Eurobites: Swisscom and Nokia combine on nationwide drone network

Swisscom and Nokia are to build a joint drone network across Switzerland that, from the autumn, will enable customers to use secure drones for a range of purposes, including infrastructure inspections, police deployments and the protection of large-scale sites. Swisscom has been offering customized drone flights for more than a year but, says the operator, the partnership with Nokia will take things up a notch, improving the availability of drone applications for industrial purposes and enabling drone operations to be automated beyond the visual line of sight. For Nokia, this represents the vendor's second nationwide drones project after a similar deployment with Belgium's Citymesh.

United Group and Eutelsat have agreed to develop a next-gen DTH (direct to home) broadcast platform, extending United Group's DTH services to an audience of around 40 million across eight countries in central and southeastern Europe. The coverage extension will be enabled by the combination of two Eutelsat satellites – Eutelsat Hotbird and Eutelsat 16A – allowing United Group's Total TV, Nova and Vivacom platforms to reach regional audiences at home and further afield in Greece, Bulgaria, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia.

Deutsche Telekom saw adjusted EBITDAaL (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, after leases) rise 7.8% year-over-year in the second quarter, to €10.8 billion (US$11.8 billion), on net revenue up 4.3%, to €28.4 billion ($31 billion). Domestically, Deutsche Telekom brought home the bacon, seeing the number of pure fiber connections increase by 113,000 during the quarter and its branded mobile contract customer base shoot up by 311,000. In the US, DT's T-Mobile subsidiary broke the 100 million postpaid customer barrier for the first time, recording 1.3 million postpaid net adds during the quarter.

VEON, the Amsterdam-headquartered operator with interests in Bangladesh and Ukraine among other disparate territories, recorded second-quarter revenue of $1.02 billion, a 12.1% increase on the year-ago period. EBITDA rose 10.6%, to $459 million. VEON maintains its ambitious full-year 2024 guidance for revenue growth of 16%-18% and EBITDA growth of 18%-20%.

A1 Group has gone live with Amdocs Subscription Marketplace software at its units in Austria, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. The software is intended to simplify the onboarding and digital subscription experience, enabling customers to manage their various subscriptions on a single platform.

Switzerland's Sunrise has been certified for its business-continuity management system (BCMS), which is intended to identify outage risks early, prevent outages and continue business operations in emergency situations. For those taking notes, the certification in question is ISO 22301.