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Siklu and Signify to run GB wireless networks off street light grid

Nick Booth
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Siklu and Signify to run GB wireless networks off street light grid

When inserted into the street lighting grid, these gadgets will create multi-gigabit wireless networks

Israel’s Siklu and Holland’ s Signify have a shared vision to turn our street lighting infrastructures into wireless networks. By integrating the two they could save economies a fortune on installation time and money and usher in the age of the Internet of things in record time. 

Petach Tikva-based Siklu, a millimeter-wave (mmWave) networking specialist, is to integrate its knowledge of gigabit wireless access (GWA) with the lighting and aesthetics knowhow of Eindhoven’s Signify. Together they could to create a network grid that can illuminate city dwellers in both senses of the word.  

Brightsites, smart city 

This combination of Siklu’s MultiHaul multi-gigabit wireless connectivity technology and Signify’s BrightSites portfolio has been included into a portfolio dubbed Broadband luminaries. 

Signify’s BrightSites system will set up 4G and 5G small cells from which Internet of Things (IoT) will support traffic monitoring, security and digital inclusion initiatives.

Municipal wi-fi will ensure that everyone gets residential broadband access. 

The ‘li-fi’ hybrid could significantly wean us off our fibre dependency. This could speed up the city-wide roll-out of secure and reliable multi-gigabit wireless connectivity in a fraction of the time and money that a fibre run would cost.

Saves fussing with fibre

Siklu’s MultiHaul TG is Siklu’s third-generation 60 GHz point-to-multipoint product line and fifth-generation overall of V-Band products. Siklu has hundreds of thousands of products installed in hundreds of cities around the world and offers advanced software tools to design and operate a network.

It says it can support any type of network shape from a small campus to a city or regional deployment. The Broadband luminaire portfolio collaboration has been a work in progress for a year, as Siklu’s MultiHaul N366 TG node was fine tuned.

With market validation in the bag, the two companies have agreed to expand the collaboration to jointly develop and commercialise solutions for street lighting infrastructure.

Light, cameras, action

“We aim to radically accelerate the transition to smart cities by enabling the lighting infrastructure as a primary platform for cost-effective and scalable broadband connectivity,” said Khalid Aziz, head of connectivity solutions at Signify.

The crucial point to remember is that every light point acts as a data hub. This is what saves time and money, and shrinks the carbon footprint of the installation.

Siklu products are already in a wide range of urban and industrial services that require gigabit broadband access, according to Ronen Ben-Hamou, CEO of Siklu: “With the increasing demand for high-speed internet connections everywhere, especially in the COVID era, we share Signify’s vision of using the lighting infrastructure as the connectivity grid of the future.” 

 

Will Christel Heydemann be announced as Orange’s CEO on Friday?

Nick Booth
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Will Christel Heydemann be announced as Orange’s CEO on Friday?

Le Figaro thinks so and says finding a group president to match Stéphane Richard will take longer

The appointment of Christel Heydemann as CEO of Orange group is expected to be approved on January 28, with her first day on the job being April 1st, writes Elsa Bembaron, the investigator who broke the story for Le Figaro. (Subscription required)

For the last nine months, Heydemann has been Executive Vice President Europe at Schneider Electric, having formerly been CEO of Schneider Electric France.

Schneider Electric has been one of Orange’s industrial collaboration partners working on 5G uses cases, announced at the Orange Business Summit in April 2019.

Two-step succession

Orange is managing the succession of departing CEO Stéphane Richard’s in two stages, with the post of chairman of the board of directors being separated from that of chief executive officer.

Richard has been in the posts since March 2011.

We should expect the unexpected in the selection of the group presidency, according to Le Figaro’s analysis. “Once the chief executive has been appointed, the operator’s board of directors and headhunter Spencer Stuart’s firm will get back to work to find a new chairman. And nothing is certain,” says Bembaron.

Pascal Cagni’s candidacy has been regularly cited. Cagni made his name running Apple Europe from 2000 to 2012. During that time he forged a link with the deputy secretary general of French PM François Hollande, an up and coming politician called Emmanuel Macron.

