What happens to… Cellnex, Sweden, Dish Wireless, Access Evolution
In today’s industry news roundup: European tower giant Cellnex needs to hire a new top dog; Sweden has expressed concern about the risk of Russian sabotage affecting its communications network; US 5G hopeful Dish Wireless loses one of its top executives, Stephen Bye; plus much more!
European neutral host giant Cellnex hunting for a new CEO after the departure of Tobias Martinez, who will step down from the role after the company’s AGM on June 1, 2023. Martinez has been CEO since Cellnex became a publicly traded company eight years ago. At the time of its IPO, it was valued at €3.2 billion and had about 7,500 towers; now, after several years of aggressive growth fueled by mergers and acquisitions, the company’s market capitalization is 22.5 billion euros and it has more than 103,000 towers (the company’s stated figure in today’s press release of 138,000 includes sites it has not yet built) . The departure news sent Cellnex’s share price down 2.4% to €31.81 on the Spanish exchange. Martinez noted that as the company enters a “new phase based on maximizing organic growth, consolidating the industrial project in the countries where we operate today and focusing on balance sheet management,” a younger person should lead the company. The announcement comes a day after Cellnex announced it is works with the British mobile operator Three to improve mast infrastructure along the busy and important London to Brighton rail line (which includes Gatwick Airport as one of its stops).
As the fight for Ukrainian territory intensifies, Russia will likely seek to threaten and weaken the infrastructure of neighboring and nearby countries, including Sweden’s, according to The security police (SAPO), the country’s security service. In a statement on Tuesday, the service noted that “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally changed the European security order and also the security situation in Sweden” and that “Russia poses a serious threat to Sweden’s security”. It noted that SAPO has “identified three sectors where there is reason to be particularly vigilant in countering espionage and sabotage. The sectors are energy supply, telecom and transportation of critical supplies. These are sectors where attacks against Sweden can cause damage to the rest of Europe as well.” The warning came on the heels of one report from ITU which described the damage to Ukraine’s telecom and technology infrastructure by the Russian invasion.
Stephen Bye, who has been chief commercial officer at Wireless dish since 2019, “to support the development and commercialization of the company’s stand-alone 5G network”, leaving the US operator’s management team to join a digital media company Ziff Davis as president of its Connectivity division, starting Jan. 23. Dish launched its Open RAN-based 5G network last June, just before its regulatory deadline, and while it’s not considered a competitive threat to AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile US, it’s early days. Bye, who has held many roles in the telecom sector this century, including CTO at Sprint (2011 – 2015), will be responsible for several Ziff Davis units, including broadband service analytics specialist Ookla and mobile network performance specialist RootMetrics. Bizarrely, Dish issued a notice to say that Bye will join its board from January 18, only mentioning later in the same release that he is leaving his day-to-day role “at the coalface” on January 17.
The European Commission is preparing to ask Europe’s telecom companies and the big technology companies, such as Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Netflixon their infrastructure investment plans for the coming years to help them assess whether the big tech companies should contribute to the investment costs of the region’s telecom operators; Reuters has reported that. The commission is is expected to launch a consultation on the issue in the coming months. At the end of September last year, the CEOs of 16 leading European telecom companies, including BT, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia (TIM), Telefónica, Telia and Vodafone, signed a statement calls on commission to introduce legislation that would force the so-called big tech companies to contribute to broadband network costs. Various parties then spoke up either for or against the idea: For example the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) announced in October that, after a preliminary assessment of the telcos’ arguments, they could find “no evidence” to support the operators’ claims.
The battle to be perceived as the leading enabler of satellite-to-smartphone communications is heating up. In the wake of recent announcements from Qualcomm, Iridium and Bullitt, Lynk Global – which describes itself as “the world’s leading satellite direct-to-standard telephone telecom company” – announced that it has launched two more satellites in its “commercial cell-tower-in-space constellation” (yes, it sounds a bit like something from one Muppet sketch). The company also boasts that the satellites are “covered by the world’s first and only commercial satellite direct-to-standard telephone license that Lynk received from the FCC in September 2022”. According to Charles Miller, Lynk’s CEO, “This launch extends Lynk’s leadership in the satellite direct-to-standard phone category. While others have just discovered that satellite direct-to-phone is a big deal, we invented and patented the technology in 2017 , began testing the technology in space in 2019 and now has three commercial satellite cell towers in place. We are years ahead of everyone else.” The company also claims to have “commercial agreements with 25 MNOs [mobile network operators] covering 41 countries” and to “actively test satellite-to-standard telephone connections in 17 countries on all seven continents”, but has yet to provide details on which MNOs and which countries.
Telkom SA and wireless service provider Rain seems to have taken a rain check on an M&A deal. Talks about an offer from Rain to be acquired by the South African operator have ended, the telco announced in a note to investors. “After initial discussions, but prior to any due diligence, the parties have decided that a suitable transaction is not possible at this time,” Telkom noted. Rain made a suggestion to Telkom at the end of September 2022, which proposes a takeover of all shares in exchange for new shares in Telkom. Following the news that the discussions had come to an end, Telkom’s share price rose about 10.5% on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in early afternoon trading.
Further evidence that, contrary to the wishes of the US administration and others, Huawei will not retreat to China and implode comes from one of its strongholds, Africa, where it has just landed a five-year 5G core agreement on MTN Ugandawhich is “part of the larger MTN Group MUNIC [MTN unified cloud] strategy that will see MTN Uganda’s network evolve into a fully cloud-based core network. For more information about the Chinese supplier, looks Defiant Huawei claims it’s out of ‘crisis mode’.
The sale on Vodafone Hungary to The 4iG group and state holding company Corvinusfor which a reduced price deal has just been completedwas considered a “transaction of national strategic interest’ and therefore exempt from scrutiny by the Hungarian competition authorities, Reuters has reported that.
– The staff, TelecomTV