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Federal Administrative Court upholds Swiss competition authority’s “precautionary” measures

Annie Turner
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Federal Administrative Court upholds Swiss competition authority’s “precautionary” measures

Swisscom claims it could slow down the roll-out of infrastructure by years

In December 2020, the Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO) opened an investigation into the planned optical fibre expansion by Swisscom. The country’s largest operator planned to double its FTTH connections to pass 3 million properties in 2025.

COMCO ordered precautionary measures against the operator, explaining that the proposed expansion risked excluding other participants from the market which could amount to misuse of Swisscom’s market-leading position.

Changing network design

“In areas that it is expanding on its own, it is changing the design of the network in such a way that competitors no longer have direct access to the network infrastructure,” COMCO said in a statement.

“For this reason, the Competition Commission is immediately taking precautionary measures to prohibit Swisscom from denying competitors access to end-to-end lines during expansion of the fibre optic network,” it said.

Swisscom tried to have this measure overturned, but on 30 September, the Federal Administrative Court concluded that the measures ordered by COMCO should be maintained.

This week Swisscom said in a statement that it “greatly regrets this decision as [Swisscom’s] choice of the point-to-multipoint architecture for the expansion is based on a successful international model.”

Setback to national economy?

Swisscom considers the precautionary measures to be misguided and claims the impact of the ruling will be to delay the FTTH expansion to the detriment of society and the economy.

The proposed use of the point-to-point architecture has been criticised by some of Swisscom’s competitors. Swisscom said it faced intense competition with other providers, such as electricity companies and cable network operators, in the construction and operation of long-range and broadband fixed-network connections.

“There is competition at all levels, and numerous cooperation partners are involved in the expansion, which entails billions of euros in investment,” according to Swisscom CEO, Urs Schaeppi. “We are convinced that our conduct is fair and in line with competition law and will now consider our next steps.”
 

BT, Vodafone, DT and Verizon pledge to help merge 5G and fixed broadband 

Nick Booth
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BT, Vodafone, DT and Verizon pledge to help merge 5G and fixed broadband 

Critics say initiative needs massive support commitment

Soon 5G services could be offered to subscriber over their land lines, if a new initiative announced by the Broadband Forum comes to fruition.

The mission is to simplify the development of products and services, the spirit of which is undermined by the sesquipedalian title of the proposed standard: Open Broadband – WWC Reference Implementation for 5G-RG (residential gateway) (OB-5WWC).

The aim is to help vendors and operators get products to market quicker, by cutting the development times and cycles. “The Open Source project will bring the full benefits of the 5G ecosystem to fixed-line services and offer a full end-to-end solution to operators,” said the Forum in a statement.

Telcos pledged support for standard

Telcos including BT, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Verizon, Telecom Italia and Telstra have pledged support in developing the new Open Broadband standard. Many of the world’s telcos are already working on the convergence of fixed line and mobile networks with the recent merger of BT and EE a case in point.

According to ISP Review wireless and fixed line broadband infrastructures are characterised by disparate aggregation and core networks. BT has reportedly struggled to develop its Halo for Business portfolio of products.

The open source ethos behind OB-5WWC should create a “production grade 5G solution stack capable of integration with OpenWRT/RDK-B frameworks,” the Forum said.

The challenge is to apply 5G’s Quality of Service (QoS) model to the fixed line devices. “The 5G-RG should natively support 5G signalling protocols and capabilities and connect services and opportunities,” the Forum claimed.

Great idea on paper but is it realistic?

This is fine in theory, but it needs huge commitment from vendors and operators to support the initiative, said ISP Review.  

David Woolley, Broadband Forum’s OB-5WWC Project Leader, said he had already received “strong support from the service provider community”. Now he said, the Forum is calling for all interested parties across the industry, including customer premises equipment (CPE) manufacturers, end-to-end integrators and hardware and software vendors, to join the project and share ideas.

The goal is to give businesses and consumers seamless and cost effective 5G and fixed broadband connections from a single provider. However, ISP Review warned that many prefer to keep both services separate – “not least to avoid being tied down to a single operator”

October 2021

James Lee Pearson
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October 2021

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New British ‘blank cheque’ infra fund heads for $200m IPO

Annie Turner
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0
New British ‘blank cheque’ infra fund heads for $200m IPO

African towerco, IHS Towers, will also launch an initial public offering (IPO) which would value it at more than $7 billion.

IX Acquisition, a so-called blank check company targeting the tech, media and telecom sectors and ICT industries in Europe and emerging markets, has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in New York to raise up to $200 million in an initial public offering (IPO).

