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Virtualisation and automation will bring a shared future to benefit all

Annie Turner
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Virtualisation and automation will bring a shared future to benefit all

Abdallah Nassar, Chief Engineering and Network Officer at Orange Cameroon, talked to Annie Turner about the long but fast-moving journey from telco to techco

Abdallah Nassar has been in his job at Orange Cameroon for four years. In that time, he’s won two Awards and been nominated as running the Best Network by nPerf (2019, 2020) and by Ookla as Best Mobile Coverage (2019, 2020), Fastest Mobile Network (2020) and Best Mobile Network (2020).

He stressed that virtualisation is the future of the network, so automation of the network, tools or process must be talked about in that context. He explained that his company began to pay serious attention to virtualisation when it was looking at how best to provide content to customers, how to combine content with data services, how to gain greater speed and agility – and ensure quality of services.

This article was originally published on FutureNet World and is reproduced here with kind permission.

Local market conditions

As is common in many markets, customers typically have more than one SIM card and switch between them depending on what they are doing. He says, “In terms of [absolute numbers] we are not claiming we are first in the market” with about 12 million customers but claims to lead the market in terms of coverage, service quality and products. The population of Cameroon is a little over 27.5 million.

Most notably, the operator offers mobile banking services across its African operating companies under the Orange Money brand. In July, Emmanuel Tassembedo, the former Head of Orange Money Cameroon, announced his company has a 70% market share of the mobile banking market on Orange Money’s tenth anniversary of operations in Cameroon.

Previously Tassembedo estimated that the operator’s cumulative monthly transactions amount to CFA800 billion ($1.37 billion) during this year, making an estimated total of CFA9.6 trillion ($16.414 billion) for the year or about twice Cameroon’s state budget for 2021.

Meeting demands

Demand for data on Orange Cameroon’s network is growing at 200% year on year, which results in the infrastructure becoming increasingly challenging in terms of maintenance, capacity, technology updates and more. Nassar says, “We realised this complexity cannot continue in the same way, using the same type of equipment, dimensioning, and legacy technology…we started to look how we can deal with all this.”

He says, “So the first step was we needed to invest but also lower operational costs – how could we create a significant cost saving while we’re investing? That started the idea of virtualisation, of putting all our system in a virtual environment, because it comes with more agility, more flexibility and on a bigger scale than normal legacy equipment.”

What exactly does Nassar mean when he talks about virtualisation – network functions virtualisation (NFV) or full-blown cloud native? He says it’s an evolving mixture and explains that while some operators use public clouds like AWS, Google Cloud or IBM Cloud, Orange chose a different way. Nassar says, “We are investing in our own cloud and recently launched our first vEPC [virtual evolved packet core] on it: we built our own public cloud infrastructure using systems from different vendors.” .

This first vEPC is to help Orange Cameroon handle data more efficiently on 3G and 4G infrastructure, but Nassar adds, “We need to be independent…this kind of an investment gives us a different position versus the competition which also has vEPCs, but they use vendors’ infrastructure or a vendor’s virtualised system.

“We want to be independent because when we talk about scaling, we mean different kinds of scaling: we can use this infrastructure for investment in our own systems and we can even offer it to the public. That’s why we call it Orange public cloud.”

Think global, act local

While building and controlling its own telco cloud is in line with group-level strategy, Nassar says that execution is “country by country. We are talking about virtual environments, but you still need a certain type of infrastructure in place and in Africa there is a lot of limitations on international transit, so it’s much better to put things in place locally and reserve international connectivity for customers’ use.

“This is why we cache content in the country – things like Meta, so Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – to lower the costs of international transit and give our customers better experience. Also, [we cache] the entire Google platform, from YouTube to all the others, and recently we put Netflix in place.”

How does the virtualisation and keeping-it-local strategy work for the enterprise or B2B market in Cameroon? Nassar explains there are two sectors. At the moment, the much larger one is private businesses, most especially micro financial institutions and banks, as well as logistics including local transport and sea-borne and other international transport. Almost all of them have systems hosted on Orange’s own public cloud, using the operator’s equipment in its own data centres.

He elaborates, “We’re talking about big players in the market and in various domains such as transport, banking, micro-finance and breweries”. He notes, “The public or government sector is totally different,” displaying natural caution regarding issues like security and the maturity of technology, but Orange Cameroon expects the pace to pick up here too.

