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Telefónica awards Ericsson and Nokia equal deals for 5G SA in Spain

Annie Turner
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Telefónica awards Ericsson and Nokia equal deals for 5G SA in Spain

Both vendors have five-year contracts and will provide the tech for roll-outs in the 3.5GHz and 700MHz bands.

Telefónica said it chose the two European suppliers to ensure continuity with its 3G and 4G network deployments, and the two would deploy in areas where their equipment is installed already.

Continuity is king

In a press statement (in Spanish), the operator said that Spain had adopted “the same strategy followed in other countries in the group like Germany, the UK and Brazil [its other main markets], which have been maintained by the 4G providers”.

The statement went on, “So in Brazil, Huawei has 65% of Vivo’s 4G network, while Ericsson has the rest. In Germany, Nokia and Huawei share 50% of the O2 network and in the UK, as in Spain, the networks are 50% between Nokia and Ericsson”.

3.5GHz provides high performance and capacity for urban areas while 700MHz is suited to less densely populated areas and indoor coverage. Spain’s auction for 700MHz spectrum is due to kick off imminently.

The operator said it chose the two European suppliers to ensure continuity from its 3G and 4G rollouts and that they would provide the equipment in areas where their kit is already deployed across Spain.

Existing coverage

Telefónica offers 5G coverage to 80% of the population and has the largest mobile network in Spain with 22,000 base stations Madrid alone.

Joaquín Mata, General Director of Operations, Network and IT at Telefónica Spain, commented, “It is a long-term award, which is the most appropriate scenario for Telefónica since we maintain 4G providers and provide us with stability for the deployment and development of 5G”.

He also added that “both Ericsson and Nokia have responded outstandingly in radio deployments in Telefónica’s 2G, 3G and 4G networks in Spain. In 5G, all suppliers have also proven to be well prepared technically so that we feel very comfortable with having the best technological partners that will help us develop 5G at the highest level of quality”.

For this reason, Telefónica Spain’s 5G network already combines the 5G NSA and dynamic spectrum sharing.

Telefónica said it will take advantage of the modularity and flexibility of the new generation of products from both European suppliers – Ericsson Radio System and Nokia AirScale – to evolve the 5G access network, in urban and rural areas, always minimizing power consumption.

Telstra teams up with Aussie government in bid to keep China out of Pacific

Annie Turner
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Telstra teams up with Aussie government in bid to keep China out of Pacific

Another potentially dangerous front opens up for telcos in the escalating trade war with China.

Telstra and the Australian government are considering a bid for the Pacific operations of Digicel Group. The debt-laden mobile operator is controlled by Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien.

The possible move is seen as being motivated by a desire to keep China from acquiring the telecoms operator. The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported that the Telstra was preparing to bid A$2 billion (€1.247 billion).

In response, Telstra said it had been approached initially by the government for technical advice about Digicel Pacific which operates in Papua New Guinea, Fiji (pictured), Nauru, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu. It added that if it proceeded with a bid, then it would have “risk management support” from the Australian government.

Loggerheads with China

The Australian government has been at loggerheads with China over a number of issues for some time and it was one of the first to ban Huawei kit from telecoms networks due to concerns about state-backed espionage.

The Canberra-based government has a history of keeping China out of its sphere of influence where it can: in 2018, the government stumped up A$137m to help fund the construction of a 4,000km telecoms cable to the Solomon Islands and block Huawei’s involvement.

In Telstra’s interests?

Telstra’s strategy is to simplify its operations and while the financial implications of the possible Digicel Pacific deal are not of great consequence, becoming an instrument of government policy is a path fraught with dangers for a commercial operation.

Ericsson, the telecom equipment vendor, is already paying the price of the Swedish regulator’s decision to ban Huawei from its 5G infrastructure after direct threats from the Chinese government about retribution if the Swedish authorities did not reverse their decision.

Digicel Pacific generated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of US$235m (€199.21 million) in the 12 months to December.

Digicel Pacific is part of Digicel Group Holdings, founded in 2001 by O’Brien, which is operational in 32 markets in the Caribbean, Central America and Asia Pacific and is facing pressure to reduce its $5.4 billion gross debt, which is was forced to restructure last year.

 

Talent shortage threatens growth of Big Three cloud cos

Annie Turner
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Talent shortage threatens growth of Big Three cloud cos

UBS reports highlights something of a reversal from the usual worry that telcos can’t attract the talent they need to transform.

In its annual study, the Swiss bank UBS has reported that the cloud businesses of Amazon, Microsoft and Google are threatened by a lack of IT talent.

This shortage, reported on the German website Business Insider, is exacerbated by the increased demand for cloud usage, which surged during the pandemic and is expected to continue to grow rapidly.