According to Bambaron, the “current ran smoothly between the future President of the Republic and the entrepreneur….” 

Orange’s UK press office declined to comment or offer a picture of Heydemann.

Brand Finance names TikTok as world’s fastest-growing brand

Annie Turner
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Brand Finance names TikTok as world’s fastest-growing brand

Apple is the most valuable with Huawei and Verizon also in the top ten, but only five network operators are in the top 150 most valuable

The Brand Finance Global 500 2022 Report names new entrant TikTok as the world’s fastest-growing brand, up 215%, “leading global revolution in media consumption”.

Apple, which recently became the world’s first $3 trillion corporation, held onto its slot as the world’s most valuable brand title with record brand valuation at more than $355 billion, followed by Amazon then Google at some distance.

Operators are few

Huawei and Verizon are cited as the world’s ninth and tenth most valuable brands respectively, but the gap between Apple’s brand value and Verizon’s is immense.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly to western eyes at least, Huawei has risen six places since last year and Verizon fallen one place.

Deutsche Telekom has risen six places, to seventeenth, while AT&T is down five to 26, and although China Mobile is down two to 34 in the ranking, rival China Telecom rises 32 to sit at 105.

Japan’s NTT is up two places to 35 – and that’s all the network operators that make it into the top 150 most valuable brands.

By sector

The report finds tech remains most valuable industry, while the second-ranked retail sector crosses $1 trillion mark following 46% brand value growth during COVID-19 pandemic.

An interesting development in the retail sector is Rakuten’s fall of 61 places to 308, as its mobile network in Japan, the first cloud-native operator in the world, continues to rack up losses and NTT DoCoMo could become the country’s leading Open RAN player.

The development of COVID-19 vaccines resulted in pharma named as fastest-growing industry, while tourism sector remains below pre-pandemic valuation

The US and China continue to dominate, accounting for two-thirds of brand value, but India sees fastest-growth during the pandemic to take its place among the top nations for brand ownership, rising 42%

WeChat came in as the world’s strongest brand for second consecutive year with top score of 93.3 out of 100 and elite AAA+ rating

Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, tops the Brand Finance Brand Guardianship Index 2022 of world’s top 250 CEOs

View the full Brand Finance Global 500 2022 report here.

Content trumps network

As David Haigh, Chairman & CEO of Brand Finance, commented:

“Media consumption has increased throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but – what is more – the way we consume it has irrevocably changed. In order to compete in this evolving marketplace, media organisations have invested heavily in their brands – from content acquisition through to user experience.

“TikTok’s meteoric growth is the proof in the pudding – the brand has gone from relative obscurity to internationally renowned in just a few years and shows no signs of slowing down.”

Telcos were heroes in the pandemic, but like their shareprices, their brands too are arguably undervalued.

BT and Nokia trial Open RAN solution in the city of Hull

Annie Turner
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0
BT and Nokia trial Open RAN solution in the city of Hull

BT has been working on Open RAN although it didn’t join the Open RAN fan club with Orange, Telefonica, TIM and Vodafone

BT said it has “underlined its ongoing commitment to the development and deployment of Open RAN technology”, announcing details of a trial with Nokia.

The trial is to take place in the city of Hull in the north-east of England (pictured). The operator will install Nokia’s RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) for Open RAN, across a number of sites, to optimise network performance for customers on its mobile network, EE.

Getting a shift on

Despite keeping a relatively low profile on Open RAN, in contrast to five of its mainland Europe counterparts, it said it is interested in “sustained investment in all technologies that deliver the best possible customer experience, including using open architecture wherever network performance can be enhanced”.

BT said it will develop Open RAN its vendor partners “to ensure it becomes a viable, mature, scale option for network optimisation as soon as possible”.

In addition to the Hull trial, the operator will  open a dedicated Open RAN Innovation Centre at its Adastral Park facility, close to the city of Ipswich in East Anglia later this year.

The idea is to provide opportunities for large and small vendors to develop and prove their equipment and provide a platform for open architecture progress across all network elements.