Enter automation

Having got that first vEPC up and running, Nassar says, “The second step is to virtualise all [the EPC] and new services, along with classic services for a mobile operator such as VAS [value-added services] and triple-play services. Step by step we are increasing the scalability of this public cloud system to virtualise our whole environment.”

Is this move to cloud and virtualisation preparing the way for 5G? He states, “It is one of many steps that we are taking to prepare the ground for 5G. It is an ambition, but a difficult ambition for this continent because there are many dependencies. We are trying to benefit from each step, although the virtualisation and automation are essential steps toward 5G.”

Nassar says, “The idea of having a virtual environment really is to simplify our operational method…but this virtual system will require a lot of frequent maintenance. To do that manually is very painful and human error could have a huge impact. When we talk about virtualisation, we cannot ignore that we need certain types of automation to be in place too.

Fault management, predictive maintenance

What automation is Nassar talking about? “We are talking about orchestration [by which I mean] an automated system that will eventually harmonise and simply the workflow of our systems, which will give us the ability to better analyse, anticipate and correct,” he says.

“There is also automation from robots which experience the network, products and services like a customer and tests them nonstop. We are not sitting in the office waiting for the customer to inform us something is not working. Our robots run all the time to identify particular types of service interruption by simulating certain situations, for example during a high utilisation period, so we can do preventive maintenance while the orchestration tries to harmonise the functionality of different nodes to make it all work together.”

Does Orange Cameroon build its own artificial intelligence (AI) models for fault management and predictive maintenance? Nassar says his company aims to develop support for ongoing maintenance and simulations of maintenance on its own cloud but is still in the process of evolving from a classic telco to a data-driven company, relying on vendors’ AI and automation solutions in the meantime.

He describes this shift as “a very long journey” but adds, “We are moving very fast. We even recently opened our Open RAN Lab, which is unique – we are asking the other operators to come and test and experiment with us. The idea is that it will help all the operators to go faster with their deployments.”

Nassar says the motivation behind Open RAN is to allow operators to act faster in the future, and to lower operational costs while using the RAN as platform for innovation in business and operational models. He explains, “The future of the current Open RAN will not only provide interoperability and standardisation of RAN elements, but also it will allow different dimensioning of your network. You will have a better control on your resources – that is, frequency, radio, equipment and power resources.”

He continues, “Open RAN will open the door to wider competition between vendors and if we continue that way, not only will the operators benefit from this interoperation between vendors’ equipment and more network flexibility at a lower cost, but also it enables the operators to come together.

“The future O-RAN will have the capability to merge the environment – allow it to act as a single operator with potentially many operators and vendors at the same site to offer a universal platform.”

Nassar says, “I see the future where all the resources in terms of vendors, equipment, frequencies and passive infrastructure, such as towers, will be shared by many operators that differentiate themselves based on the services they run on those platforms.”

Vodafone Idea adopts plan making Indian government its largest shareholder

Annie Turner
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Vodafone Idea adopts plan making Indian government its largest shareholder

The company is staggering under the weight of $27 billion gross debt. This intervention prevents its collapse, but long-term prospects are little improved.

Bloomberg reports that Vodafone Idea’s board has approved a rescue plan put forward by the Indian government by which the operator will convert some payments due to the Indian exchequer into equity, giving an almost 36% stake to the Indian government. This makes the Indian government the largest shareholder in the country’s third largest phone operator.

Existing shareholders, including the founders, will have their shareholding diluted: Vodafone Group Plc will own around 28.5% and Aditya Birla Group will have about 17.8% in the company after the conversion, according to the plan approved by the board.

An Indian government representative declined to comment.

Desperate measures

The joint venture to form Vodafone Idea, took place in 2018 with the intention of the combined entity being better able to weather the battering forces of Reliant Jio’s highly disruptive entry into the market with 4G services in 2016, funded by the Reliant Industries empire which is controlled by Asia’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani. This well-funded entry into the market resulted in seven main players consolidating to three.

Before Jio’s entry, Vodafone was India’s largest operator.  Vodafone Idea’s gross debts total almost Rs2 trillion (about $27 billion).

The disruption caused by Jio combined with the multi-billion pound debts that accrued alarmingly after a series of rulings by India’s Supreme Court allowed the government to spread its net wider to charge higher historic higher taxes and fees, and apply interest to them – known as adjusted gross revenue (AGR).

India’s Supreme Court upped the ante in October 2020 upheld an earlier ruling that Vodafone Idea should pay $7 billion, $4 billion of which were back penalties and payable within three months. Reliance Jio got off much more lightly than its two rivals, having only entered the market in 2016.

