What’s up with… Sovereign AI, VodafoneThree, Starlink

• Austria’s A1 teams up with IBM for sovereign AI
• VodafoneThree updates financial targets
• Musk accuses oligarchs of blocking Starlink in India

In today’s industry news roundup: Austria’s national operator launches a range of sovereign AI services in partnership with IBM; the cost-saving targets at VodafoneThree are updated as it reaps the benefits of post-merger convergence; Elon Musk essentially accuses India’s top tech execs of blocking the launch of Starlink broadband services in the country; and much more!

A1, the national telco in Austria and the flagship operation of central European telco A1 Telekom Austria Group, has expanded its relationship with IBM to offer AI services “on sovereign infrastructure for companies and organisations” in the central European country, the telco has announced (in German). The technology foundation for A1’s Exoscale cloud platform is IBM watsonx, which comprises “watsonx.ai for the development and use of generative AI, watsonx.data for data preparation and management, watsonx.governance for AI governance and compliance, and watsonx Orchestrate for agentic AI and automation scenarios. Thanks to the open architecture approach, companies can flexibly integrate and operate different AI models – from IBM models to open-source models and their own custom models,” noted A1. The telco’s aim is to provide Austrian businesses with a “powerful enterprise AI platform on European cloud infrastructure… a robust and trustworthy foundation for deploying artificial intelligence, where data sovereignty, transparency and regulatory requirements are considered from the outset.” According to A1, the service “supports companies in implementing regulatory requirements, such as those related to the EU AI Act. With watsonx.governance, AI applications can be documented, monitored and controlled throughout their entire lifecycle. This creates transparency, traceability and trust in the productive use of AI. Offerings range from trusted AI assistants and document solutions to AI-powered productivity applications, governance-as-a-service offerings and industry-specific AI services,” added the telco. Martin Resel, currently deputy CEO and chief customer officer (CCO) for the enterprise sector at A1 (though he is leaving shortly – see below), noted: “Our customers expect high-performance AI solutions that meet the highest standards of security, compliance and data sovereignty. By combining Exoscale’s European cloud infrastructure with IBM’s AI expertise, we are creating an attractive offering that enables companies to implement their AI strategy confidently and sustainably.” Sovereign services and strategies will be the focus of TelecomTV’s upcoming Digital Sovereignty Forum, which will be held in London on 2 December. 

Still with A1… The Austrian operator is revamping its top management team. After 10 years at the telco, Martin Resel “has decided to pursue new professional challenges outside the company”, effective from the end of January 2027. Resel will be replaced as enterprise CCO by Natascha Kantauer-Gansch, who is currently CCO for A1’s consumer operations (and, subject to supervisory board approval, she may also become deputy CEO). Christian Schubert, who is currently director of strategy and value proposition in the consumer division, will succeed Kantauer-Gansch as CCO Consumer.  

Vodafone Group has outlined the renewed multi-year strategy and updated cost-savings targets for its UK operation, VodafoneThree, which it has owned outright since buying out previous joint owner CK Hutchison at the end of July and which, according to its calculations, is the UK leader in terms of consumer mobile customers (with a 27% market share). VodafoneThree had previously set a target of achieving annual cost savings (compared with its annual opex and capex spending at the time that VodafoneThree was formed in June 2025) of £700m by its financial year 2030 (which ends in March 2030), but has now increased that to £800m and believes it can improve that figure further to achieve comparative cost savings of £1bn by the financial year that ends in March 2032. “This is driven by further savings as our network build completes and we benefit further from network rationalisation as well as the benefits of full group ownership, which enable us to move at an even faster pace. In addition, we see significant potential to drive additional revenue synergies from the merger,” noted Vodafone in this announcement. VodafoneThree is investing £11bn in its network infrastructure and systems over a 10-year period, with the £1.4bn outlay in the current financial year, which ends in March 2027, set to be the peak. As part of that 10-year investment programme, VodafoneThree will build out an “AI-ready” 5G standalone (5G SA) network that, via 26,000 upgraded macro cell sites equipped with Ericsson and Nokia radio access network equipment (including massive MIMO antennas and AI-RAN technology), will achieve 99.96% population coverage by 2034. Vodafone Group CEO Margherita Della Valle stated: “Today we are setting out in detail our strategy and growth ambitions for the UK. We are issuing new bolder financial targets and we are outlining the execution plan we have in place to deliver these. We created VodafoneThree because we saw the opportunity to transform the UK market. To create the scale to invest. To deliver a step change in network quality and customer experience across every region of the UK. And to build a stronger business, creating sustainable long-term value. After a strong start, we now have even greater confidence in the opportunity ahead. That’s why we are upgrading our cost target to £1bn, with VodafoneThree set to become an increasingly important contributor to Vodafone’s growth ambitions.”

