• NEC says it can cut vRAN deployment costs by 60% 
• AWS preps massive investment in digital infrastructure
• Telefónica boasts its green credentials

In today’s industry news roundup: NEC believes it can help reduce the cost of planning and deploying virtual RAN systems by 60%; following another year of major cloud services sales growth, Amazon is set to pump $100bn into its AI infrastructure; Telefónica says it’s living up to its green promises; and much more!

Japanese tech giant NEC says it has developed a cloud-native software solution that can cut the costs of planning, designing and deploying virtual radio access network (vRAN) infrastructure by “approximately 60% compared to conventional methods”. The solution is particularly focused on the rollout of virtual/Open RAN systems, which in turn enables “synergies” between virtualised functions and the cloud-native network deployment solution that will “improve the level of automation in network infrastructure construction work” and improve the “efficiency, quality and productivity of the virtualized mobile infrastructure construction process”. The solution comprises data analytics tools that provide “operational data for all base stations in real time”, a range of professional services, and “a package of technologies that are necessary for automating operations for each process of construction work”, including a “microservice architecture that develops and links applications as small, independent groups of services. This makes it possible to support open, multi-vendor equipment,” noted NEC in this announcement. Currently, vRAN accounts for only a small percentage of radio access network technology, but it is ultimately set to be the dominant way to deploy RAN technology, especially once the industry reaches the beyond 5G/6G era. NEC is already a major partner to the major mobile operators in Japan, all of which are embracing vRAN and Open RAN, and has formed a joint venture with NTT Docomo (called Orex) that aims to provide technology and professional services to operators in international markets that are deploying Open RAN architectures. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is still by far the largest company (with a 30% market share) in the global cloud services sector, grew its revenues by 19% in 2024 to $107.6bn, its parent company Amazon.com announced as part of its fourth quarter and full year earnings report. AWS’s operating profit grew by 62% to $39.8bn. And like its rivals, AWS is keen to keep growing its business and capitalise on the AI boom: To do that, Amazon announced plans to invest $100bn in capex in 2025, a year on year increase of about 30%, with most of that capex to be poured into datacentres, the development of its own chips and investment in other technologies to deal with AI workloads. Awkwardly, the decision to invest that heavily comes at a time when, following the claims made by China’s DeepSeek about how little it spent on the development of its generative AI technology, shareholders and market watchers are wondering whether such massive investments are really necessary. But AWS has noted that it currently doesn’t have the capacity to meet customer demand, so increased investments are needed in order to capitalise on the ongoing AI boom. And as TelecomTV has just reported, that AI boom led to a 22% increase in the size of the global cloud services sector last year to $330bn. For further background on the investment decision and service provision challenges faced by AWS and other hyperscalers, see this Bloomberg article.    

News of Amazon’s investment plans came just as research house Dell’Oro Group issued a forecast suggesting that annual global datacentre capex would surpass $1tn by 2029, driven by AI infrastructure spending. “We project that datacentre infrastructure spending could surpass $1 trillion annually within five years. While AI spending has yet to meet desired returns and efficiency improvements, long-term growth remains assured, driven by hyperscalers’ multi-year capex cycles and government initiatives such as the $500bn Stargate Project,” noted Baron Fung, senior research director at Dell’Oro Group. “Although recent advancements in AI model training efficiency from DeepSeek have been disruptive, innovations have been in progress for some time to drive greater efficiencies and lower the total cost of ownership in building and operating AI datacentres. Key areas of focus include advancements in accelerated computing through GPUs and custom accelerators, LLM optimizations, and next-generation rack-scale and network infrastructure – all crucial to enabling sustainable growth from both a cost and power perspective,” added Fung.  

For the 11th consecutive year, Telefónica has been named as “a global leader in climate action,” the giant Spanish telco has announced. The telco has been included in the ‘A List’ drawn up by non-profit organization CDP, whose ranking is considered the “gold standard of corporate environmental transparency”, according to Telefónica. “After analysing the performance of companies in 2023, CDP has once again positively assessed Telefónica’s commitment to decarbonisation. The telco has successfully decoupled its growth from its carbon footprint. Over the past eight years, the multinational has achieved an 81% reduction in its operational emissions (scopes 1 and 2) globally, as well as a 51% reduction when including those from its value chain,” noted the telco. 

Still with Telefónica… The operator’s Tech division, which provides services to enterprise users, is adding Akamai Technologies’ asset segmentation solution,  Akamai Guardicore, to its portfolio to “help large companies reinforce their cybersecurity strategy in the face of the greater attack surface that the current hyperconnected environment can entail,” according to the operator. Akamai Guardicore “visualises activity within any IT environment and, based on that visualisation, implements precise micro-segmentation policies, quickly stops potential vulnerabilities and isolates security breaches,” it added. 

– The staff, TelecomTV