From Telecoms Europe Events: https://www.telecomseuropeevents.com/
- Richard Benjamins, CEO & Founder, OdiseIA
Telco to TechCo 2025 | Cultivating the right culture in the era of AI
Telco to TechCo 2025 | Agentic AI – How to pass from idea to business case
From Telecoms Europe Events: https://www.telecomseuropeevents.com/
- André Vieira, Pre-sales Senior Manager, Celfocus
- Inês Matos, Head of Network Data Science & AI, Vodafone
Telco to TechCo 2025 | How much progress has cloud native tech made in telecoms?
From Telecoms Europe Events: https://www.telecomseuropeevents.com/
- Philippe Ensarguet, VP Software Engineering, Orange
Telco to TechCo 2025 | Opening PANEL: What is a telco for?
From Telecoms Europe Events: https://www.telecomseuropeevents.com/
- Mark Newman, Chief Analyst, TM Forum
- Colin Bannon, CTO, BT Business
- Mohamed Talaye, CTO, Orange Business
- Anita Döhler, CEO, NGMN Alliance
Fiber Experts and Netzkontor Nord launch 360-Degree fibre deployment system
The German fibre to the home specialists say their “inseyet” monitoring system enables a fully digital record of the entire fibre rollout
Fibre to the home rollouts suffer from complex processes, have embedded inefficiencies and can be prone to errors. Specialises in turnkey FTTH, Fibre Experts Deutschland (FED) has teamed up with fibre engineering planning and construction company Netzkontor Nord to launch “inseyet”, a 360-degree monitoring system enables complete, seamless real-time oversight of the entire fibre optic deployment process. The system enables a fully digital record of the entire fibre rollout.
The system provides network operators and construction partners with a real-time, comprehensive overview of FTTH project progress, including the number of metres of trenches laid and customer connections completed. A key feature is the precise 3D measurement of open trenches using smartphones and GPS rovers. The depth of each trench section, the placement of cables and marker balls and numerous other data points are automatically transmitted to the system, consolidated and verified. This creates a digital twin of the construction project – exactly as it was implemented in reality.
“With ‘inseyet’, we are delivering a fully integrated solution for the entire FTTH rollout process for the first time,” said Fiber Experts managing director Raimund Winkler. “Network operators and construction partners can monitor project progress live and respond to potential issues early. This enhances transparency and efficiency.”
In future, an AI-integrated version of “inseyet” will help detect potential construction site errors at an early stage. It will be able to identify issues such as insufficient trench depth, incorrectly placed marker balls, or overly tight bending radii. The AI will immediately notify construction partners, allowing corrections to be made while the trench is still open. This prevents costly rework and unnecessary delays. The system also automates the documentation of construction progress and facilitates accurate billing processes, enhancing overall project efficiency.
“The integration of artificial intelligence is a milestone for us,” said Netzkontor Nord managing director Dennis Ritter. “Detecting and correcting errors early not only saves time and money but also significantly improves the quality of fibre deployment. Both network operators and construction partners benefit from this.”
Home-grown innovation
Both companies involved in the system have used their experience to ensure the system is robust. To execute its projects, Fiber Experts relies on its own civil engineering capacities as well as a broad network of selected construction partners. The company’s expertise covers the entire FTTH project lifecycle, from planning and design to the installation of fibre connections within homes.
Since FED was founded in June 2021, the Düsseldorf-based company has focused on the expansion of broadband networks in the telecommunications market and offers customised turnkey solutions in the field of fiber optics, area analysis, network planning and implementation throughout Germany. In 2023 the company acquired competitor Eschborn-based Elecnet to expand its base. Netzkontor Nord made a similar move in September last year acquiring Bib Tech a company known for its expertise in broadband network planning and coordination.
Iliad completes hyperscale deal with InfraVia
Europe now has a new sovereign “made in Europe” competitor to the US hyperscalers
The Iliad Group and InfraVia have closed the transaction aimed at developing OpCore into a major European hyperscale data center platform, first announced on 4 December. As a result of the deal, Iliad is selling a 50% stake in OpCore, its data center subsidiary to InfraVia. The strategic partnership is aimed at developing OpCore into a major independent European hyperscale data center platform. OpCore is valued at an enterprise value of €860 million.
OpCore has a 20-year history of operating data centres to meet the needs of the Iliad Group, hyperscalers, techcos and large corporations. It has data centres in Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Poland. Through this partnership, Iliad and InfraVia have provided OpCore with the financial structure it needs to capitalise on the booming European hyperscale data market, by developing new 100 MW+ data centres in France and Europe with several construction projects already underway.
“Together with our partner, InfraVia, we’re looking forward to supporting OpCore’s teams in this ambitious new chapter of the company’s development,” said Iliad CEO Thomas Reynaud (above). “Europe needs independent data centre platforms more than ever before as these infrastructures, dedicated to storing and processing vast amounts of data, are essential enablers for a thriving ‘made in Europe’ AI ecosystem.”
