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French government makes €500m bid for Atos’ advanced computing assets

The government is keen to keep the assets in French hands as the group secures communications for the French military and is debt-laden

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that the beleaguered French IT group, Atos, has entered negotiations with the government over the potential acquisition of its advanced computing activities for an enterprise value of €500 million.

Atos secures communications for the French military and secret services. It also manufactures servers from which to build supercomputers but is in the throes of restructuring in an effort to tackle its large debt. The government has been attempting to close a deal with the company for some months, as it is keen to keep and control Atos’ strategic technology assets within the country.

The plan is to have an agreed share purchase agreement signed by 31 May, the point at which an exclusivity period ends, Atos said in a statement. An an initial payment of €150 million will be payable as soon as the deal is signed.

The offer could rise to €625 million including earn-outs, Atos added.

Atos was hailed as one of Europe’s champions in software and technology sector but has been on the close to financial collapse for some months. Its recovery depends on the implementation of the accelerated safeguard plan it has drawn up.

“It is the role of the French State to guarantee, as a shareholder when it is justified, the perennity and development of the industrial activities that are most strategic for our sovereignty,” Finance Minister Antoine Armand was quoted by Reuters saying on Monday.

Advanced Computing, Critical Systems and Cyber Products are part of Atos’ cybersecurity unit BDS. They employ about 4,000 people and generate about €900 million annually.

Atos said it would also launch a formal sale process for Critical Systems and Cyber Products.

Targeted policy rather than consolidation per se delivers better outcomes

Ookla analysis looks into how the number of operators in EU and other high-end markets affects outcomes

Ookla has analysed how the number of operators in a market affects network quality and consumer prices across the European Union and other high-income countries in a new report.

According to Speedtest Intelligence, three-player mobile markets in the EU delivered median download speeds 56% faster than their four-player counterparts in Q2-Q3 2024. (Note: Mobile Europe believes too much emphasis is put on network speed rather than coverage and reliability by regulators and therefore operators – but see more on the apparent importance of speed below.) Further, seven of the 10 fastest European countries were in three-player markets. 

There are notable exceptions, including Denmark, Sweden and France, which are four-player markets. However, in these markets, network sharing is more prevalent than typical.

The report also found that the number of operators in a market is not a strong predictor of the availability of 5G. Factors including population density, economic development and the availability of spectrum play a bigger role.

According to Speedtest Intelligence’s data, three- and four-player markets in the European Union showed comparable levels of 4G availability in between Q2 and Q3 this year, at 93.59% and 93.65% respectively.

Faster speed, higher ARPU

Speedtest Intelligence data reveals a positive correlation between download speeds and average revenue per user (ARPU) in four-player markets across the EU, with higher ARPU in markets like Denmark, Sweden and France potentially driving better performance outcomes. 

The paper concludes that, “There is no one-size-fits-all concentration profile that uniformly optimises network quality and consumer pricing outcomes in every country.

“Exceptional outcomes in countries such as Denmark — a four-player market with low concentration but very high median download speed — and the Netherlands — a three-player market with high concentration and also high median download speed — suggest a targeted policy toolkit, rather than the blunt instrument of consolidation, is needed to achieve balanced outcomes across a bloc with highly diverse market contexts.”

Download the white paper from here.

Yogesh Mallik leaves Tele2, Ove Wik becomes acting CTIO

Tele2 is undergoing a series of changes since Iliad Group indirectly became its largest shareholder in October

It seems Yogesh Malik (pictured) has abruptly left his role as CTIO of the European network operator Tele2 which has opcos in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Ove Wik, who is head of digital capabilities and technology for Sweden, has stepped in as acting CTIO.

Tele2 says that after more than three years with the company, Malik had completed what he set out to do – oversee the operator’s 5G deployment and IT migration.

Malik’s departure is viewed as part of the shake up after a shift in ownership at Tele2. The French telecoms concern, Iliad Group, became its largest stakeholder with 19.8% in October having completed a three-transaction deal via Freya Investment and NJJ Holdings. The former investment vehicle is controlled by the Iliad Group. The stake was acquired from Kinnevik.

The Iliad Group itself is controlled by the French telecom tycoon, Xavier Niel. In August Iliad claimed to be Europe’s fifth largest operator group by subscribers.

Musical chairs

Iliad’s long-serving CEO, Thomas Reynaud, is now Chair of the Tele2 group and Jean Marc Harion become CEO of Tele2 earlier this month. Formerly, he was CEO of Iliad’s opco in Poland, Play, and replaced outgoing CEO Kjell Johnsen who had announced his intention to leave company in September.