A matter of principal

As Nick Read, CEO of Vodafone Group, pointed out at a press conference in November 2019, only $900 million of that $4 billion was the principal, the rest is interest, fees and penalties.

At the same briefing, Read threatened to liquidate the Indian opco if the remedies requested from the Indian government were not met but at that time expressed confidence that his “shuttle diplomacy” with the government would be successful.
 
Vodafone entered the Indian market in 2007 and immediately became embroiled in a $2.5 billion tax dispute with the Indian Income Tax Department over its purchase of Hutchison Essar Telecom Services.

Vodafone Idea’s Chair warned of the company’s imminent collapse last August and was thrown a lifeline by the government in September.
 
If the government accepts Vodafone Idea’s proposal, it will walk away with a stake of 35.8% in return for delaying payment of the adjusted gross revenue and spectrum fees accumulated over four years.
 
While the government is anxious to avoid creating a duopoly of Jio and Airtel, its intervention is unlikely to improve Vodafone Idea’s bleak outlook: the operator has lost almost 10% of its subscriber base in the last year, bringing it to 269 million in October – which are the latest available figures.
 
Some analysts suggest that it probably lost a further 2 million subscriptions in Q4.
 
Bharti Airtel, which is in a stronger position, said last week that it would not convert the interest it owed the government into equity, but would pay the spectrum and AGR dues. Bharti Airtel’s subscriber base rose to 354 million in October from 330 million a year earlier, according to Bloomberg said.
 
You can read about the secrets of its success from this interview with its enterprising CTO, Rahul Atri, here.

 

UK operators warned that roaming charges and eSIM could catalyse customer reaction

Nick Booth
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UK operators warned that roaming charges and eSIM could catalyse customer reaction

VMO2’s inaction on roaming charges could be unintended masterstroke

UK comms giant Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) has been praised for not bringing back roaming charges for its customers if they go to Europe. However, some analysts say this is more about fear of the new eSIM on customer loyalty as consumers learn how easy it is to switch.  

VMO2 has not prepared plans to bill-shock its UK customer when they travel in Europe. However, last year its rivals EE, Vodafone and Three all announced plans to charge their customers a daily flat fee to use their data and minutes in the EU.

More recently, however, EE and Vodafone said they would delay their roaming charge schemes while they investigated the unexpected technicalities involved. Was VMO2’s roaming charge inaction due to practicalities rather than philanthropy?

VMO2 wants to give customers certainty 

Even before the merger with cable TV company Virgin Media, mobile operator O2 had well documented struggles with accurate billing, having been fined £10.5 million in February for overcharging customers and a further £150,0000 for stalling the investigation by regulator OFCOM.  

Now VMO2 has presented its decision not to attempt to reintroduce roaming fees, as a benevolent attempt to give customers of O2 and Virgin Mobile a sense of certainty.

“Unlike all the other major mobile networks who are bringing back roaming fees, we will not be following suit,” said Gareth Turpin, chief commercial officer for mobile at VMO2, “with many Brits now looking to plan a trip abroad, we’ve got our customers covered and extra roaming charges will be one less thing to worry about.”

Philanthropy inaction

UK consumer body Which? praised VMO2 for taking this line. 

“After the disappointing news that EE and Vodafone are planning to reintroduce roaming charges in the coming months, it is reassuring that Virgin Media O2 is offering some certainty to customers on O2 or Virgin Mobile by not reintroducing roaming fees in Europe this year,” said Sue Davies, Which? head of consumer protection policy.

However, as the most complained about telco in the UK, according to Ofcom, is it likely that VMO2 passed up on roaming charges out of concern for its customers? Or was it because its billing systems are not ready?

Don’t awaken the eSIM monster

“That’s possible,” said Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis, “or [it could be] just that making the changes would be expensive compared to the gain.”

In an analysis published on Linkedin, Bubley said that mobile network operators really won’t want their best customers to discover the powers that new eSIMs will give them to switch to alternative operators.

“I think this is partly a recognition of technological shifts and their attendant risks,” said Bubley, “The last thing MNOs want to do is to incentivise their customers to explore the eSIM capability of modern smartphones, such as downloading roaming profiles, or local in-country second SIMs. Roaming fees would massively accelerate customer disloyalty.”

