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Lithuanian spectrum auction to be hotly contested

Nick Booth
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Lithuanian spectrum auction to be hotly contested

Three-way fight between Bite, Tele2 and Telia

Lithuanian telecoms watchdog the telecoms regulator RRT (Rysiu Reguliavimo Tarnyba) has opened up the auction of 5G mobile spectrum in the 700MHz band, reports TeleGeography’s Comms Update. 

The tender comprises the sale of the following; one package of two sets of 10MHz blocks, one being in the range of 713MHz to 723MHz the other from 768MHz to 778MHz.  There are also two spectrums running for 5MHz: one is from 723MHz to 728MHz, one from 778MHz to 783MHz. Alternatively, Lithuania’s mobile operators can take their chances with the bands between 728MHz and 733MHz, or from 783MHz to 788MHz.

Bidding

The initial prices are set at €5 million and €3 million, respectively. Spectrum licences are valid for an initial period of 20 years. In January this year the RRT postponed the deadline for interested parties to submit documents for the 700MHz auction to 25 March 2022. Subsequently, the RRT confirmed that the country’s three existing mobile networks operators,  Bite Lithuania, Tele2 Lithuania and Telia Lietuva, had all registered to take part in the tender. Winning bidders are subject to certain rollout and service provision obligations, including a requirement to launch commercial 5G services in at least one of the country’s five largest cities, Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipeda, Siauliai and Panevezys, within six months and to all five by 31 December 2023.

Baltic

The Baltic countries have been cautious about adopting the new technology and there have been delays to the auction processes caused by everything from the pandemic to disagreements over licencing obligations.  Latvia was the first of the three to successfully award spectrum in January 2022. All three of the country’s major mobile operators – Tele2, Latvijas Mobilais Telefons, and Bite Latvija – won a block of 700MHz spectrum each. Estonia’s auction, by contrast, is offering spectrum in the 3.5GHz band. It is currently running and bids have surpassed reserve prices by over €1 million. 

Roy ready for Totem deals

Nick Booth
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Roy ready for Totem deals

Tall propositions from technology stack to towerco

In an exclusive interview with Mobile Europe Totem’s new CEO Nicolas Roy explains the differences in business culture between a telco and towerco.

The chief technology officers (CTOs) of European mobile network operators (MNOs) may not be making the best use of their time by getting involved in mast management. Given that time is the mobile operator’s most precious resource, they might need change their priorities. Delegating mast management and passive infrastructure issues to a specialist could make a company a lot more profitable. That is the lesson learned from an audience with Nicolas Roy, the former Orange group technical director turned mast maestro. It’s eight months since Roy was appointed as CEO of Orange’s independent towerco Totem and the difference in disciplines has been interesting, Roy told Mobile Europe. In February Mobile Europe reported that chief financial officer Ramon Fernandez had hinted that Orange’s Totem division was ‘well positioned for deals’, presumably a euphemism for being on the acquisition trail. With its 26,000 tower sites in France and Spain it has exceptional leverage. Fernandez said core operating growth is an imperative 2023.

Financials

Chairman Stéphane Richard said that Orange, with its network of over 56 million connectable households, is the uncontested European fibre optic leader. Beyond France and Spain, Orange’s biggest areas of activity in the European nations was expected to be Totem, in its role as neutral and independent service provider. “By retaining control of our infrastructure, we have made a crucial decision for our future growth,” said Roy. Infrastructure sharing options for operators will include better coverage and connections in dense and enclosed environments, said Roy. Totem could give unfettered access to hostile territory such as stadiums, underground stations, trains and offices. These are the sort of conversations that a technical director does not like having however.

Battle

The old Roy would have preferred to talk about technology protocols rather than planning permission.    By getting drawn into these areas, said Roy, a CTO can find themselves fighting a battle they are not equipped for. Many technology companies get their fingers burnt on the commercial property market as they have no idea of its hidden complexities and fall into any number of money pits. “You are dealing in non-technical conversations,” said Roy, noting how his job has changed in the last eight months. “You are dealing with landlords and local authorities and their conversations don’t follow the same [rationalisations as you might expect in a logic-related job such as a technical director’,” said Roy.

