What’s up with… Oracle, Apple, Ofcom

• Oracle unveils giant leap in cloud infrastructure business
• Apple keeps focus on cameras with iPhone 17 launch
• Ofcom seeks to fast-track D2D services in the UK 

In today’s industry news roundup: Oracle’s cloud infrastructure business has attracted massive multi-year deals that will see the tech giant’s revenues soar over the next five years; cameras and eSIM technology, not AI, are the highlights at Apple’s latest product launches; UK regulator aims to adapt existing mobile operator licences to enable direct-to-device services in 2026; and much more!

Oracle unveiled extraordinary growth projections for its cloud infrastructure portfolio late on Tuesday, sending its share price up by almost 29% to $311.33 in pre-market trading on Wednesday. The news came as Oracle reported its earnings for the fiscal first quarter that ended on 31 August: Total revenues increased by 12% year on year to $14.9bn, with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), its  infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering, generating $3.3bn of that total. It’s what’s coming next that lit a fire under Oracle’s stock, though. “We signed four multi-billion-dollar contracts with three different customers in Q1,” noted Oracle CEO Safra Catz. “This resulted in RPO [remaining performance obligations] contract backlog increasing 359% to $455bn. It was an astonishing quarter,” stated the CEO. RPO measures the value of contracts that have yet to be fulfilled, providing a useful insight into future reported revenues and financial health and it’s clear that Oracle is playing a key role in the cloud infrastructure developments that are underpinning the AI era – it is, you might recall, one of the companies at the heart of the Stargate Project in the US and has been increasing its datacentre investments in Europe to capitalise on the AI-fuelled demand for sovereign cloud in the region. And there’s more to come, stated the CEO. “Demand for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure continues to build. Over the next few months, we expect to sign up several additional multi-billion-dollar customers and RPO is likely to exceed half a trillion dollars. The scale of our recent RPO growth enables us to make a large upward revision to the Cloud Infrastructure portion of Oracle’s overall financial plan, which we will be presenting in detail next month at the Financial Analyst Meeting. As a bit of a preview, we expect Oracle Cloud Infrastructure revenue to grow 77% to $18bn this fiscal year and then increase to $32bn, $73bn, $114bn and $144bn over the subsequent four years. Most of the revenue in this five-year forecast is already booked in our reported RPO. Oracle is off to a brilliant start to FY26.”   

Apple, you may have noticed, has unveiled its latest devices, including the iPhone 17 which, the smartphone giant noted, features “the new Center Stage front camera that takes selfies to the next level; a powerful 48MP Fusion Main camera with an optical-quality 2x Telephoto; and a new 48MP Fusion Ultra Wide camera that captures expansive scenes and macro photography in more detail.” It’s interesting that while nearly every other announcement from a major tech company these days shoehorns AI into the opening few words, Apple’s big product news doesn’t mention AI until the fourth paragraph of the press release, and even then only fleetingly. It takes until the ninth paragraph of the release, which focuses on the iPhone 17’s new A19 chip, for AI to be highlighted, as the chip supports “features like Apple Intelligence” (which is the company’s own take on AI) and uses neural accelerators that “help run powerful generative AI models on device”. That, and the “sprinkling of AI” in the new features added to Apple’s latest AirPods, was “just enough AI to keep its competitors at bay,” noted seasoned industry analyst Richard Windsor in his latest Radio Free Mobile blog, though he also noted that Apple still suffers from an “ongoing weakness in AI” that attractive new gadgets won’t be able to hide for too long.  

Importantly, and as expected, eSIM capabilities are playing a big role in Apple’s latest smartphones and this was picked up by Emma Mohr-McClune, chief telecoms analyst for technology at research firm GlobalData. “The new iPhone Air is exclusively eSIM-enabled, worldwide, and that spells both a digital watershed moment for the industry at large, and new challenges for mobile operators everywhere… Apple launched several new smartphone devices, notably the 5.6mm thin iPhone Air, as well as the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max. Critically, the new iPhone Air smartphone will be exclusively eSIM-supported – without a physical SIM slot – worldwide,” noted Mohr-McClune in comments emailed to TelecomTV. “The iPhone 17 series will also be eSIM-only in a growing number of markets, including the US, Canada, Japan, Mexico and select markets in the Middle East. For the first time, mobile operators outside of the US and China will need to support their own customers with vital eSIM onboarding and service set-up trouble tickets, and it would be unwise to underestimate the wider fallout. Mobile operators everywhere need to arm their retail and online support channels for a wave of new eSIM onboarding customer issues and publish clear user eSIM usage guidelines and FAQ. But they’ll also need to steel themselves for both national and international roaming service revenue loss in the mid-term, as owners of these high-end eSIM-only devices discover the digital convenience of switching with mobile number portability and the affordability of alternative, eSIM-activated roaming plans,” she added. “Apple’s aim is clearly to gain more control over Apple device users’ journey and customer experience, but this move is also a gift to the growing array of digital-first MVNOs and global roaming providers. It can only be anticipated that more OEMs will make the same global eSIM exclusivity steps in the coming quarters. The mobile industry is now clearly moving towards a SIM-less future,” she concluded. 

UK telecom regulator Ofcom has proposed changes to existing licences that would allow the country’s mobile network operators (MNOs) to offer direct-to-device (D2D) services in 2026. Having received feedback from its initial consultation on the matter, the regulator has now published a statement that includes proposals to introduce “exemption regulations” that would allow the UK’s mobile operators to offer D2D services without having to apply for new spectrum licences. Ofcom noted: “We want to secure the benefits of D2D services for UK citizens and consumers as soon as possible and our ambition is to facilitate the introduction of D2D services in the UK in early 2026. We have decided on an authorisation framework that requires a variation to an MNO’s existing licence and new exemption regulations that will enable end users to lawfully connect to D2D services.” Ofcom is now seeking feedback on its proposals until 10 October. The regulator also noted: “In parallel with our request for comments on the Proposed Regulations, we are inviting any MNO that plans to offer a D2D service to come forward to Ofcom, with a request for a licence variation in relation to their specific bands of interest. Any licence variation is subject to the comments we might receive on our proposed non-technical and technical conditions.”

The vulnerability of subsea cables, and their importance to the digital economy, has been highlighted once again following disruption to internet services in Africa, the Middle East and Asia caused by damage to multiple submarine cables running along the bed of the Red Sea. The Associated Press reports that the damage to the South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (Sea-Me-We 4), India-Middle East-Western Europe (IMEWE) and Falcon GCX cables was likely caused by commercial shipping. Cloud services giant Microsoft Azure issued a status alert noting that, as of early on 6 September, “network traffic traversing through the Middle East may experience increased latency due to undersea fiber cuts in the Red Sea. Network traffic continues to not be interrupted as Microsoft has rerouted traffic through alternate network paths. We do expect higher latency on some traffic that previously traversed through the Middle East until the undersea fiber cuts are fully addressed. Network traffic that does not traverse through the Middle East is not impacted.” NetBlocks, which monitors the state of global internet traffic, noted on 6 September that the damage was causing degraded internet connectivity in multiple countries, including Pakistan and India, and later reported similar service disruption in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Gulf Business has a good overview of the importance of the Red Sea subsea cable route and the ongoing efforts to provide alternative internet traffic routes when cable damage impacts services. 

– The staff, TelecomTV