Ericsson secures Cloud RAN as Rohde & Schwarz validates small cell

Nick Booth
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Ericsson secures Cloud RAN as Rohde & Schwarz validates small cell

Ericsson’s Open RAN system builders get new tools that make security scale from small cell to global cloud

Two significant technology breakthroughs have been announced that could help infrastructure builders fortify their 5G networks. At a micro-level, German test specialist Rohde & Schwarz and Qualcomm Technologies have validated small cell testing, so that system builders can use mmWave technology as a building block for 5G network with greater confidence. At the other extreme, Ericsson-built cloud radio access networks (Cloud RANs) have passed a security audit, making this a robust option for infrastructure hyper scalers.

The Cloud RAN from network equipment maker Ericsson has passed an independent Network Equipment Security Assurance Scheme (NESAS) audit, making it fully compliant with the security requirements defined by global standards organizations 3GPP and GSMA.

The Security Reliability Model 

The NESAS audit of Ericsson Cloud RAN follows earlier compliance recognition for Ericsson’s Core, Transport and Radio Access Network (RAN) portfolios.

GSMA introduced NESAS as a common security assurance framework for secure product development and product lifecycle processes across the mobile industry. Conformance with NESAS is an integral part of the vendor’s Security Reliability Model (SRM) according to Per Narvinger, Ericsson’s head of product area networks.

Cloud-based RAN deployment is an important step towards a more open RAN architecture because it can provide inherent security advantages such as isolation and geographical redundancy. On the other hand, the cloud introduces new security risks according to Ericsson’s technical paper Security Considerations of Cloud RAN.

Your cloud has many points of attack

Traditional attacks against the RAN and Coren aside, the cloud infrastructure has many other  vulnerabilities, including micro-services, container engines, host operating system and third-party hardware, which can be exploited in cloud-based RAN and Core systems.

“Security is a key cornerstone in the design of our products. In the days of software and hardware disaggregation it is even more important that security is built in from the start,” said Narvinger. “Having Cloud RAN confirmed as NESAS-compliant adds another layer of credibility and trustworthiness to our Ericsson radio access network (RAN) portfolio.”

Good day for small cell validation 

The products examined were the Central Unit-Control Plane, Central Unit-User Plane, the Distributed Unit (DU) and RAN Service Discovery. Ericsson’s NESAS compliance processes underwent a complete audit by a GSMA-approved, independent auditor.

Meanwhile Christoph Pointner, senior VP mobile radio testers at Rohde & Schwarz, said the breakthrough in testing equipment was a great day for small cell validation.

“OEMs worldwide rely on Qualcomm Technologies’ platform for their small cell products,” said Pointner, “with its new functionality specialising on small cell testing, which is already validated for QDART for Small Cells, OEMs can be confident that our test solution is ready to fulfil their testing needs, whether for in the lab or production line.”

Rising telecoms trends in 2021 – and predictions for 2022

Annie Turner
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Rising telecoms trends in 2021 – and predictions for 2022

Veteran industry analyst John Strand, Founder and CEO of Strand Consult, looks at what happened and what’s coming next

Last year was not markedly different from 2020 in which COVID-19 changed so much – and many of those changes were cemented as the new normal. Strand Consult has always viewed telecoms are the foundation of modern society, and their critical importance was ever more apparent in 2021.

Big Streamers damage profitability

Last year our ground-breaking study of the broadband “middle-mile” looked at challenges of delivering broadband to disparate customers across large rural areas. It was designed to bring transparency to policymakers about the cost, level and source of internet traffic, and showed that typically the five Big Streamers – Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, Disney+ and Microsoft – account for a disproportionate share of downstream traffic.
 
For every dollar earned by the Big Streamers, rural broadband providers incurred $0.48 in middle-mile costs (that is, equipment, electricity and labour) which they cannot recover from the streaming services, end users or government reimbursement programmes. 

The five ignore broadband providers’ requests to negotiate cost recovery although their “free” caching solutions add to networks’ costs. The pervasive problem of unrecovered cost at the local, national and international levels threatens the networks’ sustainability and undermines policy to close the digital divide.

OpenRAN talks, CSPs still want RAN

For the last two years, we have studied OpenRAN in detail and published extensively about what the technology needs to become a commercial success. It is one of the most overhyped technical solutions since the launch of 3G in 2000, with promises of cutting RAN CapEx by up to half.
 