Turning point

A towerco chief has to understand property and politics as well as empathise with the digital needs and uses of operators and their clients. It’s a unique job for which there is no training manual as this all new, according to Roy. The towerco CEO must be everything from an advisor on network construction and maintenance, a relationship expert when dealing with landlords and they must have access to elusive sustainable energy sources, said Roy.  “Our industry is at a turning point,” said Roy, “in the past we have seen many tower companies funding the networks of their customers and we do think that tomorrow those MNOs would still want them to fund the networks. But the funding options mean they are more likely to turn to a tower company to provide their infrastructure and to raise capital by selling off their passive units.”

Assets

Meanwhile, Totem proves its worth by getting their money to work harder by getting more performance out of the assets they invested in. “Yes it’s clear that is the case. I mean, pure players and divested MNOs did create their own tower companies to extract as much value as they can,” said Roy. On that note, Roy wants to get the density of occupation up on Totem’s sites. Instead of having two MNOs sharing each tower, Roy would rather have five relationships to manage. “Success is gauged on different objectives,” said Roy. “Sometimes it’s about how quickly you can get permission for all these towers and construct them. That is where dealing with all the local authorities [is a fine art]. You need to find a common view with landlords, authorities and the operators in order to find the best sites.”

Telefónica-built Google Cloud opens in Madrid 

Nick Booth
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Telefónica-built Google Cloud opens in Madrid 

Hyperscaler’s presence allays Spanish sovereignty fears

Spain’s doubts that convenience compromises compliance have been allayed by the opening of a local Google Cloud centre for the Madrid region. 
Spain’s flagship operator Telefónica helped build this particular new node in a network of 33 cloud regions and 100 zones across the globe. It has promised the region’s businesses and sovereign-sensitive government organisations much quicker response times, more access to cloud services and no compromise on data protection standards. Google Cloud promised Madrilenos will benefit from high security on ‘the industry’s cleanest cloud’. 

Security first 

Companies want to get on the cloud quicker and they want their journey simplified. Locally based data hosting and data processing facilities remove these barriers to cloud adoption in the Madrid area, according to Luis Jimenez, Subdirector del Centro Criptológico Nacional. Spanish businesses and government entities can now comply with Spanish standards for availability, data residency and sustainability. 

Technology

The technology speeding their metamorphosis comprises a core set of services including Compute Engine, App Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Bigtable, Cloud Storage, Spanner and BigQuery. The Madrid region is launching with three cloud zones and Telefónica is supporting one of them, giving them access to analytics based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Application modernisation tools will be available to give existing systems the usability and dexterity of cloud computing apps. 

Who needs it?

Highly regulated sectors like government, healthcare and financial services need additional controls to store data and run workloads locally and Google Cloud makes it a lot easier for telco business service providers, such as Telefónica Business Services, BT, Orange Business Services and Deutsche Telekom’s business service division. The Google Cloud region is bringing to Spain will be especially important for convincing public sector organizations that everything is above board and inline with the National Security Scheme, according to Centro Criptológico Nacional’s Jimenez. A local cloud with the highest security guarantees is ideal. “The collaboration with hyperscalers is key. It is also essential to continue advancing with best practices adoption, training, security configurations and supervision,” said Jimenez.

Hyperscale is the convincer

Data sovereignty is a sensitive issue in Spain but it wrestles for prominence with the speed of response time, according to Carlos Valero, Chief Information Officer, Grupo DIA. “We have decided to rely on the new Google Cloud region in Madrid for some of our most critical workloads like orders, inventory, product stock. This will guarantee our customers a low-latency service while managing their data within the national borders.” Offering customers quick responses, while keeping workloads and data management safe, is vital for Spanish banking customers of BBVA too, confirmed Carmen Lopez Herranz, CTO at BBVA.  The new Google Cloud region in Madrid is a great step forward and “offering them a premium user experience without neglecting data security and residency,” said Lopez Harran.

