MoU hailed as “a cornerstone in our journey towards achieving the goals of Qatar’s National Vision 2030”
The announcement was lacked detail but promised “a comprehensive strategy to upgrade ESG [environmental, social and governance] practices” on multiple fronts. They said this “will likely set new standards in the field”.
Energy efficiency is at the heart of the strategy. Both parties intend to identify and implement solutions reduce the amount of energy used by the network.
They will cooperate to improve circular economy practices by embeding them into operations. For example, the reuse, recycling and refurbishment of hardware, to maximise value to the end of its life cycle.
They will explore improving social inclusion, addressing connectivity challenges, and fostering digital skills and training programmes to help engage, educate, and empower marginalised communities. It will be interesting to watch progress here.
Sheikh Ali Bin Jabor Bin Mohammad Al Thani, CEO of Ooredoo Qatar, stated, “This MoU is a cornerstone in our journey towards achieving the goals of Qatar’s National Vision 2030, emphasising the critical role of innovative technologies in creating a prosperous and sustainable future for Qatar and beyond.
“Through our joint efforts, we aim to lead by example and advance our nation by implementing key practices that not only benefit our customers but also the environment.”
Launch is scheduled for 2026 but the emphasis is on investment in upskilling, grants and mentoring with the aim of driving cloud adoption
Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to launch an AWS infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia in 2026. It has committed to invest more than $5.3 billion in the country.
The new region will comprise three Availability Zones at launch. AWS says it will offer greater choice to all kinds and sizes of companies in the Kingdom and enable those who wish to keep their data within its borders to do so.
Prasad Kalyanaraman, VP and President of Infrastructure Services at AWS, commented, “The new AWS Region will enable organizations to unlock the full potential of the cloud and build with AWS technologies like compute, storage, databases, analytics, and artificial intelligence, transforming the way businesses and institutions serve their customers.”
Upskilling initiatives
Part of the promised investment will be spent on upskilling initiatives to speed cloud adoption in Saudi Arabia. One example is the pledge to launch the AWS Saudi Arabia Women’s Skills Initiative with Skillsoft Global Knowledge. The aim is to train up to 4,000 women to use AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials. The courses will be free of charge and held in classrooms with AWS-certified professionals.
AWS will also invest in training students, developers and technical and non-technical professionals through vehicles like the AWS Academy, AWS Educate, AWS re/Start, and AWS Skill Builder.
Innovation centres
The company plans to build two innovation centres and provide start-ups in the Middle East and North Africa with technical mentorship and trainings on AWS technologies such as AI and ML.
AWS will also make grants available to fund graduate student research and provide free AWS Skill Builder subscriptions for up to 4,000 individuals working for small and medium enterprises established in Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) will collaborate with Amazon through MCIT’s Future Skills initiative to encourage Saudi talent to sign up for the skills development academy, which is operated by Saudi Digital Academy (SDA) and TUWAIQ Academy.
Continuing global expansion
AWS has 105 Availability Zones across 33 geographic regions globally. Along with this announcement about plans in Saudi Arabia, AWS said it intends to launch 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud
Market research shows main growth in neutral host networks will be from industrial, rather than public space, deployments
Boldyn Networks, the neutral host company, has closed its acquisition of Cellnex’s private networks business unit. The deal was announced last November.
Notably, it includes Edzcom, a Finnish firm that pioneered the design, build and operation of private 4G and 5G networks for enterprises in manufacturing, transport hubs, oil and gas, energy generation, and mining industries.
Boldyn claims the acquisition positions as a key player in the private networks market and widens its portfolio of wireless solutions.
More than 50 private networks
With this acquisition, Boldyn gains a portfolio of more than 50 private networks in Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It also moves Boldyn’s closer to its overall 5G strategy goals, with the former Edzcom team becoming part of Boldyn’s Group Strategy team.
Igor Leprince, Group CEO of Boldyn Networks, said, “By bringing Cellnex’s private networks business unit under the Boldyn umbrella, not only are we acquiring additional expertise, but growing our capability to interconnect the most complex environments.”
