What’s up with… OpenAI, Deutsche Telekom, Ciena

• OpenAI heralds “AGI era” with latest model
• Deutsche Telekom faces investor troubles over rumoured T-Mobile merger
• Ciena ups 2027 forecast off the back of strong quarterly results

In today’s industry news roundup: OpenAI unveils its new GPT-6 Astra AI model, claiming it marks the start of the AGI era; activist investor Elliott is building a stake in DT that could prove a roadblock to its reported plans to merge with T-Mobile; Ciena’s stock price fell 10% despite a strong quarter that led the vendor to publish early forecasts for fiscal 2027; and much more!

OpenAI has unveiled its latest and most advanced large language model, GPT-6 Astra, which the ChatGPT company claims is the first step into a new era of artificial general intelligence. AGI has long been a big goal of American AI firms. The threshold to get there is slightly fuzzy but it has generally been defined as an AI system’s ability to learn, reason and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks and domains at least at the level of a human, if not higher. OpenAI defines AGI as “autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work” and, according to the company’s president, Greg Brockman, the new Astra model is pretty much there. “We’re at a point now where these models are solving unsolved 100-year-old math problems, but you can also use them in order to accelerate the economy [and] in order to benefit you and your personal life … I think it’s not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era,” he said. OpenAI claims Astra is “a major advance for scientific discovery” and that the AI model can carry out tasks, such as completing tax returns, building computer games, ordering food and doing a job search that together might take a human five hours, but takes Astra just 2 minutes 51 seconds. Astra will initially be rolled out for enterprise customers through OpenAI’s Daybreak programme, before expanding more widely “in the coming days”. But its launch isn’t happening in a bubble – just last week Microsoft founder Bill Gates warned of the dangers of AI, while OpenAI itself penned a letter signed by 100 other companies warning about AI security.

Activist investor Elliott Management has been building a sizeable stake in Deutsche Telekom (DT) which could prove problematic should the German telco look to merge with its American subsidiary T-Mobile US. A report from Bloomberg (subscription required), citing people familiar with the matter, claims hedge fund Elliott – which has openly called on Deutsche Telekom to ditch its merger talks with T-Mobile US – has slowly been building up its stake in the German firm. The article did not disclose how big its shareholding is at this time, but said the investor would prefer Deutsche Telekom to unlock shareholder value through other methods, including share buybacks, such as the €2bn buyback it launched in January that was expanded up to €5bn last month. The position could put Elliott on course for a showdown with DT CEO Tim Höttges who, according to Bloomberg in April, had been considering merging the company with T-Mobile US to create the world’s biggest telco, in what would unquestionably be a complex deal to pull off. DT already owns a 53% stake in T-Mobile US, but it is the German government’s 14% direct ownership of the German operator (plus a further 14% through state bank KfW) that could prove a complicating factor, with questions remaining around where the combined company would be headquartered. 

It’s been a big week of change for telecom executives, most notably in finance offices, with Deutsche Telekom unveiling Dhananjay Mirchandani as its new finance chief (among a raft of other appointments). In the wake of that announcement, T-Mobile US, in which DT is the majority shareholder, has revealed that its CFO Peter Osvaldik is to step down in February 2027 after he extended his time at the company by a year to ensure a long-term succession plan. As part of that plan, former Shell CFO Jessica Uhl will join the company as CFO designate and work alongside Osvaldik, who first joined T-Mobile US in 2016 and has served as CFO since 2020 in an extended transition period. After spending 15 years at Shell, including five as CFO, Uhl left in 2022 and later became president of GE Venova. “I am thrilled to welcome Jessica to T-Mobile,” said Srini Gopalan, president and CEO of T-Mobile. “She brings deep financial and strategic acumen, capital allocation expertise and an innovative growth mindset that is a perfect fit for T-Mobile’s next era.

And T-Mobile US isn’t the only US telco who will have a new CFO soon after Charter Communications finance chief Jessica Fischer announced she will leave the cable operator on 15 October to join a new infrastructure joint venture backed by Google and Blackstone. Back in May, private equity firm Blackstone announced plans to invest $5bn in a partnership with Google that will create a new US-based company offering datacentre capacity, operations, networking and access to the Google Cloud’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) as a compute-as-a-service offering. Charter recently sealed its merger with rival Cox, but just days ago announced that Fischer would be leaving “for another professional opportunity” after more than a decade at Charter. Fischer then revealed on LinkedIn that she would be joining the new JV, though she did not disclose what role she will be taking up there. Charter has named EVP and chief accounting officer Kevin Howard as interim CFO while it hunts for a permanent replacement for Fischer.

