• Intel’s CEO confirms job cuts, plans leaner operations 
• T-Mobile US reports a great start to the year
• AT&T extends its reach with Helium

In today’s industry news roundup: Intel’s new CEO outlines a major restructuring of the company that will include an unspecified headcount reduction and a revision of its AI strategy; T-Mobile US has a great start to the year; AT&T hooks up with DePIN operator Helium Network; and much more!

Intel’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan confirmed plans to reduce the chip giant’s headcount during his presentation of the company’s first-quarter results, but the size of the job cuts is yet to be determined. Speculation earlier this week suggested that more than 20% of Intel’s workforce (more than 20,000 individuals) would lose their jobs as Tan looks to simplify operations and cut costs. Tan noted that the first-quarter results – revenues of $12.67bn, roughly flat year on year, and an operating loss of $301m, an improvement on last year’s first-quarter operating loss of $1.07bn – were a step in the right direction, but added in his prepared remarks that there are “many areas we need to improve, and there are no quick fixes. We must remain laser-focused on execution. One of my biggest learnings so far is that we need to fundamentally transform our culture and the way in which we operate. Organisational complexity and bureaucracy have been suffocating the innovation and agility we need to win. It takes too long for decisions to get made. New ideas and the people who generate them have not been given the room or resources to incubate and grow. And unnecessary silos have led to bad execution. I’m here to fix this.” In a separate blog, Tan highlighted what needs to be fixed in terms of the way Intel runs on a day-to-day basis. “Our competitors are lean, fast and agile – and that’s what we must become to improve our execution. I’ve been surprised to learn that, in recent years, the most important KPI [key performance indicator] for many managers at Intel has been the size of their teams. Going forward, this will not be the case. I’m a big believer in the philosophy that the best leaders get the most done with the fewest people. We will embrace this mindset across the company, which will include empowering our top talent to make decisions and take greater ownership of key priorities. There is no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce. As I said when I joined, we need to make some very hard decisions to put our company on a solid footing for the future. This will begin in Q2 and we will move as quickly as possible over the next several months.” Tan said Intel’s 2025 operating cost target would be reduced by $500m to $17bn and then cut by a further $1bn in 2026 to $16bn, but didn’t specify how many roles would be lost to enable those cost reductions. At the same time, he said the Intel team will be “taking a holistic approach and redefining our portfolio to optimise our products for new and emerging AI workloads” and “refine our AI strategy, with a focus on emerging areas of interest. My experience helping successfully fund and incubate many startups in this space provides unique insights that we will leverage in these efforts. Our goal will be to take an integrated system and platform view and to develop full-stack AI solutions that enable more accuracy, power-efficiency and security for our enterprise customers. Our goal will be to enable the next wave of computing defined by reasoning models, agentic AI and physical AI.” 

T-Mobile US got off to a good start in the first quarter of 2025, with its service revenues increasing by 5.2% year on year to $16.93bn, its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increasing by 7.9% to $8.26bn and its adjusted free cash flow increasing by 31.3% to almost $4.4bn. The self-styled “un-carrier” boasted “best-in-industry” postpaid phone net customer additions of 495,000 during the first three months of this year – that compares with the 324,000 postpaid phone net customer additions reported by AT&T and the postpaid phone net losses of 289,000 reported by Verizon. T-Mobile US also added 424,000 ‘high-speed internet’ 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) broadband   customers to take its total to just over 6.85 million. The operator ended March with just over 130.9 million customers, up by more than 10 million compared with a year earlier. CEO Mike Sievert commented: “T-Mobile delivered big yet again with outstanding Q1 results across wireless and broadband, including our best ever Q1 total postpaid customer gross and net additions – proof that our consistent customer-first focus has put us in the best position to succeed in this dynamic environment. A record number of customers chose the un-carrier in Q1 – we grew postpaid gross additions year-over-year across the board and our high-speed internet business led the industry in net customer additions for the 13th straight quarter. And all of this customer growth drove fantastic financial growth with strong net cash provided by operating activities and our highest-ever Q1 adjusted free cash flow. This is a great start to 2025, and we’re excited about what’s to come as we continue to deliver innovative experiences, our best-in-class network, and unmatched value to customers.” Read more. 