Justin Berger, Group Chief Strategy Officer for Boldyn, called the acquisition “a perfect addition…as we strive to provide more top-tier connectivity to power industrial transformation.
“We’ll increasingly see bespoke private networks enable 5G use cases. Like enterprise automation, advanced robotics, video surveillance, smart IoT devices working in large areas, employee safety, and many others. Private 5G networks provide secure connectivity to unlock new services and the ability for customers to control and monitor the network in real time.
“We can’t wait to contribute with developing more 5G use cases that can drastically improve efficiency and productivity across many sectors.”
Right on the money?
A recent study by ABI Research predicts that revenues from neutral host connectivity will reach $1.3 billion by 2030. Interestingly, it forecasts 65% of that total to come from industrial manufacturing, logistics including warehousing and energy generation.
This signals a shift away from previous scenarios that were expected to drive the market, such as campuses, shopping malls, office complexes, stadia and other public venues like transport hubs.
Leo Gergs, Principal Analyst for Enterprise Connectivity and 5G markets at ABI Research,
said demand for neutral host networks is driven by higher energy prices and constrained budgets, which in turn are driving digitalisation and encouraging enterprises to outsource their corporate network infrastructure to a neutral host or managed services provider.
ABI Research only talking about connectivity revenues from neutral host networks. Last November, ResearchandMarkets predicted the wider, global neutral host market will reach $8.7 billion by 2028. It expects neutral hosting for private enterprise and industrial solutions will combine Wi-Fi6, LTE and 5G.
Greg McCall, Chief Networks Officer at BT Group, on how a maturing device ecosystem and progress with carrier aggregation give the green light
Greg McCall, Chief Networks Officer at BT Group, said the operator will be ready to launch 5G Standalone (SA) “later this year” as the network and device pieces fall into place.
“It’s not about being first for us. It’s about delivering at the right time and making sure that we focus on delivering a differentiated, brilliant experience for our customers,” he said in an interview with Mobile Europe at Mobile World Congress.
BT’s position on 5G SA has been that it needs four elements to be in place before it would consider launching services for its mobile brand EE: device availability, SIM card support, the 5G core network, and a radio access network (RAN) that can provide “contiguous” 5G SA coverage. McCall shared the current progress in each area.
“We believe the ecosystem has matured now,” he said, noting that there are more device manufacturers that support 5G SA and that all of operator’s customers have “an SA-enabled SIM card,” which will make the transition from 5G Non-standalone (NSA) to SA “a lot easier.”
As for the network, BT has deployed a 5G core in its own private cloud environment as part of its broader programme to swap out its Huawei core for Ericsson’s. The operator has also “modernised” 7,000 radio sites, replacing more than 5,000 sites from Huawei with radios from either Ericsson or Nokia.
“We will be ready to launch what we think will be the first proper 5G SA network in the UK later this year,” said McCall.
BT will not be the first to offer 5G SA in the UK as Virgin Media O2 unveiled services last week and Vodafone launched in June last year.
Good to go with carrier aggregation
5G SA deployments have not progressed as quickly as many in the industry would like. According to the GSMA, 261 operators offer 5G services but only 47 are delivered over SA networks.
From BT’s perspective, McCall said the transition to 5G SA has been slow due to a lack of carrier aggregation technology for combining mid-band frequencies.
“The big difference between NSA and SA is carrier aggregation – being able to aggregate multiple carriers to deliver the experience our customers expect…The technology for carrier aggregation around the spectrum bands in the UK wasn’t available until more recently. That’s what slowed it down,” he said.
“Now that we’ve proven carrier aggregation around SA, we are ready to launch. We now are making sure we can build that contiguous coverage in our radio network, so when people are using SA, they can use it wherever they go, not just in isolated patches,” he added.
McCall said the wind down went “brilliantly.” The operator’s business and consumer customer service centres have not had a spike in calls following the network shutdown and it “hasn’t had to roll back a single site.”
The legacy switch-off will deliver energy savings, because 3G is “incredibly energy hungry”, and the spectrum can be refarmed to support other services, he explained.
