Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: BICS reports on roaming trends; 5G will bring more enterprise opportunities, predicts Amdocs study; Liberty-Millicom deal on shaky ground.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

January 23, 2019

3 Min Read
Eurobites: Telefónica Confirms Talks to Offload Central American Operations

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: BICS reports on roaming trends; 5G will bring more enterprise opportunities, predicts Amdocs study; Liberty-Millicom deal on shaky ground.

  • Telefónica has confirmed it is "negotiating the sale" of its Central American operations as the Spanish group looks to reduce its debt and focus on what it sees as its core territories. Reuters reports that the operator declined to name the potential buyer of the Central American unit, which encompasses operations in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama. Previous reports have identified América Móvil S.A. de C.V. as the likely buyer.

    • The significance of the EU's "Roam Like at Home" legislation in 2017, which removed roaming charges for European citizens travelling within the EU, has been underlined by new figures from BICS , the Belgium-based connectivity provider. BICS says that 4G/LTE roaming traffic across its global network grew by more than 95% year-on-year in 2018, and it expects growth will increase by 40-50% a year as more travelers discover the joys of reasonably priced data while on the move. The legislation, says BICS, has also forced operators outside the EU to offer more cost-effective packages to subscribers. (See Roam Like at Home: The Impact After One Year.)

    • Eighty percent of European communications service providers expect the introduction of 5G will lead to more revenue opportunities with enterprise customers, while 34% of them plan to offer 5G services commercially to the enterprise sector by the end of 2019. These are the headline findings of a new study carried out by IDC on behalf of software and professional services giant Amdocs Ltd. (NYSE: DOX): For more detail, see this story on our sister site, Telecoms.com.

    • Liberty Latin America 's plan to acquire Millicom International Cellular SA (Nasdaq: MICC) , which has a presence in Chad and Tanzania as well as in nine Latin American countries, appears to be running into the sand, at least according to a Bloomberg report. The report says that Liberty is struggling to win backing for the proposed deal -- which values Millicom at around $7.6 billion -- from Millicom's management. (See Liberty Latin America in Talks to Buy Millicom.)

    • Around 350 workers at Vodafone UK 's contact center in Glasgow have been told that they must be prepared to relocate south of the border in order to keep their jobs. As the BBC reports, their jobs are now going to be absorbed at existing Vodafone sites in Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent and Newbury.

    • Elsewhere in the Vodafone empire, Vodafone Germany has chosen Dutch outfit Metrological to help integrate apps and OTT content onto the operator's GigaTV platform.

    • Ireland's Openet Telecom Ltd. has landed a policy control software gig with Iridium Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: IRDM), which has recently launched its Certus satellite broadband network. Iridium hopes that Openet's system will help it better manage and prioritize broadband traffic on its global network.

    • Motorola Solutions Inc. (NYSE: MSI) has won a three-year contract with the Scottish police force that will see the company roll out its Pronto "digital policing" application to 10,000 officers of the law. Pronto is intended to replace police officers' paper notebooks, allowing them to fill in reports on their mobile devices then submit them without having to return to the station. Only a few steps away from Robocop, right?

      — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

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About the Author(s)

Paul Rainford

Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

Paul is based on the Isle of Wight, a rocky outcrop off the English coast that is home only to a colony of technology journalists and several thousand puffins.

He has worked as a writer and copy editor since the age of William Caxton, covering the design industry, D-list celebs, tourism and much, much more.

During the noughties Paul took time out from his page proofs and marker pens to run a small hotel with his other half in the wilds of Exmoor. There he developed a range of skills including carrying cooked breakfasts, lying to unwanted guests and stopping leaks with old towels.

Now back, slightly befuddled, in the world of online journalism, Paul is thoroughly engaged with the modern world, regularly firing up his VHS video recorder and accidentally sending text messages to strangers using a chipped Nokia feature phone.

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