Economic multiplier

Google Cloud’s Grace Hopper subsea cable landed in September 2021 in Bilbao, connecting Spain and the UK with the United States for increased performance and greater support using the same network that powers Google infrastructure and products. Google has helped to train more than 1 million people under its Grow with Google program in Spain. It plans to open a center of excellence for cybersecurity in Malaga and support the creation of the AI Lab Granada, in partnership with Indra Minsait in ‘the coming year’. “In 2020, we announced our plans to launch a new cloud region to help accelerate the economic recovery and growth of Spain,” said Isaac Hernandez, the Country Leader for Google Cloud in Spain, “today, it’s officially open.”

5G telco monetiser Mycom OSI sells itself to Amdocs for €176m

Nick Booth
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5G telco monetiser Mycom OSI sells itself to Amdocs for €176m

Amdocs has entered into a definitive agreement to buy UK-based Mycom OSI (MO), a software service provider that promises to raise the average revenue per head (ARPU) on 5G customers by cutting the management time needed to look after them. Privately-owned MO works with the world’s top mobile network operators (MNOs) to clarify events on their networks and nip problems in the bud. It was the first to provide service assurance applications on the public cloud as a subscription-based software service.

AaaSurance

Amdocs said MO’s network portfolio gives it more end-to-end service and network orchestration through ‘assurance capabilities’. MO’s service assurance suite manages management, faults and service quality. It does this by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to detect and predict anomalies. It then applies intent-driven closed loop operations through automated remediation and AI Operations. MO had an increasing number of both wireline operator networks and MNOs with 5G networks who were virtualising, containerising and software defining their networks but struggling with the finer details of convergence. MO’s cloud-native systems helped them enjoy the promised cloud benefits that they were struggling to realise, like scalability, cost savings and reliability.

5G clarity

The problem for MNOs is that the networks and services of the 5G era has become increasingly dynamic and complex. The cloud’s murkiest secret is that everything is nebulous and nobody can see from one end to the other. It’s difficult to be both hyperscale and holistic at the same time. That’s why they need AI agents to go in there and see the problems they can’t spot. “We predict and resolve network problems before they affect customers, while reducing operational costs through automation and AI,” said Andrew Coll, Mycom OSI’s CEO. 

There pillars of wisdom

“This strategic growth move builds on our other recent successful acquisitions in the network and cloud space and executes on three of our core strategic pillars – intelligent network automation, 5G and cloud,” said Amdocs CEO Shuky Sheffer. Amdocs’ Board of Directors has approved the transaction for a consideration of approximately $188 million in cash which, subject to the satisfaction of the conditions to closing, is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022. Revenue from MYCOM OSI is expected to be immaterial in fiscal 2022 and will add less than 1% to total revenue on an annualised basis.

Orange re-groups to concentrate on B2B and MEA

Nick Booth
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Orange re-groups to concentrate on B2B and MEA

New CEO appointed for Orange Business Services

The new Orange Group CEO Christel Heydemann, has revamped her management team in order to concentrate on the ‘transformation and development’ of key opportunities in business-to-business, Africa and the Middle East markets. Heydemann has appointed two new chief executive officers. Aliette Mousnier-Lompré will operate in this role for Orange Business Services (OBS) while Jérôme Hénique (pictured above) is to be CEO for Orange Middle East and Africa (OMEA).

Mousnier-Lompré runs OBS

Aliette Mousnier-Lompré’s appointment follows the departure of Helmut Reisinger in January 2022. The interim period was overseen with ‘considerable commitment’ by Mousnier-Lompré according to Orange’s statement. Mousnier-Lompré will join the Group’s Executive Committee. This appointment has immediate effect and Mousnier-Lompré will be operating in a rapidly changing sector affected by the pandemic, with a responsibility for the transformation of Orange Business Services (OBS). Enterprise customers need a fully integrated value proposition and better support for their digital transformation, said Orange. 

