• Intel mulls network and edge unit sale – report
• Altice France moves closer to the shop window
• New NGMN report focuses on MNO Scope 3 emissions

In today’s industry news roundup: Industry sources have told Reuters that Intel is considering putting its network and edge group, a key player in the telecom infrastructure sector, up for sale; Patrick Drahi is getting closer to a sale process for his controlling stake in Altice France, which is better known as SFR; the latest green networks report from the NGMN tackles the challenge facing mobile network operators in managing their Scope 3 carbon emissions; and much more!

Intel is considering putting its network and edge group, a key supplier to the telecom sector, up for sale as new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took the helm in March, explores his strategic options, according to Reuters. Shortly after he joined the company, Tan, who recently confirmed plans to reduce the chip giant’s headcount during his presentation of the company’s first-quarter results, sent a note to customers, staff, shareholders, the market and the public in which he promised to make the company great again by reviving Intel’s original model and culture as an engineering-based behemoth focusing on chip technology development whilst cutting costs, trimming bureaucracy and selling non-core assets. Then, on 14 April, Intel announced it had sold a 51% stake in its Altera FPGA (field programmable gate array) business, which was spun out as a separate company last year, to private equity firm Silver Lake Partners for $4.46bn. And it seems Tan is looking to move fast and reposition Intel for growth: According to the Reuters report, the CEO believes the best way to revive the company’s fortunes is to focus on the sectors where it can generate the most growth, namely PCs and datacentre infrastructure. While a formal sale process for Intel’s network and edge group, which has an annual turnover of around $5.8bn, has not yet been initiated, talks with potential bankers (which would handle the sale) have been held, according to the report.   

The billionaire telecom magnate Patrick Drahi is getting closer to the sale of some or all of his controlling stake in Altice France (better known by its go-to-market brand SFR), according to Bloomberg (subscription required), which reports that documents have been shared with potential buyers for deals that could value SFR at up to €30bn (including debt). Those potential buyers include SFR’s domestic rivals, as well as Middle Eastern giant e& and private equity firms. Drahi has been looking for a way to monetise his prize asset for a while amid rising interest rates and debt pressure. Earlier this year, he secured a debt-for-equity deal with bondholders to reduce Altice France’s debt pile of about €24bn by €8.6bn. Having managed to retain control of Altice France – Drahi still holds a 55% stake – he is now looking to offload the French telco, and while he is keen on a sale to a single buyer, there is speculation that France’s other three main telcos – Orange, Bouygues Telecom and Iliad (aka Free) – may join forces and share the spoils, though such a plan might face insurmountable regulatory hurdles. Previous speculation has also put Saudi Arabia’s STC in the frame as a potential buyer, though Drahi was unable to agree to a proposed deal to sell his Altice Portugal operation to STC last year following a long process. In the meantime, Altice France is trying to stem its subscriber losses: In 2024 it lost more than 600,000 postpaid mobile customers but in the first quarter of this year managed to add 17,000 to leave it with a total mobile customer base of 14.8 million. In terms of fixed, it lost almost 250,000 broadband customers in 2024 to leave it with a total of about 5.9 million, but in the first quarter of this year it lost only 3,000 fixed customers, so the tide is turning there too. For the full year 2024, Altice France reported revenues of €10bn, down by 5.6%, while its EBITDA dipped by 9.4% to €3.35bn. 

The Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN) has released new guidance to “support more effective carbon emissions reduction in the mobile industry through improved reporting practices and stronger collaboration.” Its new report, Green Future Networks: Environmental Sustainability and Reporting, offers practical recommendations for addressing Scope 3 emissions – those generated across the broader value chain – which represent approximately 90% of total emissions for mobile network operators. “Tackling Scope 3 emissions is one of the greatest challenges for our industry and it can only be done through stronger collaboration across the value chain,” stated Laurent Leboucher, chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and CTO and executive VP of networks at Orange Group. “This new guidance marks an important step toward more accurate, transparent reporting and provides a clear path for the industry to prioritise meaningful carbon reduction,” he added in this announcement. To find out more about Leboucher’s plans for NGMN following his appointment as chairman earlier this year, see this exclusive TelecomTV interview. 

The challenges associated with five-nines reliability reared its head again for Telefónica in Spain this week when a network update led to a major outage of fixed line services, including emergency phone lines and broadband connections, reports Reuters. Services in most areas were reestablished within a few hours and mobile services were by all accounts not impacted. The network issues and loss of critical services, seemingly caused by a routing problem that was soon isolated, will put an unwelcome spotlight on Telefónica, not least because it comes only weeks after Spain suffered a much broader and longer communications services outage following a countrywide power blackout – see Iberian outage highlights power security challenges for network operators.

– The staff, TelecomTV