Towers and fibre assets



The London-based company plans to raise $200 million by offering 20 million units at $10, and to be listed on the Nasdaq.

The company is led by Executive Chairman Guy Willner, the Co-founder and Chair of datacenter operators IXcellerate and IXAfrica, and the Founder and former CEO of IXEurope.

The firm will be looking to acquire fibre assets and towers in Europe and is one of the first special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) to target this sector, which has seen, for example, Cellnex grow rapidly in a very short term as telcos look to offload assets to raise cash.

With headquarters in Barcelona, Cellnex was spun off from a tollroad group five years ago and now has a market cap of about €24 billion – more than Spain’s biggest telco, Telefonica.

Out of Africa

Earlier this week, the African towerco, IHS Towers announced it had filed for an IPO with the US SEC to raise about $380 million.

If the IHS Towers’ IPO goes to plan, it will value the company at more than $7 billion, and it will be the largest US listing by an African company.

The group operates more than 30,000 towers in five African countries as well as in other markets in South America and the Middle East, and is the world’s fourth largest independent towerco, according to the Financial Times.

South Africa’s MTN, Africa’s biggest mobile operator by subscribers, owns 29% of IHS. Other stakes are held by Goldman Sachs and Wendel, the French private equity investor.

IHS, which is the world’s fourth biggest independent tower operator, could raise about $380m in net proceeds at the middle of the offering price range, according to the regulatory filing.

Nokia and MediaTek claim world first with carrier aggregation at 3.2 Gbps

Annie Turner
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0
Nokia and MediaTek claim world first with carrier aggregation at 3.2 Gbps

This could enable operators to deliver higher throughputs and better coverage to more customers.

Nokia and MediaTek aggregated 5G Standalone (5G SA) spectrum using 3 Components Carrier (3CC) aggregation.

This increases the sub-6Ghz 5G spectrum utilization by combining 210MHz of frequency division duplex (FDD) and time-division duplex (TDD) spectrum more efficiently to reach 3.2Gbps peak downlink throughput.

Combined tech

To achieve this performance, Nokia supplied its latest AirScale equipment including its AirScale 5G SA architecture powered by its energy-efficient ReefShark System-on-Chip (SoC) technology as well as its cloud-native 5G core.

MediaTek provided its new M80 5G modem which combines mmWave and sub-6 GHz capabilities onto a single chip as well as the user equipment testing platform.
 
Carrier Aggregation combines frequency bands for higher rates and increased coverage, delivering more network capacity by maximizing the spectral efficiency of 5G networks. 

FDD in 600MHz (n71) is a lower frequency band that provides a wide coverage area, improving cell edge performance. TDD in 2600MHz (n41) has higher bandwidth and capacity.

The combination of these spectrum bands supports a range of 5G deployment scenarios including indoor as well enhanced outdoor coverage. The high-band sub-6Ghz spectrum bands support high-capacity and extreme mobile broadband capabilities.

Power of the ecosystem

JS Pan, General Manager, Wireless Communication System, and Partnerships at MediaTek, said: “This test demonstrates the importance of carrier aggregation in enabling mobile operators around the world to deliver best-in-class speed and capacity to their subscribers.

“The combination of Nokia’s AirScale portfolio and our technology boosts the possibilities of spectrum assets and 5G networks. We look forward to continuing to partner with Nokia to advance the 5G ecosystem.”
 
Mark Atkinson, SVP, Radio Access Networks PLM at Nokia, said: “Nokia continues to drive the 5G ecosystem by delivering new and important innovations. This validation test demonstrates how mobile operators can maximize their spectrum allocations and deliver enhanced coverage and capacity to subscribers.

“Nokia is committed to pushing the boundaries of 5G and delivering industry-leading performance. High-capacity Carrier Aggregation combinations can be achieved in both 5G Standalone (SA) and Non-Standalone (NSA) based on our scalable Airscale Baseband architecture.”

Orange on the look-out for more fixed assets in Europe

Annie Turner
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0
Orange on the look-out for more fixed assets in Europe

At the Orange in Europe Day strategy briefing yesterday, the group also said it plans to stick with Huawei everywhere it’s allowed to.

The Orange in Europe Day was led by its Deputy CEO responsible for Europe, Mari-Noëlle Jégo-Laveissière. She said the group is looking to acquire more fixed line assets to further its convergence strategy – a is key pillar for growth according to its Engage 2025 roadmap, announced at the end of 2019.

Last month, Orange acquired a controlling stake in fixed-line operator Telekom Romania Communications.

