Telecompaper Headlines

(Telecompaper) WarnerMedia has officially launched its new HBO Max subscription streaming service, after opening pre-orders on 5 May. The service will feature Max Originals, plus the company's existing catalogue of films and series. In total, it will have 10,000 hours of content, including the entire HBO service; films and TV series from Warner Bros' 100-year content collection; highlights from New Line; catalogue titles from DC, CNN, TNT, TBS, truTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Crunchyroll, Rooster Teeth and Looney Tunes Cartoons; and a selection of classic films curated in partnership with TCM.

(Telecompaper) Facebook announced the new name of Novi for its digital payments wallet. Plans for the wallet were first announced almost a year ago under the name Calibra. The digital wallet will be used to transact in Facebook's planned virtual currency Libra. 

(Telecompaper) Technicolor said that it has been unable to go ahead with its previously announced EUR 300 million rights issue, due to the unprecedented crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. It has instead entered talks with some of its creditors and with third-party investors to obtain a new EUR 400 million financing, indicating that so far it has received indicative offers from one investor and from one of its existing lenders.

(Telecompaper) The investment firm KKR has partnered with entrepreneur Franek Sodzawiczny to launch a data centre company in Europe. The new venture Global Technical Realty (GTR) will provide build-to-suit data centres for large technology companies in Europe. 

(Telecompaper) Ethiopia's Ministry of Finance has decided to offer a 5 percent stake in Ethio Telecom to the public, with a cap on the number of shares an individual can buy, reports Addis Fortune. The minority stake in the telecom company will be sold to thousands of Ethiopians. Forty percent of the company will be privatised to one of the international telecom operators,  and the government will retain a majority share. 

(Telecompaper) KPN continues to suffer in the consumer market, where it has discontinued sales to new customers at its Telfort and XS4All brands in order to promote more premium offers under the KPN flag. This includes the launch of its first gigabit broadband service in March across its expanding FTTH network. KPN still lost 23,000 consumer broadband customers in the quarter, while gaining 8,000 in the B2B segment. In total, KPN had almost 3.15 million broadband customers at the end of March.

(Telecompaper) Bharti Telecom, the promoter company of Indian operator Bharti Airtel, has sold a 2.75 percent stake in Bharti Airtel to institutional investors through an accelerated book building process in the secondary market. The allocation was done to over 50 accounts, with the top 10 getting two-thirds of the overall allocation. The total sale proceeds of over INR 84.33 billion (approximately USD 1.15 billion) was over-subscribed multiple times with a mix of all categories of investors, long only and hedge fund investors across geographies in India, Asia, Europe and the US, Bharti Telecom said. 

(Telecompaper) Arm has unveiled its latest processor designs for smartphones. These include the Cortex-A8 CPU with a promised 20 percent increase in performance on its predecessor, the Mali-G78 graphic processor and the Ethos-N8 NPU for on-device machine learning. The platforms are expected to power the next generation of 5G mobile devices and AI applications. 

(Telecompaper) Revenues of Russian operator MTS increased by 8.9 percent year-on-year to RUB 119.6 billion in the first quarter, led by solid growth in its home market. Group adjusted OIBDA rose 1.6 percent to RUB 51.5 billion, and net profit increased by 0.8 percent to RUB 17.7 billion. Nevertheless, MTS lowered its outlook for the full year due to the uncertain economic outlook, saying it now expects revenues flat to 3 percent higher and OIBDA flat to 2 percent lower. Capex is still expected at around RUB 90 billion, after increased spending of RUB 19.9 billion in Q1.

(Telecompaper) Telenor said it has established a Nordic Hub to develop areas such as 5G, IoT, and the business and SME segment throughout the company's Nordic markets. The operator recently merged its Asian clusters to form the Asia Unit and created Asia Hub on 01 May. Telenor Denmark CEO Jesper Hansen will become the Nordic Hub's chief operating officer (CCO) from 01 August but EVP Jukka Leinonen will remain Head of Nordics and CEO of DNA in Finland.