All about CX

Neil McRae, Chief Architect, BT, commented, “Our Open RAN trial with Nokia is one of many investments we are making to boost the performance of our market-leading 4G and 5G EE network and deliver an even better service to our customers.

“Our high performance, high efficiency radio access equipment, provided by the major global vendors, has enabled us to roll-out 4G and now 5G at scale, with the confidence that our customers will get the best network experience possible.”

Ericsson reports y-o-y profits up by 41%, but not everyone is happy

Annie Turner
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0
Ericsson reports y-o-y profits up by 41%, but not everyone is happy

Activist investor Cevian Capital bemoans low share price, Vonage acqusition and a lack of clarity about the enterprise market

Ericsson’s activity elsewhere offset its ongoing decline in China as it reported better margins in Q4 2021 resulting in an 8% rise in its share price.

Organic sales grew by only 2% year-on-year due largely to the 3% decline it suffered in China, but gross margins were lifted by 3% resulting in a year-on-year 41% increase in profits.

Not everyone was happy with the results which are being widely described as “stellar”.

Cevian comments

Christer Gardell, Managing Partner at activist investor Cevian Capital, which cut its stake in Ericsson last year, is unhappy that the “very strong” earnings do little to address the firm’s undervalued  price.

According to a report by Bloomberg, Gardell recommended that Ericsson stems losses in its Digital Services unit, and considers divesting or spinning out its declining Managed Services business.

It should also clearly articulate the potential in its Enterprise business, including how and when it plans to get there.

Börje Ekholm, CEO of Ericsson, said in a statement accompanying the report of its financial results, “We will continue our efforts to expand our presence in the enterprise market.

“Over time, we expect the enterprise segment to provide higher growth and profitability than our mobile infrastructure business,” which is probably not what Gardell had in mind.

Vonage vantage?

Gardell also said that Ericsson’s board and management should “justify” to the market why it was better to use almost 60 billion kronor ($6.4 billion) for its biggest ever acquisition, Vonage, in 2021 at “more than 50x EV/Ebit instead of buying back Ericsson shares at 8x EV/Ebit”.

As was apparent at the time of the acquisition, a number of parties queried Ekholm’s logic (Dean Bubley didn’t mince his words), restated at the results reporting, that, “Our commitment to pursue value from growth in wireless enterprise took a significant step forward with the announcement of our ambition to acquire Vonage, which will give us the foundation to develop a Global Network Platform to drive innovation on top of the 5G network.”

Time will tell, meanwhile more info about Ericsson’s results here.

Upping the ante with Apple

Another potential source of concern is Ericsson’s patent war with Apple is escalating too. The two disagree about royalty payments for patents and the Swedish firm has now ramped up its infringement lawsuit, striving to put an embargo on Apple’s iPhone being shipped to countries including Brazil, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, among other, with the UK and other European countries looking likely to follow.

 

 

 

 

British Sugar, Virgin Media O2 open first of multi-site private 4G network

Annie Turner
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0
British Sugar, Virgin Media O2 open first of multi-site private 4G network

Eventually the dedicated 4G network will connect four ‘factories of the future’, deploying AI, IoT and drones

British Sugar and Virgin Media O2 Business have switched on the first part what they describe as the first multi-site private mobile network of its kind in the UK at Wissington in Norfolk (pictured).

The plan is to automate the manufacturing process for sugar and other co-products using a secure 4G network that enables the use of tech including IoT, robotics, automation and health & safety drones.

Seven-year hitch

The network is the result of a multi-million-pound, seven-year partnership expected to increase productivity and efficiency, and improve health & safety and security.

O2 delivered the private network in partnership with Nokia to provide connectivity to four British Sugar factory sites that span Norfolk, Suffolk and Nottinghamshire – a total operational area of 2.17km2
 
AI will monitor operations in real time and predict maintenance and potential downtime to reduce disruption and wastage and produce cost and energy savings – helping to cut unnecessary emissions.

Using a 4G private network also gives greater security and control, and enables reliable high-bandwidth in a complex factory setting where Wi-Fi is challenging (due to the amount of metal in the environment) but a requirement both indoors and outdoors.

