so), Bezos announced his support for an off-Earth initiative to construct gigawatt-scale datacentres in space that would be able to take full advantage of the continuous solar energy provided by the sun. He admits the project will be difficult and massively expensive but firmly believes that bigger and bigger datacentres will be built in space within the next 10 to 20 years and will outperform any earthbound facility. Bezos stated: “These giant training clusters, those will be better built in space because we have solar power there, 24/7. There are no clouds and no rain, no weather.” No, but there are massive extremes of temperature, relentless bombardments by cosmic rays and continual danger of strikes by space debris to contend with. Not only that but it will also be extremely difficult to maintain and upgrade orbiting datacentres and will cost a pretty penny to launch the rockets necessary to place them in space in the first place. Still, should it eventually happen, countries such as Ireland, whose national grid is already creaking at the seams because of the ever-increasing demand for power and water to run ever-bigger datacentre facilities, may breathe a sigh of relief as the lights will be able to stay on at home and Ireland will continue to be the Emerald Isle rather than turning into a desert.

The EU-funded SpikeHERO (Spike Hybrid Edge Computing for Robust Optoelectrical Signal Processing) consortium is “developing AI chips based on ‘spiking neural networks’ (SNNs) that will significantly improve signal quality and boost data transmission rates in fibre optics,” its members have announced. The consortium, which is led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS) of Erlangen in Germany, and which also includes members from Belgium, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, began its collaboration on 1 October. So what’s driving the SpikeHERO work? Well, most data traffic is now very reliant on fibre optics, while demand for higher bandwidths and lower latencies continues to increase. To be successful, future 6G networks will require very robust data transmission but the higher the data rate needed, the more signal quality tends to degrade. To compensate for this, services currently rely on digital signal processors (DSPs). However, as Michael Rothe of the Embedded AI Group at Fraunhofer IIS points out, DSPs are costly and, as they consume ever-increasing amounts of power, they are not a sustainable solution in the long term. Thus, SpikeHERO is developing a new AI processor architecture combining an optical and an electrical spiking neural network chip. Spiking neural networks work by emulating the human brain, where information is processed in pulses (or “spikes”) when a “critical relevance threshold” is exceeded. Such an attribute makes a spiking neural network ideal for AI applications that require both real-time responsiveness and energy efficiency. There are different types of SNN chip technology – optical semiconductors transmit spikes via photons, while electrical counterparts use voltage and current. Each type has its own advantages, and the SpikeHERO project intends to combine the approaches. 

Wondering about the magnitude of the growing demand for AI processing power? According to Kuniyoshi Suzuki, senior director of the cloud AI service division at SoftBank Corp, who was talking at the recent Nvidia AI Day in Tokyo, “Japan will see a 320 times increase from 2020 in demand for AI computing power by 2030”. And to cope with that demand, sovereign AI technology is required, it seems. “To ensure transparency and safety as AI adoption expands, it is crucial to build a foundation of domestic technologies – high performance, Japan-made large language models (LLMs) and large-scale domestic computing infrastructure capable of continuous LLM development,” noted Suzuki.

These days, cybersecurity is top of the worry list for just about every company and organisation on the planet. Attacks and incursions are rife and many of the biggest enterprises have been, are being, or will be brought to their knees by the actions of malign actors and criminal ransomware incursions. With that trend in mind, Orange Cyberdefence, the cybersecurity arm of the European telco, has announced it is beefing-up the advanced detection and remediation capabilities of its security operations centres (SOCs) with new agentic AI technology developed by the Paris-based French startup Qevlar AI. In an effort to provide immediate responsiveness to increasingly sophisticated and disruptive attacks, Orange is to improve the processing of ever-increasing security alerts and events, and more quickly identify incidents of compromised security across all client and customer environments. For close to 20 years now, Orange Cyberdefence has been developing a Cyber Threat Intelligence database referencing information on attacker groups, their tools and methods. The knowledge base is a unique data source in Europe and is primarily derived from Orange Cyberdefence’s managed services, analyst investigations and crisis management activities for its customers. However, the detection of attacks is getting more difficult by the day and traditional methods of detecting, preventing or remediating them are reaching the limits of their capabilities. That’s why AI technologies like Qevlar’s provide a complementary response to ever more devious threats. Qevlar’s fully autonomous AI solution adds depth to security investigations whilst simultaneously reducing analysis and incident response times. It enables Orange Cyberdefence to apply Qevlar’s qualified intelligence data to react to detected targeted attacks with even greater speed. Orange Cyberdefense protects more than 50,000 companies of all sizes, from the beginning to the end of the threat lifecycle, in over 160 countries.

– The staff, TelecomTV