What’s up with… Telenor, CK Hutchison, Netomnia, MTN

In today’s industry news round: Rumors abound that Telenor and CK Hutchison are exploring a merger in Sweden and Denmark; UK fiber broadband builder Netomnia raises fresh capital; The chairman of MTN is being impersonated, but not for laughs; even more.

nordic telco telenor There is news to be discussed from based in hong kong CK Hutchisonwhich owns several mobile operators as part of its 3 groupsRegarding a possible merger of the two companies’ operations in Sweden and Denmark. Speculations first surfaced financial Times (subscription required), which quoted two people with knowledge of the talks. The discussions are believed to be at a very early stage and neither company has commented on the speculation. CK Hutchison is in the process of finalizing a deal for its UK operator Three to merge with Vodafone UK, with details of the proposed deal to be made public in the coming days. Tre Scandinavian (Hi3G Access AB) CK Hutchison has operations in the Nordics, covering Sweden and Denmark, and is owned 60% by CK Hutchison and 40% by Investors AB of Sweden. The Swedish operation has 2.4 million active customers and the Danish operation has 1.5 million customers. Telenor’s operations in Sweden and Denmark have approximately 3 million and 1.6 million mobile customers, respectively. If the two companies have any hope of merging these operations, they would like to see some relaxation from European authorities on telecom M&A with the current one. Proposed merger of Orange and massmobile in Spain, which is set for a intensive and prolonged antitrust investigationA possible guide to whether or not they are likely to get the green light.

telenor It is also currently in discussion for an agreement to be signed with a large data infrastructure equipment vendor. cisco During MWC23. Operator and seller jointly”Explore the flexible and scalable Everything as a Service (XaaS) model to reach a wider partner ecosystem and customer base. Cisco and Telenor plan to accelerate the flexibility, scalability, and availability of cybersecurity solutions as a service for both business and consumer customers. The companies will also work to design and demonstrate how multi-cloud-as-a-service can serve business customers more effectively through end-to-end orchestration, maximum monitoring and cyber security, cloud cost efficiency and cloud resourcing And can help to use multiple clouds efficiently. optimization, ”the companies noted this press release,

netomniawhich along with its sister ISP company YouFibre claims to be the UK’s fourth largest fixed access network altnet, owned by raised £230m Committed debt funding from a consortium of six bank lenders – HSBC UK, ING, NIBC, RBC, Standard Chartered and UKIB. Netomnia says the financing package also includes a so-called “accordion” funding extension “to be raised to support the continued growth of the business in the future.” Netomnia, which is aiming to surpass 1 million UK premises, says it has already reached 410,000 premises with fiber ready for service and connected to 28,000 customers. Last October, it claimed be the first altnet To build fiber access network infrastructure in all four UK counties.

Here at TelecomTV we love a quirky Friday story to round off the week – and here’s a doozy. Incoming this morning was a press release from the South African headquartered mobile operator mtn, which has operations in several African countries, warned the media, businesses and the public that the group chairman of MTN, Mcebisi Hubert Jonas (a former deputy finance minister in the South African government) was being impersonated by fraudsters! It seems that they are soliciting money by pretending to be him and to the mind’s eye, pictures immediately sprang up of gangs of well-dressed touts roaming around Johannesburg and elsewhere, purported to look like Mr. Jonas, Passers-by identifying themselves as MTN presidents, before asking to see a mobile phone and then holding the device up to leg. Either that or stop people and ask for a few rands to make an emergency phone call and then jump in a chauffeur driven limo and speed away with your faux pas. However, the fraud attempt is much more sophisticated than this and is considered sufficiently concerning for a major telco and listed company to go so far as to issue a public warning. According to Nompilo Morafo, MTN’s chief corporate affairs and stability officer, an email scandal is ongoing that is serious enough for MTN’s internal audit and forensics process to eliminate an “organized crime syndicate” after it was created by the operator. can be implemented in an effort to Are aware of incidents relating to false solicitation of funds in the garb of requests for sponsorship of Corporate Social Investment (CSI) projects of the Company. MTN invests heavily in the socio-economic development of disadvantaged communities in alignment with the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy and the operator’s own AMBITION 2025 strategy for Africa, and access to digital and financial skills training across Africa through the MTN Skills Academy Provides access and increases employment opportunities. There’s money to be made and crooks are eager to get whatever they can. Morafo says. “We urge the public not to fall prey to scammers and report all suspicious and unwanted phone calls, emails and WhatsApp communications that we receive,” the operator said. It seems that the crooks first make contact with a potential mark via WhatsApp and introduce themselves with a picture of a real, senior company executive in an attempt to establish and build trust. They then send a spoofed email to the company employee responsible for the payment, asking that an electronic funds transfer payment be made immediately to a specific recipient. Typically, the fake email is forwarded using the ersatz email address of another company executive to make it appear that it has greater legitimacy, importance, and urgency. It is also common for scammers to use fake third parties, such as law firms or auditors. Acting in good faith, unsuspecting employees may instruct a company financial institution to initiate a request. It is not known how much the crooks got away with, but it is apparently enough to prompt MTN to take extraordinary action to keep people on their toes.

The 18,000-strong population of Taylor, a small Texas town not far from downtown Austin, rejoiced when SAMSUNG South Korea’s government announced that it will spend billions of dollars on building a 5 million square meter, state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing plant on its doorstep. This would mean 2,000 new, high-skill, well-paying local jobs and increased prosperity for all. maybe it still will but, according to a Reuters report, the cost of the factory continues to rise upward. Originally budgeted to cost US$17 billion, Samsung says it will actually come in at US$25 billion more, a nearly 50% increase over the estimated price when the project was announced in late November 2021. Inflation, rising construction material costs, geopolitics, supply chain disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have all put Samsung’s 5G mobile technology, AI and high-performance computing at the new facility It is planned to make advanced semiconductors for the application. massively more expensive. At present, the massive new plant is due to be completed by next summer and should be producing microprocessors by early 2025, but any delay in construction will put another turn on the screwdriver of rising costs. Thanks to the American Chips Act, which is designed to increase manufacturing of semiconductors within the US and reduce dependence on imports, chip makers have been able to apply for cash grants from the Biden administration to help pay for new factories. But, as the US Department of Commerce revealed a few weeks ago, even the most generous government subsidies cover no more than 15% of the cost of building new fab plants and inflation is still Moving forward. In addition, companies taking advantage of government grants must sign binding legal agreements that prevent them from expanding their operations in China for a period of 10 years. Of course, it is not just in America that inflation is causing major economic problems. For example, in 2022, Intel announced that it would build a new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Magdeburg, Germany, at a cost of $18.7 billion. The German government provided $7.2 billion in aid, but the cost of construction has since risen to $31.7 billion and Intel is seeking a further $5 billion in state aid. There’s no doubt that the new Samsung and Intel fabs will be built alongside many other fabs, not least because of their massive strategic importance in an increasingly disenfranchised and politically divided world, but we can’t be sure In the end, it will, as always, be the consumers who pay in the form of increased costs for technologies that rely on microprocessors to function. And that means almost everything.

– Employee, TelecomTV

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