That wasn’t the only bit of bragging T-Mobile US had lined up. It also announced that it is “the first wireless network in the country to reach a critical milestone: T-Mobile 5G Advanced is now nationwide!” it crowed, building on its position as the first telco in the US to have deployed a 5G standalone (SA) network. Having 5G-Advanced capabilities deployed across its whole network “empowers creators, including app developers, software engineers, tech innovators and businesses, to unlock next-generation experiences. Users can now tap into more immersive applications such as extended reality (XR), seamless cloud gaming, interactive live events, intuitive smart home integrations, innovative wearables, and highly accurate enhanced location services, among many other possibilities,” the operator noted. Ulf Ewaldsson, president of technology at T-Mobile US, stated: “At T-Mobile, our vision for 5G-Advanced is not defined by a single moment but by our continuous commitment to adapt and evolve. Our 5G-Advanced journey is already underway – we’re not just adopting technologies; we’re actively shaping them to deliver more meaningful experiences for our customers.” Read more. 

Last month TelecomTV reported on the potential of, and growing hype about, decentralised physical infrastructure network (DePIN) deployments, which could be used by telcos to expand their connectivity reach beyond their own traditional infrastructure and help to keep a lid on costs. Now comes the news that US telco giant AT&T is collaborating with Helium Network to enable AT&T subscribers to access wireless connectivity in remote areas via Helium’s decentralised “people-powered” platform. DePIN permits organisations, ‘non-traditional’ organisations, entities, enterprises and even individuals directly to contribute to the provision of connectivity and thus enable DePIN networks to expand organically and flexibly without, in theory, the need for huge upfront investments. In this case, subscribers will connect to Helium’s community Wi-Fi infrastructure that has been, and continues to be, built by individuals and small businesses deploying Wi-Fi hotspots. Many of these are sited in areas where traditional wireless comms technology is partial, sporadic and, usually, expensive to deploy and run. AT&T’s decision is direct evidence that it is following through on its proclaimed wider strategy whereby it will rely less on networks of many hundreds of thousands of costly towers and base stations and instead lean into partnerships to broaden its reach – in this instance it is embracing Helium’s model, which is decentralisation in action. Currently, the Helium network comprises more than 90,000 hotpots in the US and Mexico and more are being added every week. AT&T’s strategic decision to integrate with Helium Network gives additional impetus to the spread of DePIN systems and, in itself, has the potential to add 100 million users across the US. Furthermore, it is one of the largest real-world deployments of a blockchain-like and blockchain-powered decentralised infrastructure to date. Some critics of DePIN (mostly equipment vendors) claim the solution could be so disruptive as to, eventually, replace traditional telecom infrastructure, which is nonsense and simply will never happen. DePIN is an evolutionary and complementary movement whereby collaboration and strategic partnerships should bring about powerful alliances able to grow networks at a lower cost than is possible today whilst expanding services quickly to where they are most needed. Amir Haleem, the co-founder of Helium and CEO of Helium Mobile, commented: “Working with AT&T is a massive step forward in our mission to bring affordable and accessible connectivity to the masses. Teaming up with such a global leader in the industry [as AT&T] allows us to rapidly accelerate the adoption of Helium and provide real-world value to both AT&T and their subscribers. This is only the beginning of our journey that will transform the future of connectivity.” Elsewhere, telcos such as T-Mobile US and Telefónica have taken advantage of the Helium network, which now has 800,000 daily users and rising: Helium’s agreement with Telefónica’s Movistar is expanding access to the Helium network to more than 2 million users in Mexico.

