Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: MTN Nigeria wants to hike its prices; T-Systems aims to simplify automotive data networking; Finland considers Baltic cable damage.
Zegona and MasOrange have agreed to set up a new fiber network company in Spain. The new company will bring together the network assets of Zegona-owned Vodafone Spain and MasOrange to create a fiber-to-the-home network covering 12.2 million premises – the largest such network in Europe, claims Zegona. The new network, which is effectively already built, says Zegona, currently serves more than 4.5 million Vodafone Spain and MasOrange customers. The value of the deal has not been disclosed, but Zegona says the new fiber company is expected to have a "run-rate EBITDA" (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) of around €480 million (US$494 million) after three years. In November Zegona concluded a similar FTTH deal with Telefónica, which covered 3.6 million premises across Spain. (See Telefónica plots another Spanish fiber JV, this time with Vodafone.)
MTN Nigeria is seeking permission from the Nigerian Communications Commission to double its tariffs, according to a Daily Post report citing a TV interview with the company's CEO, Karl Toriala. However, even Toriola himself doubts whether the proposed price hikes will get the green light, saying that "they [the regulators] are very, very sensitive to the current economic situation in the country."
Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems unit is introducing two new onboarding packages for companies wanting to connect to the Catena-X automotive network, one aimed at small and midsized outfits and the other targeting the bigger fish. The standard package provides ten hours of consulting and helps the company in question prepare for the Catena-X connection through training, setting up the connector, testing the connection with production-related data and going live in the Cofinity-X environment. Members of the Catena-X association include Amazon Web Services, Google, BWW, Microsoft and Volkswagen.
The Finnish government is holding two high-level meetings today (Friday) to discuss recent cable damage in the Baltic, YLE reports. The Defense Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee will both sit to consider the damage done to telecoms and power cables over the Christmas period. (See 2024 in review: Submarine cables become a battleground and Eurobites: Sabotage suspected after latest subsea cable cut.)
As a second Trump presidency looms in the US, former UK politician and semi-retired sex machine Nick Clegg has stepped down as president of global affairs at Meta after six years in the job. In a Facebook post, Clegg revealed that he will be succeeded by his current deputy, Joel Kaplan, a Republican who was previously employed as deputy chief of staff in the White House during the administration of President George W. Bush.
Eurobites reported that Olaf Swantee had quit as CEO of Swiss operator Sunrise, just weeks after the collapse of a $6.4 billion deal to acquire Liberty Global's Swiss division. Since then Swantee has reinvented himself as an investor and "strategic business adviser." And, as his own website reveals, when he's not working he's usually "doing some kind of sport, trying out new recipes and walking [his] dog." His website also shows that as of 12.20 p.m. UK time on January 3, 2025, he had drunk 23,104 cups of coffee. You won't sleep, Olaf.
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