News

Private equity firm Apollo Global Management, alongside, former SoftBank CEO Marcelo Claure, have reportedly entered into discussions with Latin American operator group Millicom International Cellular

This week, Millicom has confirmed that it is engaged in ongoing discussions with investment firm Apollo Global Management and Claure Group for the sale of all its outstanding shares.

Apollo and Claure are reportedly considering an offer of around $19 per share, a move that would value the business at just over $9 billion, including debt.

An official offer has yet to be made, with Millicom quick to point out that there is no certainty that any deal will materialise.

The potential takeover comes at a time when acquisitions of this scale are difficult finance, with major banks unwilling to offer large loans due to high interest rates and the turbulent nature of the global economy.

Millicom itself currently has a net debt of around $6.9 billion, with sources suggesting that Apollo and Claure are attempting to structure their takeover bid in such a way as to avoid needing to refinance these financial obligations.

For Millicom, the deal would come at a time of considerable consolidation. The operator has been refocussing its efforts on its Central and South American operations for some years now, as well as gradually withdrawing from its African markets.

In 2021, the company acquired full control of its Guatemalan joint venture for $2.2 billon, as well as finally selling off its final African business, Tigo Tanzania.

In February last year, Millicom formally announced a new three-year plan to invest over $3 billion in its Central and South American businesses, as well as potentially spinning off its mobile money business and mobile tower infrastructure unit.

Some months later, this strategic shift had enticed French billionaire and owner of Iliad Group Xavier Niel to take a 7% stake in the operator for an undisclosed sum.

The first steps of Millicom’s new investment plan are already beginning to be put into action, most notably building on its networks in Colombia and Paraguay. More recently, Millicom announced earlier this week that Tigo Panama will invest $100 million to modernise and expand its 4G and fibre networks later this year.

Apollo, meanwhile, has shown increasing appetite for telecoms infrastructure in recent years, most notably striking a deal with Lumen back in 2021 to acquire the company’s incumbent local exchange carrier business, including its consumer, small business, wholesale and mostly copper-served enterprise customers and assets in 20 states. The $7.5 billion transaction was closed last year, with the business subsequently renamed Brightspeed.

It currently serves around 6 million customers in the US with phone and broadband services.

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Customers of UK ISP Virgin Media (VMO2) – specifically those that take their fixed line broadband, phone and pay TV services – are today being informed about the operator’s annual price hikes, which “on average” are set to increase by 13.8% on either 1st April or 1st May 2023 (price changes will vary according to […]

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News

The smart home device market is set to boom over the coming years, but just how many customers will actually connect these devices to the internet?

From Ring doorbells to intelligent fridges, smart devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in homes around the world. Last year alone, three quarters of Americans purchased a smart home device, with the average number of home devices continuing to climb steadily year-on-year.

This growth has led to attractive market forecasts, with most analysts predicting a double-digit CAGR over the coming five years. Fortune Business Insights, for example, estimates that the smart home market will be valued at $380.52 billion in 2028, up from $99.89 billion in 2021.

Clearly, there is an enormous appetite for smart home devices, but this impressive growth rate begs the question: just how many of these devices are actually connected to the internet?

Naturally, for some smart devices, remaining connected to the internet is paramount to their functionality; a smart doorbell, for example, is of relatively little use if it cannot connect to the customer’s phone to inform them when a visitor is at their door.

But, for other smart devices, being connected to the internet is not strictly necessary. This is particularly true for smart appliances, where, in many cases, the connectivity is extraneous to its primary purpose. A smart washing machine will still wash your clothes and a smart refrigerator will keep your food cold, regardless of whether you told them to do so via a phone app.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that many of these devices actually end up disconnected from the internet over the course of their lifespan in customers’ homes.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, South Korean electronics manufacturer LG recently revealed that fewer than half of its smart appliances remain connected to the internet.

The manufacturer noted that these devices are typically connected to Wi-Fi when first installed, but if this connection is lost – for example, due to a change in internet provider – they are often left disconnected.

Part of the issue here is that the benefits the customer receives from having these devices connected is considered too small compared to the inconvenience of having to reconnect them to the Wi-Fi. While for LG having these devices connected to the internet provides them with a wealth of invaluable consumer usage data, the direct benefits for the customers themselves are often more limited – especially for appliances that customers are used to operating manually.

