• T-Mobile US unveils key direct-to-cell launch dates
• Vodafone announces a fix for wonky antennas 
• Arelion is investing in an AI superhighway for Europe 

In today’s industry news roundup: T-Mobile US is crowned ‘Best Network’ and unveils details for the commercial launch of its T-Satellite Starlink satellite-to-smartphone service; Vodafone has developed an innovative way, again involving satellites, to keep its antennas on the straight and narrow; European international network operator Arelion is investing in the latest Ciena gear for its Nordic and Baltic AI superhighway; and much more!

T-Mobile US doesn’t need much encouragement to ‘blow its own trumpet’, as us Brits like to say but, to be fair, the self-styled Un-carrier often has good reason to ‘toot its own horn’ (OK, that’s enough synonyms…). And Ookla, which undertakes independent and objective studies and tests of communications services, has just given it good reason to shower itself with praise, as T-Mobile US has been identified as the ‘Best Network’ in the US, based on an analysis of Ookla Speedtest Intelligence data collected during the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of this year. You can read more about that, and wonder at the slightly bombastic prepared executive quotes, in this press release. Of more interest, at least to the team here at TelecomTV, is that T-Mobile US has used the self-congratulatory occasion as the catalyst to announce the impending commercial launch of the satellite-to-smartphone (aka direct-to-cell) services it has been developing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX/Starlink (which now has more than 650 low-earth orbit satellites up and running) since the summer of 2022. The initial beta service, now dubbed T-Satellite with Starlink (but previously T-Mobile Starlink), was launched in February and has so far been free of charge. But that gratis experience is almost over because the commercial service will be launched on 23 July and will include SMS texting, MMS (multimedia messaging), picture messaging and short audio message sharing. Then, from 1 October, the service will evolve to include a data service “to allow application experiences” via the satellite network. That’s as much detail as T-Mobile US provided in terms of what kind of services might actually work and under what circumstances, but it’s worth noting again that this is a service designed to give at least some kind of communications access beyond the reach of any network’s terrestrial cellular network infrastructure – in the US, that amounts to about 500,00 square miles (that’s about twice the size of Texas). That’s really quite an achievement, all things considered. The operator has said previously that the service will continue to be free for T-Mobile US customers on premium plans, while for others it will cost $15 per month. In addition, the operator is also making the service available to AT&T and Verizon customers for $20 per month from 23 July. Both AT&T and Verizon have their own satellite-to-smartphone strategies, of course – they have both invested in and will use the satellite connectivity services to be provided by AST SpaceMobile which, like Starlink, is brokering partnerships with mobile operators around the world. So, as expected, T-Mobile US is getting to market first with this new service. But… while there is much excitement around the development and provision of satellite-to-smartphone services – and quite rightly there is great anticipation about how such services could be life-savers in times of natural disasters and other unfortunate circumstances – there has been little in the way of in-depth public analysis of the business case for such services. For sure, during the next few years, it’s likely that billions of mobile users around the world will be offered the chance to sign to such services across the Americas, Europe and Asia in particular, but how many will be prepared to shell out even more money for such a service? How many customers, for example, will T-Mobile US need to sign up for T-Satellite Starlink in the next year or two to make it viable and not be little more than a shiny loss leader? There’s a great deal of perceived value in direct-to-cell, but will it move the needle on any telco top and bottom lines? I hope it does, but hope never paid the bills.    

