Home Blog Page 374

Free Mobile is now France’s biggest 5G network after canny spectrum bid

0

Attributes breadth of service to its 700MHz use and speed to 3.5GHz options.

French mobile operator Free Mobile, an Iliad subsidiary, claims it has achieved the top spot among 5G network builders in the race to digitalisation. It’s all thanks to canny bidding in the French spectrum auction of 2020.

In France, mobile operators build 5G services using the 700MHz, 2.1 GHz and 3.5GHz spectrum bands. Free Mobile uses frequencies in these bands which it bought in the French spectrum auction.

Described as a disruptive brand Free Mobile said its use of low-band frequencies at 700MHz achieved broad coverage and good indoor reception. This frequency is the channel for offering LTE services. In addition, its configuration of 70 megahertz in the midband spectrum at 3.5 GHz carries data at ‘ultra-fast’ speeds.

Free Mobile’s 5G network was launched in December 2020 with 5,255 active sites.

The mobile operator has grown its coverage from 52 to 62 per cent of the since May. At the end of 2020 its coverage was 40 per cent.

Free Mobile’s 5G network currently reaches 9,100 municipalities across France and has commissioned a total of 10,200 5G sites, reports RCR Wireless News. 

Many sites for 5G unused

France had a total of 28,018 5G authorised sites as of August 1, of which 16,517 are in use by local mobile carriers, according to France’s spectrum agency ANFR.

ANFR said that the number of authorised 5G sites during July increased by 7.4 per cent on the previous month.

Out of 17,9991 potential sites authorised in the 700 MHz band 10,914 are technically operational. Meanwhile, out of 9,955 sites authorised for use in the 2.1 GHz band only half (4,528) are technically operational. The same proportion of the 3.5 Ghz band sites has been taken up – 5.411 out of a potential of 10,815 approved sites.

French telco Orange has activated 5G in 160 cities across the country. Meanwhile, rival operator Bouygues Telecom said it expects to achieve nationwide coverage by the end of 2021, with a 5G network running on the 3.5 GHz and 2.1 GHz bands.

T-Mobile US confirms data breach, but not claims that more than 100m people affected

0

T-Mobile US confirms data breach; can’t say if it involved customers’ data

T-Mobile’s confirmation of a data breach came after Reuters reported the operator is investigating a claim first reported on Motherboard and also made on Telegram social media channel which says the personal data of over 100 million users have been breached.

Exaggerated claim?

The hackers claimed to have the phone, IMEI and social security numbers, along with names, addresses and driver licence details from the operator’s servers.

Now the company has acknowledged a data breach but says it doesn’t know if it involves customers’ data. T-Mobile has had a series of data breaches, most recently in January that did involve customers’ data.

In a statement sent out yesterday, T-Mobile US said, “We have been working around the clock to investigate claims being made that T-Mobile data may have been illegally accessed,” the statement said.

Horrible history?

T-Mobile has something of a history of data breaches, most recently in January that did involve customers’ data

The operator said in the statement, “This investigation will take some time but we are working with the highest degree of urgency.

“Until we have completed this assessment we cannot confirm the reported number of records affected or the validity of statements made by others.”

Reputational damage

Richard Orange, Vice President of EMEA at Digital Guardian, commented, “Is it really worrying that companies such as T-Mobile continue to suffer these data breaches when they stand to face such a significant fine and reputable damage.

“T-Mobile now must thoroughly investigate what led to the breach, then build a remediation strategy that can help to avoid those same pitfalls in the future.”

 

 

Progressing NFV is critical to the success of cloud-native migration

Operators are accelerating towards a cloud-native approach as they look to use cases enabled by 5G standalone networks. Kate O’Flaherty reports.

Network functions virtualisation (NFV) is quickly evolving towards a cloud-native approach as operators prepare their networks for the arrival of standalone (SA) 5G.

The shift to cloud-native networks was made clear in November last year when the ETSI NFV industry specification group defined a roadmap that will enable containerised virtual network functions (VNFs) to be managed in an NFV framework.

Several initiatives are also paving the way. Organisations such as the Cloud Native Computing Foundation are helping operators to meet the growing challenge of becoming cloud native via containers, service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure and declarative APIs.

