• e& teams up with Core42 to launch sovereign AI in UAE
• HKT announces new ultrafast AI datacentre interconnect
• TIM board gives thumbs up for Poste Italiane takeover

In today’s industry news roundup: e& partners with Core42 to launch a sovereign AI offering for enterprises and organisations within the UAE; HKT unveils a new ultra-low latency datacentre interconnect service in Hong Kong; Telecom Italia’s board approves a €10.8bn takeover offer from Poste Italiane; and much more!

Core42, part of Abu Dhabi-based tech and AI company G42, and e& UAE have teamed up to offer sovereign AI infrastructure services to enterprises and government bodies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and international markets. The first service on offer from the partners is a GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) offering called Sovereign AI Compute, which integrates “Core42’s Sovereign AI Cloud with e& UAE’s national digital infrastructure, secure connectivity, local customer relationships and professional services, creating a fully integrated platform that enables organisations to move from AI strategy to production deployment under a unified commercial and operational framework,” noted Core42 in this announcement. The service has been designed to “keep sensitive workloads and data within the UAE while giving customers a practical and accelerated path to build, train, fine-tune, infer and deploy AI at scale,” noted the partners. As part of the pitch, e& UAE is launching GPU Connect, which combines “advanced GPU capabilities together with premium e& UAE connectivity in one integrated package”. Esam Mahmoud, senior vice president of SMB sales and marketing at e& UAE, said the service “directly supports the UAE’s vision to build an AI-native economy and advance the national agentic AI agenda by enabling organisations to deploy intelligent systems that can analyse, decide and act with greater speed and confidence. The value of this platform is not only AI compute; it is the combination of AI infrastructure, private connectivity, local support and a practical route to production.”

Sticking with e& the Middle East giant says it has completed the sale of its stake in Vodafone Group to Iliad’s owner Xavier Niel, concluding a deal that was initially announced earlier this month. e& confirmed that as a result of the transaction it will bank $5.95 from the sale of the shares and the upcoming Vodafone dividend that it will still receive, meaning it will have made a profit of $1.3bn from its Vodafone stock transactions. 

Hong Kong’s HKT has unveiled plans to launch a 3.2Tbit/s ultra-low latency datacentre interconnect service to support AI workloads. The AI Datacentre Interconnect (DCI) Superhighway service will be the first of its kind in Hong Kong, according to the telco, offering ultra-fast and seamless access to computing resources in datacentres across the special administrative region. HKT said the hollow core fibre being used for the DCI Superhighway should offer latencies up to 30% lower than traditional fibre. HKT is upgrading its 800Gbit/s AI superhighway to support advanced industry standards, such as remote direct memory access (RDMA), RDMA over converged Ethernet, multipath reliable connection, and ultra-Ethernet transport. It will run between AI infrastructure facilities in Lok Ma Chau and Tseung Kwan O, and there are plans to expand it into the upcoming HK$23.8bn (US$3bn) Sandy Ridge Data Facility Cluster, which is expected to begin operations in 2029. According to HKT, the “combination of high bandwidth and ultra-low latency keeps thousands of GPUs across datacentres working in sync, reducing the time and cost of compute by minimising delays in data transmission, while simultaneously lowering power per bit to improve energy efficiency.”

Telecom Italia (TIM)’s board has approved the takeover offer from state-owned Poste Italiane, stating over the weekend that it has “given a positive assessment of the rationale and industrial prospects of the transaction and its consistency with the path undertaken by TIM” and considers the offer to be “fair from a financial standpoint”. In March, Poste Italiane, which already owns a 27% stake in the Italian telco, made a cash and stock offer to buy the near 73% stake it doesn’t currently own for about €10.8bn. As Poste Italiane’s share price has increased since the initial bid, the value of the takeover offer has now risen to about €13.2bn. Telecom Italia shareholders now have until 11 September to accept the offer and sell their shares to Poste Italiane, noted Teleborsa, the Italian stock exchange’s news service. 

Staying in Italy, Fastweb + Vodafone has partnered with SpaceX’s satellite communications arm, Starlink, to trial satellite-based direct-to-device (D2D) connections in Italy, the operator announced. The partners will conduct a technical pilot, which the telco claims is the first of its kind in the country, in the Apennines region of central Italy, with the aim of using Fastweb spectrum to bring D2D coverage to areas with limited or no terrestrial mobile coverage. The trial will initially run until 30 September and is limited to a maximum of 3,000 participants, according to reports from Italy. It is the latest D2D trial for Starlink, which has struck D2D service delivery partnerships with mobile operators across the globe.

Italian fibre cable manufacturer Prysmian has signed a deal worth up to €5.5bn (including a €550m upfront payment) with Lisle, Illinois-based interconnect technology developer Molex for the supply of optical fibre to be deployed in datacentre facilities. Prysmian noted that the deal “is part of an overall set of new agreements and commercial initiatives with hyperscalers and datacentre infrastructure providers, foreseen to bring in an additional cumulative value of over €10bn on an incremental basis up to 2035, versus the 2025 baseline. This includes up to €1.1bn of revenues on a yearly basis from 2031.” As a result of these deals, Prysmian plans to “implement a significant expansion in capacity for optical cables and fibre, which will more than double fiber capacity in the US versus the current baseline.” The news sent the company’s share price up by almost 2% to €127.75 on the Italian stock exchange. 

Telecom Egypt has said it does not intend to proceed with plans to sell off a majority stake in its datacentre subsidiary to Helios Investments, citing “unmet conditions” in the proposed deal. The telco’s board of directors voted last week to abandon the deal, initially announced in September, which would have given Helios a 75% share of Telecom Egypt’s regional datacentre hub. Telecom Egypt didn’t disclose which terms had not been met, only revealing that they included “conditions related to third parties, which are necessary for the completion and proper compliance of the transaction”. However, it did confirm that it will continue with its plans to carve out its datacentre assets into a standalone entity.

UK mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Sky Mobile has introduced free global roaming in 120 destinations for subscribers to its VIP loyalty package. Customers who have been with Sky for more than 15 years can enrol in the Sky VIP Diamond scheme and benefit from its new roaming offer, which allows them to use their Sky Mobile data, calls and text allowances across the world, subject to a 25GB fair usage cap. Sky, which operates on Virgin Media O2 (VMO2)’s network in the UK, recently expanded its roaming destinations from 55 to 120, including locations in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Non-VIP customers can add a roaming pass for £2 per day.

– The staff, TelecomTV