What’s up with… Colt, Orange, Telefónica & Huawei, optical sector

• Colt admits data theft, Orange Belgium breached
• Telefónica reportedly sticks with Huawei’s core platform in Spain  
• Investments in optical networking gear grew in Q2

In today’s industry news roundup: As Colt admits it had data stolen by hackers, it seems the same ‘threat actors’ had breached the IT systems at Orange Belgium; Telefónica has reportedly signed a new 5G core platform deal with Huawei to support its consumer mobile customers in Spain; Dell’Oro reports a 14% year on year increase in optical network equipment investments; and much more!

A week after Colt Technology Services revealed it was dealing with a “cyber incident” that had been affecting its internal systems and which had forced it to shut down some services, the network operator and enterprise services specialist has admitted that data has been stolen by hackers. “Through our extensive investigation, we have determined that some data has been taken,” noted Colt on a website page set up to provide updates about the cyber incident. “We recently experienced a cyber incident on a business support system [BSS], which is separate to our customers' infrastructure. Upon detecting the incident, we immediately took steps to contain and investigate the issue. We are now aware that the threat actor has accessed certain files that may contain data related to our customers. Our immediate priority is to determine the precise nature of the files and what information they contain… Our priority is to determine at pace the precise nature of the data that is impacted and notify any affected parties,” added Colt. While not identified by Colt, the “threat actor” is the Warlock ransomware group, which has made it obvious it has the data: In its FAQ section about the hack, Colt notes that “a criminal group has accessed certain files from our systems that may contain information related to our customers and posted the document titles on the dark web. We understand that this is concerning for you. Customers are able to request a list of filenames posted on the dark web from the dedicated call centre.” This doesn’t seem very reassuring. In the meantime, Colt has taken some systems offline and that in turn has “led to disruption to some of our Business Support Services” which in turn is rendering some services – Colt online customer portal, number hosting APIs, Colt on Demand (NaaS portal) and the system used to order and provision new services – unavailable.  

It seems the Warlock group is also responsible for a significant data breach at Orange Belgium, reports Computer Weekly. On Wednesday the Belgian operator reported that, at the end of July, “a cyberattack on one of its IT systems” resulted in the “ unauthorised access to certain data from 850,000 customer accounts.” However, “no critical data was compromised: no passwords, email addresses, bank or financial details were hacked,” the operator noted, though the data stolen included the surname, first name, telephone number, SIM card number, PUK code and tariff plan of the impacted customers. Read the full disclosure from Orange Belgium here.  

News of that breach came only weeks after the Belgian operator’s parent, Orange Group, announced it had detected an attack on one of its IT systems, following which it needed to isolate and shut down some systems, a move that impacted some enterprise and consumer services in France.   

The latest report about Telefónica’s potentially controversial and ongoing engagement with Huawei comes from Spanish newspaper El Pais, which reports that the Spanish telco signed a new five-year deal with the Chinese vendor late last year for a 5G core platform that will support its 16 million consumer mobile customers until 2030. Huawei’s low price was reportedly key to securing the deal from Telefónica. The news comes in the wake of a report from Reuters in late July that the giant telco’s chief operating officer (COO) Emilio Gayo reportedly told the financial news agency that Telefónica is “reducing our exposure to Huawei” in Germany and Spain to follow the “rules we have in these countries”, but noted that the operator would continue to work closely with the Chinese vendor in its major operations in Brazil. Telefónica announced in February that it is deploying Nokia’s packet core platform to support enterprise 4G and 5G services in Spain. News of the ongoing use of Chinese technology in the Spanish telco’s 5G core will not sit well with European Commission lawmakers, which are keen to see EU member states conform to 5G Cybersecurity Toolbox recommendations and ban the use of technology deemed to be a security risk (which, in 5G networks, encompasses technology from Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE). But while other countries, including Germany and Sweden, have identified vendors deemed to be a security risk, Spain has not, and Huawei’s technology continues to be used by all of the major mobile operators.   

The value of the optical network equipment sector grew by 14% year on year during the second quarter of 2025, according to research firm Dell’Oro Group, which cited demand for disaggregated WDM and datacentre interconnect (DCI) systems as the main drivers of the growth. While the company didn’t provide a number for that value, back-of-the-envelope calculations undertaken at TelecomTV HQ suggest the number is likely in the region of about $3.75bn, up from about $3.3bn a year ago. “Following six quarters of soft sales in optical transport, it was great to see this market recover and post a strong double-digit growth rate,” stated Jimmy Yu, a VP and analyst at Dell’Oro Group. “One area contributing to the strong growth for optical was the rising demand for disaggregated WDM, a concept that arose over a decade ago when both cloud providers and communication service providers wanted to have a more open, vendor-agnostic environment – one where a network operator had more choice in suppliers for transponders, optical line systems, and pluggable optics,” added Yu. According to Dell’Oro, investments in optical transport network technology by cloud providers (datacentre operators) drove most of the year on year growth, though spending by telcos also increased year on year. The top six vendors in terms of optical revenues in the second quarter were Huawei, Ciena, Nokia, ZTE, FiberHome and Cisco. In July, the Dell’Oro team predicted that the optical equipment sector would experience steady growth during the next five years and that the value of the sector would reach $19bn by 2029, driven mainly by DCI investments to support AI workload traffic. That trend was also suggested by another industry analyst firm, Heavy Reading, in a recent white paper that examined the impact of AI traffic on metro and long-haul optical networks – see Are telco data transport networks ready for AI?

– The staff, TelecomTV