• Samsung and Broadcom expand AI collaboration
• Verizon unveils mega fibre deal with Google
• Vodafone ups guidance after strong quarter

In today’s industry news roundup: Among a raft of AI announcements in South Korea, Samsung reveals it has expanded its partnership with Broadcom across memory and foundry technologies; Verizon’s AI Connect service strikes a billion-dollar fibre deal with Google; a strong quarter for Vodafone has seen the telco increase its earnings guidance; and much more!

The importance of the South Korean economy to the global AI sector was made abundantly clear over the weekend as giant conglomerate SK Group announced multiple deals and relationships with some of the biggest names in the industry – see SK Group forges big tech AI alliances – while Samsung and Naver also struck important deals.  

Samsung Electronics and Broadcom are expanding their collaboration across memory and foundry technologies in a move they claim will support “the next generation of AI infrastructure”. For the supply-constrained memory chip sector, where Samsung is the global market leader, the partners “plan to pursue a strategic collaboration for the supply of industry-leading memory solutions, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM), supporting Broadcom’s next-generation AI accelerators,” they noted in this announcement. “In foundry, the companies’ collaboration focuses on Samsung’s 2-nanometer (nm) and below process technologies for Broadcom’s products, including wireless broadband communications (WBC) solutions,” with the collaboration “expected to extend to advanced packaging technologies built on Samsung’s 2nm process, including 2.3D and 2.5D integration, to enable higher-performance and more power-efficient AI and networking silicon,” they added. The partners estimate the value of their strategic collaboration to be $200bn over the next five years.  

Meanwhile, South Korean internet giant Naver – often described as the ‘Google of Korea’ – has announced a deal with Nvidia and infrastructure investment firm Brookfield to expand Naver’s planned AI factory deployment from 55 megawatts (MWs) to 200 MWs: The deployment is ultimately expected to grow to 1 gigawatt (GW) in capacity.

And Nvidia announced an agreement with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) to open a joint AI research lab at the KAIST Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI in Seoul. “The collaboration will establish a robust academic AI research programme, bringing together Nvidia full-stack AI expertise, Nvidia Nemotron open models and Nvidia AI Cloud partner computing with the world-class scientific talent at KAIST, one of Asia’s premier research universities,” noted Nvidia in this announcement. 

Verizon has struck a $1bn fibre deal with Google that will see the US telco provide connectivity to the tech company’s AI datacentre facilities. Details of the deal were shared by Verizon CEO Dan Schulman during the carrier’s second-quarter financial results call. Schulman noted that the agreement marked an example of new revenue streams that build on the telco’s existing long-haul and metro fibre assets. The agreement with Google covers several dark fibre routes and, according to Schulman, is worth “well in excess of a billion dollars”. It builds on the launch of Verizon’s AI Connect service, announced last year, which sees the carrier offering a suite of services providing power, space and network infrastructure to support AI workloads. Schulman added that other deals are expected to be announced later this year. You can listen to his comments on Verizon’s earnings call here.

Vodafone Group has upped its profit guidance after reporting a 9.7% rise in sales during the first quarter of its current financial year. The UK-based telco generated revenues of €10.3bn ($11.7bn) for the three months to the end of June, with adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation after leases (EBITDAaL) growing 6.7% to €2.9bn ($3.3bn). Vodafone credited the increases to the full integration of VodafoneThree in the UK, favourable conditions in both the UK and Germany, plus double-digit growth from its operations in Africa. However it wasn’t all good news, as the operator reported customer losses in its two biggest markets: In Germany, the operator’s mobile contract customer base declined by 85,000 in the quarter, while it also lost 98,000 broadband customers. In the UK, VodafoneThree shed 48,000 mobile contract customers but gained 34,000 broadband customers. Vodafone said it expected full-year adjusted EBITDAaL in the higher range of its guidance of between €13bn and €13.3bn. The operator also revealed it had made 1,200 job cuts across Europe in the three months up to the end of June, as part of its planned £700m of cost-cutting measures.

The China Mobile-backed SEA-H2X subsea cable system has gone live, connecting Hong Kong, Hainan (China) with the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore. The 5,746km cable system features eight fibre pairs and design capacity exceeding 200 Tbit/s. China Mobile is the main backer, taking up four trunk fibre pairs, and will be responsible for operating the cable, which will be integrated with existing Asia-Pacific systems, including APG, SJC and SJC2, as well as international cables such as SEA-ME-WE 5. Other backers include China Unicom, Converge Information and Communications Technology Solutions, and Malaysia operator Irix. The system was first announced in 2022 and has been supplied by HMN Technologies.

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved a framework to move satellite services out of part of the C-band radio spectrum, freeing up 160MHz of capacity for telcos to deploy for their 5G services. Under the FCC plan, satellite operators SES and Eutelsat will receive a combined $6.1bn in payments for helping to clear the spectrum. SES said it expects to receive around $5.6bn, while Eutelsat will take around $504m in pre-tax payments. If all deadlines are hit, they expect payment to be made during 2031, and will also be reimbursed for costs incurred during the transition. The plan will see them gradually move satellite services off the C-band spectrum while ensuring an uninterrupted service. The FCC is due to carry out an auction for the spectrum no later than July 2027, with clearing deadlines set for 2030 and 2031. A 2020 auction of 280 megahertz of lower C-band spectrum raised more than $80bn from major telecom companies including AT&T, T-Mobile US and Verizon.

US cable operator Charter Communications, which is expecting to complete its $34.5bn deal to acquire Cox Communications in August, grew its Spectrum Mobile customer base by 406,000 during the second quarter to take its total to 12.7 million, it noted in this earnings announcement. However, it lost 172,000 Spectrum Internet (broadband) subscribers, reducing its total to 29.4 million, and lost 21,000 video service customers to take its total to 12.5 million. Charter reported second-quarter revenues of $13.5bn, down by 1.7% year on year, and attributed that decline mainly to lower residential video revenues. It is hoping that by gaining greater scale and reach with the Cox acquisition it can better compete with cable peer Comcast and the three main US telcos, AT&T, T-Mobile US and Verizon.

– The staff, TelecomTV