• Nokia to head up European drone and robotics tech consortium
• Veon uses local LLM for language learning app
• Microsoft invests in sovereign infrastructure in Switzerland

In today’s industry news roundup: Nokia to head up a new EU-backed project, Proactif, to boost Europe’s technology independence; Veon’s new AI Tutor uses Kazakh LLM to support language learning via gamified models in Kazakhstan; Microsoft invests $400m to expand AI and cloud infrastructure in Switzerland, enhancing services for regulated sectors; and much more!

Efforts to ensure Europe’s tech independence continue as fears grow of a lasting international trade war and global supply chain disruptions. In the latest move, Nokia has announced that it has been selected to lead Proactif, a project funded by the European Union’s Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU). According to a press release from the vendor, the Proactif consortium brings together 42 partners and four affiliates from 13 countries. The project intends to strengthen Europe’s technology resilience and leadership in electronic components and systems (ECS) technologies and support the autonomy of the European drone and robotics industry. The aim is to redefine how Europe uses robotics and unmanned vehicle technologies to manage emergencies and critical infrastructure. The consortium anticipates generating around €90m in revenue, 50 products, and more than 15 new industry patents by 2035. The additional impact of the project is also said to include “dozens of new collaborations, hundreds of new jobs, and over €40m of additional investments”. The release specifically noted that the project will develop nine advanced technology building blocks and five unmanned vehicle (UxV) platforms. The European Commission officially inaugurated the Chips JU in November 2023 as the main implementer of the Chips for Europe Initiative, which has an expected total budget €15.8bn until 2030. The Chips for Europe Initiative forms Pillar I of the European Chips Act that was first proposed in February 2022 to improve resilience to supply shortages and reduce the region’s dependence on Asia and North America for semiconductor products. At the time, it was said total investments from public and private parties were expected to exceed €43bn by 2030. The act entered into force on 21 September 2023. In March, nine European Union member states also formed the Semicon Coalition to focus “on the development of new, reliable and innovative technologies, strengthening and expanding Europe’s position in the value chain and enabling faster commercialisation of research”.

Telcos are continuing in their efforts to deliver generative AI services in local languages. Veon, the formerly “mainly Russian” operator that now presides over a group of operators in Ukraine, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, has launched AI Tutor, the result of a collaboration between Beeline Kazakhstan and its software development company QazCode. AI Tutor is built on the locally developed large language model (LLM), Kaz-LLM, and is designed to support those wishing to learn the Kazakh language. The AI learning assistant is housed within Beeline Kazakhstan’s super-app Janymda and offers six “gamified” learning modules: Make a sentence, word game, find a mistake, continue a story, fill in the blank and text questions. Veon also noted that the capabilities of AI Tutor will eventually be expanded into other disciplines. Kaz-LLM was launched in December 2024 and was created by Beeline Kazakhstan and QazCode in partnership with the Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence Nazarbayev University and Astana Hub with the coordination of the Kazakhstan Ministry of Digital Development. QazCode also previously developed Kaz-RoBERTA-conversational, the first Kazakh-language LLM with 2 billion parameters, now used to improve digital customer experience. QazCode partners with the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre and GSMA Foundry to contribute to developing LLMs for low-resource languages, addressing the language gap in AI.

Microsoft has committed a $400m investment to its cloud and AI “capabilities” in Switzerland, including “the most advanced graphics processing units [GPUs]”, the big tech firm announced this week. Having launched local datacentres in the country six years ago, Microsoft will expand its AI and cloud infrastructure at its existing facilities “near Zurich and Geneva to meet the growing demand for cloud and AI services. These upgrades will serve more than 50,000 existing customers while bringing advanced AI capabilities to organisations across regulated sectors, such as healthcare, finance and government,” it announced. The move will enable the delivery of “advanced capabilities to new organisations, allowing data to remain within Swiss borders – a critical requirement for regulated sectors like healthcare, finance and government. The upgrade “builds on Microsoft’s recently announced European Digital Commitments to build a broad AI and cloud ecosystem across Europe,” and are “part of a broader multibillion-dollar investment across Europe [that] will ensure data sovereignty and support responsible AI development. Switzerland, with its strong regulatory framework and innovation ecosystem, plays a key role in this vision,” noted Microsoft. 

Sticking with the sovereign services theme… Amazon Web Services (AWS) has unveiled an independent European governance structure for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, the creation of a dedicated security operations centre, and the establishment of a new parent company for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud that will be “locally controlled in the European Union (EU), led by EU citizens, and subject to local laws,” the hyperscaler has announced. Kathrin Renz, who currently serves as vice president of AWS Industries out of Munich, will serve as the company’s first managing director.

The US market has been waiting for some time for T-Mobile US to enter the fixed broadband sector and now, at last, the operator is to launch its first Fiber Home Internet plans on Thursday (5 June). The service is only available to 500,000 households initially, but T-Mobile Fiber ultimately expects to reach 12 million to 15 million households or more by the end of 2030. The self-styled ‘Un-carrier’ first entered the fibre market with a pilot programme in 2021 and initially focused on wholesale partnerships with the likes of Intrepid Fiber, Pilot Fiber, SiFi Networks, and Tillman Fiber. It then upped its game considerably through joint ventures with investment groups EQT and KKR, to assume joint control of fibre providers Lumos and Metronet, respectively. The Lumos transaction was closed in April but the Metronet deal is still pending. The US telco’s fibre business will add to its fixed wireless access (FWA) offering, which it claims is being used by 6.85 million premises across the US, using network capacity over its 5G network. Noting that one million customers are currently on the waiting list for fixed wireless access, T-Mobile said T-Mobile Fiber “helps address a growing need for fast, reliable broadband”.

Another day, another telecom cyberattack. This time the victims are said to be former Telefónica customers in Peru. According to Reuters, Telefónica said it has launched an investigation into a potential cyberattack following the online release of sensitive data allegedly belonging to one million of its former customers in Peru. The news agency cited a post on X by cyberattack trackers HackManac that said a group calling itself “Dedale” was offering a database containing information on approximately 22 million Telefónica customers. Notably, the breach comes two months after Telefónica agreed to sell its Peruvian business to Integra Tec International for less than €1m, ending its involvement in the country’s telecoms market that began in 1994. Meanwhile, the incident is the latest in a series of cyberattacks targeting telcos, such as the hugely consequential SK Telecom (SKT) hack. Last year, the US authorities identified that the China-backed Salt Typhoon group’s espionage campaign had penetrated nine US telcos and others in several other countries. Moreover, the Volt Typhoon group has been able to embed itself and remain undetected in parts of US critical infrastructure, including the communications sector.

Last year, the board of India’s third-largest mobile operator, the financially strapped Vodafone Idea (Vi), approved the issuance of new stock worth almost 24.6bn rupees (INR) ($294m) that it used as payments to Ericsson India and Nokia Solutions and Networks India, in return for stakes in the operator. According to ETTelecom, the two vendors have now sold their shares in Vi. Nokia was apparently the first to do so, offloading its remaining 0.95% stake in Vi in April for INR 7.95bn ($92m), with Goldman Sachs purchasing around 600 million shares. The report said Ericsson has now sold its remaining circa 0.6% stake via a bulk deal to undisclosed buyers for INR 4.3bn ($49.9m). Nokia Solutions and Networks India and Ericsson India originally acquired 1.47% and 0.9% shares in Vi respectively, but the stakes were diluted to around 0.95% and just below 0.6% respectively when the Indian government increased its stake in Vi to 49% from 22.6% after converting outstanding spectrum dues into equity shares.

– The staff, TelecomTV