In a short statement, Harion thanked Malik for his “important contribution” to Tele2 since joining the company in 2021. He continued, “His knowledge and experience have been crucial during these years of change and transformation.

Before joining Tele2, Malik was Group CTO at VEON and sat on its executive board for almost six and a half years. Prior to joining VEON, he was the CEO of Telenor India (Uninor). He has held senior roles in Europe, North and South America, China and South Asia. No doubt he’ll resurface in another one in due course.

Reuters: Aramco Digital in talks with Mavenir on $1bn investment


The involvement of ex-Rakuten Mobile CEO and Open RAN proponent Tareq Amin adds some spice to any proposed deal

Saudi Aramco’s deep-pocketed digital unit Aramco Digital is reportedly in talks to make a circa $1 billion investment in Open RAN poster-child Mavenir. If it goes ahead, the deal likely to be signed off before the end of the year, according to an exclusive by Reuters. The report also said such a deal would value the US vendor at around $3 billion.

If there deal were to go ahead, it would place another Open RAN champion, Tareq Amin, back at the heart of decision-making about the future shape of Open RAN. Amin was the high-profile co-CEO of Rakuten Mobile which trailblazed open RAN, then Rakuten Symphony too but exited in August last year to spend more time with his family. He subsequently reappeared as CEO of Aramco Digital later the same year.

AI strategy

While there was plenty of speculation around what that unit may subsequently do in mobile, Amin downplayed notions suggesting the unit would focus instead on industrial use cases and private 5G. In the meantime Aramco Digital has been sorting out its AI strategy to become a managed AI supplier to the whole Middle East.

In September, Aramco Digital and Groq announced their partnership to establish the world’s largest inferencing data center in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The facility will process billions of tokens per day by the end of 2024 and be able to onboard hundreds of thousands of developers in the region and then hundreds of billions of tokens per day with millions of developers by 2025.

At the time Amin said the initiative not only aims to create the largest facility of its kind but also ensures seamless access to advanced AI computing power for everyone, offered through it digital marketplace, nawat, in a flexible ‘as-a-Service’ model.

An uphill battle

The timing of the deal is interesting given Dell’Oro reckons the RAN market will drop 21% between 2021 and 2029. Mavenir is one of the largest proponents of Open RAN which is an attempt to crack a market that has long been dominated by three vendors – Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia. Operators have typically had a preferred supplier agreement with one or sometimes two of them.

This has proved an uphill battle, but Mavenir has a lot of traction in core network with products like its IMS core proving reasonably popular. Also, some of the relationships with customers it has in this space, such as with Telefonica opcos in Latin America, could also be attractive to a Digital as-a-Service company like Aramco Digital.

Mavenir’s clock is ticking

More to the point, last month S&P said it did not believe Mavenir can repay the outstanding balance on its $133 million term loan obligation which matures in January. As of 31 July 2024, the company had about $17 million cash on the balance sheet and about $32 million availability on its senior secured revolving credit facility. S&P forecasts a free operating cash flow deficit of about $30 million over the next six months. “Therefore, absent a maturity extension or capital infusion, we believe the company will likely default on this debt when it comes due,” concluded the ratings agency.

S&P puts this down to the high R&D expenses for Open RAN. Clearly, Mavenir needs a deal by the end of the year and Aramco Digital is well-placed to deliver it. According to Reuters, Mavenir is working with investment bank Evercore in the talks with Aramco Digital.

A deal between Aramco and Mavenir is likely to pass a US national security review. The Biden administration signed a deal with the Saudis in 2022 to cooperate on the technology to build 5G and 6G networks in Saudi Arabia.

Proximus sells Luxembourg towers to InfraRed Capital for €108m


Proximus Luxembourg Infrastructure (PLI) the first independent TowerCo entity in Luxembourg and manages 267 mobile towers

Proximus Group has signed a binding agreement with InfraRed Capital Partners to sell 100% of the shares of Proximus Luxembourg Infrastructure (PLI) for a total of €108 million. The sale will be to InfraRed’s European Infrastructure Income Fund 4 (EIIF4). PLI is the first independent TowerCo entity in Luxembourg and manages 267 mobile towers and associated assets.

Guillaume Boutin, CEO, Proximus Group (pictured), said, “This agreement represents another milestone in our bold2025 strategy to unlock value through asset divestments.” The strategy is intended to “optimise” the operator’s asset base to reinvest in transformative projects.

