• BSS vendor unveils biggest ever deal
• UK altnets Truespeed and Freedom Fibre could merge 
• Millicom could buy Telefónica’s business in Chile

In today’s industry news roundup: BSS vendor Cerillion saw its share price leap by 12% on news of its contract with Omantel; more M&A speculation swirls around the UK’s FTTH altnet sector; Millicom could buy yet another of Telefónica’s LatAm units; and more!

In the wake of the latest M&A news from the BSS sector – that of the acquisition of Matrixx Software by Amdocs – comes an announcement of a different kind from a specialist BSS vendor that has been around for more than 20 years and appears to be hitting its stride. London-based billing, charging and customer relationship management (CRM) system developer Cerillion has announced its largest ever single contract, a deal worth £42.5m over five years with Omantel, the national telco in Oman. Cerillion notes in this announcement to the London Stock Exchange that it beat “much larger, traditional OSS/BSS vendors” to win the deal, and that key to its success with Omantel was its “productised model and full-service delivery. This enables customers to benefit from a comprehensive solution that is capable of seamless upgrades and designed to maximise operational flexibility, including bringing new products to end-customers with minimal effort, while offering a lower total cost [of] ownership compared with more bespoke solutions.” It added: “Under the terms of the contract, Cerillion will supply and install its BSS/OSS suite and provide ongoing support and maintenance, as well as hosting and managed services, over the five-year subscription term, following an initial implementation period. Its technology and services will support Omantel’s mobile, fixed-line and broadband services, which are provided to individuals, corporates and other telecom operators, both domestically and internationally. Preliminary work on this major transformation project has begun.” News of the deal sent its share price on the London Stock Exchange up by 12% to 1378 pence, giving the company a market valuation of more than £400m. The size of the deal might not be that impressive to some, but it’s a big deal for Cerillion, which recently reported revenues for the full fiscal year to 30 September 2025 of £45.4m, up 4% year on year, and profits before tax of £21.7m, up 10%. Perhaps more importantly, Cerillion also noted in its full year earnings report that the value of its “back-order book” (contracted business yet to be recognised as revenues plus annual ongoing support deal sales) increased by 21% to £56.9m and that the value of its business pipeline was up by 5% to £275m.    

It’s only the second week of 2026, but the UK fibre broadband altnet sector is hot with consolidation news. In the wake of London-based G.network’s sale to a distressed debt firm, Sky News has reported that Truespeed and Freedom Fibre are in merger talks. Truespeed has been building out its network in the south-west and east of England to reach about 177,000 properties, while Freedom Fibre offers services in the north-west and Midlands areas of England as well as north Wales over its network that passes about 350,000 premises. Neither company has confirmed the talks, but a great deal of such M&A activity is expected in the UK fibre broadband sector this year as more and more of the smaller players reach financial breaking point. Truespeed, which appointed a new CEO late last year, has about 41,000 connected customers, while Freedom Fibre is reported to have approximately 28,000.   

The rumour mill is swirling that Millicom is set to bid for Telefónica’s Chilean division as part of its plans to add an additional Latin American country to its portfolio. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, said the potential deal would bring a new competitor into Chile, keeping the total number of operators at four, alongside Entel, Claro and WOM. While no official decision has been made on whether Millicom – which operates in Latin America under the Tigo brand – will bid for Telefónica Chile, where it operates mobile services as Movistar, the Luxembourg-based operator has already snapped up the Spanish telco’s assets in Colombia, Ecuador and Uruguay. Telefónica has been seeking bids for its Chile unit since last year, with rival operators Entel and America Movil previously linked with a potential joint bid, though Entel said in December it would consider its options to remain in the bidding process. Previous reports suggest Telefónica is looking to secure around €1bn for its business in Chile. The operator has been looking to exit Latin America, apart from its key market of Brazil, for some time, but its new strategy, unveiled last November, makes it clear that the giant telco is now very much focused on building scale in its main markets.  

Test and measurement vendor Viavi Solutions has integrated RF Viewer, a new augmented reality (AR) solution, into its OneAdvisor 800 Wireless test platform to give network planning and deployment teams a new way to “perceive and interact with radio frequency (RF) signals in their physical environments”. Read more. 

The TelecomTV team is still playing catch-up with what happened in the wider world during the annual seasonal break and we’ve now seen that Japanese operator Rakuten Mobile announced on Christmas Day it had broken through the 10 million customer barrier mark. “Thanks to strong support from customers and business partners, Rakuten Mobile has achieved 10 million subscribers in only 5 years and 8 months since its full-scale commercial launch in April 2020,” the operator noted in this announcement. It has a long way to go, however, before it even smells the coat-tails of market leader NTT Docomo, which has more than 91 million mobile customers.  

– The staff, TelecomTV