The problem of how to guarantee that land-based 4G and 5G antennas are positioned precisely to ensure users always get the best possible mobile signal is an old one. Antennas are generally sited on towers, poles, buildings and various scaffoldings and are continuously subject to the endless vagaries and vicissitudes of climate, weather, storms, typhoons, twisters, earthquakes, sunspots, plagues of locusts and other variable factors than can, and all too often do, result in antennas drifting out of alignment. It’s a global problem and one for which Vodafone Group believes it has a solution. It has developed an antenna alignment correction solution that will first be introduced in Albania later this summer before it is progressively rolled-out across other countries and parts of the world. With it, Vodafone will be the first mobile service provider to install satellite-guided sensors within new radio antennas sited on top of mobile masts in a commercial rather than experimental or private network. The carrier claims that once the antennas are perfectly aligned, they will remain like that. Hitherto, antennas have been installed manually by engineers, often working at considerable heights in all sorts of weather. Such conditions make precise antenna alignment a particularly tricky task. For example, an engineer must consider the azimuth (the angle the antenna points relative to geographic north), its tilt (which determines the distance and area the signal reaches) and its elevation above sea level ensure no buildings or other obstructions will affect optimum performance, all while trying not to plunge to his or her doom. Things get even more complicated when a mast carries multiple radio antennas belonging to different operators. Henceforth, Vodafone will place sensors within an antenna that will collect GPS-based location information from modules installed at different points on the antenna, together with other performance data. In turn, these sensors quickly relay details of the antenna’s alignment back to a Vodafone network operations centre (NOC), enabling engineers to either automatically reposition the antenna or, if the problem and/or the installation is complex, authorise a truck-roll with an engineer to fix the issue on location. Vodafone’s chief network officer, Alberto Ripepi, commented: “As smartphones pack in ever more functionality, network precision is key. Antenna alignment is now one of the most critical aspects when it comes to installing and maintaining high-performing mobile networks. By integrating sensors into new radio antennas, we can more easily fine-tune our radios to give customers the optimal signal quality.” Thus, at installation, each antenna will be aligned to target a specific coverage zone while minimising interference with neighbouring cell sites. Proper alignment of radio antennas can help eliminate areas of ‘no coverage’ and help increase data speeds, provide more responsive connections and reduce the number of dropped calls. Furthermore, the new technique will reduce the frequency and expense of multiple site visits to make alignment adjustments. Vodafone says it has been working closely with its network vendors to ensure that the information provided by the sensors can be collected easily and is consistent across its entire pan-European network using a standard industry protocol. The ultimate goal is for Vodafone to be able dynamically to control the position of its radio antennas to match demand – such as serving commuters on the move or sports fans in stadiums. Vodafone’s alignment initiative is part of its ‘Network as a Sensor’ programme that makes use of Vodafone’s geographical reach, encompassing 160,000 masts, across Europe and Africa.

We’ve heard a lot in the past couple of years about how the likes of Lumen Technologies and Zayo are investing in their metro and long-distance networks to provide the fat data pipes that US datacentre operators will (and, increasingly, already do) need to enable the AI economy – because, essentially, the AI bandwagon will grind to a somewhat embarrassing halt if the datacentre facilities where large language models (LLMs) are being trained, and where most of the resulting inference takes place, have insufficient capacity to handle the growing volumes of AI-related ingress and egress data flows. Basically, the AI ecosystem can’t afford to have network bottlenecks: It’s the same situation faced by the cloud services sector over the past 15 years, except this time the timescales are shorter and the data traffic volumes hard to predict. This offers a great business opportunity for long-distance data network operators – hence why the management team at Lumen, for example, has focused that company’s future on meeting the datacentre interconnect (DCI) capacity needs of the hyperscalers and other large enterprises, a strategic move that looks increasingly likely to save a company that was heading for bankruptcy. While a hefty chunk of the world’s biggest hyperscale datacentre facilities are in the US, there are plenty elsewhere too and, of course, there’s ongoing construction of new facilities around the world, and all of these datacentres need to be connected and served with secure and reliable data capacity services. As a result, network operators around the world have spied the same opportunity, of course, and one of those is Arelion (formerly known as Telia Carrier), one of the largest cross-border network operators in Europe and with routes that traverse the Nordic region, home to many datacentre facilities because of the availability of land, sustainable power and more efficient cooling than can be found in other more southerly markets. It has announced “major” but unspecified “investments in its Scandinavian network to connect hyperscale datacentres and serve the region’s booming AI markets.” And it has the network strategy and vendor relationships to deliver the goods, it notes. “Leveraging 1.6 Tbit/s waves and scalable 400G coherent pluggable optics on Ciena’s open 6500 Reconfigurable Line System, Arelion is scaling its existing Tier-1 network between Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen to support wholesale and enterprise customers’ AI and cloud applications. This accelerated network investment enhances diversity and bandwidth for current customers while allowing Arelion to support new customers quickly and cost effectively.” It adds: “Arelion currently operates multiple terrestrial routes across Scandinavia and provides diverse access via 13 subsea cables connecting the Nordics and Baltics. Through this investment, Arelion is proactively upgrading its network to reach hyperscale datacentres and new AI scale campuses by completing cable and duct construction, augmenting existing network ducts.” Johan Godal, product manager at Arelion, stated: “As a global internet carrier headquartered in Sweden, we’ve invested in our Scandinavian infrastructure to meet our customers’ evolving connectivity demands since the beginning. This strategic upgrade is the first step in a series of ongoing investments, reflecting our long-held mission to maximise our network assets by enhancing capacity, scalability and diversity. This strategy allows our customers to accelerate their adoption of emerging applications by connecting to Scandinavia’s AI superhighway.”

