Meta failed to prevent under-13s from accessing Instagram and Facebook, EU finds | Total Telecom

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The European Commission accused Meta of “failing to diligently identify, assess and mitigate the risks of minors under 13 years old accessing their services”

The European Commission has released its preliminary findings into whether Meta had breached the Digital Services Act (DSA), claiming the company had failed the adequately prevent under-13s from accessing its Instagram and Facebook platforms.

In a press release, the Commission said that Meta’s measures to prevent access by minors “do not seem to be effective”.

“Despite Meta’s own terms and conditions setting the minimum age to access Instagram and Facebook safely at 13, the measures put in place by the company to enforce these restrictions do not seem to be effective,” said the statement. “The measures do not adequately prevent minors under the age of 13 from accessing their services nor promptly identify and remove them, if they already gained access.”

It further stated that there are “no effective controls in place to check the correctness of the self-declared date of birth” and that Meta’s tools for reporting minors on the platform were “difficult to use and not effective”.

The first launched its investigation into company in 2024 following the implementation of the DSA, a broad legal framework covering how online platforms handle content and manage risks to customers online.

If the Commission’s preliminary findings are confirmed, Meta could face a fine of up to 6% of its total worldwide annual turnover.

Meta’s turnover in 2025 was roughly $201 billion, suggesting a fine could be in the region of $12.6 billion.

“Meta’s own general conditions indicate their services are not intended for minors under 13. Yet, our preliminary findings show that Instagram and Facebook are doing very little to prevent children below this age from accessing their services,” said Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. “The DSA requires platforms to enforce their own rules: terms and conditions should not be mere written statements, but rather the basis for concrete action to protect users – including children.”

In a statement to the New York Times, Meta said it disagreed with the findings, claiming its methods of preventing access by under-13s were effective. It nonetheless says that it is rolling out additional measures “soon”, adding that “understanding age is an industry-wide challenge”.

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EE upgrades Scam Guard with AI Triple-Lock Protection | Total Telecom

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Press Release

EE has today unveiled an all-new and upgraded Scam Guard, its most powerful and comprehensive fraud protection service to date.

Available to EE pay monthly mobile customers for £2 a month on a 30-day rolling contract, the service builds on EE’s existing Scam Guard offering and provides AI Triple-Lock Protection, Scam Assistant, Mobile Device Security and Dark Web Monitoring to give customers complete peace of mind against today’s increasingly sophisticated scam landscape.

The launch comes as Cifas, the UK’s leading fraud prevention service, has revealed that more than 444,000 cases were recorded to the National Fraud Database in 2025, the highest number ever recorded in a single year, and a 6% increase on 2024. The surge is widely attributed to the growing use of AI by criminal networks to generate convincing phishing emails, fake websites, deepfake calls and targeted SMS scams at unprecedented scale.

As the UK’s best network, EE introduced Scam Guard to mobile customers in 2024. Since then, more than 169 million scam and spam attempts have been stopped by EE’s service – a testament to its commitment to customer protection. The new Scam Guard builds on that foundation, raising the bar not just on EE’s own capabilities but on what customers can expect from network providers more broadly. Looking ahead, EE expects the new service to prevent at least twice as many scams over the next 12 months.

With a suite of AI-driven features designed to tackle the full spectrum of modern threats, it represents a significant step forward in helping keep customers one step ahead of increasingly sophisticated scams:

AI Triple-Lock Protection: three layers of AI defence, around the clock

At the heart of the new Scam Guard is AI Triple-Lock Protection – a trio of cutting-edge digital safety features powered by Norton’s Genie AI engine, built to keep customers protected all day, every day. This includes:

Safe Email: providing 24/7 proactive scam protection for email inboxes, scanning and flagging suspicious messages so customers know if something is a scam before they even open it.
Safe SMS: using advanced AI to detect sophisticated scams in text messages, giving customers real-time protection and peace of mind every time they check their messages.
Safe Web: harnessing AI to protect customers from scams while shopping or browsing online, blocking malicious sites before they cause harm.

