STC and Telefónica pool resources to develop new tech

Spanish operator Telefónica has signed another collaborative agreement, this time with Middle Eastern telco STC as they look to rustle up some treats in the cybersecurity, cloud, IoT and Big Data fields.

STC and Telefónica have entered into a collaborative pact in order to ‘benefit from their joint scale, combined expertise and market presence’ – which appears to mean joint future B2B and B2C projects in areas such as cybersecurity, cloud, IoT and Big Data.

This means STC has joined the ranks of the Telefónica Partners Program, launched in 2011 and which includes operators from 65 markets in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East and Africa. This apparently means STC ‘will get access to a comprehensive approach to knowledge sharing and experience on a wide variety of subjects’ – or in other words the benefits that come with being a bigger club of organisations.

”We are delighted to sign this partnership agreement with Telefónica Group benefiting our operations in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait as well as all our Local Affiliates who operate in many areas and technology environments, we will be closely working with Telefónica, all the members and partners for building a solid platform of collaboration touching all the strategic topics that enhance our positioning and leadership within our respective countries,” said Mazyed AlMazyed, STC Group Business Efficiency and New Markets General Manager.

Mark Evans, Chief Strategy and Development Officer of Telefónica added: “We are really excited about joining forces with one of the leading telcos in the MENA region. STC Group is a company fully aligned with our aim to accelerate the digital transformation of our customers and the need of leveraging scale to provide best-in-market technology solutions and digital services. We are confident that this agreement will bring important benefits to both Groups.”

Whether through its partner program or not, Telefónica often teams up with other firms on projects and trials and in the process gives the impression of being one of the more energetic operators when it comes to coming up with flashy applications of connectivity.

In September last year it announced it was working on a ‘metaverse ecosystem’ with chip firm Qualcomm, and was part of a group project looking at holographic calling for smartphones, tablets, and mixed reality (MR) glasses. Last year is also announced a diversification into IoT security, teamed up with OneWeb on a satellite project, and collaborated with Cisco on converged network and security services. Meanwhile, another announcement went out just today explaining that Telefónica has teamed up with Adwatch to leverage blockchain to fight digital ad fraud.

It’s not always easy to track all these projects tech firms and telcos launch in once they’ve been announced, but if nothing else Telefónica certainly looks very busy across a wide area of interests.

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