Eurobites: Telcos sign up to COP28 fossil fuels fight

A gaggle of major European telcos including BT, Deutsche Telekom, Swisscom, Telia and Vodafone have lent their names to an open letter addressed to the heads of state attending COP28 in Dubai urging, among other things, fossil fuel producers to set "science-based, net-zero targets and to develop and publish transition plans on short- and long-term steps to decarbonize business operations, products and services," adding that this includes "shifting investments away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy to halve GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions by 2030 and enable a net-zero global energy system by mid-century." Given the BBC's pre-summit revelations about how the UAE planned to use its role as host of COP28 to seal oil and gas deals, this may strike some as giving off an even stronger whiff of wishful thinking than is usually the case with such things.

US investment firm KKR is working on a new bid for Sparkle, the international services arm of Telecom Italia (TIM), according to a Reuters report. TIM and KKR discussed a valuation of €750-€800 million (US$817-$871 million), an improvement on an earlier offer of around €600 million ($654 million), which was rejected as too low by TIM. TIM is already in the process of selling its domestic fixed infrastructure (or "NetCo") to KKR, a deal which is expected to complete in the summer of 2024. (See Italy to take up to 20% stake in TIM's fixed assets.)

Another US investment firm, Stonepeak, has completed its acquisition of a 49% stake in towers subsidiary Cellnex Nordics several months earlier than expected. Stonepeak is paying €730 million ($774 million) for the unit, which comprises around 4,600 sites across Sweden and Denmark. (See Eurobites: Cellnex sells 49% stake in Nordics business to Stonepeak.)

The European Commission is trumpeting something it's calling a  Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU), an agreement it hopes will form a major plank of its plan to encourage the development of a stronger European chip industry. The Chips JU, which is one of a number of proposals laid out in the Chips Act to strengthen Europe's semiconductor ecosystem, will receive €1.67 billion ($1.82 billion) of EU funding, a sum that is expected to be matched by EU member states. (See EU gets in on the Chips Act.)

It's not often the case that Google can portray itself as the David in a David-and-Goliath fight but, as Reuters reports, that is sort of what it's trying to do in its complaint to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) about what it sees as Amazon and Microsoft's unfair dominance of Britain's cloud services market. In a letter to the CMA, Google claimed that Microsoft's licensing restrictions in particular leave UK customers with "no economically reasonable alternative but to use Azure as their cloud services provider, even if they prefer the prices, quality, security, innovations, and features of rivals."

In related matters, Microsoft has announced a £2.5 billion ($3.1 billion) investment in building AI infrastructure in the UK, including a doubling in size of its data center estate, according to a City AM report. The money will also go toward training a million people in AI skills, offering them the opportunity to gain a professional certificate in generative AI.

T-Systems, the IT services arm of Deutsche Telekom, is to offer and manage Google Distributed Cloud Hosted (GDC Hosted) for customers in Germany demanding the highest "sovereignty" requirements. The GDC Hosted platform runs on servers which are physically separate (or "air-gapped," in industry parlance) from Google Cloud's international backbone and the public internet. The concept of data sovereignty has become increasingly popular in Europe as governments and enterprises seek ways of reducing their reliance on the large Chinese and US cloud providers that dominate the market. (See DT plans German sovereign cloud – with Google.)

Rajeev Suri has been appointed chairman designate of Digicel Group, the operator whose business is centered on the Caribbean and Central America. Suri succeeds Denis O'Brien, who will continue to serve on the board and will remain a shareholder in the company.