Mobile Europe’s Michelle Donegan discusses Intellias’ accelerators, as well as use cases in data analytics, connectivity and software integrations by Connectbase and Virtugrp, with:
To learn more about Intellias, visit https://intellias.com/
Mobile Europe is inviting entries to its CTO of the Year Awards 2025, sponsored by Amdocs. For the entry form, CLICK HERE.
Our Awards are now in the twelfth year and previously have been won by those in charge of executing network strategy from operators large and small – see our illustrious Hall of Fame of former winners here.
Oleg Volpin, President, Europe, Telefonica Global and Network Offering Division, Amdocs, said:
“Amdocs are delighted to be partnering with Mobile Europe for the 2nd year running, to present their acclaimed CTO of the Year Awards.
Amdocs work closely with many network operators in Europe and beyond, supporting them in their transformations to achieving their business goals.
The Mobile Europe CTO of the Year Awards shine a light on those leaders, and their teams, who truly stood out in the last year with their forward-thinking strategy, tech innovation and business accomplishments.
We look forward to discovering who will collect the trophies in 2025!”
The Awards are open to CTOs, CTIOs and people with other, equivalent job titles, whether responsible for mobile, fixed, converged, cloud or satellite telecoms infrastructure.
We will present two Awards:
Entries close on 30th May 2025, and the Winners will be revealed on 9th September 2025.
For the entry form, CLICK HERE.
*Candidates can enter on their own behalf, or for a colleague.
With just under 19 billion connected IoT devices globally and solid growth, it is easy to think the market is a no brainer for telcos but even the largest, like Vodafone, have opted instead to spin-off their IoT units after finding the market fiendishly fragmented with competing protocols and even networks.
Kuwait-headquartered Zain Group has come up with an interesting approach to address the market and that is to be a gateway connectivity provider for OEMs to the eight Middle Eastern markets it serves. It has launched a Global M2M offering which it said represents a “comprehensive solution” designed to simplify IoT connectivity for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) across industries. At the same time, Zain claims to have become the first regional operator to offer global connectivity using global International Mobile Subscriber Identifier (IMSI).
Zain’s solution is set to empower OEMs from across the globe to seamlessly integrate their devices into multiple regional markets through a single point of integration and contractual relationship. This development enables partner OEMs to access all the required connectivity for their devices, eliminating the necessity to establish local presence while ensuring full compliance with local regulations.
In partnership with MAVOCO AG, a provider of connectivity management platforms, Zain said it is able to offer its customers state-of-the-art connectivity management and control technologies, with full self-service and open integration capabilities. Zain already has several million devices across its footprint and it reckons the launch of the Global M2M offering will further facilitate and enable the proliferation of connected devices across the region.
“The introduction of our Global M2M offering is a strategic move that accompanies the recent launch of Zain’s new 4WARD strategy, capitalising on our strategic footprint and superior connectivity to position Zain as the regional partner of choice,” said Zain Group chief strategy officer Kamil Hilali.
Local compliance
“This service addresses the significant challenges faced by OEMs operating in or looking to operate in the region, including compliance with local regulations and high integration costs,” he said. “By providing a unified solution that ensures compliance and simplifies connectivity across our extensive network, Zain is empowering the connection of global manufacturers to the Middle East. This will boost the pace of digital transformation of enterprises and governments, driving socio-economic growth across the region.”
Hilali reckons the service addresses several region-specific challenges OEMs may have entering the Middle East. It ensures full regulatory compliance by adhering to local requirements in markets such as Saudi Arabia and Oman, where permanent roaming restrictions pose significant hurdles.
The solution simplifies integration through a single connectivity point, eliminating the complexity and cost of engaging multiple mobile network operators (MNOs) across different countries.
Additionally, the global IMSI-based solution provides competitive roaming rates and worldwide coverage, allowing OEMs to avoid establishing local entities and thereby reducing operational costs and legal complexities. The offering further streamlines processes by presenting a unified contractual relationship, enabling OEMs to leverage their scale without fragmentation by country or operator.
Through this launch, Zain is targeting a diverse range of market segments seeking more intelligent coverage, including international car manufacturers, industrial equipment manufacturers, smart meter providers, connected device companies, and enterprises involved in international freight, shipping containers, and cold supply chain management.
