In today’s industry news roundup: AI search specialist forges partnership with India’s Bharti AIrtel as it seeks a way to become a default smartphone browser; seasoned telecom exec Andrew Coward is looking for a new challenge; UK altnet Vorboss expands its portfolio with strategic acquisitions and an investment; and much more!
Generative AI (GenAI)-enabled conversational search engine developer Perplexity is in talks with smartphone manufacturers to pre-install its recently-launched Comet browser on their devices, according to Reuters. Perplexity, which counts SoftBank Group, Nvidia and SK Telecom among its investors, is seeking to embed itself into the daily routines of tens of millions of users as quickly as possible but knows that making itself the default browser on smartphones will be tough. “It’s not easy to convince mobile OEMs to change the default browser to Comet from Chrome,” Perplexity’s CEO Aravind Srinivas told Reuters. Chrome is the installed browser on about 70% of the world’s smartphone devices. Speculation has also been rife that Apple likes the idea of integrating Peplexity’s functionality into its Safari browser so much that it has held internal discussions about acquiring the AI search startup. Perplexity recently closed $100m in new funding at a valuation of $18bn, according to Bloomberg.
Still with Perplexity… India’s second largest telco, Bharti Airtel, is offering advanced generative AI-enabled search application Perplexity Pro to all of its 360 million mobile (and other wireless connectivity) customers for a year: The subscription would normally cost 17,000 rupees ($197) for 12 months, the operator noted in this announcement. Commenting on the partnership, Gopal Vittal, Bharti Airtel’s vice chairman and managing director, stated: “We’re thrilled to announce a game-changing partnership with Perplexity, bringing their cutting-edge AI capabilities exclusively for Airtel customers. This collaboration will bring the powerful and real-time knowledge tool for millions of users at their fingertips, at no extra cost. This first of its kind Gen-AI partnership in India is focused on helping our customers navigate the emerging trends in the digital world with confidence and ease.” Airtel joins a growing number of operators, including Indonesia’s Telkomsel, Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom, that have struck deals to offer Perplexity’s generative AI (GenAI) applications to customers for free.
Well-known and highly-regarded telecom sector executive Andrew Coward has left IBM after a five-year stint as general manager of software networking at the tech giant “to pursue new opportunities in networking and AI.” In a LinkedIn post, Coward, who is (and remains) a member of the DSP Leaders Council, noted: It’s been an incredible journey, as we rebooted IBM’s networking business, acquired five companies, built ground-breaking AI networking products, and redefined how networks and applications should be built and managed in a hybrid multi-cloud environment. As a consequence, today our networking products are recognized by customers and analysts as truly market-leading. None of this would have been possible without strong support and fortitude across the IBM leadership, from the amazing talent we assembled and challenged with this transformation, and the customers who trusted us with taking their most critical network assets and managing & automating them with our technology. I am truly grateful to have been given the opportunity to reinvent networking inside IBM at a time of monumental change for both the company and our industry, and I leave behind many colleagues who have become close friends through our time together. For those of you wondering what I will be doing next, I am as yet, undecided. I know our industry is at the beginning, not the end of AI transformation, and I can’t wait for the next chapter to begin.” Prior to IBM, Coward held senior positions at Lumina Networks (CEO), Brocade, Carrier IQ, Juniper Networks, Unisphere Networks, Nortel and Bay Networks.
UK fibre broadband network operator Vorboss, which is part of the FTTP (fibre-to-the-premises) portfolio of companies owned by investment firm Fern Trading, has jumped aboard the UK altnet M&A bandwagon, but not in the way that others have. While the likes of CityFibe and Netomnia are buying or merging with other altnets, Vorboss, which focuses on enterprise customers in London, has expanded its services and support portfolio with the acquisition (for undisclosed sums) of cybersecurity specialist 40fi and Optimity, a provider of managed IT services. “Together, these acquisitions bring an additional 80 experienced professionals into the Vorboss team, significantly enhancing the company’s ability to deliver end-to-end solutions for London’s most demanding businesses,” noted Vorboss in an announcement emailed to the media. “Vorboss is excited to welcome the hundreds of customers that Optimity and 40fi serve across the UK today, and look forward to continuing the high levels of customer service and technical expertise currently provided,” it added. In addition, Vorboss has made a strategic investment in Layer8, “a first-of-a-kind software platform enabling building operators to automate, manage, and monetise their networks. Designed for commercial real estate environments, Layer8 gives building managers, managed service providers (MSPs), and non-technical users simple, secure control over on-site network infrastructure,” noted Vorboss. Tim Creswick, CEO of Vorboss, stated: “Vorboss has a long history in managed services, but for the last six years, our focus has been on delivering the best enterprise fibre network London has ever seen. That has been a huge project, commanding millions of hours of labour from our team, and we are now connecting thousands of business customers to that network – all at 10 Gbit/s and above. I’m excited that we’re now able to return to some of our managed services roots, with the timely addition of cybersecurity services. These are things that our customers and partners ask us about all the time. As operators of extensive, high-capacity infrastructure, we have a huge amount of real expertise in-house already, so customers know that they’re getting advice from real practitioners, not just consultants. The addition of the Optimity and 40fi teams gives us some immediate scale to address those customer needs, with the same vertically integrated, high quality approach that they’ve come to love from us”.