Henique opportunity

Jérôme Hénique is currently Director of Operations and Deputy CEO of the Group’s regional subsidiary present in 18 countries in Africa and the Middle East. He will take over the management of the subsidiary from Alioune Ndiaye who will concentrate on his role as chairman of the board of directors. Alioune Ndiaye will remain Non-executive Chairman of OMEA and will continue to play an active role in the governance of the entity. 

MEI is growth engine

The Africa and Middle East region is currently one of the Group’s major growth engines, said Orange. Challenges lie ahead in the build-out of networks, in financial services and in the development of other new digital services. Jérôme Hénique will join the Group’s Executive Committee. This appointment will take effect from 1 July. The other members of the Executive Committee all remain in their current roles. “The changes announced today reflect the priorities for the next few months on which we must now accelerate. The B2B sector, Africa and the Middle East, are key markets for Orange,” said Christel Heydemann, CEO of Orange.

DT enlists sun and wind to flatten spike in power bills

Nick Booth
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DT enlists sun and wind to flatten spike in power bills

Ericsson equips mobile operator to tap green power 

Ericsson and Deutsche Telekom (DT) are erecting solar panels and wind turbines in a bid to ground the soaring electricity costs associated with 5G infrastructure building. All mobile network operators (MNOs) should take note, according to corporate banker Morgan Stanley, which has estimated that $872 billion will be spent across the globe as the rollout of 5G networks proceeds until 2030. Can MNOs erect a new mast without seeing spikes in their electricity costs? 

Solar Capex

The capital expenditure needed for sourcing solar panels and turbines will be worth it in future operational savings, according to Mats Pellbäck Scharp, Ericsson’s head of sustainability. “Energy costs for our sector are around $25 billion per year, probably closer to $30 billion, at current energy prices,” said Pellbäck Scharp, Ericsson’s head of sustainability, “so it is sort of on the same magnitude as the investment in radio equipment and other things.”

Fossil fools

A 5-kilowatt wind turbine and solar modules could power DT’s entire Dittenheim site 120 miles north of Munich in the state of Bavaria. However figures suggest otherwise. The twelve square metres of solar panels that are already operating have only supplied about 10% of the site’s required energy in the year since they were installed. When the wind drops or sun rays are blocked relief comes from Germany’s centralised, coal fired plants via a connection to the main grid. 

Cheap dirty power

Though they are getting 90% of their energy from burning fossils, Scharp said that for telecom operators there are times when it is financially logical to use local renewable energy. Market prices of power are typically higher during the morning and evening and DT’s home-made power becomes viable. But in off-peak times it is better to rely on the ‘cheap and dirty’ power from the national grid when lower demand reduces costs.

Solar roll-out

However, DT and Ericsson say the new system could be quickly rolled out to other mobile sites in the future. Energy costs accounted for around 5% of telecom operators’ operating expenditure on average, according to estimates from McKinsey, a figure which is expected to increase as 5G is deployed more widely.

Bahrain offers its first Standalone 5G network

Nick Booth
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Bahrain offers its first Standalone 5G network

Huawei-built 5G SA sees stc take decisive lead

The kingdom of Bahrain has its first 5G Standalone (5G SA) network, which was built for mobile operator stc Bahrain by Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei. The network will offer both consumers and enterprises high-resolution video, virtual reality, augmented reality and multimedia and online data communication. As a small archipelago in the Persian Gulf, made up of 50 natural islands and an additional 33 artificial islands, Bahrain Island dominates the territory and makes up around 83 percent of the country’s landmass. It is here that  stc will provide most of the enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra reliable ultra low latency comms (URLLc) and massive machine typcommunications (mMTC) services will improve public security, transports, banking and consumer services.  

stc pushing tech boundaries

Bahrain neighbours Qatar and the north eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, to which it is connected by the King Fahd Causeway, is a relatively small nation with a population of 1,501,635 in the 2020 census. However, it has big ambitions, according stc CEO Nezar Banabeela. “stc Bahrain has consistently been at the forefront of pushing latest technologies beyond just mere enhancements to approaching capabilities closer to fully fledged 5G,” said Banabeela, “through this achievement, we are laying the foundation for further milestones, service availability and inclusivity of the fundamental capabilities that is included in stc Bahrain network to cover all the forecasted 5G network use cases.”