“We are confident of the opportunity to capture a first-mover advantage in the provision of comprehensive, universal connectivity services to OEMs and further solidify Zain’s position as a leader and partner of choice for digital transformation,” said Hilali.
In 4Q24, webscale – or hyperscale – capex grew an astounding 78% YoY, to push the annual total just over the $300 billion benchmark, according to MTN Consulting’s latest report. Perhaps more astounding is that webscale capex surpassed telco capex in 2024 – one for the regulators to ponder whether they are focusing all their energy on the right sector.
“Key webscalers retain ambitious buildout plans for 2025, in part to curry favour with politicians looking for big announcements to brag about,” said MTN Consulting chief analyst Matt Walker. “Capex plans have not been adjusted since Deepseek or the tariff-induced stock market crash, but it seems likely many of these companies will gradually come to their senses.”
“Generative AI is a bubble,” he added. “There is no way current levels of spending can continue.”
Walker may well be right as the MTN report comes at a time when multiple reports have appeared suggesting Microsoft is actually walking away from some of its huge data centre commitments globally.
After declining 3% in 2023, webscale capex grew at incredibly fast, unsustainable rates in 2024: up by 26%, 53%, 61%, and 78% YoY in the four quarters of the year. Q4 FY24 capex of $100.2 billion pushed the annualised total to $304.4 billion, up 56% YoY, and another all-time high. Investor interest in generative AI has spread rapidly, driving GPU spend in the data centre. Some companies claim they are struggling to procure all the GPUs they want, and prices are unusually high, both due to Nvidia’s market power. Nvidia’s net profit margin for the quarter ending 31 January 2025 was 55.85%. The chipmaker’s average net profit margin for 2024 was 53.25%, a 96.49% increase from 2023.
Walker reckons the current investment spike would seem to be inspired by a mix of hype and fear of missing out, as GenAI brings with it a plethora of legal and regulatory risks and relative lack of proven business models.
MTN said the most recent webscale capex is focused on outfitting existing data centres: from 48% of annualised capex in 2022, Network/IT and software capex was 60% of total capex in 2024. The biggest capex outlays in 4Q24 came from Amazon ($27.8bn), Microsoft ($15.8bn), Meta ($14.4bn), and Alphabet ($14.3bn). These four accounted for over 70% of single quarter spending.
Double bubble trouble?
Synergy Group recently said the number of large data centres operated by hyperscale providers increased to 1,136 at the end of 2024, having doubled over the last five years. They added it has taken less than four years for the total capacity of operational hyperscale data centres to double, as the average capacity of newly opened facilities continues to climb. The United States still accounts for well over half of total worldwide capacity, measured by MW of critical IT load, with Europe and China each accounting for about a third of the balance.
Synergy forecasts that it will take less than four years for total hyperscale data centre capacity to double once again. Each year will see a reasonably steady 130-140 additional hyperscale data centres coming online, but overall capacity growth will be driven more by the ever-larger scale of those newly opened data centres.
Naturally, the companies with the broadest data centre footprint are Amazon, Microsoft and Google. In aggregate the three now account for 59% of all hyperscale data centre capacity. They are followed in the ranking by Meta, Alibaba, Tencent, Apple, ByteDance and then other relatively smaller hyperscale operators.
Pedal to the metal
MTN said annualised revenues for the webscalers has reached almost $2.6 trillion. Topline growth has been driven by the big 4: Alphabet, Amazon, Meta (FB) and Microsoft. For six straight quarters, all of these companies have recorded double digit revenue growth.
Webscale free cash flow margins averaged out to 16.3% in 2024, a bit lower than the 18.6% average of 2023. Unlike Nvidia, the average net profit margin for 2024 was 19.9%, a bit higher than 17.5% in 2023. Net margins are around the same level as in the year before Covid, but free cash flow margins have dropped recently due to high capex spend.
“Meta, Tencent and Microsoft were 1-2-3 for FCF margins in 2024 overall,” said Walker. “The ecommerce specialists Amazon and Alibaba are the laggards, as usual. In gauging webscalers’ ability to fund their capex, their recent levels of free cash flow profitability is one factor to consider.”