“The challenge is that a consumer doesn’t see the true value that manufacturers see in terms of how that data can help them in the long run. So they don’t really care for spending time to just connect it,” explained Henry Kim, the US director of ThinQ, LG’s smart platform, which allows you to control numerous smart devices via a single app.

This issue represents more than just a customer experience challenge for these manufacturers. The data generated by these devices is paramount in the creation of new services and revenue streams, at a time when manufacturers are already being squeezed by a strained global economy and supply chain issues.

Thankfully, to a certain extent, manufactures can overcome these connection issues themselves through technical innovations, such creating improved antennae that remain connected more easily or protocols that help the devices reconnect themselves.

However, more complicated challenges remain, from creating meaningful benefits for customers to ensuring that their data secure and their privacy respected.

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Press Release

Spark, New Zealand’s largest telecommunications and digital services provider, together with Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) and Red Hat today announced the successful completion of a 5G Standalone (5G SA) trial in New Zealand. The trial was delivered within an impressive three-month timeframe, demonstrating the ease with which standalone cloud-native solutions can be deployed.

The 5G SA trial was underpinned by Ericsson’s cloud-native 5G Core running on Red Hat OpenShift, integrated with Spark’s 5G Fixed Wireless Access Network (FWA) to test enhanced wireless broadband. The trial successfully confirmed and validated the technical capabilities of 5G Standalone technology on Spark’s network.

The trial demonstrates how 5G standalone technology can deliver the low latency, high bandwidth and reliability that are required for high-performance use cases, such as real-time video analytics, when compared to previous wireless technologies. Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core network slicing and edge computing deployment capabilities creates the potential for new monetization opportunities for Spark’s customers in enterprise and critical communication.

The trial is part of the ongoing groundwork that Spark is undertaking to prepare for the roll out 5G standalone network at scale in the future and explore the future benefits of 5G

Nilay Rathod, Technology Tribe Lead at Spark, says: “This proof-of-concept trial with Ericsson and Red Hat demonstrates the potential that 5G standalone technology offers to our Spark network, opening the door on capacity and low latency to help accelerate Internet of Things trends, such as connected cars, smart cities and industrial IoT. The benefits of this technology include greater opportunities for our partners and better services for our customers. Trialing the solutions offered by Ericsson and Red Hat is an important step for us to identify the optimal combination of vendors and solutions to deliver the benefits we want to achieve, as we work to bring relevant use cases specific to New Zealand’s local requirements.”

Emilio Romeo, Head of Ericsson, Australia and New Zealand, says “Ericsson’s technology portfolio to support 5G Standalone presents a pathway to 5G maturity and future-readiness for communications service providers, their partners and customers. This trial with Spark and Red Hat clearly demonstrates the range of capabilities and use cases made possible by a network underpinned by Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core technology including ultra-low latency and access to higher data rates for applications such as cloud gaming, immersive video and real-time robotics control.” ​​

Ben Panic, APAC Head of Telco, Media & Entertainment at Red Hat, says: “Red Hat is excited to collaborate with Ericsson and Spark to deliver positive business and technical outcomes for New Zealand’s leading telecommunications carrier and its customers. This trial with Spark showcases the power of Red Hat OpenShift in supporting greater flexibility, reliability and scalability for software-defined networks and any underpinning systems. In longstanding collaboration with both Ericsson and Spark, Red Hat is pleased to play a key role in building the future of one of New Zealand’s largest wireless mobile networks.”

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American Tower rumoured to be eying Cellnex takeover

STARTUP STORIES

t3 Broadband are one of the companies you can meet at Connected America, making place in Dallas this March. Find out more here

Tell us about your start up
t3 Broadband is a company that specializes in providing engineering services and products for broadband access solutions. Our offerings include RF engineering, wireless engineering, fixed and mobile wireless products, optical products, and GIS. We work closely with our operator customers to effectively solve their business needs by providing the correct product, solution and service set that help achieve their goals. Customers are service providers, utilities, tribes, and other entities that provide broadband and mobile services to their subscribers, typically but exclusively to the rural markets.