Any telcos in European Union (EU) markets that are sitting on the fence when considering their quantum-secure networking strategies might need to reconsider their plans because the European Commission’s Network and Information Systems (NIS) Cooperation Group has suggested some not-too-distant deadlines for the implementation of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in critical infrastructure. The EC has “issued a roadmap and timeline to start using a more complex form of cybersecurity, the so-called post-quantum cryptography.” In this short announcement, the EC notes that the “potential of quantum tech to deliver societal benefits is accompanied by risks its misuse can pose to the cybersecurity of our communications and connected infrastructure. An effective solution to these challenges is post-quantum cryptography, which uses encryption methods based on complex mathematical problems that even quantum computers find difficult to solve. All member states should start transitioning to post-quantum cryptography by the end of 2026. At the same time, the protection of critical infrastructures should be transitioned to PQC as soon as possible, no later than by the end of 2030.” The clock is ticking! And that announcement came as the EC also noted that the first quantum computer acquired by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC), a public-private partnership in high-performance computing, has been inaugurated in Poznan, Poland, at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC).

From the inception of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 and on through to his old age, Chairman Mao Tse-Tung espoused his theory of “continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.” In today’s China, one of the PRC’s most powerful companies, Huawei, maintains the practice of the rotating chair, a management structure in place since 2011 whereby three individuals rotate in turn to serve as company CEO and head of the board of directors and its executive committee for six-month terms. The notion underpinning the system is that a rotating leader can provide fresh perspectives and avoid the stagnation of thought and company development that can happen when a single leader is in charge for too long. Currently, the team comprises Eric Xu, Ken Hu, and Sabrina Meng. Since 12 April this year, Eric Xu (Xu Zhijun) is the one rotating, so to speak. Speaking at the recent Mobile World Congress Asia event in Shanghai, Xu recommended “fibre-to-the-room” (FTTR) technology as a catalyst in ensuring the further and continuing growth of the global telecom industry. Huawei’s FTTR solution extends fibres to all rooms in a building and provides various gigabit Wi-Fi 6 master/slave FTTR units, all-optical components and optical cable construction tools, “enabling users to enjoy [a] stable gigabit Wi-Fi experience in every corner of rooms at every moment.” What bliss! FTTR is already widely deployed in China but much less so in other parts of the world. In 2023, the latest year for which official population statistics are currently available, the PRC was home to 1.411 billion people – and rising. Despite economic headwinds having blown the economy off course from time to time, China’s ongoing dash for economic growth continues, the population continues to grow and housing has to be found for it. The solution in most cities is to build hundreds of massive high-rise accommodation blocks, most of which provide basic and very limited space for families crammed into veritable towns in the sky, housing thousands of individuals. Again, as of 2023, China’s biggest city, Chongqing, was home to 31.91 million people, Shanghai had a population of 24.87 million, Beijing had 21.86 million, Chengdu 21.40 million and Guangzhou had 18.83 million. In 2024, China had 18 megacities (cities with a population of at least 10 million) and 113 cities with more than 1 million inhabitants. All have increased in size and population density since the last sets of statistics were published. FTTR, ideally installed as the buildings rise, certainly can work as a solution to the broadband provision challenges faced in many Chinese cities. Eric Xu told his audience that by the end of this year, China’s installed FTTR base will be 75 million and rising. However, elsewhere in the world, the entire number deployed is just 500,000, not least because of the immense challenges presented by attempting to retrofit FTTR into crowded centres of populations. Nonetheless, Xu emphasised that FTTR can benefit businesses and domestic subscribers by boosting internet connection speeds, alleviating problems of poor and inconsistent Wi-Fi coverage, and allowing service providers to charge higher prices for their comms packages. As well as trying to convince the rest of the world to adopt a technology that is generally unsuitable to their demographics and needs, Xu also wants every car within the PRC and everywhere else on earth to connect over 5G. Surely wishful, indeed, magical thinking and a complete impossibility in practice. A good talking point though.