Meanwhile, the Cloud iNfrastructure Telco Taskforce, jointly hosted by the GSMA and the Linux Foundation, operates as an open committee which is responsible for creating and documenting a common cloud infrastructure framework for the telecoms industry.

Vast native opportunities

The opportunities for operators that embrace a cloud-native ethos are vast, including increased efficiency and being able to support multiple 5G use cases. Yet operators moving to cloud-native networks face many challenges, including how to resource skills and make major cultural changes amid the shift to a very different DevOps-based working culture.

For starters, becoming cloud native can increase complexity for operators, says Aurelio Nocerino, European Lead, Communication and Media Network Practice at Accenture. “There are 5G Open RAN applications and then the legacy network is ongoing” – and for many will continue for many years.

Fergus Wills, Director of Product Management, Enea, which specialises in cloud-native software for telecoms, agrees, saying the challenge for many operators is operational. “They need to consider the management of a mixed cloud-native network function (CNF) and VNF approach as different parts of the systems evolve at different paces.”

Another issue for operators is avoiding vendor lock-in and adopting a common approach to toolsets, such as making a choice to follow Red Hat’s OpenShift, says Wills. OpenShift is a hybrid cloud, Kubernetes-based application platform for enterprises.

Learning lessons from NFV

However, many of the lessons learned to date from NFV projects can be applied to future network evolution, according to Martin Taylor, Chief Technical Officer of Metaswitch Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft last year as part of its push into the telecoms sector.

He says, “Operators are working on third-generation projects where they are applying learnings from [previous] attempts. They are moving on from the virtualised environment to really taking advantage of softwarisation of the network and DevOps.”

As part of this, he says progress has been made in acknowledging cloudification and the difference between that and virtualisation. The original vision of NFV created in 2012 talked about software appliances, says Taylor, but that was not the ideal way of approaching it.

He explains, “It means you are using commercial off-the-shelf hardware, but in terms of how you operate the network, it doesn’t change anything – it just replaces a physical box with software. Cloudification means completely rethinking the way software is architected for a cloud environment.”

Taylor cites the example of Netflix, saying, “It’s massively scalable and scales fairly quickly for its users. It achieved that by building software specifically designed to work in the cloud environment.”

Scaling in the cloud is very different to what operators are used to, Taylor continues. “The traditional way of scaling the network is replacing a small box with a medium one, then replacing that with a large one. In the cloud, you typically scale with lots of small units, and you increase the number and spin them up in response to demand. You then have the freedom to scale.

This is ‘scaling out’ instead of ‘scaling up’, which gives you a tolerant system and a blast radius if anything goes wrong.”

Widening NFV’s scope

The transition to cloud-native, container-based solutions is coupled with the expansion in NFV’s scope from its initial focus on the network core to new areas such as the radio and fixed access networks, says Gary Mackenzie, Senior Technologist, Telco Technology Office EMEA, Red Hat.

This, he concedes, creates challenges, such as ensuring the existing technologies used in virtual environments are ported to container-based solutions at the same time as introducing new technologies to serve the expanded scope of NFV.

He notes, “The other challenge is operationalising this technology to ensure we can smoothly deploy this to thousands of sites and then maintain it effectively in production. That’s a step-change from the initial tens or hundreds of sites we saw in the first wave of NFV deployments.”

Mackenzie describes the trends Red Hat is seeing as customers evolve from VNFs to CNFs with OpenShift. “5G deployments are tending to be more multi-vendor than previously seen. This is driving service providers towards a common infrastructure platform to host all these vendors in a neutral environment.

“With some functions being pushed towards the edge of the network, it doesn’t make sense for each vendor to bring their own infrastructure, so a neutral platform [like OpenShift] is key.”

Meanwhile, he says, operators are learning from their initial NFV experiences and focusing on fixing some of the pain points from those deployments, including bringing software-defined networking (SDN) to operational models.

He adds, “We’re seeing some exploration of the role of systems integrators with more clarity from operators on what they can and want to do in-house, versus what they want integrators to provide.”