Scam Assistant and Call Labelling: real-time analysis across every channel

New Scam Guard also introduces Scam Assistant, a tool that allows customers to upload screenshots of texts, emails, websites, social media messages or even QR codes to receive instant advice on whether they are safe. Alongside this, Call Labelling delivers automatic, network-level screening of every incoming call, giving customers the information they need before they pick up.

Monitoring, security and password management: complete digital protection

Social Media Monitoring and Dark Web Monitoring watch for suspicious activity across a customer’s online footprint, sending quick notifications so they can take action without delay. Mobile Device Security provides real-time protection against ransomware, viruses and other online threats, automatically blocking dangerous attachments before they can cause damage. Additionally, Password Manager creates, stores and auto-fills strong, secure passwords, removing one of the most common vulnerabilities in personal online security.

Malcolm Cubitt, Director of Product, Mobile, EE, said: “Fraud in the UK is at a record high, with AI making scams more convincing and harder to detect. As these threats evolve, we continue to adapt as the UK’s best network—constantly seeking new and innovative ways to protect and support our customers. This includes leading industry alliances, investing in network-level controls, and employing a dedicated team of security experts. And now with our newly enhanced Scam Guard service, we’re providing customers with an even greater level of cyber security protection.”

EE is committed to helping customers enjoy the benefits of the digital world with confidence through practical protections like Scam Guard. This is underpinned by BT Group’s purpose to connect for good and its wider work to help people with the digital skills, tools and support they need to connect, stay safe and succeed.

EE Scam Guard forms part of a number of cyber security solutions offered to BT Group, which collectively over the last 12 months (Jan-Dec 2025) saw:

Blocked 1.6 billion attempts to access malicious domains
Stopped 200 million scam SMS messages
Blocked 61 million scam calls
Flagged a further 175 million nuisance and fraud calls to keep customers protected

The new Scam Guard is now available to all EE pay monthly mobile customers and will be available to purchase as an add on.

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VMO2 taps Suffolk solar farm for 10 years of clean energy | Total Telecom

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The deal with Egg Power will supply roughly 5% of the company’s energy demands

Today, Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) is expanding its renewable energy usage, signing a new 10-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with solar power provider Egg Power.

The deal will see VMO2 source power from Egg’s new solar farm 70MW solar farm in Suffolk, which is currently under construction and is expected to begin power generation in 2027.

In total, the agreement is expected to cover around 5% of VMO2’s total energy demand.

Egg Power is a natural energy partner for VMO2, with both companies being owned by Liberty Global.

The deal is expected to significantly contribute to VMO2’s Net Zero carbon emissions goals, with the operator currently aiming for neutrality across its entire value chain by 2040.

“This agreement with egg Power is the latest step in Virgin Media O2’s journey to achieve net zero emissions by the end of 2040,” said Mark Hardman, Director, Finance Operations at VMO2. “We’re committed to growing and operating our business in a way that’s good for people and the planet, where we’re cutting carbon, securing renewable energy on a long-term basis, and sourcing renewable energy generation from the UK.”

The deal builds on a similar 10-year agreement for wind power that VMO2 signed with The Renewables Infrastructure Group last year. Combined, the two deals mean around 20% of VMO2’s energy usage will come from renewable PPAs.

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Deutsche Telekom considers merging with T-Mobile | Total Telecom

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The move would create a combined entity valued at around $267 billion

Deutsche Telekom is considering merging with its US unit, T-Mobile, according to a report from Bloomberg citing people familiar with the matter.

Deutsche Telekom already owns a 53% stake in the US company but is now reportedly considering forming a holding company to combine the two businesses.

If such a deal were to be struck, this new company would be jointly owned by both companies’ existing shareholders and would potentially seek a listing in both the US and Europe, the sources said. Reporting from the Financial Times suggests the latter would likely take place in Luxembourg, Amsterdam, or Dublin, rather than Germany, for take advantage of lower tax.