Sticking with the UK altnet scene… The received opinion of many market analysts is that the UK’s fibre altnet market is too big and yet too diffuse, is unsustainable, and ripe for a period of inevitable and intense consolidation and (for some players) a complete disappearance from the market, However their proliferation across Britain (there were more than 100 of them at last count) has been transformational as they have gone head-to-head with the big, sluggish, and smug incumbent service providers and hit them hard with genuine competition in the provision and deployment of fibre-optic broadband access. Indeed since 2018, when the first altnets appeared on the scene, their combined affronts have seen them providing service to more than 40% of UK premises. That finally spurred the incumbents into taking action to accelerate their fibre deployment and altnets have been very important where in helping the industry to close in on the UK government’s target to have 96% of the population able to access superfast broadband by 2027. However, the intensity of the completion that has forced the likes of the BT Group to double-down on its efforts to deploy fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) is now beginning to work against some altnets as they discover that, having laid infrastructure (and overbuilt in some places), they face capital constraints and do not have sufficient subscribers to generate the revenues needed to ensure their long-term viability and survival. Overall, the picture being painted is bleak, which is why it has come as a bit of a surprise to read a very upbeat new research report – the first ever Altnet Confidence Index 2025 – which adduces evidence to show that technological advances and seemingly insatiable demand for high-speed internet access make them very positive about their future prospects. The key takeaways from the report, which was commissioned by Proactive International PR in partnership with market research firm Censuswide, are that 83% of altnet companies expect to grow rather than contract during the next 12 months and 70% of them expect to enjoy increased investment over the same period. The Altnet Confidence Index, which is based on a survey of 300 decision makers from ISPs, network operators and equipment and technology vendors from across the UK FTTP sector, indicates that 77% of respondents say they expect still to be in the market in five years’ time and will continue to grow well into the future. Some 39% of altnet companies cited ‘sustainability’ as their biggest priority for investment and that figure exceeds the 25% of respondents who named continued network build-out as their principal priority. Of those companies confidently expecting to grow, 49% say advances in technology drive them forward while 39% cite private equity and investor interest as reasons for optimism, while 35% enthused about “increased demand for high-speed internet”. Other reasons given include competitive differentiation and market gaps (34%). the continuing rollout of fibre and expansion of infrastructure and infrastructure expansion (33%), and the “resilience of the industry” (30%). So, a remarkably bullish response overall but 37% of respondents said they are worried about rising operational costs and increased regulatory pressures. A further 31% of respondents admitted that while the trend to the “consolidation of smaller players reducing opportunities’ is causing some concern, 70% are convinced that, overall, some necessary consolidation will be a good thing and will have a positive effect on their own companies. Other causes of potential worries for the future are rates of customer churn and many of those altnets primarily deploying infrastructure in predominantly rural areas are 21% less optimistic about the future than those serving urban areas. The full report is available here.