The operator is currently weighing whether to “hold off” and use the freed-up spectrum as it launches 5G SA or whether to start using it now. “We haven’t made a decision on that yet, but the process of reusing the spectrum is simple,” he said.
Partner content: Operators integrating cloud technology into their core networks, transport and RAN infrastructure are reshaping the industry’s future
This digital transformation in the network, fostered by 5G but initiated with the 4G core virtualisation, marks a pivotal shift from traditional, hardware-centric networks to software-driven, cloud-based architectures. With this transition, operators can dynamically allocate resources, automate processes, and rapidly deploy new services, enabling them to stay agile and competitive in an ever-evolving market landscape.
Beyond the technical challenges, cultural and organisational shifts are imperative for the successful adoption of cloud-native practices. Telecom operators must cultivate a culture of innovation, collaboration and continuous learning within their teams. Embracing DevOps principles, breaking down silos between departments, and fostering a mindset of experimentation and adaptation are crucial elements in harnessing the full potential of cloud technology.
By aligning their people, processes, and technology with the principles of agility and flexibility, Telecom operators can truly unlock the transformative power of the cloud in shaping the future of the industry.
However, to succeed in this journey, some key points must be addressed.
Cloud technology is not new
Telecom operators have been moving to the cloud for quite some time, and this journey is familiar, especially for the IT teams. However, for the network teams, things are more complex.
For example, when Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) appeared, the first feedback from network engineers was: “Why do I need this?”. For some use cases, NFV was more expensive. So, why did we begin to virtualise the core network and have worse results than other cloud migrations in the BSS domain? The answer is complex, but the basis of it is one of the main pain points in every digital transformation: culture. The best deployments of NFV were from the teams that created a true DevOps culture for the network’s cloudification.
Virtualised core is not new either
The core network, the backbone of telecom operations, is transforming significantly. Adopting cloud-native principles and technologies within the core network architecture promises improved operational agility, enhanced service delivery, and reduced operating costs. Nowadays, most of the operators have the 4G core and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) 100% virtualised, and for most of them, the results achieved were good, but not great.
The holy grail of cloud-native has not yet been achieved. Some crucial issues still need to be addressed to become a true cloud-native core:
There must be no cloud fragmentation, and projects such as Sylva are fundamental for this.
The VNF/ Cloud-Native Network Functions (CNFs) vendors must update their applications.
A proper AIOps solution is still needed to efficiently manage these VNFs/CNFs.
However, not everything is bad news at the core. The RAN is still taking its first steps in cloudification. But we’ll delve deeper into that in the next chapter.
RAN cloudification
The modernisation of the RAN, a critical and costly domain of the telecom network responsible for the wonders of mobile phones, is pivotal in this era of rapid technological evolution. The cloudification of the RAN, denoted as Cloud-RAN or C-RAN, involves transitioning RAN functions to a virtualised environment in the cloud.
This approach promises operational efficiencies and cost savings and opens new avenues for service innovation. By leveraging cloud capabilities, Telecom operators can deploy new services more swiftly and flexibly, responding more effectively to market demands and customer needs.
All this sounds great. The virtualisation of the core is going well. So, why is RAN still in its early stages? The answer is that virtual core efficiency still needs to be acceptable for the thousands of mini-data centers for RAN workloads.
We should not change or force digital transformations because it is a trend; we must always do it with a business case to support the decision, and for the RAN, most operators do not have a business case for cloudification. However, with the implementation of cloud-native workloads on the core, this will undoubtedly change.
Open RAN’s role in digital transformation
Open RAN is excellent. Period. Nevertheless, we need to talk about the role of Open RAN in paving the way for RAN cloudification. The standards and the tests that are being done (in this case, I’m referring to the disaggregation of the BBU in CU and DU) are fundamental to starting the massive RAN cloudification. Conclusions
The move towards cloud-based telecom networks brings significant operational efficiencies and opportunities for cost optimisation. Virtualisation and cloudification enable Telecom operators to utilise their infrastructure better, reduce reliance on physical hardware, and lower energy consumption. These changes contribute to a more sustainable operation model and align with the global push towards greener technologies.
