
- SK Telecom tests its enterprise AI personal assistant
- SoftBank and OpenAI unveil Cristal Intelligence
- Nigeria’s massive mobile price hikes are imminent
In today’s industry news roundup: SK Telecom is in beta test mode with its Adot Biz application; SoftBank and OpenAI are collaborating on specialised AI platform development for the B2B sector; Nigeria’s mobile operators are planning to introduce mobile tariff increases of 50% in March; and much more!
The enterprise version of SK Telecom’s AI-enabled personal assistant, Adot (aka A.), has entered an internal beta test phase with about 300 individuals ahead of a planned commercial launch during the first half of this year, the South Korean company has announced (in Korean). Adot Biz can help workers with regular daily tasks, such as general information searches, writing up meeting notes, conference room reservations and schedule coordination via an audio/chat interface, while Adot Biz professional has been designed to help with specialised, customised tasks, such as legal affairs, tax affairs and generating corporate press releases. SK Telecom plans to improve the performance of Adot Biz by using various large language models (LLMs), such as SKT’s own LLM, Adot AX, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. SK Telecom, which these days identifies as an AI company, recently revamped its operations to better capitalise on its AI and communications services capabilities and is developing multiple AI-enabled services for international markets as well as for customers in South Korea. It is currently signing up beta users for Aster, the AI personal assistant it has developed for the US market.
The relationship between Japan’s SoftBank and generative AI (GenAI) giant OpenAI is getting tighter and tighter. The two companies are already bedfellows in the Stargate Project, a new company that plans to invest up to $500bn in the construction of new AI infrastructure (datacentres) in the US, with $100bn to be deployed with immediate effect. And if the Financial Times’ sources are good, SoftBank is set to make a sizeable investment in the ChatGPT developer. In the meantime, the partners have announced that they will work together to develop and promote an “advanced enterprise AI” system called Cristal Intelligence, which is being designed to “securely integrate the systems and data of individual enterprises in a way that is customised specifically for each company”. SoftBank has pledged to spend US$3bn annually to deploy OpenAI’s solutions across its group companies, “making it the first company in the world to integrate Cristal Intelligence at scale, as well as deploying existing tools like ChatGPT Enterprise to employees across the entire group.” In addition, SoftBank and OpenAI are establishing a joint venture (SB OpenAI Japan) to “accelerate the deployment of Cristal Intelligence customised for Japan-based companies”. Read more.
The announcement comes as OpenAI scrambles to react to the emergence of Chinese GenAI platform DeepSeek. In the past few days, OpenAI has launched OpenAI o3-mini, “the newest, most cost-efficient model in our reasoning series” and a new tool called Deep Research which, following a user prompt, will “find, analyse, and synthesise hundreds of online sources to create a comprehensive report at the level of a research analyst”. At least one seasoned industry analyst, Richard Windsor at Radio Free Mobile, has taken a closer look at the capabilities and results and isn’t worried that anyone other than companies that offer outsourced research services using humans who lack specialised domain knowledge will be impacted.
Those gnarled philosophers the Rolling Stones tell us that “You can’t always get what you want” and the telecom operators of Nigeria are finding that pithy aphorism to be true. Following a concerted campaign, they started this year by demanding to be given approval to impose an immediate 100% increase in mobile tariffs for both business and domestic subscribers in order to remain viable. Following a decade-long cap on mobile service prices, the operators have been making a great deal of noise about needing to double their prices, exerting pressure on the government and the national regulator and greatly disconcerting their huge customer base. However, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) determined in January that, having considered the “prevailing market conditions”, an increase of up to 50% would be allowed. That sounded generous enough, but the wailing from the operators hasn’t ended. Prior to the NCC’s decision, Karl Toriola, CEO of the country’s largest operator, MTN Nigeria, said that due to increasing costs and constant inflation combined with the devaluation of the Nigerian currency, the naira, a 100% increase on tariffs was the minimum necessary to “not only ensure the sustainability of the telecoms industry but also enable companies to maintain and improve the quality of their services.” So naturally, following the news that a hike of only 50% would be allowed, he reverted to doom-and-gloom mode in a recent interview with the English-language (but Paris-based) Africa Report, during which he claimed that the country’s operators are “on our knees financially”. He added that the 50% cap on tariff increases will mean that “the bigger players are the ones that will be able to survive the longest [but] at the same time, smaller players will collapse and [be acquired] by the biggest players”. His apocalyptic pronouncement may well be a matter of getting retaliation in early as Nigeria’s powerful trades unions, the Nigerian Labour Congress and subscriber associations begin to organise and campaign against, what is, even at 50%, still a massive price increase and one that, according to this report, is due to hit the market in March. Meanwhile, a former Minister of Communications for Nigeria, Adebayo Shittu, weighed in with a strange intervention to the increasingly acrimonious debate, stating that the price hike is “a necessity for economic progression” and that telcos “do not provide a Father Christmas service”. No, that’s the job of the elves, the reindeer and Santa himself. We all know that.