He added: “The overall level of average margins is a bit low relative to history, and it’s moving in the wrong direction. Webscalers can afford this for a few quarters, but not for a few years.”
Despite the Netherlands having some of the best fixed networks in Europe, there will always be so-called white addresses which can’t get fast fixed internet. Therefore Odido, formerly known as T-Mobile Netherlands, launched its Klik&Klaar fixed wireless access (FWA) to reach around 20,000 addresses where there is no fibre infrastructure or where customers only have a single provider for internet access.
With the launch of its Klik & Klaar service, Odido became the first operator in the Netherlands to offer FWA for B2C customers. The operator made the service competitive. At launch last October it was €25, or €20 if users were also mobile subscribers, and featured a soft data limit of 2TB per month. The operator offered some innovation to make the strive more attractive. With FWA, internet can be used immediately upon receipt with an installation app that helps the customer to locate the best reception in the home. Coverage can be expanded in the home using Wi-Fi points and in combination with services such as Videoland and Viaplay.
While the maximum speed is limited to 300/30 Mbps, the use of 3.5 GHz means some parts of urban environments are going to receive less than that. To bill the service, the operator had already been simplifying and unifying its IT stacks onto the Netcracker Digital Commerce & Monetization platform as part of an ongoing BSS consolidation and transformation program.
“Our long-term partnership with Netcracker, which began before the formation of Odido, has given us the confidence to work together on this critical step in our IT transformation program,” said Odido CIO Robert Purdy. “We are excited that we can deliver high-speed access to our customers and look forward to additional innovative services as a result of this alliance.”
“Bringing FWA to our customers is an important milestone since our rebranding to the market,” said Odido head of IT mass market Bas Touw. “I am confident that our collaboration with Netcracker will lead to further such innovations as we continue to disrupt the Dutch telecom landscape.”
The FWA service uses Netcracker’s BSS suite of products and professional services, including Product Catalogue, Customer Order Management, Customer Information Management and CPQ, as part of a standardised IT deployment. The operator reckons it has streamlined its order process and delivered digital services for customers and agents.
“As the leading mobile operator in the Netherlands, Odido is blazing a trail to 5G monetization, including the investment in FWA,” said Netcracker GM Benedetto Spaziani.
Wider collaboration
The FWA partnership is just one aspect of Odido’s wider relationship with Netcracker. Last year, the operator chose Netcracker to consolidate a number of critical processes across various brands and legacy environments onto its Netcracker Digital BSS. The deal included professional and support and maintenance services, as part of a large-scale digital transformation project. Odido was already using Netcracker Digital BSS for Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) and Order Management but this was expanded to expanded to Product Management (Product Catalog and Product Lifecycle Management).
On the mobile side, in October Odido and Wipro shifted its direct mobile customers to the cloud-native Ericsson Billing platform, hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). In the end, Odido wants to reduce complexity and legacy systems, modernise its entire technology stack, “cloudify” its BSS platform and if it achieves all of that, enhance the end user experience.
Telenor and Jotta have announced the merger of their cloud storage businesses, forming an all-Norwegian alternative to global – read US – players. The companies said growing geopolitical tensions have driven European consumers to seek alternatives to international technology services.
The new company will serve over two million active customers and expect revenues of approximately NOK 200 million in 2025. Its enterprise value is estimated at NOK 1.5 billion, including synergies in storage costs. The merger will not affect existing Min Sky and Jottacloud customers. The merger is subject to approval by the Norwegian Competition Authority, with completion expected in Q2 2025.
Both Telenor Software Lab and Jotta AS are well-established in the cloud storage market. For over a decade, Telenor Norway has offered Min Sky, an automatic image backup service developed by Telenor Software Lab. Since its founding in 2008, Jottacloud has grown into one of Europe’s leading storage providers in a market dominated by international tech giants. Over the past ten years, the company has achieved an average annual revenue growth of 16.7%. Jotta is owned by the Norwegian investment company Hawk Infinity, which focuses on software and technology companies.