In January this year, the UK government announced that the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) would investigate Google’s “strategic market status” (SMS) to assess the extent to which Google’s enormously powerful position in search and search-advertising services may be distorting the market, as well as to determine how such domination might impact consumers and businesses including advertisers, news publishers and rival search engines. In the UK, Google accounts for more than 90% of all general search queries while more than 200,000 UK advertisers use Google’s search advertising. The CMA says given that search is a key digital service for people, businesses and the economy overall, it is vital that competition works properly and is seen to do so. Measures of that include greater choice, the introduction of new and innovative services and ensuring that users have full control over their data and how it is used. Effective competition should also permit users to access a wide range of content whilst publishers and writers are treated fairly, and compensated, for the use of their content. Where businesses are concerned, effective competition should keep down the costs of search advertising, allowing Google’s rivals to create alternatives to ‘traditional’ market access, and ensuring AI startups can compete with the likes of Google on a level playing field. In a new update, the UK government makes it clear that the CMA is acting under the aegis of Britain’s new digital markets competition legal framework which came into force on 1 January this year. The statutory deadline for the end of the CMA’s probe is 13 October 2025. The investigation is now well advanced and with the deadline for its completion and the announcement of the CMA’s final and binding decision getting closer, indications are that the authority is poised to enforce change on Google if the company does not voluntarily do so. Thus, the CMA has provided a “roadmap” of changes Google ‘might’ like to make ahead of the 13 October deadline. One example is for Google to provide different “choice” screens permitting users to get to other providers of search facilities. Another is to provide enhanced transparency of, and control over, content provided by publishers. Apparently, the average person in the UK makes between five and 10 searches a day and businesses spend an average £33,000 a year on Google adverts. The CMA says that if competition were to be working, that figure would already be considerably lower. Sarah Cardell, the CEO of the CMA, says that any regulatory changes it “may propose” will be “targeted and proportionate” to “give UK businesses and consumers more choice and control over how they interact with Google’s search services”. For its part, Google says the outcome of the investigation and any suggested changes “could have significant implications for businesses and consumers in the UK”. Yes, that is the whole point of the exercise! Further, Google has characterised the “proposals” floated so far by the CMA as “broad and unfocused”. It’s a certainty they will get narrower and much more tightly focused in the months to come. Last year, a judge in the US ruled that Google operates an “illegal search monopoly” and the US Department of Justice has filed an antitrust case against the company, accusing it of monopolising the advertising technology market. Meanwhile regulators in the EU, Australia and Canada are also investigating Google for “anticompetitive actions and behaviour.” Watch out for the wriggling, contortions and squeaks of outrage and anger as Google tries to convince the CMA it is not in the least anti-competitive and should not be designated as having SMS status. It should make for an enjoyable spectator sport in the run up to 2026.

– The staff, TelecomTV