Industry 4.0

Over the seven-year partnership, British Sugar intends to fully embrace an Industry 4.0 ecosystem, with more than 15 digital manufacturing use cases.

The infrastructure is described as “easily upgradable to 5G where necessary”, as British Sugar looks to introduce more complex processes that will benefit from the higher speeds and lower latency.

This includes robotics to streamline production further, automated ground vehicles, and connected drones that can cover a large area and monitor structures such as silos and lime kilns remotely and safely.

Nick Smalley, Programme Manager at British Sugar commented, “During testing we were encouraged by the early results…and as we have begun to roll out the targeted priority use cases to our users, they have been quick to feedback the time savings they have seen – with new plant commissioning, plant testing and day-to-day diagnostic processes being highlighted in particular.”
 
The new private network will eventually provide connectivity across British Sugar’s other factories at Cantley in Norfolk, Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, and Newark in Nottinghamshire.

Nokia and OIV to build first Croatia’s first 5G SA industrial private network 

Nick Booth
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Nokia and OIV to build first Croatia’s first 5G SA industrial private network 

Automotive component maker AD Plastik signposts the way forward for electronic vehicle boom

Nokia is working partnering with Croatia communications infrastructure operator OIV Digital Signals and Networks to build a 5G private wireless network at AD Plastik’s automotive component manufacturing facility in Zagreb. The Finnish comms vendor’s Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) will cut latency and secure 5G wireless connectivity for equipment, machinery and a set of applications at AD Plastik’s manufacturing campus in Zagreb. It will replace the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, whose limitations stood in the way of the manufacturer and its Industry 4.0 ambitions.

Edge computing, video and more apps

The extends connectivity to create a model of local edge computing, video services and a much more powerful range of application options. Nokia describes it as a ‘compact, easy-to-deploy’ system comprising network equipment and a cloud-based operation monitoring system and industrial connectors that will take care of all the previously tricky standard and industry-specific protocol connectivity configurations.
“Digitisation of business in our industry is simply a necessity,” said Marinko Došen, president of the AD Plastik Group. “Just as your chances on the car market are significantly reduced if you produce vehicles that cannot be connected, so you have to keep up with trends in the production of automotive components.”

So much more in control with 5G

5G technology isn’t just a hundred times faster than the existing one, said Došen, it allows the manufacturer to simultaneously connect the smart and digital devices that it uses every day in production. It’s all about the possibilities rather than the speed, said Andrej Skenderović , project manager at OIV Digital Signals and Networks. “We launched this project with the aim of expanding the range of our services. We see the potential to start the recovery and further development of our industry.”
Industry 4.0 is a transformation that brings greater efficiency and flexibility while maintaining quality and safety, said Michael Siegel, director of Nokia Enterprise South-East Europe.

 

 

How is RCS&RDS taking subscribers from Romania’s leading telcos?

Nick Booth
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How is RCS&RDS taking subscribers from Romania’s leading telcos?

The subscriber numbers gap was once wider than Romania’s iconic Transfagarasan Pass

Record numbers of customers ported their fixed or mobile phone numbers in Romania last year, according to Profit.

The defection numbers rose from 945,186 in 2020 to 1.106 million in 2021, it says, a rise in subscriber seduction rates of 17%. Was this the Covid effect? 

The figures suggest not because from 2019 to 2020 the number of customers who swapped their mobile operator fell slightly, from a previous high of 958,821 in 2019.

Last year, 1,050,900 numbers were ported to another network, 20.3% more than in 2020.

However, the challenger brand in Rumanian telecoms, RCS&RDS attracted way more defections – 561,953 subscribers from rivals, a 53.5% churn rate, following on from 43.2% in 2020 and 39.2% in 2019.

More details from Profit here

Rohde & Schwarz first to respond to phone makers’ 112 distress call

Nick Booth
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Rohde & Schwarz first to respond to phone makers’ 112 distress call

R&S system knows exactly where smartphones stand on regulations

Rohde & Schwarz has won the first stage in a race to meet a new EU regulation on the sale of smartphones which comes into force in just five weeks. It is first to market with a testing system that all phone makers will desperately need. The logic of the new EC diktat is that 112 distress calls can instantly tell the emergency services exactly where the phone owner is coming from so first responders get to the scene ASAP. The best way to achieve this is to ensure each device complies with Galileo, Advanced Mobile Location (AML) and Wi-Fi positioning systems. 

