Eurobites: Telenor exits Pakistan

Nordic operator Telenor has announced the sale of its Pakistan unit to Pakistan Telecommunications Company Ltd (PTCL) – part of the UAE-based e& group – for 5.3 billion Norwegian kroner (US$502 million). Telenor will retain a strong presence in Asia through Grameenphone in Bangladesh, CelcomDigi in Malaysia and True Corporation in Thailand, which between them have close to 160 million customers. Telenor's experience in Asia has not always proved a comfortable one: In 2021, observing the chaos and uncertainty caused by having a military junta in charge, it felt compelled to sell off its Myanmar operation at a knockdown price. (See Hellish ride is not enough to put Telenor off Asia.)

Nokia has completed a joint lab trial with Arm and HPE of cloud RAN using so-called inline acceleration technology, whereby a customized chip is used to run part of the RAN software, as opposed to letting the general-purpose processor do all the work. The trial, which took place at Nokia's Open Cloud RAN Innovation Center in Dallas, Texas, saw the completion of an end-to-end cloud RAN L3 data call using Ampere Computing's Arm-based general-purpose processor, the HPE ProLiant RL series server as well as Nokia's cloud RAN inline Layer 1 accelerator and cloud RAN software.

Vodafone has teamed up with Sumitomo, Deloitte and Nexxiot for automated freight handling. The new service, powered by the Pairpoint Digital Asset Platform, will automatically verify the provenance of data on the movement and content of cargo, allowing companies to streamline their freight handling procedures whilst complying with international trade laws.

Telia has installed a private 5G network for Posten, the Norwegian postal service, at its new logistics facility in Oslo. In addition to the 5G network, the facility is connected by two separate fiber cables that support cloud services and communication with the company's central systems. As a backup in the event of any connection outages, the terminal also has an antenna that it can use to connect to satellite Internet services.

Telecom Italia (TIM) has integrated Amazon Prime into its TimVision TV service – the first streaming platform in Italy to do so, it claims. Customers who activate TimVision Entertainment or TimVision Gold packages will have Amazon Prime included in their bundle and access to all Prime Video content. Prime will run alongside Disney+, Netflix, DAZN and Infinity+ on the TimVision platform.

Solange Sobral and Alejandro Reynal have joined Telefónica's board of directors, replacing Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain and Peter Erskine, respectively. Sobral is EVP of operations at IT company CI&T, while Reynal has been president and CEO of hotel chain Four Seasons since 2022. The two leavers will remain linked to the Telefónica Group, with Cirac becoming vice chairman of the Telefónica Tech Advisory Board and Erskine continuing as a director of Virgin Media 02.

Spanish towerco Cellnex has signed an agreement with Urban Service Point (USP) which will see Cellnex equip USP's upmarket newspaper stands with small cells. The first such installation will take place on Barcelona's most famous street, Las Ramblas. USP was founded in 2018 to breathe new life into Spain's historic newspaper stands by transforming them into up-to-date service hubs.