The same sources emphasise that discussions are at an early stage and no formal decisions have been made.

Neither Deutsche Telekom nor T-Mobile have commented on the media report.

Deutsche Telekom has gradually increased its stake in T-Mobile over the past five years, growing from roughly 43% in 2021, following the T-Mobile–Sprint merger, to today’s 53%.

The US unit is by far Deutsche Telekom’s most valuable business, comprising around 72% of the operator group’s total value.

A merger of this scale would trigger intense scrutiny from both American and European regulators, with impact on competition, foreign ownership of critical infrastructure, and aligning cross-border regulations all key issues.

“We don’t see competition, security, or regulatory issues leading the [US] government to block the deal, but there are significant political issues that might have to be addressed in the deal review,” analysts at New Street Research told Reuters.

Approval from the German government would also be required, with the government currently owning a 14% stake in Deutsche Telekom and state-owned lender KfW also owning 14%. These stakes combined makes the German state Deutsche Telekom’ largest stakeholder.

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Bangladeshi telcos warn of shutdowns due to fuel crisis | Total Telecom

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The country is one of the worst impacted by the ongoing war in Iran, with the majority of its fuel typically being imported from the Middle East

This week, Bangladesh’s telecoms network operators are warning that they may soon be forced to shut down services due to a lack of fuel.

In a letter to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh (AMTOB) said that the industry is facing “severe operational distress due to the prolonged unavailability of commercial power and the lack of assured fuel supply for backup systems”.

“The situation has escalated beyond the operational control,” said the AMTOB in the letter. “If these conditions persist, there is an imminent risk of large-scale telecom network shutdowns across significant parts of the country.”

Bangladesh is facing a sever fuel shortage caused by the ongoing war in Iran, which has limited the export of vital fuel supplies from the Middle East. Around 80% of Bangladesh’s crude oil and 65% of its natural gas are imported from the region.

Fuel prices in Bangladesh have risen by around 15% since the start of the conflict and rationing is being imposed by the government.

For the telcos, which operate much of their infrastructure using this fuel, the situation could soon be untenable. Base transceiver stations (BTS) consume over 52,000 litres of diesel and 20,000 litres of octane daily, while data centre operations use around 500–600 litres of diesel per hour, or around 4,000 litres per day per facility.

“Multiple strategically vital telecom facilities are currently running on dangerously low fuel reserves,” said the letter.

Network operators are calling on the government to grant parts of their networks priority in order to ensure that critical services like mobile financial transactions and emergency response can remain operational.

Also in the news

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AST SpaceMobile satellite placed into wrong orbit | Total Telecom

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The failed deployment could hinder commercial pilots of direct-to-device (D2D) services for AST’s mobile operator partners

Satellite company AST SpaceMobile has hit a setback this week, with its latest BlueBird 7 satellite being deployed in the wrong orbit.

The launch, which took pace on Sunday, saw BlueBird 7 carried into low Earth Orbit (LEO) by Blue Origin’s New Glenn reusable rocket. However, issues in deployment led to the satellite being placed into too low an orbit.

“During the New Glenn 3 mission, BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower than planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle. While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will [be] de-orbited,” explained AST SpaceMobile in a statement, noting that the cost of the lost satellite was covered by an insurance policy.

AST is currently in the process of deploying a constellation of roughly 90 LEO satellites, which will be used to provide global coverage of D2D satellite services. This will allow AST’s mobile operator partners, such as Vodafone and AT&T, to provide customers with coverage beyond the limits of their terrestrial networks.

AST currently has six active satellites in orbit, which provide intermittent coverage and have primarily been used for preliminary tests of the company’s D2D technology. BlueBird 7 was set to be the first of the company’s upgraded satellites, with 45–60 additional devices targeted for launch before the end of the year.

