Vodafone Group and CK Hutchison unveiled a long-expected combination of their U.K. telecom businesses, after talks that started last fall. Vodafone would own 51% of the business, CK Hutchison 49% and no cash would change hands, under the agreement, which European regulators must approve. The combined company would have a value of at least $21 billion, with 27 million wireless customers. “From day one, millions of customers” of Vodafone UK and CK Hutchison's Three UK “will enjoy a better network experience with greater coverage and reliability at no extra cost, including through certain flexible, contract-free offers with no annual price increases, and social tariffs,” Vodafone said in a news release. The new company would cover more than 99% of the U.K. population with a 5G stand-alone network, “delivering to customers up to a six-fold increase in average data speeds by 2034,” Vodafone said. The companies plan to invest $14 billion in the U.K. over 10 years “to create one of Europe’s most advanced standalone 5G networks, in full support of UK Government targets,” Vodafone said.

The board of directors of the U.S. Export-Import Bank approved a preliminary commitment to lend $300 million to the government of Costa Rica’s Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad & Subsidiaries for equipment and services from trusted vendors to deploy a 5G network, the bank said Friday. Ex-Im "financing can play a key role in ensuring 5G telecommunications infrastructure is built and supported by trusted vendors,” said President and Chair Reta Jo Lewis.

Before Ligado can get ancillary terrestrial component authority in the L band, a more in-depth review of potential interference to adjacent band services is needed, said Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada Wednesday, denying Ligado's 2022 application. Noting Ligado's U.S. authorization, ISED said harmonization of technical standards is important, but it would be premature to give Ligado an ATC authorization due to interference concerns. In its decision, ISED cited a National Academies of Science report raising concerns about possible interference to high-precision GPS receivers and Iridium downlinks (see 2209090032). ISED said it "strongly encourages" collaboration among the stakeholders to assess the potential for interference from proposed ATC services in the 1525-1559 MHz band into adjacent-band global navigation satellite system receivers. Ligado emailed it's disappointed the agency is seeking additional study, but "we also appreciate that ISED believes this will help achieve consensus in its efforts to ensure maximum and efficient terrestrial use of the L-band in Canada. This band has been extensively studied in the U.S., and we’re confident additional technical studies will continue to show these frequencies, like most spectrum bands, can -- and should -- be used for multiple services. We will continue collaborating with ISED and other parties while remaining focused on working with our partners to commercially launch satellite Direct-to-Device (D2D) service solutions later this year.”

U.K.-based Vodafone will slash 11,000 jobs over the next three years, about 10% of its workforce, the company said Tuesday. “Our performance has not been good enough,” said new CEO Margherita Della Valle: “To consistently deliver, Vodafone must change.”

Mobile connections are critical to closing the digital divide in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, said a GSMA report released Tuesday. GSMA said more than 40% of the population live in rural areas “where mobile connectivity is the primary, and often only, form of internet access.” Countries in the region are undergoing a digital revolution, driven by ambitious government digital transformation initiatives and a general trend towards greater digitalisation, spurred by the pandemic,” the report said. While 45 million people in the region use mobile broadband, another 50 million remain unconnected, GSMA said.

Germany’s Deutsche Telekom has Huawei gear in its network, including antennas, but doesn’t plan to remove it, CEO Tim Hottges said Thursday on a financial call. “There is no ban here of Huawei, and I even don’t see a ban coming,” he said, noting the security review Germany is performing on all Chinese gear. “What Deutsche Telekom and what the other carriers are doing is that we are just following the law, and we are just following the political guidance on this area,” he said. Hottges emphasized the growth of its majority-owned T-Mobile in the U.S. T-Mobile covers 275 million POPs with its ultra-capacity 5G network, he said: “We are way ahead of our competition, and we will reach 300 million POPs by end of the year.”

Rogers Communications is testing Lynk's supplemental coverage from space capabilities with plans for expanding direct-to-device coverage in 2024 across Canada's most remote areas, Rogers said Wednesday. It said the service will start with texting and expand over time to data and voice.

Workers represented by United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1944, after 16 months of negotiations, approved a new contract with Canadian provider Telus. The agreement covers 6,800 members and includes wage increases each year through March 2027, better job security protections, paid domestic violence leave and other benefits, USW said Friday. “Every improvement won in this contract is the direct result of hearing from Telus workers that they expect better,” said Donna Hokiro, USW Local 1944 president.

Comments are due April 7, replies May 8, on a November Further NPRM on taking next steps to further clamp down on gear from companies on the FCC’s covered list, said a notice for Wednesday’s Federal Register. The notice seeking comment on extending the FCC authorization ban to components of covered equipment and on revoking previous authorizations of covered equipment (see 2211230065). Filings should be made in dockets 21-232 or 21-233. “In seeking comment on component parts, the Commission notes at the outset that it believes that certain component parts produced by entities identified on the Covered List, if included in finished products, could potentially pose an unacceptable national security risk, similar to the security risk posed by the ‘covered’ equipment that the Commission is now prohibiting from authorization,” the notice said.

The European Commission will put the "final nail in the coffin of competition" if its proposed gigabit connectivity recommendation is accepted, said Luc Hindryckx, European Competitive Telecommunications Association director general, in an interview. The recommendation is part of a package of measures unveiled Feb. 23, which also includes a Gigabit Infrastructure Act and a questionnaire on the future of Europe's electronic communications sector (see 2302230001). If approved, Hindryckx said, the recommendation "will irreversibly damage the pro-competitive and pro-consumer principles established in the long-standing European electronic communications framework." Under that framework, national telecom regulatory authorities who find a network operator has significant market power must impose specific rules on them to ensure competition. The EC, however, wants to boost the revenue of ex-monopolies such as Deutsche Telekom and Orange, which continue to dominate national markets, he said. The theory underlining the draft recommendation is that deregulating dominant players and allowing them to increase the wholesale prices they charge alternative telcos would motivate them to invest in very high-capacity networks (VHCN), he said. The proposal, however, ignores that challengers also have incentives to invest and that competition is the main driver of investments in VHCN: The less competition, the less investment. Other concerns, Hindryckx said, are: (1) A recommendation can be adopted quickly because it doesn't require approval by the European Parliament and Council. (2) The draft undemocratically overrules some aspects of the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC), legislation that required approval from the Parliament and Council. (3) Increasing wholesale charges will hike retail prices, fueling inflation. The recommendation should seek to harmonize the way regulatory authorities apply the EECC but, as written, it will discourage them from adopting pro-competitive measures to avoid confrontation with the EC, blogged telecom consultant Innocenzo Genna Friday. If in a given market there may be "prospects" of infrastructure competition, the regulator will be forced to let its guard down, he said. That will make access to infrastructure more difficult, with prices no longer cost-oriented. "All of this is referred to as 'flexibility,' a euphemism that actually translates as: no more competition." Big telcos, on the other hand, said the recommendation is too regulation-heavy. Rules for the fiber era should be different from those for the copper era, but the draft "still excessively relies on disproportionate regulatory intervention, as opposed to much needed incentives and cost recovery reflecting the business risk of network deployment," said the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association.