Last August Finland’s Nokia paused it work in the O-RAN Alliance fearing it could violate US restrictions by working with the 44 Chinese companies that participate in it. We are yet to find an OpenRAN proponent who can explain how their prevalence does not compromise OpenRAN which is promoted by industry and governments from the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, and even Russia as trade policy and enterprise enhancements, although the OpenRAN market itself appears to be growing minimally.
 
If OpenRAN achieves the success its proponents predict, it will account for less than 1% of the 5G mobile sites in 2025 and not more than 3% in 2030. Operators are deploying 10,000 classic 5G sites a month.
 
Further, mobile operators’ job is to deliver a great network experience to customers: OpenRAN offers limited features compared to the 200 GSMA-compliant 5G networks launched globally by the end of 2021. There is no comparison between the functionality of Rakuten´s 4G/5G network in Japan and those of an American 4G /5G network, and the US will soon upgrade from 3GPP’s Release 15 to Releases 16 and 17.

Claims about OpenRAN distort further when hailed as a way for Europe to catch up to the US, China, and South Korea in 5G.

Another hard year for China and Huawei

When Joe Biden became President in January 2020, we thought the bipartisan stance towards China would not change, and if anything it has become tougher with Huawei in the eye of the storm. The company still faces significant financial pressure, and public opinion has not changed – corporate customers rightly do not want their sensitive, valuable data to be vulnerable to the Chinese government.
 
Many operators experience increased reputational and regulatory risk by using Huawei equipment in telecoms networks. On the upside, it need not be expensive to rip and replace Chinese firms’ equipment because operators have planned 5G upgrade costs already and there are competitively priced alternatives to Huawei.

Cybersecurity is getting even bigger

In 2021, there was great concern around the world about serious problems like illicit finance, human trafficking and ransomware from rogue nations and crime cartels. Secure networks and practices to defend them will become even more important in 2022.
 
The US and EU have rolled out new policy and regulation to improve network security, including 5G. This includes the EU’s Toolbox and the US Secure Equipment Act. As mentioned, Strand Consult finds the push for greater security incompatible with the influence of Chinese players on OpenRAN technologies.

Big Tech mutates faster than Coronavirus

There’s good and the bad news around Big Tech – Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Just like when health authorities think they have the virus under control, a new variant emerges, it’s the same for those trying to regulate Big Tech. The companies evolve, with a new name or practice or public-private partnership, faster than regulatory efforts.
 
If anything, regulations so far, like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), have strengthened Big Tech. Their revenue, market share and earnings have increased compared to the time before GDPR, and inadvertently governments have made it harder for small and medium sized companies to compete.
 
In 2022 we should accept that efforts to regulate Big Tech have failed and instead charge them for their use of resources rather than allow free rides on networks and public airwaves. These are important lessons as policymakers look at the cloud market.

The cloud explodes in 2022

Policymakers are turning their attention to public clouds – AWS, Azure and Google Cloud – which hold increasing amounts of citizens’ and enterprises’ data. More questions are being asked as awareness of clouds’ presence, practices and power grows.

Mobile networks are increasingly integrated with clouds, and individuals and firms are ever more embedded into Big Tech – there is no turning Big Tech off or opting not to use it.
 
Yet data portability between clouds is already complex and difficult, and companies might find it impossible – which should ring big anti-trust alarm bells. The technical reality is that cloud services from the big three are not comparable, like for like. Users will not achieve the same result if they use the three platforms’ AI solutions to analyse data, for example. Another big question for 2022 is which has the best AI?
 
Regulators need to understand that it is far easier to switch 5G equipment vendors than cloud providers.

Mobile phones and services are boring

“New” versions of the iPhone look nearly identical to the one before. It is a testament to Apple’s marketing that it has been able to navigate inevitable device fatigue.
 
There’s not much excitement in new versions of mobile apps either: the key development in 2021 was using mobile apps to manage COVID-19, which will continue in 2022. Additionally, governments entered the mobile app market in a big way with vaccine passports, which for many countries have become or will be de rigueur.

Tower companies across the value chain

Tower companies are key to efforts to find profitability in an increasingly difficult telecom market. In Europe alone, they have contributed some €36 billion to the mobile industry and around the world we see tower companies starting to spread across the value chain.
 
In Brazil, towercos have invested in fibre too, while others mull whether to enter the spectrum market. We will see more infrastructure-based activity in 2022.
 
Denmark’s TDC is a case in point: three Danish pension funds PFA, PKA and ATP plus Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets have split the telecom operator into an infrastructure firm and a service company – TDC Net and Nuuday respectively. We follow the process closely and call it “financial acrobatics,” but expect the trend to grow in 2022. 