The driver for growth comes from the conviction that having control of fixed and mobile infrastructure enables the operator to provide more high quality services, and that customers will buy bundles of them rather than just mobile service, say. This is designed to drive greater consumption, customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Moving from mobile-only

Outside of its domestic market of France, Orange mainly started operations as a mobile-only operator.

Jégo-Laveissière hammered home the message that fibre has proved to be the key to growth in markets where Orange has both fixed and mobile assets.

Orange has also shown that it is prepared to be flexible in its approaches to getting its hands on fibre. For example earlier this year in Poland, it partnered APG, a pension management fund, to set up a joint venture, FibreCo.

Belgium is an obvious target market to acquire fibre assets and earlier in the year Orange began trialling FTTH in Brussels.

Jégo-Laveissière wouldn’t be drawn to comment on Belgium specifically, simply noting that fixed-line acquisition could happen in any of the European markets in which Orange operates – Belgium, Luxembourg, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Spain (where Orange is not faring well).

Maybe there will be an opportunity to invest in Telefonica’s fibre infrastructure, given the report by Bloomberg that Telefonia is exploring the possibility of spinning its fibre assets off into a separate unit with the intention of attracting an investor.

The Chinese vendor

When asked about the continuing use of Huawei equipment in Orange’s European infrastructure, she said obviously Orange would follow regulatory obligations, but saw having “the Chinese vendor’ as a question of balance, and that Orange would continue to use Huawei equipment where it is allowed to do so.

In France the authorities have said it will not renew licenses for Huawei equipment when they expire, but Orange’s 4G network is built on Nokia and Ericsson kit anyway, and they will supply its 5G RAN.

Spain is a different issue. It is Orange group’s second biggest European market by sales and last year more than half of its 4G network equipment was supplied by Huawei, according to Strand Consult.

Poland and Romania are also heavily reliant on Huawei equipment. Jégo-Laveissière said continuing with Huawei is mostly a matter of price, which could turn out to be very high if any of those countries change their stance on Huawei, as it will almost certainly mean replacing the 4G network in the interests of interoperability.

She also said that Orange will continue in its joint procurement efforts with Deutsche Telekom to push for better deals from other suppliers.

Telefonica mulls options for Spanish fibre network including sale of stake

Annie Turner
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0
Telefonica mulls options for Spanish fibre network including sale of stake

Bloomberg reports Spain’s incumbent is considering ways to bring in new investors.

Telefonica has spoken to potential advisers about the possiblity of spinning out its fibre infrastructure in Spain into a new unit as a way to attract new investors, according to a Bloomberg report.

Spain has the most advanced fibre penetration rate of any geographically large European country at 62.8% (according to the latest figures from the FTTH Council Europe, which are as of September 2020). It is also leagues ahead of Europe’s four largest economies, with France at 35% penetration, Germany at 4.9%, Italy at 5.9% and the UK at 3.7%, according to same data.

The value a standalone Spanish fibre business would be about around €15 billion according to Bloomberg’s sources, which also said any deal is likely to take until 2022 to negotiate and that no final decisions have been taken.

Telefonica declined to comment.

Telefonica announced in late 2019 that it planned to sell assets to help cut its debt pile and raise money for new investment as part of its five point plan.

In July, the company agreed to sell a stake in its Colombian fibre optic broadband network to private equity firm KKR – its fourth such deal since last year. It’s also been forming joint ventures to deploy fiber in countries including Germany and Brazil.

VodafoneZiggo to keep 5G cloud building in-house with OpenShift

Nick Booth
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0
VodafoneZiggo to keep 5G cloud building in-house with OpenShift

Trusts foundation work and apps to Red Hat partners

Dutch mobile operator VodafoneZiggo is to create its own hybrid cloud infrastructure using Red Hat’s OpenShift Kubernetes built container system.

The operator has eschewed use of the public cloud and elected to build its own unified application infrastructure, with a new standalone 5G core. It claims this will raise productivity and get it to market faster.

Red Hat claims VodafoneZiggo was looking for ‘supplier-agnostic technology’ for a multi-vendor infrastructure featuring interoperable cloud-native network functions (CNFs).

Keep your hands on your hybrid cloud

Previously VodafoneZiggo used a Red Hat OpenStack system to build its 4G mobile core and business applications. It chose to continue this ‘horizontal’ strategy by opting for Red Hat OpenShift as its foundation for cloud-native apps across both the network and the business, with 5G Core as its first deployment.