The transformation of telecom networks through cloud integration, core evolution, and RAN modernisation opens many opportunities for innovation and monetisation. Telecom operators are now better positioned to develop and deploy new services catering to diverse customer needs, such as 5G Mobile Private Networks (MPN) slicing, edge computing, and IoT solutions. This potential for innovation and operational efficiency sets the stage for Telecom operators to explore new business models and revenue streams.
Moreover, collaboration among Telecom operators, technology vendors, and other stakeholders is paramount in driving this transformation. The collective effort towards standardisation, security, and skill development is critical in realising the full potential of cloud-based telecom networks.
The author
André Antunes Vieira is Operational Intelligence Lead at Celfocus.
André Vieira started his career providing consulting and engineering services in telecommunications, developing and leading several projects focused on telcos across Europe, Africa, and Asia.
In 2021, he joined Celfocus to manage the Celfocus Order Management Product. He refined product offerings and managed customer relationships and partnerships.
He is now leading the offer of a Business Unit – Operational Intelligence – that combines technologies and professional services that speed up the delivery of the foundations of digital transformation while leveraging the Telecom Operator ecosystem.
Since February 2023, he has also been the leader of the communication and adoption working group for Project Sylva, a Linux Foundation Europe project
The cost of doing business in the country has soared now its currency is not pegged to the US dollar
MTN Nigeria Communications has posted a loss after tax of N137 billion (about €79 million) for the 2023 financial year, despites its service revenue increasing 22.4% to N2.5 trillion.
Likewise Airtel’s revenue in Nigeria for the nine months ended 31 December 2023 fell 21.96% to $1.24 billion (€1.144 billion) from $1.59 billion although in constant currency, the firm’s revenue grew by 22.7%.
Airtel operates in 14 African countries. Nigeria had been the most profitable, but over the last nine months, its Francophone markets (Niger, Chad, Rwanda Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo and Gabon) have reported impressive growth of 8.5% overall on the previous year.
The fall is the result of Central Bank of Nigeria’s decision to let the naira trade freely. It had been pegged against the dollar for many years. The naira has fallen 70% against the American dollar since June 2023 meaning the cost of doing business in Nigeria has soared, aggravated by inflation as well as the plunging exchange rate.
Towering costs
MTN is Africa’s biggest mobile services providers by subscribers and Nigeria accounts for about a third of its revenues. An example of how its operating costs have risen is that MTN Nigeria leases almost 16,000 towers from the independent US towerco IHS Towers.
As MTN Nigeria’s tower leases are indexed to the dollar, costs are estimated to have increased by 45-50%. MTN owns 26 per cent of IHS and is at loggerheads with the towerco over governance and is demanding voting rights commensurate with its stake. Last autumn MTN Nigeria announced its intention to switch from IHS to American Tower Corporation for some 2,500 sites.
Karl Toriola, CEO of MTN Nigeria, said in a statement, “This development contributed meaningfully to the upward pressure on the cost of doing business in Nigeria, and for MTN Nigeria in particular, significantly increased the costs in relation to our tower leases.”
MTN group’s annual results are due to be announced on 25 March. Although its Nigerian business has been dealt a severe blow beyond its control, the operator reported a 45% increase in data traffic, and a 49% rise in mobile money transactions.
The two have stepped up with work on AI algorithms at Vodafone’s innovation centre in Spain, working with the Telecommunication Institute of University of Málaga
Vodafone is extending its collaboration with Intel on optimising algorithms for 5G Open RAN at the operator’s innovation centre in Málaga, Spain. The aim is to improve performance and reduce energy consumption.
They work alongside the Telecommunication Institute of University of Málaga to improve Open RAN architecture and expand the emerging ecosystem.
The three are working towards Vodafone’s planned UK commercial deployment of fourth generation Intel Xeon processors with Intel vRAN Boost in the first half of this year.
Their most recent focus has been developing “ultra-efficient” AI and machine learning algorithms for massive MIMO deployments. The intention is to integrate them into test silicon produced by Intel and establish new benchmarks for industrial internet applications.
