• Telefónica boasts AI-enabled ‘smart voice’ services
• DT continues its AI-native evolution
• Rakuten Group boasts first net profit in six years

In today’s industry news roundup: Telefónica adds network-based AI to its B2B voice services; Deutsche Telekom has been ramping up its AI activities; improving fortunes at its mobile and other main divisions helps Japan’s Rakuten Group to its first quarterly net profit since 2020; and much more!

Telefónica says it has integrated network-based generative AI (GenAI) into all of its business voice services in Spain, “from the simplest mobile line to the most up-to-date switchboard, thereby moving towards smart voice.” The new portfolio enables enterprises to “transform their voice conversations into smart communications, thereby preventing the loss of opportunities and valuable information – all thanks to call transcription and summarisation, as well as the virtual assistant, across all our voice solutions, whether fixed-line or mobile, driving the evolution of communications noted the operator in this announcement. Javier Pascual, director of product, pre-sales and provisioning at Telefónica España, noted: “We are the only operator to offer intelligent call transcription and summarisation for both fixed-line and mobile voice services, making us the best gateway for businesses to access digital technologies. This pioneering solution, which integrates generative AI into standard telephony, enables our customers to summarise and transcribe calls, as well as integrating 100% virtual agents using natural language, thereby boosting productivity and agility”.

Deutsche Telekom has continued its evolution towards becoming an AI-native telco, with the operator noting in its second quarter earnings presentation that 83% of its employees now use AI tools on a regular basis. As part of its latest financial results, the German operator revealed that its internal AI knowledge bot, askT, has had more than 8 million conversations with staff since it was launched in October 2024. The service, which is an internal, generative AI-powered employee concierge and search tool built in partnership with Glean, has now been made available across all of DT’s European operations. 

Sticking with its AI strategy, DT also revealed it has now introduced AI-based energy saving solutions nationwide across several of its operations, and it is carrying out AI-based quality checks across its fibre network. The telco has also deployed AI in a customer facing role, revealing that its AI-driven customer service bot had “deflected” more than 2.1 million calls in the first half of the year, while for B2B it has launched its OnePortal at six of its operators and developed 20 AI use cases using Salesforce’s AgentForce in those six markets. During the operator’s second quarter earnings conference call, CEO Tim Höttges outlined how the German telco plans to capitalise on the opportunities offered by AI, including its investments in datacentres and infrastructure. He said: “Our ambition is to grow our datacentre business in line with the demand we see for sovereign and secure AI-ready infrastructure here in Europe. If you look at our industrial AI cloud, which we built with Nvidia, all of our Blackwell GPUs are sold out, and I could have sold them 10-times over. We are looking at expanding this and I have held discussions about getting the right amount of chipsets, and we are also assessing our participation in the EU’s Gigafactory project.”

As the fortunes of its mobile segment continue to improve, Japan’s Rakuten Group has reported its first quarterly net profit for six years, the company announced as it published its second quarter financial results. Its Internet Services, FinTech and Mobile segments all reported growth, with total group revenues hitting 665.5bn yen ($4.2bn) and an operating profit of 42bn yen ($260m), up 109.6%, and a net profit of 7.7bn ($48.5m). Rakuten Mobile ended June with 10.75 million customers, almost 1.8 million more than a year ago, while its second quarter revenues of 101.3bn ($638m) were up by 11.9% year on year. For further details, see this earnings announcement. 

Donald Trump has nominated Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lawyer Danielle Thumann to become the fourth commissioner at the US telecom regulator. If confirmed, Thumann, who already serves as senior counsel to FCC chairman Brendan Carr, will give the Republican Party a 3-1 advantage at the commission, which would still have one seat left unfilled even after Thumann’s appointment. The US President has nominated Thumann to serve a five-year term, alongside Carr and fellow Republican Olivia Trusty, plus Democrat Anna Gomez. Her nomination will need to be approved by the GOP-controlled Senate. Thumann does bring some telecom sector experience, having previously worked in a government relations role for US-based infrastructure and tower firm Crown Castle.