After a proof of concept, VodafoneZiggo enlisted Red Hat Consulting for guidance on development models such as DevSecOps and creating an ‘open, collaborative culture’, according to Red Hat.

This new environment will benefit people and processes, resolve operational issues and cut downtime, claims Red Hat. VodafoneZiggo will be get better performance out of its machines because the open nature of the software means it can be more tightly integrated and will run on ‘bare-metal’ – i.e. without the constraint of needing layer of operating systems to do the translations between different cultures of software.

Why not hop on the public cloud?

The do-it-yourself approach to building a 5G software infrastructure has its critics. Danielle Royston, CEO of public cloud lobbyist TelcoDR, recently told a Cloud City conference that the public cloud is both a massive threat and a massive win for telco.

“Do nothing and you’re screwed,” said Royston. “The Amdocs, Ericsson and IBM dinosaurs will talk your ear off about how it won’t work. What about the security, privacy, latency and lock-in, they’ll bleat.”

Used boldly, Royston said, the public cloud will: “wow your customers and double your ARPU without massive CapEx expenditure.”

However, in an interview with Mobile Europe, Stephen Reidy, CIO for Three Ireland, said the use of public cloud should be used cautiously. “We do use public cloud where appropriate [but] we have a lot of our infrastructure in our own data centres,” said Reidy.

Keep your cloud in your data centre

Red Hat claims it will maintain continuous systems security with features inherent in OpenShift’s multi-layered network, container isolation and data access control.

“We want to focus on our differentiation in 5G services and business applications,” said VodafoneZiggo’s director of mobile networks André Beijen, “Red Hat and partners can help boost productivity and deliver continuous innovation. We wanted a stable container system with a comprehensive security and management features and we trusted in Red Hat’s set of partnerships to provide supplier independence.”

Ericsson and Nokia kept out of billion dollar China Mobile tender

Nick Booth
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Ericsson and Nokia kept out of billion dollar China Mobile tender

Nearly all contracts awarded to ZTE and Huawei

Europe’s top infrastructure builders appear have been spurned from Chinese networking contracts in retaliation for governmental bans on Huawei.

Equipment makers Nokia and Ericsson, both with long track records of installing networks for Chinese mobile operators, found themselves uninvited to tender for a $1.16 billion job with China Mobile.

The contracts to supply comms equipment went to ZTE and Huawei. Both are subject to bans in Europe, including Ericsson’s home country Sweden, the US and elsewhere over cybersecurity and espionage fears.

Until recently Ericsson and Nokia were able to win major deals with Chinese domestic operators, reports Mobile World.

No more jobs in China

Though details of the converged 4G/5G core network contract were not disclosed it is thought that Huawei and ZTE submitted very similar bids of 7.49 billion Yen ($675million) and 7.46 billion yen ($672 million) respectively and they appear to be the only vendors to bid.

Huawei has been prevented from participation in 5G network building across Europe. In October 2020 Sweden banned Huawei and ZTE from participation in its 5G network building.

 In July it was reported that Ericsson won a contract to supply 5G networking to US telco Verizon worth $8.3 billion (€9.199 billion). Its record contract win may have come at the expense of Huawei. 

In January Sweden’s Supreme Administrative Court dismissed an appeal by Huawei to prevent 5G spectrum auctions going ahead that stipulate the winning bidders cannot deploy the Chinese vendor’s equipment.

The US announced in June that five Chinese infrastructure equipment makers – Huawei and ZTE, plus Hytera, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and Dahua Technology – would be banned from the US forever.

Did European and US bans provoke China?

In May Chinese state media that Sweden had one last chance to reverse the Huawei ban. However in September Ericsson’s CEO Börje Ekholm said he was not giving up on China. “We have been in China for 120 years and I don’t intend to give up easily. We are going to show that we can add value to China,” said Eckholm.

Finland’s Nokia announced in September that it was stepping back from its involvement in the Open RAN Appliance, which invited speculation that it was distancing itself from the Huawei ban in order to win favour with China.

However China’s largest operator has decided not to use kit from the two non-Chinese vendors, even though Ericsson and Nokia had recently gained ground in the market.

Failed to appease the Chinese

In July, Nokia Shanghai Bell won a 10.1 per cent share of a 5G radio contract from China Mobile, while Ericsson was awarded a 9.7 per cent share. August saw Ericsson win a three per cent share of a joint 5G RAN tender from China Telecom and China Unicom.

Ericsson had prepared for a revenue downturn and closed a research facility in China. However Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark had reportedly been more optimistic as the Finnish government had been less combative.

 

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