It is expected that the deal will close in the first quarter of 2025, subject to regulatory approvals.

Service continuity assured

Proximus Luxembourg operates under the Tango and Proximus NXT brands and will be the anchor tenant on the respective sites. A long-term master service agreement will ensure continued access to the infrastructure for Proximus Luxembourg, “guaranteeing uninterrupted mobile services and consistent network coverage for Tango and Proximus NXT customers,” according to a press statement.

InfraRed intends to support “the further growth of PLI as the leading independent telecommunications infrastructure business in Luxembourg”. The current management team will remain in place.

This transaction aligns with InfraRed’s EIIF4 strategy of investing in European core infrastructure assets with stable, long-term revenue streams and opportunities for further development. In this case that includes “optimization” of the mobile tower sites.

More than halfway there

The sale of the mobile tower infrastructure in Luxembourg contributes to the Proximus Group’s broader ambition of unlocking value from non-core assets to fund its strategic priorities. After this transaction, Proximus is more than halfway to meeting its €500 million divestment target by 2027.

The proceeds from the sale will support investments in critical growth areas, such as its fibre roll-out, where Belgium is lagging behind most other western European countries.

Stability, operational continuity

Boutin added, “By partnering with InfraRed Capital Partners, we ensure the long-term stability and operational continuity of our mobile infrastructure in Luxembourg, while freeing up resources to support transformative growth projects like our fiber roll-out strategy. This partnership provides a solid foundation for continued high-quality services for our customers in the years to come.”

InfraRed is a global infrastructure asset manager with over 25 years’ experience across essential infrastructure assets. It has completed more than 300 transactions worldwide, including notable investments in digital infrastructure such as telecom towers, data centers and fiber networks. InfraRed is committed to long-term partnerships and its strong asset management team has significant experience in actively managing critical infrastructure.

TIM invests €130m in cloud and new data centre


Operator looking to capitalise on a solid performance in cloud services (up 22% YoY), following a boost from Italy’s National Strategic Hub

TIM announced it will invest around €130 million to grow TIM Enterprise in the cloud and build a new data centre near Rome. The new funds and other initiatives will see the TIM Group’s overall capacity rise to 125 megawatts (up 25 MW), which the operator said confirms its leadership in the colocation market in Italy. Rival Aruba also recently confirmed it will build a €300 million hyperscale data centre campus in Rome, located in the Tecnopolo Tiburtino area to the east of the city. 

TIM said the new investment is not new but rather, included in the capex set out in its 2024-2026 business plan, already disclosed to the market. The operator said the initiative is part of a broader group investment strategy to enhance the availability of additional high-performance data centre space in its existing campuses in Rome and Milan, as it aims to “retain its leadership in the Italian market” and respond to the growing needs of companies and the public administration. 

Earlier this month, TIM Enterprise reported nine-month total revenues of 2.3 billion euros (up 5.8% YoY) and service revenues of €2.1 billion (up 8% YoY), continuing to outperform the reference market thanks to the defensive strategy on the connectivity business and growth in IT revenues, which accounted for 62% of the total. In particular, the solid performance in cloud services (up 22% YoY) – thanks to the boost from National Strategic Hub – Security (up 84% YoY) and IoT (up 27% YoY) continued. The value of contracts signed during the nine months was up 67% YoY to €3.5 billion, demonstrating the success the operator was having in there enterprise space with cloud services.

Government cloud adoption in central to TIM’s enterprise growth with this coming through Italy’s Polo Strategico Nazionale (National Strategic Hub – PSN) secure cloud infrastructure – the operator has a 45% share. The goal of this project is to bring 75% of Italian administrations to use cloud services by 2026. The initiative envisages the implementation of a dual-region architecture distributed over 4 data centres, interconnected with ultra-broad fibre optic connectivity to ensure business continuity in real time. 

Ready for service in 2026

The new data centre is to be built near Rome and will be operational by the end of 2026. TIM Enterprise already has 16 data centres across Italy running through its Noovle brand. The data centre will be connected to TIM’s fibre network, which already connects the group’s other data centres and enables ultra-low latency connection with the region clouds of the hyperscalers in Italy and hosted at the group’s sites – as well as interconnection with the spaces dedicated to the National Strategic Hub. 

It will also host high-performance Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) hardware for AI applications and quantum cryptography equipment for maximum security in data transmission. The operator said the new site will be designed and built to “the highest standards of reliability and safety (Rating 4)”, will have among the “world’s best water consumption levels” and will be equipped with a rainwater recovery system so as not to affect the city’s freshwater consumption. Approximately 88% of the waste produced during construction is expected to be recycled.