“The company is currently in production through BlueBird 32, with BlueBird 8 to 10 expected to be ready to ship in approximately 30 days,” said the company statement. “The company continues to expect an orbital launch every one to two months on average during 2026, supported by agreements with multiple launch providers, and it continues to target approximately 45 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026.”

The extent to which the failure to deliver BlueBird7 will impact AST’s customers is unclear. VodafoneThree, for example, is scheduled to begin trials of the technology with customers this summer.

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Arelion upgrades Nørre Nebel site, prepares for more subsea cables | Total Telecom

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These developments support the continued growth of the Nordic digital infrastructure market amid significant private data center expansion in Jutland and Copenhagen

Arelion is upgrading its Nørre Nebel site to support additional cable landings and long-term network scalability. The site is fully operational and project-ready with front haul, back haul and subsea horizontal directional drilling (HDDs) for landing multiple diverse sea cables in place.

The global internet carrier is leveraging its network of ducts on the north route from Nørre Nebel to Copenhagen via a unique subsea cable system from Aarhus to Copenhagen. On the south route, ducts passing Esbjerg to Kolding and Copenhagen add resilience and route diversity, with Kolding serving as a key junction point for routes south to Germany and east to Copenhagen.

These investments are part of Arelion’s ongoing strategy to connect many new data center developments in the region to its network, including the recently completed new duct and cable extensions connecting the atNorth DEN01 Copenhagen data center to Arelion’s Nordic AI superhighway.

Complementing the infrastructure, new optical systems supporting wavelength capacity have been added between Amsterdam and Kolding to enable more efficient traffic routing and offer diversity bypass options for Hamburg.

The improvements strengthen connectivity for customers in Denmark’s expanding data center markets and align with broader European initiatives to improve subsea and terrestrial infrastructure across the North Sea region. Denmark’s access to renewable energy and its strategic position continue to support its emergence as a regional data center hub, with the national market expected to reach $2.9 billion by 2030 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.44 percent.

“These upgrades to our Danish network reflect our broader commitment to strengthening digital infrastructure across the Nordics, helping us support enterprise and wholesale customers with low-latency, fully diverse connectivity and predictable performance as they deploy AI applications,” said Johan Ottosson, VP Strategy & Product Management at Arelion. “Our continued investment ensures the capacity needed to keep pace with accelerating demand for AI-driven services, providing a scalable and secure foundation for both training workloads and latency-sensitive inference use cases.”

The submarine cable industry is changing rapidly. Join the industry in discussion at Submarine Networks EMEA, the world’s premier subsea industry event

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French telco consortium boosts SFR offer to €20.4bn | Total Telecom

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SFR, owned by billionaire Patrick Drahi’s Altice Group, rejected an initial offer of €17 billion in October

Bouygues Telecom, Orange, and Iliad have this week submitted a revised bid for rival operator SFR, valuing the business at €20.4 billon.

The offer comes after the trios initial approach of €17 billion was rejected last year.

Drahi had previously indicated that he was looking for offers closer to €20 billion.

The proposed deal would see the three telcos split the majority of SFR’s assets between them, with Bouygues taking 42% of the assets, Iliad 31%, and Orange 27%.

All three operators would have taken a piece of SFR’s consumer business, including mobile and fixed broadband customers, while the B2B unit would have been divided solely between Bouygues and Iliad.

The company’s physical network assets, both fixed and mobile, and the company’s spectrum holdings, would largely have been split between all three partners.

The proposal did not include some of Altice’s smaller assets, including stakes in Intelcia, UltraEdge, and XP Fibre, and alsoAltice group’s activities in French overseas departments and regions.

Any deal will be subject to strict regulatory scrutiny due to reducing the number of mobile operators in the market from four to three.

Traditionally, European regulators have been loath to allow such mergers, viewing them as reducing competition and driving up costs for consumers. In recent years, however, opposition to these mergers is waning, with notable large-scale deals being permitted, including Three and Vodafone in the UK and Orange and MasMovil in Spain.