“We’re determined to invest massively alongside the Iliad Group to turn OpCore into a European leader in hyperscale data centres,” InfraVia chief executive officer Vincent Levita. “Achieving this goal means investing at an unprecedented scale to meet the exponential market demand and help shape a robust and sovereign European digital ecosystem.”
The proposed partnership is intended to give OpCore the “right financial structure” with dedicated financing that will cover up to 75% of the required investment in OpCore with bank debt. It would enable OpCore to scale to more than 130 MW by developing a data centre in the Paris region of about 100MW, and then to multiple hundreds of megawatts in Europe.
The plan is that OpCore and the Iliad Group remain close partners, working together rapidly to expand Scaleway, Iliad Group’s cloud subsidiary, and OpCore itself. Scaleway will retain its status as a privileged client of OpCore.
Pardieu Brocas Maffei has advised InfraVia on the negotiation and drafting of the Master Services Agreement as well as on the real estate aspects of the transaction. InfraVia was also assisted by the investment banking firm Perella Weinberg Partners with Gilles Tré-Hardy. The EU nodded through the deal on 21 February.
Legacy OSS is holding back Level 4 Autonomous Networks
Partner content: CSPs, technology providers and standards organisations launched the L4 is ON Joint Initiative at the Autonomous Networks Summit 2025 held at MWC in Barcelona
In recent years, members of the TM Forum has collaborated to create a six-step approach – Level 0 to Level 5 – to measure progress towards network automation and autonomy. The lower levels are already being applied and are delivering immediate cost, efficiency, and agility benefits.
Gaining higher levels is tough, hence communication service providers (CSPs), technology providers and standards organisations launched the L4 is ON Joint Initiative at the Autonomous Networks Summit 2025 held at MWC in Barcelona in March. However, there are many challenges still to overcome, particularly the problem of a mishmash of legacy OSS systems and infrastructure. Where does that leave automation?
The L4 is ON Joint Initiative
We are now evolving towards Level 4 (a high level of automation – see below), and operators are looking to gain additional benefits and address a broad range of scenarios.
That’s why TM Forum held a seminar entitled L4 is ON: Shaping the Future of Autonomous Networks Together during the Autonomous Networks Summit 2025 at MWC[1]. However, that might be considered a simplistic scenario as operators still face multiple challenges in achieving L4 autonomy.
Before diving into those challenges, it’s worth considering what the different levels of autonomy are, ranging from “no automation” to “full automation”, as defined by TM Forum’s members, below:
- Level 0 Manual Management –The system delivers assisted monitoring capabilities, which means all dynamic tasks must be executed manually.
- Level 1 Assisted Management – The system executes a certain repetitive subtask based on preconfigured automation to increase execution efficiency.
- Level 2 Partial Autonomous Network – The system enables closed loop O&M for certain units based on AI models under certain external environments.
- Level 3 Conditional Autonomous Network – Building on L2 capabilities, a system with awareness can sense real-time environmental changes, and in certain network domains, optimise and adjust itself to the external environment to enable intent-based, closed-loop management.
- Level 4 Highly Autonomous Network – Building on L3 capabilities, the system performs, in a more complicated cross-domain environment, and applies analysis to make decisions based on predictive or active closed-loop management of service and customer experience-driven networks.
- Level 5 Fully Autonomous Network – This level is the ultimate goal for telecom network evolution. The system possesses closed-loop automation capabilities across multiple services and domains, throughout the entire lifecycle, achieving autonomous networks.
L4 essentially represents the evolution to a new era of intelligent, self-optimising networks that will boost efficiency, reliability, and innovation for CSPs. The TM Forum seminar brought together influential voices from CSPs, technology providers, and standards organisations to launch the L4 is ON Joint Initiative. It aimed to tackle questions such as:
How do we turn the promise of Level 4 networks into reality?
How can collaboration drive the shift and deliver measurable results?
What must change — operationally and culturally — for L4’s potential to be unlocked?
Retiring legacy OSSs en masse is unrealistic
The seminar fostered dialogue between stakeholders, provided some actionable insights that could be applied to create real-world strategies for advancing Autonomous Networks. However, what is clear is that progress towards L4 is slow with significant challenges to overcome, namely dealing with legacy platforms and infrastructure. These cannot simply be retired en masse. Legacy OSSs support live services and operational processes that are still essential to customers and will be for some time to come.
Of course, operators are looking to track and measure progress towards their automation goals. Many have undertaken self-assessment, using the TM Forum’s six-step framework — the results of which were published during the Autonomous Networks Summit.
