Eurobites: Deutsche Telekom migrates voice to the cloud

Deutsche Telekom says it has successfully migrated its IP voice platform to the cloud, meaning that its landline connections are now controlled from cloud data centers in Germany. More than 17 million customer connections have been migrated in this way, with voice minutes now being handled through the NIMS (Next Generation IP Multimedia Subsystem) platform. The project saw Deutsche Telekom working in collaboration with a number of partners including Juniper Networks, Mavenir, Microsoft, HPE, Red Hat and Lenovo.

Telenor Group stablemates Elisa and DNA Tower Finland have joined forces for the rollout of Elisa's Distributed Energy Storage (DES) offering at DNA Tower's sites to help operators save on energy costs. This is the first deployment of the Elisa DES system, which effectively transforms the tower site's backup batteries into a virtual power plant, enabling so-called load-shifting whereby electricity is purchased from the grid during low-cost periods and stored for consumption when prices are higher.

Virgin Media O2's full-year adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) rose 3.7% year-over-year, to £4.10 billion (US$5.16 billion), on revenue that increased 5.2% to £10.92 billion ($13.74 billion). This was at the low end of mid-single-digit EBITDA guidance. VMO2's fixed customer base grew by 31,300 over the course of the year, while contract mobile net additions totalled 46,600, 19,000 of them coming in the fourth quarter. The company claims to have rolled out fiber to new areas faster than ever before in 2023, covering 833,100 additional premises, with the majority of these premises forming part of the Nexfibre FTTH network.

Ericsson is on a pre-MWC product launch splurge, unveiling a bunch of upgraded radios, including the flagship AIR 3255, a Massive MIMO time division duplex (TDD) radio which, says Ericsson, offers energy savings of more than 25% and a 20% lower carbon footprint compared to its predecessor. On the software side, Ericsson is trumpeting the inclusion of something it calls Explainable AI (XAI) within its cognitive software range for communications service providers. This, says Ericsson, offers greater transparency into what the hell AI is up to, making it easier for CSPs to use it effectively to manage their networks.

Eutelsat Group, which since last September has owned OneWeb, the low Earth orbit satellite operator, saw its adjusted EBITDA fall 12.7% year-over-year in the six months to December 2023 on revenue that slipped 0.2%, to €572.6 million ($616.3 million). CEO Eva Berneke admitted that delays in the availability of OneWeb's ground network have dented revenues. (See OneWeb, Eutelsat merge to form integrated GEO-LEO satellite firm.)

Dutch operator KPN says it intends to participate in the forthcoming auction of national 5G licenses, which will make spectrum available in the 3.5GHz band – the missing piece, says KPN, of its 5G jigsaw.