In the wake of Q4 and full year 2024 financial results that highlighted the importance of its Network Infrastructure (optical, routing/switching, fixed broadband) division, Nokia has announced a datacentre interconnect network infrastructure deal with internet exchange giant DE-CIX. The vendor is to supply its 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) platform for DE-CIX’s upgrade of the data transport backbone network, which runs between the 10 datacentres that comprise DE-CIX New York, the largest internet exchange in the north-east of the US. The new optical transport network will support 400 Gigabit Ethernet (400GE) services and is capable of supporting 800GE to meet potential future capacity demands. Nokia is aiming to double down on its offer to hyperscalers and other datacentre operators in the near future with the $2.3bn acquisition of Infinera, a move that will give it a range of optical networking products that can be deployed inside datacentre facilities, as Nokia’s CEO Pekka Lundmark explained during an earnings webcast last October. Nokia expects to close the Infinera acquisition in the next couple of months. In the meantime, it will be hoping to secure further datacentre interconnect networking technology deals as digital infrastructure companies of all sizes invest further in existing and new facilities in the US and in other markets, a trend that looks set to help fuel the expected growth in the optical networking equipment sector over the next five years.
Indra, the Spanish defence and technology giant that was recently in the news when its chairman was suddenly appointed as the new CEO at Telefónica, has agreed to acquire a majority stake (89.68%) in satellite operator Hispasat from utility firm Redeia for €725m. According to Redeia, which noted its new strategy will focus the company’s efforts and finances on the development of Spain’s national electricity infrastructure, the deal values Hispasat at €966m. Hispasat operates a constellation of 10 communications satellites that covers Europe, north Africa, all of Latin America and most of North America. The satellites are used for the provision of a range of communications and multimedia services, including pay-TV, internet access, backhaul and more: In the first nine months of 2024, Hispasat generated revenues of €178.1m and an operating profit of €25.4m. Hispasat is a member of the SpaceRISE consortium that in December 2024 was awarded long-term contracts to build and run Europe’s IRIS2 (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) constellation, which will provide secure services to European Union member states via 290 low-earth orbit (LEO) and medium-earth orbit (MEO) satellites.
Doha, Qatar-based telco Ooredoo has been busy with multiple network-related developments in recent days. Most importantly, it has unveiled the Fibre in Gulf (FIG) project, a plan to build a new submarine cable that will connect seven Gulf countries – Qatar, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq – with a low-latency, secure data communications link that also connects the region with Europe. The subsea network, which will be built by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), will boast 24 fibre pairs with a capacity of up to 720 Tbit/s. “This advanced infrastructure will deliver exceptional connectivity benefits to hyperscalers, business customers, governments, AI providers, datacentres and telecom operators, by enhancing network reliability and security, as well as significantly enhancing connection speeds,” noted Ooredoo. It has also announced a significant 5G network refresh in Qatar with Ericsson and become the first telco in the Middle East region to implement network APIs based on the Camara specifications.
The old proverb has it that “The mills of God grind slow but exceeding small”, and the same can be true of the British Court of Appeal (CoA) as Motorola has just found out. Back in 2021, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ruled that Motorola had been making “supernormal profits”(for which read “filling their boots” by blatant overcharging) and had an “unconstrained monopoly” in the market for the supply of comms network equipment to Airwave, the UK’s Tetra-based emergency services system. “Supernormal” is the term applied to well in excess of what would be expected as profitability in a “well-functioning market”. The CMA enquiry found that Airwave was responsible for 21% of Motorola Solutions’ global pre-tax profits while accounting for about only around 7% of its global revenues. Accordingly, the CMA imposed a ‘charge control order’ on Motorola, which capped the prices it could impose and resulted in a £200m reduction to its Airwave bill. Motorola appealed the CMA’s ruling on the grounds that the authority had not properly calculated the profitability of Airwave and neither had it made a comprehensive and exhaustive assessment of competition in the sector. Reaching for their expensive attorneys, Motorola took the matter to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) – and duly lost. It then applied for permission to take its case to the Court of Appeal and, late last week, was denied permission to do so. The unanimous judgment supported the CMA’s ruling and the case is now over – permanently. There is no higher court to which Motorola might try to appeal. The aged Airwave system remains in daily use by police, fire and ambulance services across England, Scotland and Wales, and Motorola has been ruled out of contention for any involvement in the supply of equipment and services to the UK’s Emergency Services Network (ESN), Airwave’s long-delayed replacement. In a report published last month, the National Audit Office, the UK’s independent public spending watchdog, damningly wrote that successive British governments have demonstrated a “lack of understanding” on how to purchase technology. That’s a classical British understatement. Over the years many billions of pounds have been squandered on overpriced ‘high-tech’ systems and services that have been massively delayed in their arrival and then found to be practically useless when eventually operational. It is to be hoped that the ESN will be an exception to this dismal rule. Ericsson and IBM UK will be primary technology contractors to the ESN (with contributions from Samsung of South Korea) which, when up and working (allegedly by 2026), will be run by BT Group, the UK’s incumbent telco. It will serve more than 300,000 emergency responders across Britain.
– The staff, TelecomTV
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