Capital venture

The capital and largest city in Bahrain is Manama and Banabeela said that mobile edge computing and ‘uplink centric’ broadband connectivity will support advanced network-functions in the kingdom’s manufacturing, petroleum, port, healthcare and education sectors. “stc Bahrain has taken an early and decisive lead in 5G rollout, having already covered half the nation with the latest wireless technology,” said Banabeela.

Milestone

Since its establishment, stc has worked hand in hand with the Bahrain Telecom Regulatory Authority to transform Bahrain’s telecoms, according to Banabeela. In June 2018 it achieved a milestone by becoming one of the first countries in the world to introduce 5G elements across its national network. In 2019, it adopted the latest 5G core technologies, spectrum sharing between LTE and 5G, the latest spectrum management technologies and agile transport layer technologies using Huawei’s solutions, Banabeela claimed. 

Speed and premium services

“In addition to data speeds of up to 1.2 Gbps, we’ve developed a wide range of premium home broadband services and devices to enhance the home broadband experience alongside unlimited Internet,” said Banabeela. Huawei Bahrain CEO Ethan Sunxiaofei described stc Bahrain as a strategic partner to the Chinese state-owned equipment supplier. “It will form the future networks that relies on a combination of mainstream and alternative technologies across efficient spectrum use together with AI and Cloud,” said Sunxiaofei.

MTN Group deploys Premium Wi-Fi

Nick Booth
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MTN Group deploys Premium Wi-Fi

Automatically improves user experience

Pan-African mobile operator the MTN Group and Chinese equipment manufacturer Huawei have jointly launched the Premium Wi-Fi service in Nigeria in a bid to ‘continuously’ fine tune the end-users’ experience on the network.

The Premium Wi-Fi can play back the historical home wireless networks’ performance in the last seven days. It demarcates faults based on speed tests by segment and diagnoses major issues in just one click, in order to rectify problems in the cloud. A self-trouble shooting function on a mobile app provided by MTN Nigeria enables home broadband users to solve some network problems by themselves, allowing them to manage the broadband performance much easier.

According to MTN Nigeria’s Chief Technical Officer, Mohammed Rufai, the Premium Wi-Fi deployment is geared around delivering a superior user experience with high technology. With the variety of smart home devices multiplying by the day and endless new types of services being created to land on them, there needs to be a better home network quality. Given that most of the apps will be youth-oriented video clips and online games that calls for a lot of management.

“Home network experience has become a vital area in improving network quality for MTN Nigeria,” said Rufai, “we want to solve problems such as Wi-Fi interference, coordination between home network terminals and Wi-Fi coverage which occurs frequently and leads to a large proportion of user complaints.”

In order to improve user experience, MTN Group partnered with Huawei to launch the Autonomous Driving Network project. This introduces the home network manager to clever new practices such as target architecture design, autonomous level evaluation and high-value use-cases of autonomous networks.

“With this, we can proactively identify and accurately locate fault points on home networks. It will help us to improve O&M efficiency and reduce customer complaints,” said Daniel Smith, a senior engineer with the MTN Group, “in future, MTN and Huawei will implement more innovations in network automation and intelligence and quickly deploy them on the live network.”

Cloud mobile ops begat pop up shops

Nick Booth
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Cloud mobile ops begat pop up shops

Oracle and MNOs can give bricks and mortar peak agility

Oracle partner OLR Retail claims it has created a business service opportunity for all mobile operators with their top tier retail partners.
As department stores and big grocery chains struggle to compete with online retailers, OLR Retail and its mobile systems integration partner Peak Technologies claim they can create liquidity out of bricks and mortar assets. They want to be able to be more responsive to events and open pop-up shops, one day stores for festivals and instant warehouses for supply chain emergences. That requires perfect information management and, while many IT systems can meet this challenge, the backbone and central nervous systems of many bricks and mortar stars need to be more pliable.