Subsea threat helps boom in cables and new, 200Gbps satellite tech

Stories about sabotaged and threatened subsea cables abound, but there are silver linings too as space comms look destined to move from radio to lasers

The ongoing threat to subsea cables by terrorists and state-backed actors is hyping up tension between nations but it is also encouraging the building of more cables for resilience and new satellite technologies. Indeed, cutting undersea cables is seen as element of hybrid warfare, such as allegedly employed in Europe by Russia against NATO members or Ukraine’s allies.

Just days ago, a Russian intelligence-gathering vessel was escorted out of Irish waters by the Irish navy. The Irish Times said it was seen flying drones in the Irish Sea, about three miles from the location of undersea cables.

But Russia is not the only suspected saboteur: at the time of writing, a Chinese carrier, Yi Peng 3, is being monitored by a Danish naval patrol vessel in the Sea of Kattegat, off the coast of Jutland, Denmark according to the The Guardian. The Swedish police investigating the apparent sabotage of two undersea cables in the Baltic Sea have said a Chinese ship is “of interest” as it passed the two cables on Sunday and Monday about the time they were apparently maliciously severed. It is believed the Chinese ship sailed from the Russian port of Ust-Luga.

It should be remembered that China threatened Sweden, as well as Swedish companies, promising reprisals for banning Huawei equipment in 5G networks back in 2021. Revenge is famously a dish best served cold.

More than regional difficulties

Cutting cables isn’t about causing a little regional difficulty for your immediate enemies either. Sabotage in one region can have serious consequences in others, as demonstrated by cuts in submarine cables in the Red Sea in February showed.

RETN, which runs a private, global managed network, says that the impact of the February 2024 cable cuts on Europe and Asia was severely underestimated. Who was responsible for those cables being cut is not clear, but there is concern they were targeted by the Yemeni Houthis rebel group as part of its campaign to pressure Israel to end its attacks on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Surge in subsea cables

Still, perhaps there are two silver linings. First, since 2020, there has been a surge in the building of undersea cables: more than 25% of all cables launched since 2010 have gone live since 2024, according to Analysy Mason’s tracker.

They have been built to meet the demands of rising traffic, through increased investment by hyperscalers and because of demands for better resilience. Another 68 cables are expected by 2027.

Source: Analysys Mason, Submarine Cable Tracker

This article on the top 10 subsea cables, published in August in DataCentre magazine makes interesting reading too.

Satellite picks up the pace

Clearly as the expansion of communications satellite constellations continues, it too potentially provides greater resilience, particularly with the rise of direct-to-device (aka direct-to-cellular) technologies. According to Juniper Research in September, the direct-to-device revenues will be worth will be $2.8 billion over next five years, up from $30 million in 2025, when commercial services will launch.

Nor is it just the newbie satellite constellation offering direct-to-device or cell. In January, Iridium announced it is developing a new direct-to-cell service called Project Stardust that will allow standard smartphones to connect to its LEO satellite network. That was in the same week that Starlink demo’d its first text message via direct-to-cell.

Another big milestone was in October, when Elon Musk’s SpaceX ran a trial in Romania to prove that its Starlink satellites could support up to 8 times their current capacity without interfering with Geostationary satellite networks if only the ITU would abandon or relax its 25-year old equivalent power flux density (EPFD) limits. Although the World Radio Conference 2023 kicked the can down the road regarding EPFD it seems only a matter of time before they are revised.

200Gbps comms in space

Maybe there was an even bigger milestone last year, which has had much less attention but could have far bigger implications. The Financial Times [subscription needed] reports that in 2023, Nasa fired a tiny laser back to Earth from an orbiting satellite which transmitted data at 200Gbps, sending 3.6 terabytes of data to our planet in 6 minutes.

As the FT points out, for comparison, the $10 billion James Webb telescope launched in 2021 can send about 57 gigabytes of scientific data per day. That’s because the telescope, like communication satellites, uses radio frequencies whereas Nasa’s trial used light or optical communications technology from French company Cailabs (picture courtesy of Cailabs shows its headquarters in Rennes, France).

The company originally focused on telecoms and achieved a world record, with Japanese operator KDDI, for how much data its fibre optics could carry back in 2013. It is still making those products today.

In 2019, another Japanese firm, NEC, suggested the company should use its tech for aerospace and eventually won a contract from the French Ministry of Defence. One expert told the FT that he expects to see a huge shift to optical communications in space over the next decade, with giants like Airbus and Safran now also working on the technology.