Rising competition

Analysts at UBS Bank describe the overall risk as “moderate”, while others warn of strengthening competition for talent.

UBS analysts spoke to 15 of the so-called Big Three’s enterprise clients and cloud partners and reported that the second quarter of 2021 was the first time they have heard “consistent remarks” about concerns about a shortage of IT talent.

The analysts say this risk is “moderate” for the moment, but stress that the situation should nevertheless be monitored more closely. The major cloud providers rely on managed service providers and IT partners that facilitate about 40% of their customers’ switch to cloud, according to Sid Nag, Deputy MD at Gartner.

As use of the cloud grows, so does the demand for these skills which has reached record-breaking levels that it could soon exceed supply. This would have a great impact on the cloud business as a whole.

Questionable value

Nag said those companies that rely on specialists to get them set up on cloud only reap the benefits of cloud once the implementation is complete.

In his interview with Business Insider, he went to so far as to question the usage and value of cloud when significant delays occur.

Some cloud customers told USB analysts that some of their transition projects have been running late for months as their IT partners work through a backlog.

The corresponding competencies for cloud use are also in demand among customers, especially those that do not have their own IT specialists or who are not yet trained to use the cloud.

Alarm bells

Apparently the lack of cloud experts is ringing the alarm bells at the Big Three and smaller IT providers well as customers wanting or starting to move to cloud computing.

A corporate client who was interviewed by UBS on the subject said, “The battle for talent and experts among the big cloud infrastructure partners is crazy. Both clients and IT companies cannot hire quickly enough.”

Another UBS interviewee stated that some of the largest IT partners had even tried to take over smaller, specialized companies to acquire skilled workers quickly. “We are now being approached regularly by global IT companies,” he said.

A1 Telekom Austria offers 100Gbps links to Turkey with 200Gbps to follow

Annie Turner
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A1 Telekom Austria offers 100Gbps links to Turkey with 200Gbps to follow

A1 Telekom Austria Group has established the fastest route to Turkey and is offering a range between 2Mb to 100Gb, with up to 200Gb soon.

Due to the direct crossing through Austria via Salzburg and the Karawanken tunnel (pictured), A1 Group is providing the shortest route from Frankfurt to Turkey, with two more redundant routes as backup.

International Carrier Ethernet (which complies with MEF standards) as well as capacity services enable the interconnection of multiple company locations or data centres, meaning multinational corporations can interconnect their business premises via flexible scalable bandwidths.

Better performance

A1 Austria says this should especially improve performance for streaming services and gaming due to reduced latency and runtimes.

Franz Bader, Director Wholesale at A1 Telekom Austria Group, says, “Over the past few years, the wholesale business unit of A1 Telekom Austria Group Wholesale has developed into a Pan-European carrier. I’m therefore particularly delighted to be able to announce the enhancement of this very important routing.

“By enabling this route, we further lay the foundation of global connections for our customers. Numerous global carriers and OTTs already trust this new speedy service”.

The operator says it was the first carrier in Central and Eastern Europe to achieve MEF CE2.0 certification, with two of the three service classes E-Line, E-LAN und E-Access being subject to thorough scrutiny.

Colombia: KKR and Telefónica to build nationwide wholesale fibre

Annie Turner
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Colombia: KKR and Telefónica to build nationwide wholesale fibre

The infrastructure deal is worth about $500 million (€423.48mn) to Telefónica and subject to the usual regulatory approvals.

KKR, a global investment firm, announced an agreement with Telefónica Colombia to establish the country’s first independent, nationwide, wholesale infrastructure company.

New owner

As part of the agreement, KKR will acquire a majority stake in Telefónica’s fibre optic network, the largest in Colombia, and make the network open access through a newly established independent entity, which KKR will control as the majority shareholder.

Telefónica will be a minority shareholder in the new company, with a 40% stake.

The company will be run independently by a local team in Colombia but brings together the expertise of KKR and Telefónica to build and operate the infrastructure.

Recently, the companies joined to establish ON*NET Fibra as Chile’s first open access wholesale fibre optic network.

KKR is also an investor in FiberCop in Italy, HyperOptic in the UK, and Open Dutch Fibre in the Netherlands, which operate similar models.

Telefónica said it would look to partnering as a preferred option to develop its businesses in Latin America in its Five-point strategy, announced in late 2019.

In July, Grupo Telefónica announced a joint venture with CDPQ, FiBrasil Infraestructura e Fibra Ótica (FiBrasil) to build out fibre infrastructure in one of its main four markets, Brazil.

Building out

Upon closing of the transaction, Telefónica’s fibre optic network will become open access and available for all internet service providers in Colombia to use, including Telefónica’s retail operation.

With the investment from KKR, the new company plans to expand fibre optic coverage from approximately 1.2 million homes today to at least 4.3 million homes by the end of 2024.