With the 10th Indian Mobile Congress (IMC) underway, the mood in the country’s telecom sector should be positive, but instead it has been soured by an accusation by Elon Musk that the long-planned satellite broadband services launch in India by Starlink, the low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite operator unit of Musk’s SpaceX, has been “blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people. You can guess who they are …” he added in an obvious reference to Mukesh Ambani, the head of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), which is the parent company of India’s largest telco Reliance Jio, and Sunil Mittal, the chairman of the country’s second-largest operator, Bharti Airtel. Like Starlink, the ​satellite internet ventures planned by Jio and Airtel have secured early approvals to launch in ​India but are awaiting spectrum assignment and final clearances, noted Reuters, while India’s Ministry of Communications issued a statement to confirm that the three potential satellite broadband players were at roughly the same stage of the approval process, with security assessments under way for each, and that “the suggestion that the framework or ​its application is unfair or discriminatory is baseless and misconceived”. Musk must surely realise he is not helping Starlink’s case…

Singtel’s sovereign cloud unit RE:AI, part of the telco’s Digital InfraCo division, has teamed up with the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) to help enterprises translate promising AI pilots into production deployments, something that Singtel notes is a challenge because off-the-shelf AI solutions do not always meet the specific business needs of enterprises. “Through the partnership, enterprises participating in the Digital InfraCo’s Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Applied AI with Nvidia will collaborate with SIT students, researchers from the SIT x Nvidia AI Technology Centre (SNAIC) and the Nvidia AI Technology Centre (NVAITC) to develop AI applications for industry use cases,” noted Singtel in this announcement. “Enterprises and government agencies will be able to co-create purpose-built AI solutions, leveraging RE:AI’s sovereign AI cloud infrastructure and network of technology partners with SNAIC’s applied research expertise, industry collaborations and AI education capabilities,” it added. RE:AI was in the news recently for helping Singtel to become one of the first telcos to launch an AI token-as-a-service (TaaS) offering. 

Telefónica has updated its Climate Action Plan, which “sets out the strategy, targets and actions that will guide the company on its path towards net-zero emissions by 2040” and “integrates climate action across the entire organisation and strengthens the link between sustainability, competitiveness and value creation,” the operator announced. According to Telefónica, the update follows “significant progress in decarbonisation”. By 2025, the telco had reduced its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 92.8% compared with 2015, and offset 100% of these emissions in Spain, Germany and Brazil through the retirement of 48,395 carbon credits from nature-based CO₂ absorption and reduction projects. It also managed to reduce its Scope 3 emissions, which are harder to control, by 28.2% compared with 2016. Maya Ormazabal, global director of sustainability at Telefónica, noted: “Climate action forms part of Telefónica’s strategy and day-to-day management. This plan turns our commitments into concrete actions that involve the entire organisation and reflect an increasingly ambitious, rigorous and effective approach to climate management, based on science, measurement and accountability. Sustainability is not an add-on to the business, but a way of managing it and generating value.” 

– The staff, TelecomTV