Across the entire footprint
Vodafone plans to embed such algorithms and technologies the footprint of its entire mobile network, including the core, edge, access and radio, The idea is that it will then be ready to meet future demand and provide new, 5G-based service like network slicing.
Vodafone claims in a press statement, this “will represent a step change in computation without the need for multiple chipsets in radio units. This will give Vodafone the necessary processing power to continually improve speeds and capacity for customers for years to come, while delivering critical services when and where they are needed.”
Santiago Tenorio, Vodafone’s Director of Network Architecture, said, “Open RAN has opened the doors to unforeseen benefits through greater disaggregation. Vodafone and its partners are now focused on realising this potential to reduce costs and improve energy savings while enhancing performance for our customers.”
AI is “here to stay” and the industry must embrace the hundreds or thousands of use cases it could enable, says Deutsche Telekom’s Group CEO, Tim Höttges
In his keynote last week, Deutsche Telekom’s CEO Tim Höttges portrayed AI as the most consequential technology that has “affected everything on this planet”. He said it is the biggest thing that the telecom industry has to embrace.
AI was by far the biggest theme of MWC24 and DT was at the heart of some of notable developments at the show. “AI is here and has come to stay. We will see hundreds, thousands of new use cases that will make our industry better,” Höttges said.
“Who the hell needs apps?”
One of the most interesting developments with potentially far-reaching implications is an AI-enabled phone that is free of apps announced ahead of MWC. DT demonstrated the concept on its own-branded T Phone at the show. An AI-based assistant replaces all the apps on smartphones so that people can access what they need through a “generative interface” via voice or text. DT is working with Brain.ai and Qualcomm to develop the technology in Europe and the US.
“This is the end of the app… We will make the phone entirely app-free. Who the hell needs apps? I don’t want to have an app,” he said.
He ranted about how apps are “doing something in the background of my phone with my data,” and need multiple passwords and some are not even used that often. “Why can’t I talk to my phone and say, ‘I want to buy something’ and AI is looking for the service and giving me the results immediately, and there is no intermediary anymore?”
“In five or ten years from now, nobody will use apps anymore. We will use the interface of speech, or an easy way of asking the system, and be automatically connected to the functionalities of the apps,” he said.
While a tantalising idea, there are many issues to be resolved to get to this juncture and the app platforms themselves, and others are working on the same basis. For example, OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, is planning a GPT store and Apple itself has had a sudden change of heart. It will now allow progressive web apps to run on the iPhone.
Telco AI Alliance
At MWC, the CEOs of the five telcos in the Global Telco AI Alliance met for the first time and announced plans to create a joint venture company. The Alliance comprises DT, e& Group, Singtel, SoftBank and SK Telecom. Established in July 2023 by four of the operators, SoftBank’s participation was announced this week.
The JV plans to develop Large Language Models (LLMs) for telcos’ needs. They will be focused on customer service interactions via digital assistants and chatbots.
For Höttges, the rationale for the Alliance is that telcos are best placed to know what they need for their own use cases. Also, they don’t want to be reliant on others.
“We do not want to become dependent on the hyperscalers alone. We want to build our own system. We want to refine it in our way…We understand our world better and therefore we have to train the model ourselves,” he said.
He also left the door open for other telcos to join the Alliance “maybe at a later stage.”
DT marshals AI efforts from central unit
DT has established an AI Competence Centre (AICC) with a team of 500 AI experts who develop products using the tech as well as manage and coordinate projects across the organisation. They are in charge of “defining the rules,” buying licenses, organising development, and dispatching IT experts to help various teams create AI tools.
The operator has myriad AI use cases currently in practice, almost too many to keep track of. Höttges said, “we stopped counting after 400 use cases.”
“What we are striving for is not about cost savings alone,” he said. While productivity is one of the elements, he said there are “endless gains” from AI in the way telcos can serve their customers better.
Top of mind for Höttges is being more energy efficient, ensuring higher quality, increasing network stability, automated networks, predictive manintenance, anomaly detection, and individualized offerings for customers, just to name a few.