Japanese tech giant NEC claims it has successfully conducted the country’s longest-ever terrestrial wireless free-space optical (FSO) communication over a distance of more than 10km. It also, as part of its tests and trials, successfully established a communications channel between an observation deck on the Tokyo Skytree tower and a ground-level location 3km away. That might not seem much, distance-wise, but it is highly significant in terms of degrees of elevation and the transmission/reception of data through occluded or disturbed atmosphere. The Tokyo Skytree broadcasting tower is the tallest structure in Japan at 634m (that’s 2,080ft). Compared to the propagation of radio waves, FSO technology is faster and provides greater capacity by transmitting and receiving light beams over the air (ie. without any need for fibre-optic cables). Furthermore, FSO beams have minimal spread and so provide exceptional, pin-point directionality. This means the possibility of interception by third parties is extremely low. The technology also reduces interference and congestion in communications without the need to obtain radio frequency (RF) usage licences. It is also an ideal comms carrier on land in regions where the installation of fibre lines is both challenging and excessively expensive and between land and maritime vessels. Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world, sitting as it does atop four converging tectonic plates. The country experiences at least 1,500 earthquakes a year and some of them can be very destructive. Thus, a further benefit of FSO is that it can be used as an alternative or emergency communication method in the event of a disaster where wired communication networks are damaged or destroyed. It is also perfect for the transmission and reception of highly confidential short- and medium-range communications related to national security. In its latest demonstration, NEC overcame one of the major challenges that FSO has traditionally suffered – the negative impact on stable communications from atmospheric turbulence, (such as heat haze) that increases with distance and between differing elevations. NEC says it will now focus on further improving the comms quality of transmission and reception whilst reducing the size of the FSO device from about 2m³ to just 1% of that size to enable it to be carried easily by one person. It expects to make the kit commercially available by 2028. Additionally, NEC plans to combine FSO technology with quantum cryptography to develop free-space quantum key distribution technology to enable even more secure communications in the future.

A House select committee of the US Congress has subpoenaed China’s three major telcos, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, alleging that while they are barred from operating US telecom infrastructure, and have been since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoked their licences in 2022, they nonetheless continue to maintain “points of presence” in the US and are exploiting them to help enable cyberattacks. According to CNN, the select committee, which focuses on the Chinese Communist Party, says the subpoenas are part of the ongoing investigation into the connections the three companies have to the Chinese military and the government of the People’s Republic. Two US representatives, John Moolenaar, a Republican for the state of Michigan, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Republican for the state of Illinois, have been demanding information from the three Chinese companies about the residual operations they are running in the US that fall outside the remit of the FCC. A letter sent to one of the Chinese telcos reads: “The committee has received information indicating that China Mobile may continue to maintain network points of presence (PoPs), datacentre access and cloud-related offerings in the United States. China Mobile’s ongoing US operations – particularly in internet backbone exchanges and cloud computing environments – could therefore allow unauthorised data access, espionage, or sabotage by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).” The letter adds that “increasingly aggressive attacks on US telecommunications networks” are the result of “illicit relationships with cyber threat actors” as well as attacks orchestrated by hacker groups with either the tacit or direct approval of the Chinese authorities. The House select committee reports that neither China Mobile, China Telecom nor China Unicom has, as yet, replied to its questions. The oft-repeated response from within the corridors of power in Beijing is that “China opposes the US overstretching the concept of national security” by “long-arm jurisdiction to bring down Chinese companies.” Twang!

Patrick Drahi is looking to sell his prize asset, Altice France (better known by its go-to-market brand SFR), having secured a debt-for-equity deal with bondholders in late February 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 – the telecom billionaire is now looking to offload the French telco, according to Le Figaro. Drahi is keen on a sale to a single buyer, but 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 that sounds like an M&A nightmare that would take years to execute and require a significant sea change from regulators that, up to now, have been resistant to in-country consolidation. 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 after 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 keep its total mobile customer base at 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 staff, TelecomTV