• Deutsche Telekom lands major sovereign AI deal  
• Iliad boasts ‘growth leader’ status in Europe’s telco sector
• Orange to trial Ericsson cloud and Open RAN tech

In today’s industry news roundup: Deutsche Telekom has landed a major large language model development deal for its new sovereign AI factory; Iliad Group continues to grow its revenues, margins and profits across its main European markets; Orange France will try out multiple radio access network and supporting software technologies from Ericsson to help determine its 5G network evolution plans; and more!

Deutsche Telekom has won a new contract worth tens of millions of euros for its Industrial AI Cloud platform (or AI factory) it is developing with Nvidia and which it officially unveiled in early November. DT’s enterprise division, T-Systems, is providing capacity on the new platform to Leibniz University Hannover for the SOOFI (Sovereign Open Source Foundation Models) research project, which is developing a “new powerful and sovereign large language model (LLM) with around 100 billion parameters – operated and trained entirely in Europe,” noted DT.  “The large language model is thus finding its home in one of Europe’s largest AI factories, which has over 10,000 GPUs,” boasted DT. “The total computing power is 0.5 exaFLOPS (exa floating point operations per second) and the storage capacity is around 20 petabytes. The datacentre is connected to four 400 Gbit/s fibre optic connections and meets the highest standards of data protection, security and reliability. Starting in March 2026, a network of around 130 Nvidia DGX B200 systems with a total of over 1,000 GPUs will be operated exclusively for the European language model SOOFI,” stated the giant German telco, which has already been putting its weight behind the European sovereignty agenda this week. Dr. Ferri Abolhassan, member of the board of management of Deutsche Telekom and CEO of T-Systems, stated: “Digital sovereignty is critical to Europe as a business location. We are proud to be working with Leibniz University, the Fraunhofer Institute and the German AI Association on a project that is crucial to Europe’s future viability and independence in the field of artificial intelligence.” For further details, see this DT press release. 

Pan-European network operator Iliad Group has reported a 1.9% year-on-year increase in service revenues for the third quarter of 2025 to €2.39bn, while service revenues for the first nine months of this year (Q1-Q3) increased by 3.5% to €7.08bn. “With [service] revenues up 3.5%… in the first nine months of 2025, the Iliad Group was once again the growth leader out of Europe’s top telcos,” the company boasted. Group earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 5.6% to €3.05bn for the first nine months. Net profit for Q1-Q3 increased by almost 87% to €840m. Iliad Group CEO Thomas Reynaud stated: “This quarter has confirmed the Iliad Group’s position as Europe’s growth leader. In an increasingly tough environment, we continued to combine commercial momentum with financial strength. Our ability to innovate – with services like Free TV and a VPN included in our 4G/5G mobile plans – and the standards of excellence we set for subscriber experience remain at the heart of our business model. Thanks to the performance of all of our geographies, we are on track to exceed our target of €2bn in operating free cash flow this year.” Iliad ended September with 42 million mobile and 10 million fixed broadband customers across its three main markets of France, Italy and Poland. For further details, see this announcement.   

Adding to its existing engagements with Nokia and Samsung Networks, Orange has teamed up with Ericsson for “a focused programme of experimental” 5G trials in France using the Swedish vendor’s hardware and software systems, with the aim of helping the telco “prepare for future RAN evolutions”. Ericsson “aims to enhance spectral efficiency, accelerate network automation and promote sustainability across mobile networks while Orange France evaluates these technologies under live network conditions in France to prepare its future RAN roadmap and bring greater network automation to millions of Orange France customers,” the partners noted. Among the technologies involved in the trials are the vendor’s FDD massive MIMO antenna-integrated radios, “advanced software solutions and cutting-edge 5G functionalities to further enhance energy efficiency” in mobile networks and the vendor’s Intelligent Automation Platform (its service management and orchestration, or SMO, system) including its non-real time RAN intelligent controller (RIC) and associated rApps (RAN automation applications). Orange and Ericsson have also launched a two-year trial to “explore cloud RAN and Open RAN architecture.” Emmanuel Lugagne Delpon, CTO of networks at Orange France, stated: "Our strategic partnership with Ericsson is accelerating our journey towards enhanced networks for our customers. By leveraging breakthrough spectrum, sustainable technologies and cloud-native solutions, Orange is working to advance its autonomous networks journey and deliver the best 5G experience." For further details see this announcement. 

If the AI bubble is about to burst, Microsoft and Nvidia will be among the companies getting very wet, as they have just announced strategic partnerships with Anthropic and plans to invest up to $5bn and $10bn respectively in the large language model (LLM) developer. Read more. 

– The staff, TelecomTV