Using different categories, CSPs rated their progress to date to calculate an average score for the level of automation achieved, as shown below:
Core Network Stability — Level 3.5
RAN Fault Management — Level 2.8
IP Network Optimisation — Level 2.6
Core Network — Level 2.5
IP Network — Level 2.4
Change Management — Level 1.9
According to the participants, Level 2 has already been achieved for many processes and domains. But progress drops off — and none of the respondents reported that they had achieved Level 4.
So, a gap is opening between target and reality. In our opinion, that’s because as you seek to move to higher levels, operators face a growing challenge for the integration of new automated processes with legacy OSS infrastructure. Yes, the legacy OSS estate will be modernised or replaced over time, but for now such replacement programmes must be considered alongside other investment and transformation priorities.
Consolidating, simplifying and optimising OSS for L4
If we think about the results reported at the Summit, it seems clear that the transition to automation is moving from relatively narrow areas, such as the core network, into others that span domains. The RAN, for example, is a complex domain but one in which there is a finite number of cell sites, typically procured from a single (at most two, currently – notwithstanding progress towards OPEN RAN adoption) vendor.
In this context, it’s relatively easy to automate fault management functions in the RAN, because there are fewer vendor solutions to consider, making the task of integration somewhat easier.
Similarly, the transport (IP network) also likely comes from a narrow range of vendors, so we would probably expect more advanced progress here. What we see is most progress in tightly defined domains that are, at least in concept, relatively isolated from each other – which allows automation to proceed with fewer obstacles and friction.
In both cases, a relatively harmonised infrastructure base means that the interfaces with which automation functions and processes need to integrate are likely to be broadly consistent and follow modern principles – they may all be standardised on best practice form organisations like the TMF, for example.
Change management, on the other hand, spans all domains and is a network-wide discipline. That’s where we encounter the legacy challenge – there will be multiple systems, from many different vendors, serving different functions, services and domains. In this context, there will a heterogenous assembly of protocols and legacy interfaces, from different generations of systems and a wider range of vendors.
Moving from a narrow focus area into one that spans so many systems and entities is, naturally, much harder than, say, automating the RAN. Automating change management for a single vendor solution is necessarily easier than achieving the same thing across a multi-vendor network, OSS and BSS stack.
The results, while promising on one level, hint at the challenges ahead. The more systems and processes that are included within an automation goal (change management or security governance, for example), the more difficult automation becomes – and this is particularly applicable when the automation needs to extend to legacy solutions, such as are found in the OSS domain.
The seminar provided great insights – but is L4 really ON? Well, the answer is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ depending on the situation and the range of systems that need to be included in the required automation framework.
Help is, however, at hand. The We Are CORTEX platform enables integration with legacy interfaces — irrespective of the generation — that can be easily integrated to bring automation to legacy and orphaned services, and OSS elements and silos to create a consolidated future until operators are ready to retire or replace legacy systems.
To find out more about how CORTEX can help you navigate this journey, download our recent paper here
[1] https://www.tmforum.org/2025-autonomous-networks-summit/
Hrvatski Telekom appoints new leader for IT services unit
The Croatian operator’s COO for business customers and board member Marijana Bačić replaces Goran Car
Croatian information and communications technology (ICT) services company Combis will now be headed by Hrvatski Telekom (HT) COO for business customers and board member Marijana Bačić (above) from 1 May. She is replacing Goran Car who has been director at Combis for the past five years – which is an independent entity wholly owned by HT. Founded in 1990 in Dubrovnik, Combis became part of the HT Group in 2010 through HT’s acquisition of the entire share capital of Combis.
Since September 2022, Bačić has been in charge of sales, marketing, customer and technical services for business customers and ICT operations at the telco. HT signalled that the position of director of the management board of Combis will be held by a member of the management board of Hrvatski Telekom.
“HT Group, of which Combis is a part, has development plans, with a clear focus on growth, providing innovative solutions and a superior customer experience. Marijana Bačić, who has extensive experience and in-depth knowledge of the telecommunications and ICT industry, will contribute to the growth of the HT Group and the development of our customers’ businesses in her new dual role,” said Hrvatski Telekom and Combis board president Nataša Rapaić.
She added: “I would like to thank Goran Car for his leadership of Combis over the past five years, during which Combis has achieved significant growth and strengthened its position as one of the leading system integrators in the region.”
Regional play
Goran Car has been the director and board member of Combis since March 2020 and after more than 20 years of career in Combis and HT Group, he has decided to “look for new professional challenges outside the HT Group.” He successfully led Combis through various market and business challenges, and during his mandate, the company established itself as a VMware partner and has evolved from a small company to a regional leader in system integration with subsidiaries in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
The company has won some big names as well. In 2023, in collaboration with Hrvatski Telekom and Samsung Electronics Adriatic, Combis completed a digital transformation of McDonald’s restaurants across Croatia. The project involved the installation and centralised management of information and promotional content, enabling simultaneous content updates from the cloud at all locations nationwide. Combis also developed and implemented a cloud-based contact centre for Croatia Osiguranje, the largest insurance company in Croatia.
