• Bharti Airtel bumps up Airtel Africa stake to 79%
• China Telecom completes Hong Kong landing for Asia Link Cable
• Cerebras Systems IPO set to raise $5.5bn

In today’s industry news roundup: Bharti Airtel is set to increase its stake in Airtel Africa to 79%; China Telecom successfully completes Hong Kong landing of the Asia Link Cable, which connects six APAC countries; Cerebras Systems’s IPO will raise $5.5bn, valuing the AI firm at more than $56bn; and much more!

Bharti Airtel is increasing its stake in Airtel Africa through a stock swap deal with India Continent Investment that will see the Indian telco giant increase its stake in the African operator from 62.7% to 79%. The move came as Bharti Airtel reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenues of 553.8bn rupees ($5.8bn), up by 15.7% year on year, thanks to “sustained growth in India and robust performance in Africa.” Bharti Airtel ended March with 666 million customers – 482 million in India and 184 million in Africa. 

China Telecom has completed the landing of the Asia Link submarine cable system (ALC) at its Chung Hom Kok landing station in Hong Kong. ALC, which is backed by China Telecom and 13 operators across the APAC region, spans 6,200km, linking China, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia, with a total capacity of more than 325Tbit/s. China Telecom was the primary investor in the cable and will add over 100 Tbit/s of bandwidth to its network once it goes live. The cable is the company’s first to land in Hainan (China’s southernmost province). The CLS in Chung Hom Kok is China Telecom’s first self-built facility outside of the Chinese mainland.

Large AI processor developer Cerebras Systems will raise $5.5bn – and be valued at more than $56bn – from its initial public offering (IPO) process, which will culminate today (14 May) when its shares are listed on the Nasdaq exchange at $185 apiece. For more on the company’s approach to AI processing, see this article from late 2024 when the company announced its IPO plans – at that point its expected valuation was less than $10bn. The listing is the largest tech IPO in the US since Snowflake listed in 2020, according to Reuters, and is expected to be the first of a number of AI-related IPOs this year. According to seasoned tech sector analyst Richard Windsor, Cerebras has timed its IPO perfectly: “Such is the demand for anything AI, that, despite some serious question marks, Cerebras Systems has been able to price its IPO above the already increased range and still have a good prospect of a rally when the shares open for trading,” he noted in his most recent Radio Free Mobile blog. The question marks relate to Cerebras’s current reliance on one major customer – the vast majority of its demand, almost 80%, currently comes from United Arab Emirates (UAE) AI lab MBZUAI, though that concentration is set to lessen – and the competitive environment, as the emerging major rival for what it offers is AI sector behemoth Nvidia. However, Windsor believes Cerebras currently “occupies a niche in the AI inference market,” and “for the moment, Cerebras is likely to sell all it can make as demand for AI silicon remains much greater than supply due to the race to develop superintelligent machines. This race is likely to continue into 2027 at least, meaning that sentiment towards the sector should remain strong, giving Cerebras plenty of demand for its silicon,” adds Windsor. The expectation is that the Cerebras share price will rise on its debut – keep an eye on the CBRS ticker.   

Sparkle – the infrastructure arm of Telecom Italia (TIM) – has signed a memorandum of understanding with Jordan-based Naitel to extend its GreenMed submarine cable system to the middle eastern country. Sparkle will work with Naitel, which is the telecom arm of Aqaba Digital Hub, and partner iLevant, to integrate the proposed GreenMed – which will cross the Adriatic Sea, linking European countries with the Middle East – into terrestrial fibre networks and regional interconnection platforms in Jordan. Jordan is already a landing point for Sparkle’s BlueMed system, which is part of the Blue and Raman systems the Italian firm built in partnership with Google. The Italian wholesale operator has already signed up Alcatel Submarine Networks and Elettra TLC to build and install GreenMed, respectively. The cable, which will link Italy to Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey and now, potentially, Jordan, has already received backing from the European Commission.

Vodafone Ireland has integrated Amdocs’ Network Inventory solution as part of the telco’s network modernisation efforts. The Irish operator replaced its legacy system with the Amdocs solution, which helps operators automate 5G and cloud-era networks through real-time data and capacity efficiency tools. According to Amdocs it worked with both Vodafone Ireland’s local team and the Vodafone Group to harmonise network operations and topology and migrate the operator’s data to a modern platform. “By moving to Amdocs’ modern network inventory solution, we are strengthening our ability to plan, build and manage our network more efficiently,” said Sheila Kavanagh, chief network officer at Vodafone Ireland.

Internet exchange (IX) operator DE-CIX has joined industry body Mplify (formerly known as the MEF, or Metro Ethernet Forum), which these days positions itself as a “global alliance shaping the evolution of network-as-a-service (NaaS)”. According to Frankfurt, Germany-based DE-CIX, it will “contribute its expertise to the advancement of standardised and automated connectivity solutions for peering, cloud connectivity, and AI connectivity, while collaborating on the use of Mplify’s Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) APIs as a framework for interconnection automation. The move supports DE-CIX’s strategic evolution towards becoming an interconnection-as-a-service provider,” it noted in this announcement. The move comes only days after DE-CIX reported “rapid network expansion” and a 3.3% increase in full year 2025 revenues to €70.9m.  

– The staff, TelecomTV