For example, DT has developed an AI-based tool that automates some of the network planning for rolling out fibre-to-the-home. The tech has improved the productivity of the FTTH buildout by 75%, he said.
In the radio access network, DT uses AI to automatically switch off equipment during the day or night when sites are not in use to save energy. He said the operator has seen savings of €50 million in the first year of using “AI-automated steering” of mobile sites in its European and German network footprints.
AI at the top
Höttges said AI is “a CEO topic” and that telco leaders need to define the company’s strategy, “show the organisational importance” of AI, and “take away the interest in the organisation about losing their jobs.”
DT has trained 75,000 people in AI so far, and they are not only “IT people,” he said.
“Everybody should have a feeling about AI, otherwise they will be against it. Teach the people about the benefits of AI throughout the entire organisation,” he advised.
Kyvistar’s CTO tells Mobile Europe how cyberattack in December 2023 caused a devastating outage but strong partnerships are playing a big part in its resurgence
Restoring mobile sites destroyed by Russian drone strikes is the “new reality” for Ukrainian operator Kyivstar after two years of war. But a cyberattack in December 2023 caused a devastating outage that disrupted services for days across the country.
The operator has become used to losing up to 10 sites every month in areas along the border with Russia and on the front line. “Yesterday, we lost around three sites and restored one,” said Volodymyr Lutchenko, Chief Technology Officer at Kyivstar, speaking to Mobile Europe at MWC.
The targeted, physical network damage impacts services only in those geographic areas while the rest of the network is “very stable and reliable,” he explained. However, the cyberattack on 12 December took down the entire network and affected services for 24 million people.
Partners join cyber recovery effort
Lutchenko shared some details about how long services were out. The operator recovered the fixed-line network in eight hours. But for the mobile network, it took 35 hours to restore voice services and 52 to 55 hours to restore data services.
“Total recovery [took] more time, but those were the times for the service restorations. It was incredible work by the team, who worked four to five days without any interruption or pause,” he said.
Kyivstar also had support from the country’s other operators as well as vendors Ericsson and ZTE during the network recovery. Microsoft’s Detection and Response Team (DART) and Cisco’s Talos Incident Response also jumped into action to help.
“As soon as they learned we had been hit, they immediately proposed their support,” said Lutchenko.
He said it’s “very difficult” to be prepared for cyberattacks. “You have to win every battle, but your enemy has to win only once.”
“Any kind of defence can be breached, but the very important thing is how you react after that breach. That’s the experience we gained after this attack. I’m sure after this attack, we become stronger,” he said.
War not stopping network expansion
Lutchenko’s “number one” priority for this year continues to be keeping Kyivstar’s network up and running to provide communication services people need that are critical during the war. But it is not easy. To give an idea of what he and his colleagues are dealing with, he said the operator has lost three regional data centres housing “major core sites” in the last two years, the third of which was knocked out in January this year by a rocket attack.
In addition to focusing on network resilience and repairs, he is also determined to carry on with Kyivstar’s network strategy to build more coverage, capacity, and new services just as the operator would have before the Russian invasion in February 2022.
“We are not stopping our network development even during the war,” he said.
Kyivstar’s LTE network covers 95% of the population. The operator aims to expand that to 98% by the end of 2026 to provide “uninterrupted” LTE coverage along national and international roads as well as to “small villages”.
In June 2023, VEON Group and its subsidiary Kyivstar pledged to invest $600 million over the next three years to fund the Ukrainian operator’s infrastructure expansion, digital service development, and community support projects. Part of these funds will go towards building more fibre access and 4G network coverage. The operator is currently testing 5G.
Open to Open RAN
The $600 million investment will also support Kyivstar’s open RAN trials.
At MWC, Kyivstar signed a letter of intent with Rakuten Symphony to use the company’s open RAN technology. The agreement follows a previous tie-up between the Ukrainian operator and Rakuten Group, announced in August 2023, to collaborate on open RAN and digital services as part of Ukraine’s reconstruction.