Private 5G networks – hot and crowded

Much was written about private 5G networks in 2021, especially regarding who will build and run them. Many parties are keen to get into the market, from mobile operators to IT companies, system integrators and infrastructure equipment suppliers.

OpenRAN players also want to enter, although they have yet to prove they can handle the demands of a classic mobile network. Expect fierce competition, very low margins and, inevitably, a shakeout.

Around the world – US, Brazil and Asia

Overall, we’re going to see big markets set agendas for other markets, but political goodwill is needed to allow the evolution. This is problematic when political systems rarely grasp the importance of events.
 
The US’ C-band spectrum auction raised a record $90+ billion. Mobile operators were set to launch 5G in this band on 5 December but were hijacked the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which posted a dubious advisory about 5G transmissions’ potential interference with altimeters.
 
US planes fly to more than 50 countries where some 200 5G networks operate without any reports of such interference. The FAA has known about 5G for years but appears to be protecting small aircraft and maybe helicopter fleets that haven’t upgraded safety equipment.
 
In Asia, Telenor and Axiata are in the process of major consolidation. After decades of study, we believe most policymakers do not understand the process of consolidation and its benefits, so we and published an exhaustive, evidence-based report Understanding 4 to 3 Mobile Mergers to remedy this.
 
Similarly, in Brazil, many of ailing operator Oi’s assets were distributed between the three major players Vivo, Claro and TIM. It will be interesting to see how the three – and new, smaller players – will fare now the 5G auctions have taken place, mostly likely using it to extend existing and new broadband infrastructure with 5G/FWA.

2022 will see rising prices

Mobile and broadband prices have stalled or fallen in recent year, but we expect price rises around the world in 2022. In 2021, Denmark’s telecom regulator colluded with energy companies to fix the wholesale price of fibre access at above what the market offers, guaranteeing a price rise. If the regulated price of fibre increases so will broadband prices on private networks.
 
Another driver is that operators have long struggled to create value for shareholders through organic growth, and price rises seem inevitable in 2022, given the high value of broadband underlined so spectacularly the pandemic era. This is the law of supply and demand: no price increases, no money to invest in network upgrades.

BAI partners Mavenir for Sunderland’s 5G smart city project

Annie Turner
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BAI partners Mavenir for Sunderland’s 5G smart city project

City Council looks to edge and Open RAN to boost local business and evolving economy

Mavenir, the network software firm and BAI Communications (BAI), a global comm infrastructure provider, are launching a smart city project for Sunderland City Council in the north-east of England (UK).

In recent decades the region suffered from the demise of heavy industries like coal mining, steelworks and shipbuilding but the Sunderland is undergoing a transformation, attracting investment from newer industries.

Acclerating progress

BAI Communications will build a new 5G-centric network – runing on Mavenir’s MAVedge solution – to accelerate adoption of digital services for manufacturing and logistics, education and social care. 

The initial scope is for the deployment of a city-centre 5G private network which could evolve and become a neutral host network.
 
Neutral host models enable local councils and authorities to provide smart services and run numerous smart community applications in a more viable and cost-effective manner by offering services from more than one mobile service provider from the same small cell.
 
MAVedge comprises Open vRAN and 5G Packet Core solutions to offer 5G connectivity and enables secure private networks to be distributed at the edge to support a digital marketplace of applications and devices. The idea is that the marketplace will “create an efficient environment” for home, enterprise and industry use cases:

• smart homes to support health and social care for vulnerable people at home, providing access to assistive technologies like sensors and other IoT devices.

• digital skills and education thorugh better online and remote connectivity and distance learning across primary and secondary Schools within the local authority.

• manufacturing and Industry 4.0 to improve the supply chain for the automotive industry, including applications such as self-driving vehicles and autonomous heavy goods vehicles.

Runaway success?

Brendan O’Reilly, Group Chief Technology Officer at BAI Communications, said, “Open RAN is a cost-effective solution which is based on open interfaces and will give us the ability to deploy in a very agile and flexible way”. This is surprising as the general perception in the market is that the economics of Open RAN are as yet unproven, despite some dramatic claims.
 
“We are creating a new digital fabric for Sunderland’s City, upon which the City’s digital and business entrepreneurs can build – a portfolio of new digital services for the benefits of residents, businesses and visitors”, added Andrew Conway, Director of Solutions and Innovation at BAI Communications UK.