Bell Canada’s capex jumped noticeably in the second quarter of this year as it pumped more funds into its AI infrastructure rollout. As it pitches its AI fabric to the Canadian B2B and government sectors, the operator is investing in its own AI factory facilities: Its Merritt, British Columbia, datacentre, which has been operational since March this year, has 13 megawatts (MWs) of contracted capacity; while construction is underway at its much larger site in Sherwood, Saskatchewan, which will ultimately boast 300 MWs of capacity and which is due to come online at some point in the first half of 2027. The operator says it has “line of sight” for the deployment of 800 MWs of capacity across Canada in time. As a result of its datacentre investments, Bell Canada’s capex increased by 41.5% year on year to C$1.080bn (US$774m) in the second quarter, while its operating revenues increased by 1.5% to C$6.18bn (US$4.43bn). For further details, see this earnings announcement.    

San Francisco-based enterprise AI agent developer HappyRobot has raised $150m in its Series C round of funding to help it expand into more enterprise vertical sectors. The round was led by Prysm Capital and co-led by Eurazeo, while existing investors a16z, Base10, and Y Combinator all participated, as did Orange and Deutsche Telekom’s T.Capital. HappyRobot, which is now valued at $1.2bn, has raised $200m in funding across all of its rounds, and says it is currently working with about 150 businesses, including DHL, Naturgy, Repsol and Uber.  “After first proving our platform in logistics, one of the world's most operationally demanding industries, we're expanding across the supply chain as well as into insurance, energy and utilities, telecommunications, airlines, and other sectors where business-critical work still depends on manual coordination across fragmented systems,” the company noted in this announcement. 

The total value of M&A deals in the global telecom sector “stagnated” at $65bn in the first half of 2026 compared with the equivalent period in 2025, according to a new report from management consultancy Bain & Company. Activity in the second quarter of this year ramped up to $38bn – thanks mainly to the $24bn deal between Altice France (SFR) and a consortium comprising Bouygues, Iliad, and Orange – from the first quarter’s $27bn, with activity remaining “highly concentrated, with the top five deals accounting for more than 80% of total value across 43 deals”. The Bain team notes that telecom sector M&A activity is expected to remain subdued, though it should be noted that the total value of deals in the whole of 2025 was just $80bn, so there’s a good chance there will be a full year uptick as telcos around the world seek to gain greater scale via acquisitions.  

Talking of M&A… UK broadband player TalkTalk could be about to offload PlatformX Communications (PXC), its wholesale division, with a report from Sky News suggesting it is set for exclusive talks with Octopus Investments over a sale of the unit. Octopus Investments, which is part of the same group that owns utility services giant Octopus Energy, manages a portfolio of around £9.9bn, which includes broadband infrastructure group Fern Trading, which owns UK altnet All Points Fibre. M&A speculation has long swirled around TalkTalk, which has already split its operations into two separate businesses in order to facilitate potential divestment deals. A period of exclusivity is expected to last weeks if talks proceed, according to Sky, and a sale would likely value the business at several hundred millions pounds. Octopus isn’t the only firm that has been linked, however, as private equity group Epiris is reportedly working alongside PXC’s executive chairman Tom O’Hagan to strike a deal.

Airtel Business, the B2B arm of giant Indian telco Bharti Airtel, has teamed up with state-owned communications and IT technology system manufacturer ITI Ltd. to address the needs of businesses across India that are advancing “their digitization in line with the nation’s digital growth and development agenda,” the partners have announced. The duo will combine their relevant expertise to develop “an integrated suite of future-ready and scalable digital solutions across enterprise connectivity, datacentre and sovereign cloud services, IoT, AI-powered solutions, LEO satellite services, cybersecurity, and more” that will “enable businesses to overcome legacy complexity, strengthen digital resilience, and build for the future to unlock new growth opportunities.” 

– The staff, TelecomTV