“We’re always eager to discover new technologies. Open RAN is challenging the standard telco environment. We are in the stage of learning more details about this. The first step is to start lab tests and then small network proof of concept… It’s important to understand if it is easier or harder from a planning, operation, and maintenance point of view,” he said.
But the cooperation with Rakuten is “much wider” and not only about Open RAN. “Rakuten is a digital company,” he said.
Working together, Kyivstar sees opportunity to develop new consumer and B2B products. He pointed out that Rakuten’s Viber is already well established, installed on nine out of 10 smartphones, and heavily used in the country.
In January, Rakuten opened a new office in Kyiv. The Japanese group has software development and digital marketing teams in Ukraine for three of its businesses: Rakuten Viber, Rakuten Advertising and Rakuten Rewards.
The operator saw a 15% subscriber increase in Romania, Spain and Italy, up to 23.8m revenue generating units (RGUs)
Romanian telco Digi Communications has delivered big jumps in revenue, subscribers and EBITDA in its preliminary financial results for the year ended 31 December 2023, with Spain proving to be a very successful market entry.
Following the European Commission’s approval of the creation of a joint venture by Orange and MásMóvil, Digi scored 60MHz of spectrum assets from the two, plus an optional national roaming agreement. Both moves allow Digi to significantly enhance its network capabilities and competitiveness in Spain, further supported by the ongoing expansion of its fibre network. Meanwhile, its 5G launch this month boosts Digi Spain’s offerings with high-speed, affordable connectivity.
Group revenue for the year ended 31 December 2023 was €1.7 billion compared with €1.5 billion (up 13.2% YoY). Group Ebitda was €509.3 million (up 19% YoY). Meanwhile Group RGUs were up 15% YoY to 23.8m – driven mainly by mobile sign-ups in Romania and Spain. Digi’s operating expenses for the year were €1.2bn compared with €1.13bn YoY as the operator expanded its network and subscriber base.
Romania saw 5.8m RGUs (up 18% YoY) while Spain saw an impressive 4.6m RGUs (up 23% YoY). In Romania, PayTV and broadband RGUs increased 5% and 9% respectively while in Spain broadband and fixed telephony grew albeit from small user bases.
Digi said it was “on track” for the launch of commercial services in 2024 in Portugal. The operator also has a wholesale agreement for national roaming in Belgium with Proximus. In 2024 the operator said it will be expanding its Romanian mobile network and rolling out equipment to service the new frequencies. In Spain it will continue developing its fixed infrastructure. In Portugal, it will continue with its mobile and fixed infrastructures development.
Digi said almost 870,000 subscribers ported onto its network in Romania through the year. In Spain, it saw a net gain of almost 604,000 porting onto its network.
Remarkable growth
Digi Communications CEO Serghei Bulgac (above) said the telco “experienced remarkable growth in 2023. Our core markets, Romania and Spain, continued to be highly competitive last year, but this did not impact negatively on our growth rates.” When pressed by analysts on the service launch dates for Portugal and Belgium he replied: “Please bear with us…I think we will stop commenting on exact launch date as its as it’s not helpful and it is quite difficult to predict.” He added that Digi will offer both fixed and mobile services in Portugal.
He confirmed the group’s FY24 capex outlook would be around €650m. On the company’s FY24 growth prospects he said: “We hope to continue the efforts and the growth results that we achieved in 2023…of course with certain variations, especially given that in Romania in the fixed operations we are already very mature – both the market and us – and our position is pretty strong. So we do expect further declines in growth in this area.”
On ARPU, Bulgac confirmed there were no immediate plans to increase prices in the markets it operates in. “If you look at our ARPU numbers it is continuous [at] €5.8 at the group level,” he said. “We do not forecast an [ARPU] increase. We do not forecast a decrease and basically our policy is to maintain our prices.”
He added: “Certainly, there will be a variation in the prices but it will come from the new customers taking new packages. And it may be that they [may create] somewhat downward pressure on the ARPU – again, if more new customers take smaller packages or less expensive packages [but] only from this point of view.
“Other than that, we certainly are not decreasing the prices and we’re also not planning to increase the prices in the current future,” he said.
