Orange

June 2026 showed agentic AI scaling from pilot to platform: industry-wide standards momentum, AI-RAN field trials from Nokia, Amdocs and KDDI, and fresh capital across data centers on three continents. This full roundup covers every deployment, partnership, funding round and governance move from the month, with tools to prioritise AI use cases and plan the network around them.
Eight French organisations — including Capgemini, Orange, EDF, Iliad and Scaleway — have formally united under the AION consortium to bid for an EU AI Gigafactory designation, backed by approximately €10 billion in committed investment. The bid targets EuroHPC's live call for proposals, closing June 23, 2026, and is designed to demonstrate France's ability to anchor the full AI value chain. For telecom and enterprise IT leaders, AION signals a structural repositioning of European operators as sovereign AI infrastructure enablers, not merely connectivity providers.
Deutsche Telekom's transition from Ericsson to Mavenir as its primary 5G standalone core provider represents a fundamental rethinking of how Tier 1 operators architect and operate networks in the cloud-native era. Mavenir now carries all standalone 5G traffic in Germany, while Ericsson handles legacy 4G and non-standalone 5G. Driven by the Horizontal TelCo Cloud initiative, the shift has already produced measurable results including 65% energy savings in live testing and three commercial network slicing deployments, with Apple FaceTime set to leverage these capabilities at consumer scale via iOS 26.
The European Commission has approved Orange’s plan to acquire the remaining stake in MasOrange, signaling limited competitive impact and clearing the path for full control in Spain. Orange will purchase the roughly 50% it does not already own in MasOrange from the Lorca consortium for about €4.3 billion. MasOrange was created in 2024 by combining Orange Spain and MásMóvil, and the new deal converts the joint venture into a wholly owned Orange subsidiary. The Commission used its simplified merger review, indicating no structural change in market concentration. Closing is expected before July 2026, after which MasOrange will be integrated into Orange’s operations and financial reporting.
ETSI has introduced OpenOP Release 1 as an open-source operator platform for telco cloud, designed to standardize capability exposure and federation at the edge while creating a practical bridge from 5G-Advanced to early 6G experimentation. Networks are becoming software-first and distributed, but operators still face fragmented exposure of network capabilities and inconsistent approaches to multi-operator edge. OpenOP targets this gap with a standards-aligned, open implementation that lets developers consume telecom capabilities via CAMARA APIs and deploy applications across federated edge zones. Release 1 provides a working, end-to-end baseline with integrated components for exposure, orchestration, federation, and AI-assisted intent, suitable for hands-on testing and integration.
Orange Business is putting authenticated, AI-augmented voice back in the critical path of CX and employee workflows as enterprises confront fraud, fatigue, and falling answer rates. As digital touchpoints proliferate, the phone channel faces a crisis of confidence: spoofed identities, impersonation scams, and AI-generated content have eroded user trust and pushed customers to ignore legitimate calls. Despite surging chat and self-service volumes, voice remains the preferred medium for resolving complex or high-stakes problems, and the most-used channel for many service agents. The new capabilities combine authenticated caller identity, deepfake detection, generative AI in the contact center, and agentic telephony that can autonomously manage call flows.
Orange Business has launched Orange Drone Guardian, a counter‑UAS service that turns telco infrastructure into a nationwide sensing fabric—arriving as drone activity, regulation, and critical-infrastructure risk converge. Orange is leveraging assets few others can: secure nationwide connectivity, cloud qualified to ANSSI’s SecNumCloud 3.2 standard, a domestic security operations capability, and a tower footprint via TOTEM’s 19,700 sites across France. The offer combines sensors, command‑and‑control software, secure cloud, and managed operations in a subscription bundle designed to scale and evolve. Delivered as a subscription, customers gain real‑time situational awareness without large upfront capex.
Live Streamed on Mon, 2 Mar at 09:30 - 10:45 CET

In an environment of accelerating change, global decision-makers convene to explore how the industry can unlock the full potential of 5G while laying the groundwork for what comes next. Visionaries take the stage to chart a path toward a hyper-connected world shaped by AI-native networks and next-generation infrastructure. Discover how operators are rethinking value creation and building the foundations of a more dynamic, intelligent and equitable digital economy.
Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, TIM, and Vodafone unveiled a live, pan‑European edge federation at MWC 2026, marking a practical step toward an interoperable edge cloud that spans national borders. The five largest European operators demonstrated the European Edge Continuum, a federated edge capability now running in lab and pre‑production environments. The initiative provides a single entry point to deploy and manage applications across multiple operators’ edge nodes, with automated placement, security controls, and mobility‑aware continuity. The platform draws on components developed under the IPCEI‑CIS program backed by the EU’s NextGenerationEU funds, and is positioned for industrialization and commercial rollout next.
Nokia and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are bringing agentic AI to 5G-Advanced network slicing, moving closed‑loop, intent-based services from PowerPoint to live pilots with du and Orange. The partners unveiled an agentic AI-powered slicing solution that fuses Nokia’s RAN-to-core slicing, AirScale radio, and MantaRay SMO with AWS’s Bedrock AI platform and EKS Hybrid Nodes to turn external context—events, traffic, maps, weather—and live network KPIs into real-time policy decisions. The result is adaptive, premium slices provisioned when and where they’re needed, without manual reconfiguration.
A German court has ordered Meta’s Edge Network Services to pay Deutsche Telekom roughly €30 million for network services tied to Meta traffic, reshaping leverage in Europe’s peering and interconnection market. The dispute centered on whether Meta’s subsidiary used Deutsche Telekom’s private interconnection and peering points under a valid, paid contract after an earlier agreement expired. The court sided with the operator, concluding that continued use of those private interconnection facilities created obligations to pay for services over a multi-year period covering traffic from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
NGMN’s latest operator-led guidance frames simplification as a precondition for 5G efficiency, sustainability and service agility—not an optional clean-up exercise. NGMN’s new Framework for Network Simplification – An Operator View argues for targeted simplification across radio, core and transport to contain this sprawl while preserving the ability to launch differentiated services. The alliance places cloud‑native design, federated service exposure and AI‑driven operations at the center of that shift, supported by agile ways of working. Simplification is how operators square the circle—cut carbon and cost, while accelerating innovation. The publication offers a practical, non-prescriptive method to decide where simplification delivers the most benefit, and when complexity risk outweighs near-term gains.

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