• Orange Business bolsters its AI foundations
• UK pumps £2.5bn into AI and quantum
• Nokia flexes its optical muscles

In today’s industry news roundup: Orange Business ups the AI ante with new service launches and enhancements; the UK is desperate not to get left behind in the AI and quantum era; Nokia rocks up to OFC with some bold network efficiency and total cost of ownership claims; and more!

Orange Business, the B2B services division of Orange, has used its annual customer summit to unveil a range of service launches and enhancements, many of which, as you’d expect, are underpinned by AI. They include: The launch of Live Collaboration, which Orange Business describes as “a trusted set of modular sovereign collaboration tools designed to address increasing cloud spend, vendor lock-in and new digital vulnerabilities”; an augmented approach to enterprise voice communications to instill trust and security with features such as branded calling, deepfake detection, and agentic telephony; and the launch of Orange Drone Guardian, which “detects, identifies and classifies intrusive drones in low-altitude airspace across France, with plans to extend coverage to additional European countries”. Orange Business CEO Aliette Mousnier-Lompré noted: “We understand the pressures organisations face as they navigate complex and volatile market conditions… [and] aim to empower organisations to scale and innovate securely, enabling them to thrive amid uncertainty.” 

The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has announced £2.5bn in funding for Britain’s AI and quantum computing sectors to ensure that companies in those critical tech sectors can scale and succeed in a country that Reeves claims is on course to “achieve the fastest AI adoption in the G7”. According to this UK government announcement, the funding plan “delivers on the government’s modern Industrial Strategy, which identified digital and technologies – including AI and quantum – as one of eight high-growth sectors critical to long-term economic renewal,” something the UK is desperately in need of. In a speech delivered on Tuesday, Reeves stated: “AI is the defining technology of our era. The choice is this: We can bury our heads in the sand and leave it to other countries – whose values may differ from ours – to shape and own this technology. We can leave it to the market alone, and let the balance of risk and reward be determined by a super-wealthy few. Or we can chart our own course. That’s why I am setting out an ambitious plan for the UK to achieve the fastest AI adoption in the G7. In a world defined by technological change, Britain cannot afford to stand still. With this strategy, I believe we can approach the future with confidence – with the technologies of the future invented, built and deployed here in Britain.” As for the focus on quantum computing, the government announced that the UK “aims to become the first country in the world to commit to making and deploying  quantum computers at scale by the early 2030s, ushering in a new era for computing, which could add £200bn to the economy by 2045.” 

Nokia, along with the rest of the optical networking sector, has rocked up to the annual OFC event, held this year in Los Angeles, with a number of new offerings in a portfolio that the vendor believes is key to its success in the AI era. Nokia identified some time ago there would be an uptick in optical networking investments not only in the transport networks that connect datacentres and other AI infrastructure hubs but also within datacentre facilities themselves – hence its $2.3bn acquisition of fellow optical networking innovator Infinera, a deal that closed about a year ago. So for OFC, it has announced a “new suite of application-optimised coherent transport solutions enabling significant improvements in network efficiency and providing up to 70% lower total cost of ownership” and a “compact, in-line amplifier optimised for multi-fibre applications that enables network operators to deliver up to 40x more services in the same footprint”. The vendor has also announced the expansion of its out-of-band management (OOBM) portfolio with the launch of Aurelis for Data Centers, a purpose-built, passive optical network (PON)-based fibre system that, according to Nokia, reduces the number of active switches required for OOBM by 90%, thus improving space efficiency, delivering 50% or more power savings and simplifying operations. 

– The staff, TelecomTV