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AT&T struggles to defend open cloudiness of Ericsson deal
More than a year into the Ericsson-led rollout, there is very little evidence AT&T's radio access network is as multivendor and virtualized as the telco makes out.
Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Mercedes-Benz gets conversational with Google; Ericsson brings AI to network administration; Orange and Vodacom agree towers deal in DRC.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched its first investigation under the new digital markets regime that came into force at the start of the year – and it's the dominance of Google's search-related advertising services that is under the regulatory microscope. Among other concerns, the CMA will assess how competition is working (or not) in the search advertising market, and whether Google is using its position to prevent innovation by others, not least in the way it is embracing AI technology. The CMA believes that effective competition could keep a lid on the cost of search advertising and in turn reduce prices across the wider economy. The investigation is expected to take nine months.
In related news, German carmaker Mercedes-Benz and Google Cloud have joined forces to introduce new conversational capabilities to the MBUX Virtual Assistant. It is hoped that the partnership will enable drivers to have "natural-language conversations" with the in-car assistant to obtain information from the Google Maps platform about nearby points of interest and so on. The fruits of the collaboration will be available in Mercedes-Benz's new CLA series later this year.
Ericsson has unveiled a new generative AI-based NetCloud Assistant (ANA) to simplify the job of enterprise 5G network administration. Unlike traditional chatbots, says Ericsson, which use search to provide links to existing resources, ANA has the ability to read, understand and generate new text and graphical content, providing personalized responses by collating information from multiple technical documents and insights from the customer's network. It is intended to complement Ericsson's existing NetCloud AIOps dashboard.
Orange and Vodacom have struck a towers deal in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which will see the two companies jointly build, own and operate solar-powered basestations in underserved areas of the country. It is envisaged that the project will extend network coverage to up to 19 million people in less densely populated rural communities. (See Vodacom, Orange partner to expand rural network coverage in DRC.)
Nokia has been chosen to connect up eight new 2-gigawatt wind farms in the Dutch North Sea to help bring the energy onshore. Nokia's 1830 PSS DWDM technology will be used to connect the offshore sites to TenneT's onshore communications infrastructure, enabling TenneT to monitor and manage the remote platforms from dry land.
Vivendi has failed in its bid to annul the sale of Telecom Italia's fixed-line grid to investment firm KKR. As Reuters reports (paywall may apply), French media giant Vivendi filed a complaint with a Milan court in December 2023, which challenged the sale. Italy's government bought 16% of the network as part of the deal. (See Vivendi remains awkward element in TIM's fixed ambitions.)
Kim Hagberg has stepped down from her role as EVP, chief operations at Nordic operator Tele2. She had been part of the management team there since 2018, overseeing the merger of Tele2 and Com Hem, among other responsibilities. No reason has been given for her departure. (See Sweden's Tele2 to Swallow Com Hem in $3.3B Deal.)
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