This strategic merger strengthens the new company’s ability to develop a future-ready cloud storage solution for both consumers and businesses. The joint venture, owned 50/50 by Hawk Infinity and Telenor Amp, will continue to enhance both Jottacloud and Min Sky, utilising “the best technology, expertise, and infrastructure” from both companies.
“The merger brings clear synergies, particularly in secure data storage, artificial intelligence, and product development. By joining forces, we’ll be stronger and better equipped to deliver the best cloud storage experience. We’re confident that Jottacloud and Min Sky users will benefit from even better services in the future,” said Roland Rabben (above,left), CEO and founder of Jotta, who will also lead the new company.
“Most of us store our private photos on the cloud, and many are now questioning the security of data stored abroad. By merging the Norwegian cloud storage companies Jotta AS and Telenor Software Lab, we are creating a robust Norwegian competitor that can challenge global providers in the European market, he added.
Norwegian realism
Jottacloud was an AI pioneer and claims to be the world’s first cloud storage provider to introduce AI-powered language-based search for users’ photos. AI will remain central to the platform’s continued innovation. Since its founding in 2008, Jottacloud has prioritised privacy, sustainability, and data security. Its server infrastructure is entirely based in Norway, powered by 100% renewable energy. Following the merger, all data will be moved to Jottacloud’s Norwegian data centres, reinforcing its commitment to secure, locally stored data.
The companies said the cloud storage market is expanding rapidly due to increasing data needs and digitalisation. “My Sky is a highly valued service in a rapidly growing market, driven by rising data consumption and the need for secure storage,” says Telenor Amp head Dan Ouchterlony (above, right).
“By scaling up our cloud storage capabilities and expanding our development environment, we can offer an even better service to our customers. Jotta is the perfect match for this ambition, and together, we see an opportunity to build a leading international SaaS company,” he added.
“We will continue to develop our services with privacy and data security as top priorities. These are fundamental values we stand by, even as they face increasing challenges. By offering secure storage on Norwegian soil, we believe our service will attract more customers both domestically and internationally. This merger creates economies of scale, growth opportunities and strengthens our ability to compete with global providers,” said Rabben.
How Ericsson 5G Advanced has become the key to unlocking high-performing programmable networks
In this interview from Mobile Europe, Michelle Donagan asks Dr Sibel Tombaz, Head of Product Line Cloud & Purpose-built 5G RAN at Ericsson, about how high-performing programmable networks achieve differentiated connectivity at scale and new business models and how operators can monetize this.
Dr Tombaz also explains why Ericsson holds the view that high-performing programmable networks is now the way to build networks and how Ericsson 5G Advanced and AI fit into these high-performing programable networks.
High-performing programmable networks will enable a new business paradigm by facilitating the journey towards achieving differentiated connectivity at scale.
Additional information:
How Ericsson connect high-performing programmable networks and differentiated connectivity:
www.ericsson.com/en/5g/5g-for-service-providers/5g-advanced/solutions
Mobile Europe’s latest 5G Advanced report with Ericsson:
www.mobileeurope.co.uk/5g-advanced-research-report-feb2025
A1 Austria, which is responsible for more than 50% of the €5.3bn revenue generated by parent A1 Group, has migrated its Elasticsearch clusters to the cloud as part of its underlying IT infrastructure transformation. The clusters used predominantly by the telco division at A1 Austria for advanced data analytics and run the largest and most business-critical workloads that were considered for migration.
When the cloud transition began, A1 Austria was running on-premises clusters of Elasticsearch and using Grafana dashboards to visualise the data and provide insights into the network. But the system was becoming increasingly complex, siloed and inefficient to manage. Perhaps more importantly, when Elasticsearch switched from a free, open-source model to a licensing model, A1 needed to head off any cost blowouts.
“Creating efficient dashboards that truly benefited the business could take weeks,” said A1 Austria core observability engineer Alexander Köstenbaumer. “Just because it’s a dashboard, it doesn’t mean it’s helpful – and we saw growing rates of exhaustion and confusion among our colleagues who were spending too much time trying to understand the information being presented to them.”