HT’s move for closer control of Combis suggests the telco hasn’t given up on regional aspirations either. It owns a majority stake in Montenegro’s incumbent operator Cronogorski Telekom and a minority stake in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s HT Mostar. In February it posted an FY24 6% YoY revenue increase, driven by robust performance in mobile, fixed services and system solutions.
In January 2025, Hrvatski Telekom completed the merger of HT Servisi into HT Inc., further streamlining operations and boosting organisational efficiency. Another significant milestone for Hrvatski Telekom was the 3G network retirement, which was concluded in Q1 2025. At its most recent results in February, the telco confirmed its stance on regional expansion remains “unchanged as we diligently assess potential M&A opportunities”.
A1 completes international DWDM network upgrade with Nokia
The telco has seen a big bandwidth boost after introducing L-band to its WDM frequencies
A1 Telekom Austria, has successfully modernised its international Wideband Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) network using Nokia’s 1830 PSS optical transport platform. The telco said the technology significantly enhances its capacity to handle vastly increased bandwidth. Thanks to the introduction of an additional WDM frequency band, the L-band, A1 has doubled the available fibre spectrum, and so can deploy twice the number of WDM channels over its existing fibre infrastructure.
The newly implemented Nokia 1830 PSS system offers “advanced spectrum flexibility and optimised performance” across the network. As a result, A1 is now capable of transporting data at speeds up to 400Gbps, 600Gbps, and 800Gbps, with plans to scale up to 1.2 Tbps in the near future. This represents a significant leap from the previous maximum of 100 Gbps.
As part of the modernisation, A1 Telekom Austria replaced 68 ILA sites and 24 Add-Drop nodes across 6,478km of its fibre infrastructure. The integration of the new amplifiers posed significant technical challenges, particularly the migration of amplifiers between add-drop nodes, which had to be completed within the same maintenance window. However, through coordination with local partners, A1 Telekom Austria said it overcame these obstacles, ensuring the smooth execution of the project.
The modernisation process now means A1 can offer an enhanced and fully optimised network that serves customers across three best-in-class routes from the Turkish border to Frankfurt. A1 said this upgraded network provides robust connectivity to all major capitals and cities between Turkey and Germany.
“We are excited to introduce the latest technology to our international WDWM network, which will undoubtedly provide our customers with improved connectivity and future-proof performance,” said A1 Telekom Austria International business director Denis Filazafovitch (above).
He added: “This project demonstrates our commitment to innovation and our ability to work closely with local partners to deliver state-of-the-art infrastructure. The new network ensures that we are well-positioned to meet the increasing demands for bandwidth in the years ahead.”
“We are proud to work with A1 for the modernisation of its international network, where our services capabilities have been crucial to the overall project success,” said Nokia head of optical networks Europe Stefano Grieco. “The integration of our 1830 PSS system marks a significant milestone in enabling A1 to meet the ever-growing demand for high-capacity services. This upgrade not only enhances network performance and scalability but also reaffirms our commitment to providing innovative solutions that drive the future of connectivity.”
FT says MasOrange’s private equity backers considering a 2026 IPO
Separately, MasOrange’s fibre JV with Vodafone Spain is seeking an investor
The Financial Times reports [subscription needed] that the private equity backers of MasOrange are mulling the possibility of an initial public offering (IPO) in 2026, looking to “cash out some of their assets”.
MasOrange’s earnings report for its first full calendar year of operation, published in February, indicated that it is performing in line with expectations. It had total revenues of €7.388 billion in 2024, a 1.5% increase on the previous year. EBITDA increased 10.8% to €2.803 billion.
MasOrange said it expected to gain the projected synergies from the merger, having already saved about €120 million of the total projected €500 million savings. It added it is on schedule to exceed €300 million in savings in 2025.
Who owns MasOrange?
MasOrange was formed from the €20 billion merger of Orange Spain and MasMovil in 2022 to become Spain’s biggest operator. MasMovil was owned by KKR, Cinven and Providence Equity Partners. They bought MasMovil in 2020 for about €5 billion when it was Spain’s fourth largest operator behind Telefonica, Orange and Vodafone.
Citing unnamed sources, the FT article stressed that no final decision had been made.
Importantly, Orange has the option to buy a controlling stake in MasOrange at the IPO price.
Looking for fibre investor
Separately, MasOrange is apparently looking to sell as stake in the the fibre optic joint venture is announced in January, in partnership with Vodafone Spain. The two plan to build a fibre network that passes about 23 million premises. If an investor can be found, it will take a 40% stake, with MasOrange holding a 50% share and Vodafone Spain holding the remaining 10%.
Apparently the deal is expected to close in the first half of this calendar year.