Don’t worry R&S has got this

From March 2022 all smart phones sold in the common market must support caller location for 112 emergency calls. Manufacturers might already do this as a matter of course, but proving their veracity is another story since there is no such testing equipment. This could create an unintended barrier to entry and testing equipment makers were in a race against time to provide one. Which Munich-based R&S has won with the help of certification partner Cetecom.

EC Rider

In order to comply with this regulation manufacturers must prove their products meet a complicated range of criteria set out in sometimes confusing EC documentation. The devices must be compliant with several positioning systems stipulated by the EC. Certification service provider Cetecom has started first E112 testing using the R&S test sequences. The EU’s Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/320 is a supplement to the Radio Equipment Directive (RED) 2014/53/EU which defines that 112 emergency calls must provide caller location information to emergency services in a fast and accurate way, to make sure first responders can arrive at the site of an accident quickly.

Trade barrier overcome

Instead of a harmonised standard, a guideline document from the EC recommends the testing procedures for Notified Bodies, who support the smartphone vendors in the conformance assessment procedure. Compliance with Galileo, Advanced Mobile Location (AML) and Wi-Fi positioning will be mandatory.
Rohde & Schwarz says decades of experience in providing RED regulation compliance hardware and software has enabled it to write a software extension to its R&S TS-LBS location-based services test system before everyone else. Comply with an EC guideline document and the upcoming ETSI standard TS 103 825 for AML protocol testing is a rare feat of patience and endurance. 

Technicalities

Rohde & Schwarz said it collaborates with leading Notified Bodies and test houses to speed up the availability of the test solution. In its new system the cellular network is emulated by the R&S CMW500 wideband radio communication tester, while the dual-frequency E1+E5 GNSS signal for Galileo system is generated by an R&S SMBV100A vector signal generator. The automation software used in the test setup ploughed through all the test cases described in the EC guideline and executed the automatically to ensure unified, fast and repeatable results.

Team with Cetecom

“We were quick to respond to the new requirements by the EC due to our pursuit for a safer and connected world,” said Alexander Pabst, VP of market segment wireless comms at Rohde & Schwarz. Pabst praised the team work of trusted partner Cetecom. “We appreciate this opportunity to use the test and measurement knowledge of Rohde and Schwarz, because having the E112 caller location test solution available early on is a significant step for us,” said Cetecom MD Jens Passe.

Orange Belgium, La Grand Poste create 5G Lab in Liège

Annie Turner
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0
Orange Belgium, La Grand Poste create 5G Lab in Liège

This is the operator’s second 5G Lab in Belgium, the first was inaugurated last October in Antwerp

Orange Belgium has forged a partnership with the Grand Poste of Liège (picture shows city of Liège), which is a hub dedicated to creative companies and innovation.

The 8,000 m² faciliity is due to open in the second half of this year and will be used to develop and test new 5G applications in collaboration with customers, prospects and partners, including start-ups, established enterprises, universities and others.

Orange Belgium will provide its expertise, technology and accompanying pilot projects, but others will be encouraged to test their own equipment too.

The Lab in Liège brings the total number of Orange group’s 5G labs to 10.

Dynamic region

Werner De Laet, Chief Enterprise, Innovation and Wholesale Officer at Orange Belgium, said: “After the opening of our first Lab in Antwerp and its great success in generating a positive dynamic in the region, we are delighted to be able to develop 5G and its applications in Wallonia as well, and especially in the exceptional framework of La Grand Poste.

Gérôme Vanherf, CEO of la Grand Poste, added, “We are very happy to announce this cooperation with Orange, which fully corresponds to our vision of La Grand Poste: a place designed to facilitate encounters between all of the players in the innovation ecosystems (start-ups, SMEs, large companies, academic players, investors, government authorities, the general public, etc.) and thus generate high-potential projects.”

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