Denmark’s largest telecoms and energy group to expand fibre wholesale

Annie Turner
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0
Denmark’s largest telecoms and energy group to expand fibre wholesale

Norlys implements Cerillion’s billing, charging and customer relationship management software to grow B2B business and its own services

Norlys is Denmark’s largest telecoms and energy group, and says the software deployment enables it to connect its fibre infrastructure to the country’s open access wholesale platform. In other words, it is making its infrastructure available to other service providers for resale via a standardised gateway.

The implementation automates service fulfilment and will also allow Norlys to expand its services through partnering other infrastructure owners.

Cerillion believes there is further opportunity to help Norlys realise more growth over the coming year. “We are very pleased to have completed this important implementation for Norlys.

Structural separation

“The structural separation of infrastructure owners from service providers has put Denmark at the forefront of the fibre broadband industry, driving network investments and delivering greater choice and better service levels to end customers.”

Magnus Just Olesen, Vice-President of Net Planning at Norlys, said, “The successful implementation of our new BSS/OSS solution…[opens] up significant new opportunities for us to grow and expand our infrastructure business.

“Automating our fibre service fulfilment with Cerillion has created a highly scalable business model which allows us to focus on further network expansion.”

Louis Hall, Chief Executive Officer at Cerillion, added, “The structural separation of infrastructure owners from service providers has put Denmark at the forefront of the fibre broadband industry, driving network investments and delivering greater choice and better service levels to end customers.

“Norlys is at the leading edge of this revolution, and we are delighted to be helping them to grow their business with our digital BSS/OSS solutions.”

A growing trend

As John Strand of Strand Consult point out, Denmark’s TDC blazed the trail: three Danish pension funds PFA, PKA and ATP plus Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets have split the telecom operator into an infrastructure firm and a service company – TDC Net  and Nuuday respectively.

Strand said, “We have followed the process closely and call it ‘financial acrobatics’, but expect the trend to grow in 2022.”

MTN mounts legal challenge against Telkom’s spectrum auction play

Nick Booth
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MTN mounts legal challenge against Telkom’s spectrum auction play

Delays hit South Africa’s economy and people says MTN CEO Molapisi

South African operator Telkom’s appeal to delay the spectrum allocation process now faces a legal challenge by Pan African telco MTN.

MTN is anxious to press on with building its 5G networks and has now filed papers to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa). The writ opposes Telkom’s request for more time to prepare its application. 

Telkom went to the courts on January the 4th to halt Icasa’s planned March 8 International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) spectrum auction. It wants more time for the applications to be reviewed. The Telkom tabled an ‘urgent interdict’ to prevent Icasa from processing any applications until the review is heard.

Delays to 5G building will hit the economy

Icasa published the final ITA for the licensing process for the IMT spectrum on December the 10th. This instructed all spectrum applicants to submit their proposals by January 31.

MTN South Africa CEO Charles Molapisi said the delays don’t help the wider interests of South African society. “Spectrum is not just an industry issue, this is an issue for all our people and while there are certainly elements of the ITA [invitations to apply] that are a concern, we have to work together to best benefit the people of South Africa,” said Molapisi. “We cannot have a repeat of 2021, where the entire process was delayed for another full year,” said Molapisi, “[this new delay] comes on the back of 14 years of no additional spectrum being added to the industry.”

Spectrum auction will attract investment

While the current ITA is not perfect, the regulator has tried to strike a delicate balance for all players, Molapisi said. 

“Last year, MTN consistently worked with the regulator to avoid further delays in the spectrum process, but the time for action is now,” said Molapisi.

A successful spectrum auction will attract investment into the national economy and could have an immediate benefit for consumers, Molapisi said. The effect of the regulator’s allocation of temporary spectrum, during which data prices gradually fell and became more accessible, is a perfect example of why expedience is necessary.

“We need to provide sustained data quality and speed but most importantly, continued reductions in the price of data. Spectrum is the key to this, and we need to collaborate now, with the regulator and all stakeholders, to unlock South Africa’s economic recovery,” said Molapisi.

 

 

Bouygues Telecom installs Benoît Torloting as CEO in top management revamp

Nick Booth
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Bouygues Telecom installs Benoît Torloting as CEO in top management revamp

French mobile operators reacting to change – from boardroom to billing

A climate of change has descended on French mobile operators. One operator has undergone a major transformation at management level and they all face a major 5G marketing dilemma caused by new government legislation.