Mobility service

The raw material for this empowerment is a simple mobile network, which is transformed into an activating agent by a cloud apps from OLR and integration from Peak, according to Stephen Godman, Sales Director, EMEA, OLR Retail. With a readily available mobile network and staff handsets, a supermarket or department store can set up a ‘pop up shop’ in order to try out new concepts or react to a crisis. “We’re [using consumer mobile] taking the lead in accelerating the end-to-end automation of the retail supply chain for improved flow of intelligence to every worker on the shop floor, the warehouse, and the back office,” said René Schrama, UK MD for Peak Technologies.

ERP is controlling

All enterprise retailers, such as supermarket chains and department stores, use enterprise resource planning systems, but ERPs can have the effect of pouring quick drying concrete into an engine. Modern enterprises don’t want their sinews stiffened – they want the opposite quality, agility, according to Schrama. Oracle’s Retail ERP system is one of the most popular and the two integrators claim they have made it more amenable without neutralising its omniscience. System integrator Peak and Oracle specialist OLR Retail claim to have reconfigured and retrained the ERP system to work around the user’s preferred business processes, through the use of its own M-Netics system. Peak Technologies provides the comms integration. The upshot is an application that can be run cheaply on staff smart phones, which can be deployed easily.

Pop up at festivals

One department store opened pop up shop at a festival and one well known discount supermarket was able to use a car park as a temporary shop floor when its indoor retail space was flooded. The phones, the ‘resource planning’ system and the mobile network make information on the entire supply chain available. This means staff can use their phone to instantly find anything for customer, whether in another shop, in the warehouse or in transit, according to OLR’s Godman. The use of a smartphone and a smartphone app and a mobile network makes it makes everything easier.

New steps

“This partnership brings a step change for retailers,” said Godman. “The ease and speed of integration of M-Netic’s functionality with Oracle Retail will empower retail organisations with the latest intelligence on products and pricing, clicks and collections with complete visibility over stock, whether the goods are in the warehouse, in transit or on display.”

Huawei makes uNOCs serve customers

Nick Booth
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Huawei makes uNOCs serve customers

uNOC can be trusted to offer Zero touch compliance

Huawei has built the world’s first unified automation and intelligence programme, uNOC, in partnership with stc Bahrain. The programme is the first in the Middle East and North Africa and uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies that can automatically take the initiative and make a timely intervention when customers have an issue with their network.

The concept of using uNOCs for customer service was unveiled at the Samena Council’s Leaders’ Summit. The uNOC will enable services such as Communication Technologies (CT), IT, Business and International Wholesale to operate on a single platform with enhanced digital capabilities, according to Huawei.

The uNOC will incorporate multiple business operations such as unified service management, unified workforce management and all online governance via intelligent dashboards. As a first milestone, the platform will focus to promote the concept of Zero touch surveillance by interconnecting processes across domains and offering instant ‘one-click operations visibility’.

Currently more than 60% of operations and maintenance (O&M) systems in the world are maintaining multiple isolated operational support systems (OSS), according to a release from the co-creator of uNOC, stc Bahrain. These confused, over-complicated O&M systems result in poor resource efficiency, slow processing and incomplete end-to-end operations. stc Bahrain revamped its processes by deploying them on a single and unified service management system, with the potential to replace manual tasks with machines, resulting in high operations efficiency, higher network availability and data quality.

The uNOC uses AI and machine learning to serve the user experience and oversee unification, automation and intelligence, according to Nezar Banabeela, stc Bahrain’s CEO.  “Our partner Huawei is accelerating transformation in the Kingdom to better serve our expanding services portfolio,” said Banabeela.

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