Operators’ NFV progress

Operators are certainly making progress with NFV programmes such as Telenor’s NFV initiative, which is part of a business, IT and network transformation. It aims to reduce cost and complexity, and capture new revenues via NFV and a cloud platform.

The operator is also developing cloud-enabled, analytics-driven automation to improve the speed of network operations and enhance customer experience.

BT has taken a different approach. Its NFV programme is split into two, says Andy Reid, Senior Manager, Protocols and Encodings in Applied Research, BT. “There is what we are doing in terms of roll-out and deployments [where] we have consciously decided we want a standard platform from which we will run all our network apps.

“We call [it] our ‘network cloud’. We are in the process of building and deploying it, and performing integration focusing on 5G, looking for a single platform from which we will load various apps from different vendors.”

Alongside this, he says BT’s research department is examining possibilities and use cases. “One thing active at the moment is mobile edge and how we integrate that with the core and also into the SDN and NFV story.”

At the same time, Reid says BT is “very engaged with applying the DevOps idea as broadly and completely as we can,” but he acknowledges the area presents “its own challenges to the network”.

Yves Bellego, Director of European Network Strategy at Orange, explains it has chosen to virtualise network functions on different infrastructure. “We have our own infrastructure and then we have vendors’ infrastructure. The decision whether we go one way or another has not been made,” he says.

Over the next year, into 2022, Orange will focus on the 5G core network. “We are looking at the 5G core including SDN and other functions, and we are also looking at access with Open RAN,” Bellego adds.

Orange, along with European operator groups Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, TIM and Vodafone signed an MoU early this year pledging to support and promote Open RAN. They followed this up with an Open RAN Technical Priority Document in June.

5G: moving NFV forward

For mobile operators, the specification of the 5G Core by 3GPP as a cloud-native and implicitly container-based architecture has been the big driver for a move to cloud. “It is no longer optional in many respects,” says Mackenzie.

He explains that the move towards greater scale has had an impact too. “When a service provider is deploying thousands of RAN sites, they need completely automated provisioning and configuration processes.”

In lots of ways the rollout of standalone 5G with the 5G Core will be the inflection point at which operators need to be ready to support a cloud-native environment, says Mackenzie.

The 5G core is “very important” as it’s a key function that will be fully virtualised, says Bellego. “In the past, it was part of the network, but now all of the network will be based on virtualised solutions. Capacity and reliability are key in telecoms and we will have functions that will boost this.”

5G SA will represent an opportunity to “move the NFV game forward,” says Taylor. “The 5G SA core is the first generation of mobile technology architected to make it well-suited to cloud deployment. Architecturally it should be easier to deploy in the cloud than previous generations and can realise the benefits NFV brings.”

5G and the move to cloud native is being driven by new use cases, via the so-called fourth industrial revolution and IoT, which will of course utilise 5G SA. With this in mind, private networks are an area of interest as operators continue in their journeys to become cloud native to support 5G SA.

Taylor describes the opportunity, saying “There are lots of situations where 5G enables capabilities that just weren’t there before, such as robotic warehouses, port facilities, airports and military facilities.”

Driving new use cases

Taylor continues, “These situations include cases where you have a large area to cover and devices that are inherently mobile, such as robots, or high-bandwidth such as cameras. Wi-Fi isn’t enough and lacks the required guarantees, and wired is not an option. 5G is an enabler for a whole bunch of industry use cases that are often better deployed by using a 5G network.”

He says mobile operators have a great opportunity to participate in this market. “They have the spectrum, the know-how and assets, but they do not have the field to themselves.”

It’s clear that over the next few years, use cases around 5G SA could offer a much-needed revenue boost for mobile operators as their core revenues continue to erode, but first they must embrace the next phase of NFV, including the evolution to cloud and the challenges around it.

“This is a big evolution and the only way to benefit is to ensure [you have] the right skills and ways of working, with the same mentality and culture as an IT department,” Accenture’s Nocerino says. “Operators need to be automating everything.”

This article first appeared in the July edition of the Mobile Europe & European Communications magazine, which you can download free from here.

Vodafone claims Deutsche Telekom discriminates against other service providers’ customers

0

Rival says the DT’s German incumbent, Telekom Deutschland, is not sticking to its obligations of equal treatment.