What is your USP
t3 approaches each customer opportunity with an economic-first approach, working with our customer to solve their broadband network questions in the most cost-effective manner possible. We also take a solution- and vendor-neutral position, and given our background in both fixed and mobile networking, partner with our customers to find the best options to fit their budgets and their needs, many times creating a hybrid network solution that combines wireless and fiber components. We also bring unique intellectual property to our customer engagements that combines business and technical domains that are aligned to meet each customer’s budget and solution requirements.

What is your relationship with the telecom sector?
Telecom service providers are t3’s customers. These service providers may be fixed wireline operators such as traditional telephone or cable companies, mobile operators migrating their 3G and 4G networks to 5G, and tribes, municipalities, and utilities providing broadband to their communities.

How have you got to your current stage of development?
We are in a growth mode, self-supported with some key customers and partners, leveraging both the national broadband infrastructure investments and network modernization trends across both fixed and mobile operators.

Why did you establish the business?
Based on the management team’s background with large multinational companies, we started t3 to provide similar services to rural and smaller operators to assist them in bridging the digital broadband divide with value-based economic solutions.

What is your motivation?
Our motivation is the need for advanced digital services in rural parts of the country and our ability to help our customers provide these services to their communities.

What does the future hold for your business?
With broadband becoming a critical service, we see continued growth with the expansion into the unserved and underserved markets and communities.

COMPANY CV
HEADQUARTERS: Council Grove, KS USA
LAST FUNDING TYPE: Self-funded, private investment
WEBSITE URL: www.t3broadband.com
FOUNDER: Chris Crowe, Owner/CEO

Viewpoint Article

By Bill Danner, EVP Americas, Intent HQ

Telecommunication companies sometimes veer away from an incredibly rich, yet underutilised dataset – data already in their possession – weblog data. Concerns about privacy, scalability challenges, and fears of potential misuse have created significant hesitation. This has been stopping Communication Service Providers (CSPs) from leveraging their weblogs to offer more relevant marketing and from monetising this Internet traffic data that they already log and analyse routinely for network engineering purposes.

However, the privacy/compliance teams at CSPs increasingly believe that the magic formula is to fully figure out the ways to encourage opt-in, while handling weblog data safely, especially for marketing purposes. Senior leadership teams perceive the risks, in general, but are interested in monetising this valuable asset, without compromise or loss of customer confidence. Simultaneously, the marketing teams don’t know what steps to ask the IT department to implement in order to use weblog data safely.

Privacy-first use of weblogs is possible today, and there is growing interest in proven capabilities that will give early adopters a competitive head-start. What is needed to take advantage of this richest of data sources is a digital platform capable of delivering privacy by default right from the outset, which eliminates any risks.

How can this be achieved? Is this possible? How can CSPs find the right balance, being respectful of customer data and yet harnessing its power to deliver the relevance customers expect? In parallel, how can they protect and grow their revenue streams by safely monetising their data assets, while maintaining consumer and brand confidence?

The answer may seem simple, but delivering the end result is not easy. The key is to put customer protection first. Meet or exceed the regulations by engineering privacy into the way all customer data is processed and then optimise its treatment to reveal the richest possible insights for marketers.

Sharing information with data scientists, privacy experts, and IT practitioners has facilitated meaningful conversations about how to overcome the concerns entrenched in CSPs about weblogs. Importantly, they don’t need to surmount the challenges alone.

Here are 10 best practices plus first-hand observations, learnings and recommendations that could transform the way CSPs approach the use of weblog data:

Under GDPR, a telecom needs customer consent to use weblogs for most marketing purposes. Gaining this customer consent for a modest fraction of customers isn’t difficult. This fraction is often more than enough people to support a proof of concept for use of this data.
Customer identities should be protected throughout all processing. Even consented customers should have their identities tokenised, so identities are never exposed to employees (and vendors) working with the data.
Weblogs should be summarised and converted into a form that generates insights about many customers, independent of any one customer’s identity, early in the processing. This ensures that insights connect to the common actions of groups of customers, making the insights non-invasive and more practical.
Some data elements in a consented customer profile may be inappropriate to use as criteria for selection or treatment in some kinds of marketing campaigns. For example, the result could be discriminatory. The use of these data elements should be systematically controlled.
Weblogs can reveal far more detail than marketers need, far more than they have the capacity to use. Deep packet inspection, showing what a consumer did on each website, is “Too Much Information.” Truncating URLs to block this detail requires expertise but isn’t hard to implement.
Consented customers may change their mind and opt out. Systems must support this processing seamlessly.
Data protection also requires a clear policy for data retention. We recommend 24 months or less for the inferences derived from weblogs.
Security is the foundation of privacy. Without strong data security, there can be no privacy.
Analysing vast weblog data requires “data minimisation”, following the principle of select, omit, truncate and summarise to ensure data privacy and processing efficiency. Parallel processing technology can also support projects dealing with massive, internet-scale data.
Insights are most effectively extracted using semantic analysis and natural language processing, supported by domain-specific AI and machine learning. This helps to solve any issues created by language nuances, ambiguity, correlation, and bias.

When used correctly, data science and marketing teams can use weblogs to significantly improve their own models, including those that predict churn, delivering up to 3x return on investment and sustainable data monetisation. Understand how to build in privacy by design and outsmart your competition.

Author

Bill Danner is EVP, Americas at Intent HQ

bill.danner@intenthq.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wdanner/

Author biog

Bill Danner has over three decades of experience working as a senior executive and corporate marketing specialist. Currently EVP of Americas at Intent HQ, he is the global consumer data privacy lead for the company and focuses on consumer data protection initiatives. He also supports the operations, business development and planning departments within the Americas team. Bill believes that privacy is an essential element of true personalization, partly because of rapid changes in regulations, but mainly because personalization cannot succeed without customer trust. As a provider of marketing technology, privacy-by-design is critical to the success of Intent HQ.

Bill has a BA in Economics from Harvard University, an MBA from Harvard Business School and completed an Executive Programme in Digital Marketing Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of the IAPP. Prior to joining Intent HQ, Bill was President and COO of financial technology company CreditRiskMonitor (CRMZ).

www.intenthq.com

News

A Canadian court this week rejected efforts by the competition bureau to block to deal, describing the appeal as being ‘without merit’

Back in 2021, two of Canada’s largest telecoms companies, Shaw Communications and Rogers Communications, announced their intention to merger in a deal worth roughly $15 billion.

Since then, the controversial deal has been plagued by regulatory bottlenecks, with critics complaining that the deal will reduce competition and drive up costs for customers. Competition Commissioner, Matthew Boswell, launched an appeal to block the deal in May last year, saying that it threatened to further shrink Canada’s already concentrated mobile market.

This month, however, has seen the Competition Commission rebuffed twice.

At the start of the month, the Competition Tribunal dismissed the appeal to block the deal, saying that they did not believe the merger would represent the loss of competition the Commissioner claimed. In particular, the Tribunal noted that there would still be four major mobile players in the mobile market, with Quebecois telecoms group Vidéotron having agreed to purchase Shaw’s mobile unit, Freedom Mobile, and scale up their operations to a national level.

The Competition Commission immediately said it would appeal this decision at the Federal Court of Appeal in Ottawa, alleging that the Tribunal had made legal errors in appraising the deal.

Now, this week, this new appeal has been rejected by the court, which said that the appeal was ‘without merit’.

“[The Competition Tribunal] found, I would say, on the evidence rather decisively that there was no substantial lessening of competition,” explained Justice David Stratas. “They also found a number of pro-competitive considerations.”

The Commissioner Boswell has said he will further appeal the ruling, potentially taking the case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

This dismissal now means the merger is agonisingly close to competition, with the companies scurrying to dot the I’s and cross the t’s before the deadline of January 31.

Only one hurdle now remains: approval from Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, whose permission is required to transfer spectrum from Shaw to Vidéotron.

In a tweet, Champagne noted the court’s decision, saying that he would deliver his own verdict on the merger ‘in due course’.

My statement regarding the Federal Court of Appeal’s ruling on the Rogers-Shaw transaction: pic.twitter.com/ujvwznTVrl

— François-Philippe Champagne (FPC) 🇨🇦 (@FP_Champagne) January 24, 2023

How is the global telecoms market shifting in 2023? Join the experts in discussion at the Connected America conference live in Dallas, Texas

Also in the news:
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American Tower rumoured to be eying Cellnex takeover