Money Moves: March 2022

Here are some of the most prominent venture capital and merger and acquisition news items from March. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s VC or M&A activity in our monthly Money Moves section, or if you have any tips on that activity, please send the information to Julia King (jking@sdxcentral.com).

Aruba CTO Says SSE Needs Better Intrinsic Network Security

Security service edge (SSE) is a powerful tool for securing application access, but it’s no replacement for intrinsic network-layer security, Aruba CTO David Hughes told SDxCentral.

5G Hype Hits 'Greatest Uncertainty' Phase for Carriers

The 5G hype period appears to be in for a rude awakening with killer apps remaining elusive and additional revenue for carriers hard to come by, according to a new report from Moody’s.

Operators collaborate to keep Ukrainian refugees connected

European and Ukrainian operators have signed a Joint Statement in collaboration with the EU to nail down continued measures to make sure people fleeing the war in Ukraine have mobile connectivity.

Three’s 5G handset usage quadrupled in 2021

UK operator Three has put out a bunch of stats within its ‘Mobile Britain’ report – including that 5G usage on its network has increased by 385% since 2020, and handset numbers have quadrupled.

Softbank borrows JPY35 billion to fund ‘Society 5.0’ 5G build

Japanese operator Softbank played up the societal benefits of 5G as it raised fresh funds for its network rollout.

Lego and Epic want to make a metaverse for kids

Toy brick firm Lego and games publisher Epic Games have announced that together they intend to build some sort of metaverse aimed at children.

Iliad and WindTre inch towards rural 5G JV

Italian operators Iliad and WindTre appear to have made progress in their plan to share the burden of rural 5G rollout.

Tata Digital finally launches its ‘super-app’

Indian conglomerate Tata Group has launched a new app that aims to aggregate all its digital offerings in once place.

SDxCentral 2-Minute Weekly Wrap: AMD Drops $1.9B on Pensando

How to Choose the Right Open Source Projects

The cloud-native ecosystem is home to a massive number of Kubernetes-focused open source projects, and that presents a paradox of choice.

CrowdStrike, Mandiant Push ‘Collaborative Approach’ in Cybersecurity

CrowdStrike and Mandiant joined forces this week to address an increasingly complex threat environment. The strategic partnership enables joint customers to integrate CrowdStrike’s Falcon endpoint security technology with Mandiant’s incident response and consulting services.

Daily Roundup: How Should You Interpret MITRE ATT&CK Evaluations?

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Ofcom gets a new spectrum boss

Dan Lloyd will join Ofcom in May as Group Director, Spectrum bringing with him 20 years of wireless/tech experience in ten countries.

Samsung Electronics set for best profit in years

Despite everything, Korean tech giant Samsung has guided significant year-on-year increases in sales and operating profit for the first quarter.

Deutsche Telekom pitches itself as a beacon of Western civilisation

Shareholder meetings are an appropriate forum for an inspirational speech or two but judging the volume of rhetoric to employ can be tricky.

Thousands of small businesses vulnerable to cyber attack, warns BT

UK telecoms group BT has commissioned some research which concludes thousands of small firms in the UK are without business grade security, leaving them open to cyber attack.

Digicel ditches Panama as M&A kills competition

Digicel is closing down its operations in Panama, claiming that it has been squeezed out as a result of an anti-competitive environment.

Daily Roundup: Are QR Codes the Secret to Greener Data Centers?

In case you’ve been stuck in video conference meetings all day, here are today’s top stories from SDxCentral. Also, make sure to subscribe to our daily newsletters to get these stories in your inbox.

Enterprise IT Spend to Cool, Asia Security Spend Remains Hot

Enterprise IT spending on security, cloud, and data centers is set over the next two years, however increased cybersecurity concerns will continue to drive steady enterprise IT spending growth across Asia, according to a pair of new analyst reports.

Google Data Dives Into a BigLake

Google added a new big storage option for data-needy customers and helped form a new data initiative focused on helping enterprises migrate their storage needs to the cloud.

How Should You Interpret MITRE ATT&CK Evaluations?

Several security vendors touted perfect threat protection or detection scores in the recent MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluation. However, MITRE recommends an independent interpretation of the results and that interested consumers create their own scores based on specific needs.  

O-RAN Alliance Targets ‘Open Intelligence’ in Release 2

The O-RAN Alliance released its second wave of specifications for open radio access network (RAN) architecture with much of the focus on what it calls “open intelligence.”

UK to trial running full fibre connections through water pipes

A UK government-led Fibre in Water trial will see full fibre-optic cable deployed through 17km of live drinking water mains between Barnsley and Penistone.

Northrop Grumman hopes AT&T can make it better at blowing stuff up

AT&T and giant US defense contractor Northrop Grumman want to see how 5G can improve the efficacy of US armed forces.

Lynk launches ‘first commercial-ready cell-tower-in-space’

Satellite base-station company Lynk says it has successfully deployed Lynk Tower 1 into space, its first spacecraft covered by an FCC license to operate a satellite direct-to-standard-phone service.