Vodafone Deutschland has accused the incumbent of massively disadvantaging its competitors’ customers and has written to a letter to federal and state politicians, putting pressure on the Federal Network Agency to stipulate clear rules about this matter regarding fiber networks in new regulation, according to an article in Welt am Sonntag.

Delays in line connections

Vodafone Deutschland buys wholesale capacity from Telekom Deutschland, the incumbent on whom it depends to activate the line.

Vodafone claims often customers are not treated equally, although Telekom is obliged by regulation to treat all customers the same.

Vodafone reports a large number of cases in which connections to Vodafone customers by Telekom were delayed well beyond the contractually agreed period due to insufficient staff resources or insufficiently suitable IT systems – sometimes for many weeks.

The letter said, “Affected customers then canceled the Vodafone connections they had ordered and were supplied with connections by Telekom shortly afterwards”.

The newspaper article quoted Andreas Laukenmann, Head of Consumer business at Vodafone Deutschland, saying, “It still often happens that our customers wait too long or in vain for telecom technicians to activate the new Internet connection, while telecom customers are helped more quickly”.

Stout denials

Telekom denies the allegations and points to a massive improvement in its performance for its competitors.

“We treat all customers equally,” the report quotes a Telekom spokesperson saying.

Telekom also pointed out that Vodafone can view and book all available delivery dates at any time via an interface into the Telekom computer system, but claims Vodafone has not yet set up the technology required to use this interface fully.

You have to wonder why it needs technical requirements and maybe it behoves DT to provide a simple to use, easily accessible system?

More than third of organisations worldwide hacked or held to ransom

0

IDC’s new survey finds many vctims are held to ransom multiple times as attacks become more sophisticated.

A new survey by International Data Corporation (IDC) found that more than a third of organisations worldwide has experienced a ransomware attack or breach that blocked access to systems or data in the previous 12 months.

For those that fell victim to ransomware, it is not uncommon to have experienced multiple ransomware events.

Wall Street to Main Street

“Ransomware has become the enemy of the day; the threat that was first feared on Pennsylvania Avenue and subsequently detested on Wall Street is now the topic of conversation on Main Street,” said Frank Dickson, Program VP, Cybersecurity Products at IDC.

“As the greed of cybermiscreants has been fed, ransomware has evolved in sophistication, moving laterally, elevating privileges, actively evading detection, exfiltrating data, and leveraging multifaceted extortion. Welcome to digital transformation’s dark side!”

Key findings from the survey include:
• The incident rate was notably lower for companies based in the United States (7%) compared to the worldwide rate (37%). 

• Manufacturing and finance reported the highest rates of ransomware incidents and transportation, communication, utilties and media industries reported the lowest. 

• Only 13% of organisations reported experiencing a ransomware attack or breach and not paying a ransom. 

• While the average ransom payment was almost a $250,000 (€213,000), a few large ransom payments for more than $1 million skewed the average. 


Greater awareness

Greater awareness of ransomware incidents has prompted organisations to undertake various actions in response. They include: reviewing and certifying security and data protection and recovery practices with partners and suppliers; periodically stress-testing cyber response procedures; and increased sharing of threat intelligence with other organisations and/or government agencies.

Greater awareness of awareness has prompted requests from boards of directors to review security practices and ransomware response procedures.

Analysis of the survey results also showed that organisations that are further along in their digital transformation efforts were less likely to have experienced a ransomware event. These are organisations that have committed to a long-term digitalization investment plan with a multi-year approach tied to enterprise strategy.

The report, IDC’s 2021 Ransomware Study: Where You Are Matters!, presents findings from the Future Enterprise Resiliency & Spending Survey of nearly 800 IT decision makers and influencers.

The July 2021 survey focused on topics such as attention by the board of directors, ransomware payments, size of the ransomware, number of ransomware payments, and the exfiltration of data.

BES alleges Huawei used its system to spy on Pakistan government

0

A Californian tech consultancy has accused Huawei of using its equipment to create a backdoor to spy.

A Californian tech consultancy has accused Huawei of using its equipment to create a backdoor to spy, according to The Register.