This trend looks set to continue. Earlier this week, the European Commission announced it is looking to relax merger rules across the bloc, with the aim of building ‘European champions’ with the scale to compete with foreign industry giants.

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Nokia and Orange team up for AI RAN | Total Telecom

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Press Release

Nokia and Orange today announced a new collaboration focused on developing and evaluating artificial intelligence radio access network (AI-RAN) technologies powered by Nokia’s anyRAN 5G software and NVIDIA AI infrastructure. The initiative aims to explore how emerging AI-RAN capabilities can enhance network performance, energy efficiency and enable new services for Orange customers.

Through a structured co‑innovation framework, Nokia and Orange will jointly identify, design and evaluate new AI‑RAN capabilities. The collaboration aims to explore how a GPU-based radio processor can boost radio performance with more advanced receivers, and how AI can be tightly integrated into the RAN to further improve performance, support new services such as sensing, and bring greater automation and intelligence to both cloud-based and purpose‑built RAN environments.

“Orange is committed to building more efficient, adaptable and sustainable networks. By collaborating with Nokia and NVIDIA on AI‑RAN, we can better understand how the AI-native architecture enabled by AI-RAN can improve the efficiency of key radio algorithms — such as scheduling, beamforming and power optimization — enhancing both spectral efficiency and energy performance, while also enabling advanced capabilities like predictive optimization and radio sensing. This collaboration is an important step in our long‑term network strategy,” said Laurent Leboucher, Group CTO, Orange.

As mobile networks evolve towards 6G, Nokia and Orange will co‑develop approaches to maximize the spectral efficiency of existing and future bands, including the upper 6 GHz band. The 6G-ready platform will enable a smooth, software-defined migration to 6G and support smarter use of compute resources across Orange’s operational footprint.

By working with Nokia and NVIDIA, Orange aims to deepen its understanding of how AI-enabled RAN functions can be integrated seamlessly into operational networks while ensuring sustainability and efficient resource utilization across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

“AI is reshaping how networks are designed, introducing new levels of intelligence and flexibility across the radio layer. Through this collaboration with Orange, we are exploring how Nokia’s AI-RAN solution brings advanced AI and RAN functions together in a unified architecture. This will be instrumental in enabling the industry’s transition toward cognitive, AI‑native networks,” said Pallavi Mahajan, Chief Technology and AI Officer, Nokia.

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Vodafone’s scam call tech gets an AI upgrade | Total Telecom

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Vodafone has added an AI-driven scam call filter to its Secure Net Mobile security package as the operator intensifies efforts to cut fraud and nuisance traffic on its network.

The new Scam Call Protection feature is built into the network rather than installed as a separate app, allowing it to scan incoming calls in real time and warn customers when a number looks suspicious.

The service is designed to spot fraudulent, spam and other unwanted calls around the clock, including numbers already linked to scam activity. If the system judges a call to be high risk, an alert appears on screen so the user can decline it or pick up with more information. Vodafone says the feature is switched on automatically for existing Secure Net Mobile users, with no extra setup required.

“Scam calls are becoming increasingly harder to spot, and it’s easy to feel caught off guard. Scam Call Protection on Vodafone Secure Net Mobile gives customers an extra layer of reassurance – constantly working in the background to monitor calls, and flagging known and suspected scam calls. The introduction of Scam Call Protection strengthens our commitment to provide comprehensive built‑in digital security, helping people feel safer, more informed and more in control of their digital world,” said Rob Winterschladen, Consumer Director at VodafoneThree.

In recent years all of the UK’s mobile operators have been doubling down on their attempts to quash scam callers. In 2025, under the new Telecommunications Charter, BT (EE), Virgin Media (O2), VodafoneThree, Tesco Mobile, TalkTalk, Sky (Sky Broadband) and the Comms Council UK all pledged to crack down on scammers, including enhancing their existing scam detection systems. AI, naturally, has played a significant role in these upgrades, with O2’s AI-powered scam detection software, for example, having blocked over 1 billion scam and spam calls to customers.

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