Would you be happy to have your fingerprints taken or get a facial scan to access phone services? Or would you consider it intrusive?
Headquartered in Amsterdam, United Group is a multiplay telecom and media provider that's developed a large footprint across southeast Europe. Last month, the company secured the acquisition of Tele2 Croatia from Sweden’s Tele2 Group.
The deal is valued at EUR220 million—easily one of United Group’s most notable takeovers.
The latest figures from TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Forecast Service show that there were 7.95 billion cellular subscriptions worldwide at the end of 2019, up from 6.97 billion five years earlier and 4.61 billion at the end of 2009.
Following our recent piece on the impact of remote work on WAN and IT infrastructure managers, TeleGeography is taking a closer look at the response of ISPs to the crisis.
Broadband internet and OTT providers across the globe are being forced to make changes to their operations as they handle the massive, pandemic-induced increase in bandwidth demand.
In December 2019, UK telecom giant BT Group agreed to sell BT Espana to investment fund Portobello Capital. This was the first part of its plan to dismantle and sell off its sprawling BT Global Services unit. This month, BT agreed to offload its Latin American businesses to CIH Telecommunications Americas, marking the second confirmed transaction.
Today we examine BT’s motivations and take a closer look at other businesses that are likely to be sold off.
Mobile data usage continues to boom worldwide.
Here’s just one example. Following Super Bowl LIV in Miami, AT&T reported that users in the stadium consumed 10.2TB of mobile data during the game. This is enough to stream high-definition video for almost two months straight.
The ill-advised merger between Brazilian telecom giant Oi and Portugal Telecom—a union that we first heard about in October 2013—ranks as one of the more disastrous telecom tie-ups in recent memory. While Oi’s subsequent financial issues have been well-documented, the slow unraveling of the enlarged company is altogether less clear-cut.
Today we look closer at the fallout.
French billionaire Xavier Niel rose to prominence in the telecom world for his ownership of domestic telco Iliad. You might know Iliad for sparking a price war in the mobile sector when Iliad’s Free Mobile launched in January 2012. (Niel employed a similar price-war tactic when Iliad Italia launched in May 2018.)
But these companies only represent the tip of the iceberg.
Indeed, the size and scale of Niel’s empire are often overlooked due to convoluted shareholder structures and the lack of a unified brand name across markets.
Today we piece it all together to appreciate the bigger picture.
We've been celebrating the launch of our beautiful new CommsUpdate site by taking a closer look at the year’s major global developments—the highs, the lows, the mergers, the auctions. All of it.
One thing is certain: there was more than enough telecom news to go around in 2019. If you haven't had a chance to peruse our wrap-up of January-June 2019, click here and have a read. Keep scrolling to take in the biggest news from the back half of the year.
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