On Wednesday a complaint was filed in the US District Court in Santa Ana, California, setting out the allegations of Business Efficiency Solutions (BES) against its one time tech partner Huawei Technologies.

The complaint refers to a period in 2016 when they teamed up to overhaul the IT and comms systems of the Punjab Police Integrated Command, Control and Communication Center (PPIC3) of Lahore, Pakistan.

The court heard that the Pakistan government invited tenders from a range of companies including Motorola, Nokia, and Huawei, to modernise the police’s technology.

The proposal included a Data Exchange System (DES), for storing data from national identity cards, excise and customs, cellular providers, land and tax records, immigration and passport records.

Australia was one of the first countries to ban Huawei from telecoms networks. The ban on Huawei in the US, over allegations of spying, have created a surge in business for rival equipment vendors such as Ericsson.

Was Pakistan’s security breached?

The legal filing claims Huawei used BES’s Data Exchange System to “create a backdoor and obtain data important to Pakistan’s national security and spy on Pakistani citizens.”

Allegedly Huawei did not have the capacity to provide all the systems called for in the tender, which included building and resource management systems, digital forensics and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). So in March 2016 Huawei partnered with BES to develop the eight software systems needed. BES’s contribution to this joint effort work was instrumental in Huawei winning a contract worth $150m, it claims.

However, BES alleges, Huawei turned one of BES’s software systems into a secret gateway between Pakistan and China through which the Chinese could collect and view data important to Pakistan’s national security as well as private, personal data on Pakistani citizens.

Huawei allegedly restisted paying partner

Huawei, allegedly, acquired BES’s low-level system designs and then resisted paying BES. Meanwhile it bid for police modernisation contracts – without BES – in municipalities across Pakistan, Qatar, Dubai, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

“Huawei threatened to terminate the agreements between the parties and withhold all payments owed to BES unless BES installed the duplicate DES system in China,” the complaint says. BES CEO and founder Javed Nawaz admitted that, under duress and the impression that the move had the approval of the government of Pakistan, a duplicate DES system was installed in China.

 

 

Verizon Business and Equinix automate connections to MPLS and Private Ethernet

Automatic access is software defined in new Network-as-a-Service arrangement.

Verizon Business is working with data centre giant Equinox to automate the connection of enterprise clients to hundreds of cloud services, network infrastructures and service providers. 

Access will be achieved by improvements to its global supply of MPLS and Ethernet private networking, which will be facilitated by the mobile telco’s Software-Defined Interconnect (SDI) system.

The SDI system is part of the Verizon Business Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) strategy.

Faster activation

Verizon Business claims that network services will be activated faster for customers, with lower access costs and more networking options.

“Organizations are seeking more agile ways of working from anywhere on any device,” said said Massimo Peselli, Senior VP of Global Enterprise at Verizon Business.

New systems are emerging that were built on 5G, such as real-time data analytics and Artificial Intelligence, better security and Augment and Virtual Reality.

Enterprises won’t get them to work without a flexible, programmable, scalable and reliable platform that delivers network services in a much more resilient and cloud-centric way, according to Peselli.

“This SDI expansion provides our customers with the agility to meet their needs as they migrate to the cloud,” he said. 

Networks must be consistent

Verizon and Equinix have worked together since the launch of SDI in 2019. The service initially included same day provisioning of Private IP to Equinix’s colocation environments.

It will now support Ethernet E-Line and E-LAN wide area networks. Verizon now promises network performances of up to 10 Gbps in tandem with Equinix Fabric, which grants the global connectivity to Verizon’s MPLS and private Ethernet services.

“Network delivery needs to be globally consistent, in order to create digital advantage,” said Bill Long, Senior Vice President, Core Product Management, Equinix.

Ireland’s Eir to push fibre out to 200,000 more homes and firms

0

Eir, owned by French entrepreneur Xavier Niel, plans to reach 1.9m premises with FTTB.

Eir is expanding its gigabit fibre infrastructure to pass 200,000 more homes and businesses. So far, it was has passed 1.7 million with fibe and has 772,000 fixed broadband subscribers. Niel’s promise to pass 1.9 million premises with fibre equates to 84% of businesses and dwellings in the republic.