(Telecompaper) Mobile operator A1 Belarus has started testing part of its 5G standalone network. The company claims its network is the first standalone 5G network in the country, with no reliance on the operator's LTE network. 

(Telecompaper) Norwegian communications regulator Nkom has announced the result of the auction that began on 06 May of 4,739 MHz of 5G spectrum. The frequencies were divided into 65 blocks in eight bands, namely low 10 GHz, high 10 GHz, 13 GHz, 18 GHz, 23 GHz, 28 GHz, 32 GHz and 38 GHz. The auction ran for 118 rounds and spectrum was awarded to the existing mobile operators Telenor, Telia and Ice, as well as the newcomers GlobalConnect/Broadnet and Funn, for a total of more than NOK 34 million. Acting spectrum division director Espen Slette said the variety of successful bidders will be beneficial in terms of competitiveness, expansion and resilience.

(Telecompaper) Tele2 Sweden and Telia have announced launches of their 5G networks and 3 Sweden said it would expand the 5G network that came on stream in December, when announced testing.

(Telecompaper) UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is understood to have bowed to pressure from rebel Conservative MPs and drawn up plans to reduce the involvement of Chinese technology company Huawei in the UK 5G network to zero by 2023, reports The Guardian.

(Telecompaper) Revenues for Alibaba's fiscal fourth quarter rose 22 percent from the year to CNY 114.314 billion, compared to growth of 38 percent in the previous quarter and 40 percent in the one before that. The adjusted EBITDA increased by 1 percent to CNY 25.440 billion, against growth of 37 percent in fiscal Q3. The net profit meanwhile sank 88 percent to CNY 3.162 billion, compared to an increase of 62 percent sequentially. 

(Telecompaper) Vodafone Group has announced the appointment of Jean-Francois Van Boxmeer as a Non-Executive Director. He is currently CEO of Heineken and will take up the post after the AGM on 28 July, subject to shareholder approval

(Telecompaper) HPE reported generally lower results for its fiscal second quarter to end April, greatly hit by the global economic lockdowns enacted since February. HPE GreenLake provided a boost to the company, as did its Intelligent Edge Business in North America. But to help navigate the tough times, HPE started a new plan to reduce costs and prioritise investments and resources. Under the three-year Cost Optimization and Prioritization Plan, to run through fiscal year 2022, HPE aims to generate gross savings of at least USD 1.0 billion, with annualised net run-rate savings of at least USD 800 million. It also expects cash funding payments of USD 1-1.3 billion.

(Telecompaper) Altice Europe's French operations generated revenues of EUR 2.64 billion in the first quarter, up 3.6 percent year-on-year (+13.3% in Q4). EBITDA rose 1.6 percent to 975 million, marginally below analysts' consensus forecast. The EBITDA growth rate slowed down sequentially from 19.6 percent in the previous quarter. The French subsidiary continued to account for 73 percent of Altice Europe's revenues, broadly stable year-on-year. 

(Telecompaper) Spain's fifth largest operator Euskaltel has revealed the launch offer for its new Virgin Telco brand, available in 85 percent of the Spanish market where it's not currently present via the Orange Spain network. The flexible range of tariffs includes an FTTH offer at speeds of up to 300Mbps for EUR 33 a month, rising to EUR 39 for 600Mbps broadband. This can be converted into a convergent plan with the addition of a mobile line with 20GB of 4G data and unlimited calls for an extra EUR 6 a month, rising to EUR 29 for a mobile line with unlimited calls and data. A fixed line with unlimited calls to landlines and 100 minutes to mobile numbers costs EUR 6 a month.

(Telecompaper) Apple and Google have released their jointly developed API for Covid-19 tracing apps. The software is expected to help public health authorities build smartphone apps to alert people when they are exposed to the virus.