For the past 11 years, stringent national legislation (the Mobile Device Distribution Improvement Act of 2014) in South Korea has dictated exactly how heavily mobile handsets may be discounted, the unintended net result being that, rather than falling, prices have remained stubbornly high. That is about to change and the introduction of a raft of new regulations should mean bigger discounts for consumers and less expensive devices. That’s good news for subscribers but manufacturers and service providers are already warning that a “subsidy war” could break out that will drive down their profitability and, eventually, even reduce consumer choice as carriers vie to outpace their competitors and enhance their own market share with cut-thoat, cut-price offers and enhanced subsidies. According to The Korea Herald, South Korea’s biggest English-language daily newspaper, the 2014 legislation imposed a cap on handset discounts from retail shops at 15% on top of official carrier subsidies. It also requires carriers, in the name of transparency, to publish fixed subsidy amounts. However, in practice the legislation resulted in inflated smartphone prices and limited consumer benefits that led to endless customer complaints. Now the government is acting to repeal the law to promote more competition, encourage bigger discounts and generally introduce greater flexibility in device pricing. Thus, henceforth carriers will be “relieved” of the burden of publishing fixed subsidy amounts and retailers will no longer have to abide by the 15% maximum discount. It seems more than likely that the most immediate effect of the relaxations will be mass discounting of handset prices with speculation mounting that some tariff plans might even include a ‘free’ smartphone as part of a new consumer service bundle. The Korean consumer smartphone market is split between “authorised dealers” and independent retail stores and the two sides are already squaring-up for a serious scrap over discounts and other customer blandishments and incentives. The Korea Herald points out that with things about to change so suddenly and radically, consumers should shop around and be sure to read all the small print in any new service contract they may be minded to sign. Retailers will now be able to offer ”discriminatory pricing”, different discounts depending on whether a subscriber is switching carriers, starting a new plan or upgrading an older handset model, while carriers and manufacturers will be free to offer any amount of subsidy on any amount of contracts. However, the two principal Korean comms regulators, the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), have the remit to oversee and police instances of “unfair pricing” and to ensure that subsidies are offered equally to everyone under the same conditions, i.e. the same phone, the same plan and the same type of contract. A quagmire lurks waiting to lure disgruntled subscribers into the bureaucratic mire. The South Korean government has announced that a “task force” of regulators and service providers will meet “at least twice a week” to monitor the market and respond at speed to incidents of abuse and sharp practice. The market relaxations come at an opportune time for manufacturers such as Samsung whose new Galaxy Z Flip7 and Fold7 handset model is to be introduced next week, and Apple whose iPhone 17 will hit the market in September. There is much speculation that SK Telecom, South Korea’s biggest wireless carrier, having been disgraced following a hacking incident and customer data breach in April of this year, will do all it can aggressively to claw back some of the customers it lost as a result of the cyber attack – it fell to under 40% market share for the first time as more than 800,000 subscribers churned to other service providers. Expectations now are that the carrier will be particularly aggressive in cutting its subscriber prices and initiating a subsidy war against its competitors. If it pitches its wares and services low enough to bring a few hundred thousand former customers back into the fold, SK Telecom will regard it as money well spent. It could be a hectic few months until things settle down – if they do.
Telia has struck a deal to acquire Swedish broadband network operator Bredband2 for SEK3.25 per share, or SEK3.1bn (€276m). Shareholders who own 50.2% of Bredband2’s stock have already accepted the offer and the company’s board has recommended to other shareholders to also accept. In a statement issued on 18 July, the Bredband2 board noted: “Telecom is an industry where economies of scale create economic and financial space for investments, forward initiatives and the opportunity to offer the best services. Through the proposed transaction, Telia’s operations are complemented by a large customer base that significantly increases the scope for new investments and initiatives. The Board believes that the Offer has been positively affected by these circumstances. They also mean that the opportunity for Telia to effectively take care of Bredband2’s customers and employees’ skills and energy is very good.” Patrik Hofbauer, Telia’s president and CEO, noted: “We see an opportunity for a collaboration that strengthens both Telia and Bredband2 while creating value for our respective customers and shareholders. The offer is also in line with Telia’s strategy to focus on what we do best – delivering world-class connectivity and communication services that millions of customers rely on every day. The Swedish broadband market is developing rapidly and we believe that this collaboration would help Bredband2 compete and remain relevant by broadening its service offering while improving its operational efficiency. The Bredband2 team has done a fantastic job of building a trusted brand that stands out as an attractive and affordable alternative, which would complement Telia’s established premium products and enable us to reach an even larger and more diversified customer base. In short, the combined company would have clear strategic and operational advantages and be well positioned to deliver a stronger and more competitive offering to consumers and businesses throughout Sweden.” For the first quarter of 2025, Bredband2 reported revenues of SEK456.2m (€41m) and an operating profit of SEK32m (€2.8m). Bredband2 ended March 2025 with 519,400 broadband subscribers, while Telia ended June 2025 with 1.39 million broadband customers in Sweden. News of the deal came as Telia announced its second quarter results and agreements to sell its operations in Latvia.
– The staff, TelecomTV