Eavann Murphy, MD of Eir’s wholesale operation, said, “Our purpose is, and always will be, to connect for a better Ireland and we do this by building world class fibre networks as we understand that high speed broadband has become absolutely essential to support the way we work, live, do business, socialise and connect.”

Universal broadband

The company said the 16% of Ireland not covered by its plan would be served by the national broadband plan. The government in 2019 set up National Broadband Ireland (NBI) to connect rural parts of the country with FTTH. “We are actively supporting the national broadband plan,” said Murphy.

She added that the two projects together “will mean Ireland will have a ubiquitous gigabit fibre network, making this one of the most connected countries in the world”.

She added, “The upgrade of all premises, both homes and businesses, to a gigabit fibre connection will enable customers to live and work anywhere they choose in Ireland, while being connected with highspeed fibre, an absolute essential.”

Niel has said he intends to take his telecom empire private, including eir, valuing the entire business at €10.85 billion. 

 

5G FWA fastest growing consumer broadband service – 58m in 2026

ABI Research find that fixed wireless access (FWA) is grow rapidly in response to demand for higher capacity networks.

The worldwide residential broadband market had over 1.1 billion in 2020, a 4% increase from the previous year, according to ABI Research. Not surprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated demand for broadband connectivity, and for higher capacity broadband.

This demand is expected to remain strong post-pandemic recovery and ABI Research, 5G Fixed Wireless Access expects it to have a CAGR of 71% in the global residential market to exceed 58 million subscribers by 2026.

Driving demand

Remote working, online learning, e-commerce, and virtual healthcare drove high-speed broadband demand throughout 2020. The big increase in the use of internet-based home entertainment such as video streaming and online gaming also pushed existing broadband users to upgrade their broadband service to a higher-tier package, while households without broadband access signed up for new subscriptions.

“Increasing adoption of internet-connected devices, smart TVs, and smart home devices, as well as consumers’ media consumption through internet applications, will continue to drive high-speed broadband adoption in the years to come. In addition, many businesses are allowing remote working for some of their employees after the pandemic, which will boost the need for home broadband services even further,” explains Khin Sandi Lynn, Industry Analyst at ABI Research.

Next-gen cable and fibre

To fulfill demand, broadband operators are investing heavily in expanding higher-capacity broadband networks. While some cable operators continue to invest in and upgrade to the DOCSIS 3.1 specification, the cable standardization body, CableLabs, and other industry players are already working toward DOCSIS 4.0 technology.

“Although cable companies don’t anticipate the need to deploy the new cable standard any time soon, Comcast has completed a lab test of DOCSIS 4.0 full-duplex system-on-chip from Broadband in April 2021.

Cable companies are likely to stretch the life of the existing DOCSIS 3.1 standard for a few more years. However, DOCSIS 4.0 can support speeds of up to 10 Gbps downstream and 6 Gbps upstream, enabling improved customer experiences as well as the use of AR/VR or bandwidth-demanding services, which will certainly emerge in the future,” says Lynn.

Similarly, telcos continue to upgrade their xDSL to FTTH networks. In addition, FWA services are a cost-effective alternative when the deployment of a high-speed fixed broadband network is not economically feasible.

5mmWave solutions gain ground

Ongoing 5G network deployment alongside the development of extended 5G mmWave solutions will allow service providers to offer high-speed 5G FWA services in both urban and low-density areas. 5G FWA services are expected to represent 4% of residential broadband services in 2026, growing from less than 1% in 2020.

As residential broadband penetration saturates mature markets, competition among broadband operators is likely to create challenges to maintain market shares. “In addition to network upgrades, broadband operators need to invest in cutting-edge software and hardware to optimize network performance and support better user experiences.

Providing advanced home networking devices, internet security, and home network self-diagnosis tools can help service providers reduce churn andimprove average revenue per user,” Lynn concludes.

These findings are from ABI Research’s Pay TV and Residential Broadband Subscriptions market data report.

- Advertisement -
DOWNLOAD OUR NEW REPORT

5G Advanced

Will 5G’s second wave deliver value?