The hidden costs of low-budget, lawful interception

Partner content: Too much focus on the initial price of lawful intelligence platforms can lead to much higher total cost of ownership over time

When purchasing lawful intelligence platforms, it is common to solicit RFIs or RFPs from all kinds of providers – including those who compete on the basis of price. If purchasing teams focus excessively on initial price, however, the long-term total cost of ownership (TCO) may be obscured if the technology stack’s features and capabilities are not fit for purpose and scalable.

To overcome the limited functional scope and rigid architecture of low-cost options, many organisations face extensive change orders that threaten the budgets they intended to protect. Over time, commodity-oriented solutions lack future-readiness.

Best of breed

By contrast, SS8 aims to deliver best-of-breed lawful and location intelligence and a platform built for long-term flexibility and TCO. The solution is based on a modular architecture that enables customers to adopt the exact functionality they need immediately and seamlessly add capabilities in the future, like high-accuracy location or advanced data fusion. This approach supports inherent cost advantages when purchasing a full-featured lawful and location intelligence platform, such as:

Over-emphasising initial price

Cost-efficient lawful intelligence solutions must be long-term in their perspective. For example, location services that are accurate enough today may be inadequate in the future, a situation some operators may have faced when the European Parliament recently recommended more stringent emergency caller location criteria.

Platforms should be built for distributed, virtualized 5G networks and the associated explosion of traffic and new applications. The types and volumes of traffic passing over mobile networks today are radically different from those of just a few years ago, and usage models for lawful intelligence must evolve to keep pace.

Static definitions of solution requirements ignore cost-effective scalability. An analysis of an organisation’s lawful intelligence practice must consider the cost to scale up the number of concurrent targets, the bandwidth coming into the system, and the number of analysts using it – and not just gradually over time. Solutions must be able to scale dramatically and instantaneously in the event of a black swan event such as civil unrest or a terrorist attack.

The SS8 platform has a cloud-ready architecture built on Kubernetes explicitly to scale services rapidly and on demand while minimizing cost and operational impact. By contrast, the rigidity common in lower priced solutions leaves them unable to quickly adapt to dynamic circumstances, leading to hidden costs.

SS8 provides the highest level of functionality today, drawing on nearly 25 years of industry leadership to help define the future. As new capabilities emerge, they are engineered into the SS8 platform and seamlessly rolled out to customers.

Long-term cost efficiency

The SS8 lawful and location intelligence platform protects operators’ investment by flexibly absorbing the impacts of change, an advantage that extends to the business relationships SS8 has with its customers. Service costs are modular to match the modular design of the solution, so customers pay only for what they need, when they need it, with a predictable fiscal roadmap for the future. SS8 engineers meet with customers regularly for quarterly business reviews to understand industry challenges and tailor SS8 platform development to meet them.

Different pricing models are available to meet customer requirements, from a capital expenditure model to multi-year budgets, or operational subscription-based projects. As a mobile network operator builds out a new service area, for example, the SS8 solution starts small to accommodate the limited number of subscribers.

Future readiness

With a structured approach that grows with the subscriber base, SS8 is a partner that cost-effectively provides tailored sets of services at every scale, throughout the lifetime of the service.

That total lifecycle approach also exemplifies SS8’s position as the industry’s only end-to-end provider in every aspect of lawful and location intelligence. SS8’s comprehensive scope of technologies and intelligent, tested workflows include everything from industry-leading handset- and network-based location technology to cutting-edge data fusion and analytics.

No other vendor provides SS8’s scope of offerings, and its platform is unparalleled at helping communication service providers and law enforcement prepare for the future of lawful intelligence with advanced, scalable solutions that help protect society.

About the authors

Javier D’Agostino

Javier is the Sales Director for the LATAM region for SS8 and has over 20 years of experience as a sales leader. He is responsible for the company’s strategic expansion into Communication Service Providers and Law Enforcement Agencies (Intelligence and Security). He has a BS in Information System Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of CEMA. To learn more about Javier, view his LinkedIn profile here.

About Rory Quann 

Rory Quann is a Senior Solutions Engineer specializing in End-to-End Government Solutions at SS8 Networks and brings with him over 14 years of experience in the Lawful Interception and Data Analysis industry. Prior to joining SS8 in 2013, Rory worked for BAE System Applied Intelligence where he was focused on large scale Government deployments of Intelligence Solutions. Rory has held multiple positions in the Lawful Intelligence space ranging from Deployment Engineer, System Consultant, and Sales Engineer focusing on Country-wide Passive deployments. Rory is a Certified Microsoft MCSA Engineer and EMC Certified deployment Engineer. You can learn more about Rory on his LinkedIn profile by clicking here.