Indian telcos rail against private 5G

India’s three big mobile operators are apparently attempting to block companies seeking to roll out private 5G networks from participating in the country’s upcoming spectrum auction.

PLDT reportedly in talks to sell 6000 Philippines towers for $1.5 billion

Philippines telco PLDT has entered talks with Edgepoint and Edotco to sell 6000 towers in the Manilla area for a sum of $1.5 billion, according to reports.

5G Carriers Face Energy Crunch

Operators have an energy consumption problem on their hands that’s both exacerbated and diminished by 5G, according to ABI Research.

Cisco Pushes Hybrid Work With Firewall Refresh

Cisco unveiled a series of mid-range firewalls this week alongside a cloud-delivered management dashboard as part of an ongoing effort to capitalize on the pivot to hybrid work models. 

Are QR Codes the Secret to Greener Data Centers?

Aligned Data Centers this week announced OriginMark, a material traceability system the provider says will accelerate circular asset management and supply chain decarbonization.

Daily Roundup: 5G Carriers Face Energy Crunch

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Prosimo Tackles Multi-Cloud App Networking

Multi-cloud networking vendor Prosimo this week introduced app-to-app networking functionality designed to streamline customer deployments.

AT&T's Media Failure Portends Poor 5G Future

AT&T’s failed media and entertainment adventures continue to hang like a dark cloud over the company despite its newfound status as a standalone company squarely focused on wireless and broadband connectivity. As the company finalizes a shedding of its WarnerMedia business through a merger with Discovery this month, following last year’s DirecTV spin-off, its outlook remains poor, according to a market research firm.

Mine’s bigger than yours: German operators vie for 5G bragging rights

For all their talk of services and enabling a digital lifestyle, sometimes telcos just want to show off about the size of their networks.

Thai mobile merger close to completion

The merger of Thailand’s second and third largest mobile operators looks set to happen sooner rather than later, with the shareholders of both companies having now approved the move.

Broadband prices ranked – UK is 92nd cheapest in the world

Price comparison site Cable.co.uk has released a report listing what it reckons are the cheapest and most expensive places to buy broadband across the world.

Meng Wanzhou is added to the Huawei rotation

Recently released Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou will probably get a go at running the whole show later this year because she has been added to the ‘rotating chair’ roster.

Daily Roundup: Qualcomm Hypes 5G mmWave Momentum

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VMware Exec Claims SDN War Win Over Cisco

VMware NSX platform’s advantages in flexibility and security help the vendor continue to win in the software-defined networking (SDN) market, its networking and security leader touted. And the vendor plans to roll out more endpoint security services to reinforce its dominance.

SSE Is a Compromise, Claims Cato Co-Founder

Cato Networks co-founder Gur Shatz isn’t a fan of security service edge (SSE). In fact, he finds the Gartner-coined product category “annoying” and counter productive.

F5’s Cloud Native Network Functions Saturate Rakuten Symphony

Rakuten Symphony today boosted its open radio access network (RAN) platform with cloud-native network functions (CNFs) from F5 that target networking and security requirements for wireless carriers.

Fortinet Unleashes Flood of Security Features

Fortinet revamped its FortiOS operating system with new artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced features designed to accelerate threat detection and mitigation and improve network visibility.

UK government creates an NFT in bid to become a ‘cryptoasset hub’

The government has announced vague plans ‘to make Britain a global hub for cryptoasset technology and investment’, which includes having the Royal Mint issue an NFT.

Elon Musk becomes the largest Twitter shareholder

Space X and Tesla founder Elon Musk has bought 73.5 million shares representing 9.2% of microblogging platform Twitter.

Singtel’s ATN pays a high price for Australian towers

Australian Tower Network has agreed to acquire Axicom and its 2,000 telco towers for A$3.58 billion, over a billion dollars more than its own similarly-sized business was apparently worth just six months ago.

TIM aims to hammer out single network deal this month

Italian operator group TIM has formally agreed to begin talks with CDP with a view to defining the terms of a merger with Open Fiber by the end of April.

UK government asks telecoms firms to ‘raise awareness’ of cheaper tariffs

UK Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries has written to BT, Virgin Media O2, KCom and others to ask them to ‘outline plans for promoting low-cost social tariffs’ for people on benefits.

Google Distributed Cloud Edge Hits Full Market

Google’s edge reach hit the mainstream as the cloud giant unveiled general availability of its Distributed Cloud Edge portfolio. The move extends its cloud tentacles into the telecommunications and edge space that is receiving increased attention from cloud and data center providers.

Qualcomm Hypes 5G mmWave Momentum

Qualcomm remains confident in the future of millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum for wireless communications despite a relatively slow start globally and a shift in strategy and emphasis among carriers in the United States. 

Daily Roundup: Intel Acquires Granulate to Boost Data Center Efficiency

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Why AMD Spent $1.9B for Pensando's DPU Biz

AMD’s $1.9 billion acquisition of data processing unit (DPU) vendor Pensando better positions the company to compete directly against rivals Nvidia, Intel, and Marvell in the highly competitive data center market, analysts told SDxCentral Monday.