Eurobites: Vodafone sells 10% Vantage Towers stake for €1.3BEurobites: Vodafone sells 10% Vantage Towers stake for €1.3B

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Ofcom fines BT for failure to connect emergency calls; Juniper Networks picks Telxius for 400G upgrade; and Nokia trials 5G NSA cloud RAN in India with Bharti Airtel.

Tereza Krásová, Associate Editor

July 22, 2024

3 Min Read
Vodafone logo on a shop.
Vodafone will use the €1.3 billion raised from the sale to axe debt.(Source: matt fowler/Alamy Stock Photo)
  • Vodafone has sold a further 10% stake in Oak Holdings, which controls Vantage Towers, the company that owns the operator's cell towers in Europe. The €1.3 billion (US$1.4 billion) proceeds will be used for "deleveraging," or debt reduction. The sale means Vodafone has reached its goal of holding 50% in the firm, with the remaining 50% owned by infrastructure investment groups led by KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners.

  • UK regulator Ofcom has slapped BT with a £17.5 million ($22.6 million) fine for being unable to connect emergency calls during network disruptions in June 2023. The problem lasted for ten and a half hours, during which the British incumbent failed to connect 14,000 calls. The issue was caused by a configuration error in a file on its server, which also caused disruptions to text relay services used by people with hearing and speech difficulties. Ofcom concluded the operator had been ill-prepared for such an incident, lacking the systems necessary to spot the problem early on, and to assess its severity and impact. Equally worryingly, its disaster recovery capacity had insufficient capacity to handle all the calls. The regulator found that fortunately no one had suffered serious harm because of the outage.

  • Spanish bank BBVA has picked Telefónica Tech to create a specialized cybersecurity center in Mexico, mirroring one already in place in Spain. Telefónica Tech says it provides nearly 50 specialized cybersecurity products to the bank and will have the honor of being "one of BBVA's main strategic partners in cybersecurity."

  • In more Telefónica news, its global connectivity subsidiary Telxius was tapped by Juniper Networks to upgrade its global core and edge network infrastructure to 400G. The latter firm's network consists of fiber optic submarine cables and terrestrial backhauls spanning over 100,000 km in Europe and the Americas. The upgrade will increase its capacity and make it more scalable, the companies said.

  • Nokia, the Finnish purveyor of telecommunications equipment originally founded as a paper mill, has hailed a successful implementation of its 5G non-standalone (NSA) cloud radio access network (RAN) trial with Bharti Airtel in India. The trial was carried out in an over-the-air environment, using 3.5GHz spectrum for 5G and 2,100MHz spectrum for 4G data calls. 

  • MasOrange has tapped ZTE Managed Services to provide cable management services to its brands in northern Spain, including Euskaltel and R, according to local media. The operator, recently born from the Orange and MásMóvil merger as the Frankenstein-style name suggests, reportedly said the decision was made because of the technical quality of the offer. Chinese vendors, including the state-owned ZTE, are not exactly popular with many Western governments and Brussels at the moment, due to security concerns.

  • Meta seems to be continuing its long-standing struggle with regulators everywhere, having been fined $220 million by Nigeria's Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC). The Big Tech empire was found guilty of multiple "abusive, and invasive practices" in its handling of customer data, FCCPC said in a statement it posted on social media on Friday afternoon.

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Europe

About the Author

Tereza Krásová

Associate Editor, Light Reading

Associate Editor, Light Reading

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