Sparkle and Mobily plan to improve connectivity via subsea systems

This collaboration is intended to boost Saudi Arabia’s strategic plan to offer a low-latency route between Asia and Europe

Sparkle and Mobily have signed an MoU to jointly expand international connectivity solutions with Saudi’s Mobily leveraging Sparkle’s international subsea infrastructure. Specifically

The announcement was made during the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s inaugural Connected World KSA conference in which Mobily was a taking part as a Digital Infrastructure Founding Partner.

Under the MoU, Mobily is to acquire fibre from Sparkle’s submarine cable systems with strategic drop points in Chania, Palermo, Milan, and Marseille. The project is expected to be completed in 2025.

This builds on the new digital path announced in October 2024 by Sparkle and Mobily. Earlier this month Mobily announced its first subsea cable which will also be the first to directly link Egypt and Saudi, passing through the Red Sea with landing stations at Sharm El Sheikh and Duba.

More options

The intention is that as result of these two agreements, network providers, ISPs, OTTs, content and application providers, and enterprises will benefit from a reliable, low latency route with scalable capacity options.

Clients will also gain access to the networks of both Mobily and its partners, leveraging a portfolio of services including Layer-1, Layer-2, and IP solutions. They provide virtual access to major Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) and global connectivity.

Mobily’s offers “extensive services within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” and Sparkle also provides services across Italy and Europe.

“Our collaboration with Sparkle strengthens the resilience of global network connectivity between the East, the Middle East, and Europe. This partnership supports the expansion of data centers and fosters content diversification for OTT platforms and hyperscalers in the region, enabling robust digital growth and innovation” said Thamer A. Alfadda, SVP Wholesale at Mobily in a statement.

He also said the new agreement marks “an important milestone in our partnership”. 

Enrico Bagnasco, CEO of Sparkle, added,“We are pleased to cooperate with Mobily to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s primary and pivotal role in the digitalization of the region and reinforce the Kingdom as a strategic digital hub enabling better communication between Europe, the Middle East and beyond.” 

Colt expands NaaS’ reach, adding 130,000+ new European locations

The new locations are served by Colt’s dedicated fibre infra in the UK, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland

Colt Technology Services (Colt) announced the latest in a series of improvements to its Network as a Service (NaaS) platform, Colt On Demand. It has added 130,000 more locations served by dedicated fibre (FTTX) in the UK, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland to access the platform.

This adds to the 32,000 Colt connected buildings, 1,100 datacentres and 275 cloud points of presence already accessible to customers through Colt On Demand. The B2B specialist also reaches millions of locations via carrier partners in over 180 locations to offer businesses scale, speed and security.

The latest improvements also involves a shift to greater automation for Colt and its customers and a new user interface on Colt’s On Demand platform that is designed to make it easier for businesses to navigate and support their geographic expansion plans through the platform.

Via the interface, they can flex their bandwidth requirements to meet business demand and respond to changing market dynamics.

Recently Colt surveyed 1,500 CIOs:

• 58% said they are using more on demand or NaaS features as a result of the growth in AI usage

• 81% of respondents in the study highlighted the positive impact of NaaS on their carbon reduction goals, and  almost 30% cited using NaaS as a direct contributor to carbon reduction.

Power of partnerships

The new locations are offered via Colt’s ecosystem of best-of-breed partners, with an additional 20,000 locations expected to be available through the platform by the end of the year, bringing the total to more than 180,000, of which 32,000 are ‘on net’, connected to Colt’s own digital infrastructure. As well as benefit from the scale and reach, businesses selecting Colt’s on net locations benefit from real-time quoting, ordering and delivery, and in-life real time flexing.  

Colt says its NaaS service, Colt On Demand, has won more than 30 industry awards since its inception including six recently.

Peter Coppens, VP Infrastructure and Connectivity solutions at Colt Technology Services said, “We pioneered Network as a Service over seven years ago. Since then, our multi award-winning On Demand platform has connected thousands of businesses to sites across the world, and we’ve refined and enhanced the platform based on their experiences.

“The latest customer-driven changes are the most significant yet, giving businesses access to five times as many locations as before, providing unrivalled scale and improving automation. This is the beginning of a new era of NaaS, and once again, Colt is leading the charge.”

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