As we previously reported, Ciena has just completed yet another very successful fiscal quarter, with revenues for the three months to 1 August increasing by 37% to $1.67bn and the company increasing its full fiscal year sales guidance to $6.42bn, thanks mainly to the AI infrastructure boom. But the story gets more interesting. In the vendor’s earnings call with analysts and investors, Ciena’s CFO Marc Graff noted that due to “ongoing momentum and improved visibility into future demand, we believe it is prudent to provide early direction for fiscal 2027,” which runs from November 2026 to October 2027. “As we see it today, we expect to deliver another record year with revenue growing a minimum of 30% year on year, yielding at least $8.3bn to $8.4bn in revenue with supply-driven upsides,” noted the CFO. Note the use of “at least”, which means that if demand grows even greater and supply chain challenges (which every vendor is facing) ease, that number could be even higher. This is incredible news, taking Ciena into uncharted financial territory. But guess what? News of the results (which were better than expected) and the forecast for the next year (also great and unexpected) wasn’t enough for investors, as Ciena’s share price dipped by about 10% by the end of trading on 3 September following the announcements. It has recovered slightly, by 1.8% to $321.99, in early trading on Friday (as this article was written), but it makes you realise that it’s practically impossible to guess which way Ciena’s stock might go on any given day.    

The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has decided that the $21bn saved due to previous reforms made to the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) programme – that’s half of the initiative’s original $42bn funding value – will now be put towards a new round of BEAD funding, “enabling states to address locations that may remain unserved, including those affected by changes in previous federal and state broadband programmes”. The NTIA noted that the “new funding round will allow states and territories to direct a portion of their BEAD savings towards newly identified unserved locations that were not previously included in the FCC’s broadband map, as well as other locations that have become eligible as a result of defaults or changes in previous federal and state broadband programmes.”

KDDI has expanded its direct-to-device (D2D) service roaming to the Philippines, through a partnership with Globe Telecom, and New Zealand, partnering with Spark, as of 31 August, adding to its existing direct-to-device (D2D) roaming arrangements in the US (with T-Mobile US) and Canada (with Rogers Communications). All of the operators involved partner with Starlink Mobile for their D2D service delivery. KDDI had signalled its intention to expand roaming to these markets earlier in the year and we can expect more such bilateral arrangements as more and more mobile operators team up with Starlink Mobile for D2D service provisioning. 

Telefónica has completed the sale of its former headquarters building in central Madrid for a reported €200m. The building at Gran Vía 28 in Madrid “has been acquired by General de Galerías Comerciales,” noted the Spanish telco. “The transaction is part of Telefónica´s active management and real estate portfolio optimisation plan, as set out in the company’s strategic plan, Transform & Grow, which calls for rigorous and effective execution,” it added. 

Telecom Egypt has signed a partnership with Power Sub Link to build a subsea cable system linking Sharm El Sheikh to Taba, extending the reach of its Red2Med cable system. The new 200km Sharm El Sheikh-Taba link will interconnect with Telecom Egypt’s Red Sea Festoon Cable System, which serves as the southern part of the Red2Med system, linking Egypt’s Mediterranean landing stations with those in the Red Sea via the Internet Corridor of Egypt, which runs alongside the Suez Canal. The extension, due to be ready for service by the end of 2027, will be designed as a repeaterless cable with a capacity of 5 petabits per second, and will act as one of the shortest and fastest connectivity routes between Sinai-based Taba and Sharm El Sheikh, whilst offering a continuous subsea route along the Sinai Peninsula coastline.

Bad news from Scotland, where pioneering connectivity tech specialist pureLiFi, which developed an optical version of Wi-Fi that uses light instead of radio to transmit data, has gone into administration and made all of its 42 staff redundant after it failed to raise additional capital, reports Edinburgh News. A note on its website states: “Unfortunately, pureLiFi Limited has ceased trading with effect from 31st August 2026 and has entered into administration with BTG Begbies Traynor being appointed as administrators.” The company, a spin-out from the University of Edinburgh, was founded by Professor Harald Haas, the subject of a recent TelecomTV analysis. 

– The staff, TelecomTV