Move to OpenSearch
To do this, the telco used OpenSearch by Exoscale – the European cloud provider it acquired in 2017. At the time, A1 Group was leveraging Exoscale’s IT services, including compute, storage, Kubernetes and container solutions. The cloud provider was the obvious partner. All Exoscale’s database services are delivered exclusively by Helsinki-based AI platform company Aiven, including OpenSearch, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache Kafka and Grafana. A1 Austria opted for OpenSearch, a managed open-source Elasticsearch alternative.
The telco and Exoscale kicked off a proof-of-concept and in the end it took just one week to get everything up and running. A1 Austria now has a highly-scalable central observability infrastructure, based on a 30-node OpenSearch cluster with 21TB of storage – Exoscale’s largest deployment. It is growing at a rate of 10GB of data per day, or 300 GB of data each month, as data analysis and visualisation requirements of the A1 Austria telco team increase. Logstash is in place for data ingestion and Grafana dashboards remain for visualisation.
“We’ll need to add another cluster soon as we’re nearing capacity,” said Köstenbaumer. “To manage storage costs, we’ve adjusted our data retention policies and increased index rollover frequency. Fortunately, Exoscale cloud’s flexible nature allows us to add a small cluster and scale it as our data volume grows.”
Accelerating cloud adoption
OpenSearch has become an indispensable tool, with more than 100 technical users among the core network team relying on it daily to gain insights, and many more have access. “With OpenSearch, our data visualisation dashboards are running much faster. When we make a big data query, it’s at least double the speed,” said A1 VoLTE and VoWif acceptance expert Christoph Reiss. “It helps us identify network issues and fix them before they become major problems.”
The team has implemented custom alerts to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) from mobile voice and data core networks, including logins, active users, data usage and call failures. When a failure is detected, the responsible service team is immediately notified to investigate and resolve the issue. This dashboard, as well as others, are used by senior management to get an immediate view of how services are performing.
A1 Austria plans to move its instance of Grafana to Managed Grafana on Exoscale and is exploring Managed Apache Kafka on Exoscale, both powered by Aiven. “The triumph of the transition to OpenSearch has ignited a wave of cloud adoption across other parts of A1 Group,” said A1 Group IT services director, Momtchil Ivanov. He added that cloud adoption at A1 Group has since started to accelerate. It is migrating between 10 and 20 applications a month, and that rate is increasing.
Google LLC announced it is acquire New York-based cloud security platform Wiz for $32 billion, in an all-cash transaction. The deal comes less than a year since Google attempted to acquire the company – which fell apart after Wiz weighed antitrust and investor concerns as reasons for abandoning the potential deal.
However, the new US administration has already signalled a light-touch on AI regulation and despite still engaging in some antitrust initiatives, it is expected this light touch will carry over to the biggest tech companies. The deal will also be a major boon for the VC industry which has not seen windfalls since 2022 – and which predominately supports the new administration. The atmosphere around such deals – and Europe keenly knows – has shifted in favour of the deal.
For its part, Google will be pointing to the fact it still lags AWS and Microsoft on the cloud front – Wiz will join Google Cloud – and it stressed it wants to exploit Wiz’s multicloud capabilities. Wiz delivers an easy-to-use security platform that connects to all major clouds and code environments to help prevent cybersecurity incidents. Organisations of all sizes — from start-ups and large enterprises to governments and public sector organisations — can use Wiz to protect everything they build and run in the cloud.
Wiz’s products will continue to work and be available across all major clouds, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud platforms, and will be offered to customers through an array of partner security solutions. Google Cloud will also continue to offer customers wide choice through a variety of partner security solutions available in the Google Cloud Marketplace.
Google Cloud wants to use Wiz to build a unified security platform that combines Wiz’s Cloud Security Platform with Google Security Operations, securing cloud-native applications at every stage of development, protecting code, CI/CD systems, and infrastructure. It will also use Wiz to provide precise threat intelligence that gives customers visibility into their own systems through the eyes of their adversaries.
This can be done by the way Wiz’s solution scans a customer’s environment, constructing a comprehensive graph of code, cloud resources, services, and applications – along with the connections between them. It identifies potential attack paths, prioritises the most critical risks based on their impact.
Mobile Europe’s Michelle Donegan speaks with Oleg Volpin, President, Europe, Telefonica Global and Network Offering Division, Amdocs
To learn more about Amdocs, please visit www.amdocs.com
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