In December the board of Bouygues Telecom decided to split their company’s leadership into two roles. Former president and CEO Richard Viel would relinquish his role of chief executive officer to Benoît Torloting, who had been deputy CEO. However Viel will remain as president, with Edward Bouygues serving as his vice-president.

The new CEO Torloting has made his mark by injecting fresh talent into senior management, making three new appointments. Sandrien Brissart replaces the departing Mylène Collin as HR director, Jean-Christophe Ravaux becomes the new director of business-to-business services and Régis van Brussel is the new director-general of the Résuau Club Bouygues Telecom with an expanded remit covering the company’s physical distribution network.

Too many assistant chiefs, n’est pas?

The board have created three new assistant CEOs. Laure Joslet, head of residential and professional customers, Chrystel Abadie Truchet, head of commercial and client, and Jean-Paul Arzel, head of technology and network infrastructure and IT, have all been appointed as assistant CEO. Yves Legrand, the previous head of technology and network infrastructure and IT, is departing.

The first major task for management of all French telcos will be to tackle the challenge of complying with the French government’s latest amendment to its anti-waste legislation. From January 1st all French mobile operators must inform their customers, in detail, about their personal greenhouse gas emissions, linked to their mobile data usage, on their monthly bill.

Video consumers tainted with climate guilt

Some critics say this will discourage customers to use their phones and consume data, which will have a direct effect on the revenue streams of all operators.

French mobile operators have been trying to encourage more consumption by encouraging subscribers to watch videos, tempting them with unlimited data packages. The new billing information is likely to undermine entire marketing campaigns that will encourage subscribers to adopt faster mobile network services, most notably 5G.

Augmented and virtual reality, along with latency-free mobile gaming are the mobile operator’s three best bets for future revenue streams. If these data-hungry applications are tainted by a link to greenhouse gas emissions, mobile operators fear they won’t get the returns they planned from their investment in 5G.

That may be top of the agenda at the next meeting of the new Bouygues Telecom board.

Africa Cup of Nations benefits from Orange effect on aspiring young footballers

Nick Booth
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Africa Cup of Nations benefits from Orange effect on aspiring young footballers

Orange Sponsors Change and turns plastics into fanatics 

Mobile operator Orange is becoming heavily influential in African football, with a series of campaigns and sponsored programmes. The effects spread beyond the game and benefit communities. 

Footballers the world over are hostage to superstitions, rituals and statistics. Analysts of the game have noticed a link between Orange and success in football tournaments. There are 54 nations in Africa. Out of the 24 teams that have qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), 11 belong to a country where Orange is present: Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Mali, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia. 

Football’s grass roots are Orange 

The link between a French mobile operator and success in football could be explained by its grass roots support for the sport in Africa. Orange has been a partner of African football since 2008 and was the official sponsor of the last seven AFCON tournaments.

Orange has held a series of regional football tournaments in the nations where it offers a mobile phone service. In Cameroon, young participants in the Orange Sponsors Change tournaments joined forces with the Orange Clean Your City initiative to collect waste in seven cities across the country. Orange inspired 1,300 volunteers to collect 14 tonnes of plastic which will be transformed into football equipment and redistributed to football academies in Cameroon.

From plastics to fanatics

In Côte d’Ivoire, 500 players from 50 regional clubs that played in the competition collected 19 tonnes of plastic that will be converted into construction equipment.

A select group of young participants will be celebrated during the AFCON final on February 6th. All the regional tournament winners will be invited to the International final of Orange Sponsors Change next spring. The Africa Cup Of Nations runs from Jan 9th to Feb 6th and is being held in six stadiums in five cities across Cameroon. 

During the tournament fans will be encouraged to collect and recycle their plastic waste via recycling bins. Orange will invest in local companies to recycle the plastic collected and return them to fans and their communities in the form of shirts, balls and sometimes entire football pitches from recyclable materials.

Orange supports its local teams

Orange is distributing 20,000 balls, made from recycled rubber, to young players. “We support major sporting events in the countries where we operate by placing the focus of our strategy on the fans,” said Béatrice Mandine, Orange’s director of communication, brand and engagement, “it is a great action that will leave a positive legacy.”

Orange Sponsors Change will raise awareness of environmental issues through their passion for football, said Alioune Ndiaye, CEO of Orange Africa and the Middle East: “This is great proof of the Orange Group’s commitment to society and the planet.”

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