This will be coverage at least 87 municipal areas in Colombia, with more than half consisting of underserved areas outside high-income urban areas.

Waldemar Szlezak, senior leader of KKR’s infrastructure investment team, said, “We are thrilled to, once again, be working with Telefónica to provide greater broadband access to those who need it, and to be doing so in Colombia, a country we believe is primed for significant growth ahead and which serves as an attractive destination for investors.

Alfonso Gómez Palacio, CEO of Telefónica Spanish-speaking Latin America, explained that “This is one more step by our company to lead FTTH services in Latin America.”

KKR established its global infrastructure team and strategy in 2008 and has since been one of the most active infrastructure investors around the world with a team of more than 50 dedicated investment professionals. The firm currently oversees approximately $28 billion in infrastructure assets and has made over 45 infrastructure investments across a range of sub-sectors and geographies.

Scotiabank and Bank Street are acting as financial co-advisors to KKR on the transaction.

 

Intel drumming up support for €17bn investment in fabs across Europe

Annie Turner
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Intel drumming up support for €17bn investment in fabs across Europe

The chip maker is reported to be lobbying to win financial and political support for its project.

Intel’s planned investment in a new European semiconductor facility could be spread across several EU countries if it wins the backing it is seeking.

The Financial Times [subscrition needed] reports that Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel, met French the French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian prime minister Mario Draghi to discuss the global chip shortage that has hit industries around the globe.

Apparently the visit was made after signals from the European Union that substantial sums could be made available to help the bloc meet a new target to double semiconductor production to 20% of the global market by 2030, including making the most advanced chips.

Intel has plans to invest $20 billion in two new factories in the US and a further $7 billion (€5.9 billion) to double the capacity of its Leixlip plant in Co Kildare, Ireland, including bringing its most advanced d 7 nanometre (nm) chip production to its Leixlip site.

Greg Slater, Intel VP of Global Regulatory Affairs told the Financial Times, “We could put manufacturing on one site and packaging on another.” Research and development could also be shared across EU countries, while spending with European suppliers would increase “dramatically”.

He said the company is “well placed to make this an ecosystem-wide project, not just a couple of isolated paths in one member state. We do believe that this is a project that will benefit Europe at large”.

 

Openreach and Nokia test 10x faster fibre broadband

Annie Turner
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0
Openreach and Nokia test 10x faster fibre broadband

The trial was conducted at Openreach’s Adastral Park lab in Ipswich, UK (pictured): a field trial will start in December.

BT’s wholesale access arm, Openreach, and Nokia have conducted the UK’s first tests of a new full fibre’technology, which could deliver ultra-reliable broadband services that are ten times faster than today’s UK standard deployments.

The two say the trials prove that current GPON and XGS-PON broadband technologies and future upgrades to 25G PON will work together seamlessly.
 
Nokia has pioneered the 25G PON technology that can deliver download speeds of 25Gbps over a single optical fibre, and run on the same underlying infrastructure that Openreach is already building across the UK.

No 250Gbps standard

That’s 2.5 times faster than the current faster tech, XGS-PON. Nevertheless, some in the industry have queried the wisdom of Nokia nailing its future to the 25G PON mast.

In 2020, ETSI, Huawei and some Chinese operators prevented the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) adopting 25G PON as a standard, proposing a 50G option.

Nothing daunted, Nokia set up its own 25G PON supporters club, the 25GS-PON Multi-source Agreement or MSA Group. 

As the analyst house 650 Group explains, “This MSA (multi-source agreement) strategy is used by various groups in the technology industry when there is sufficient buying power to move ahead of (or in this case, without) standards ratification; we see if used frequently by hyperscalers when building their bleeding-edge data center infrastructures”.

One argument against 25G PON is that the capacity won’t be needed for ten years or so, by which time the price of 50G PON will have fallen and become competitive. It would be easy to take issue with either of these arguments, but one fact remains, due to developing its own Quillion chips, it looks like Nokia’s customers can upgrade from 10Gbps to 250Gbps on the same hardware via a software upgrade, without a total rip and replace.

Openreach trial

BT says that the successful trials in Ipswich means it will undertake further field trials to test compatibility with existing technologies, and assuming they work out, the companies could develop a wider range of services and speeds for the UK’s retail service providers to offer consumers and businesses in the future.

And they could offer these new speeds and services without any disruption such as digging up the road.
 
Peter Bell, Director, Network Technology at Openreach said, “As the country’s largest digital infrastructure provider, it’s crucial that we continue to plan, innovate and evolve our network, to make sure we have the capacity and capabilities that the UK needs in the future.
 
“The Full Fibre network we’re building today is going to be the platform for the UK’s economic, social and environmental prosperity, and these trials prove that we can keep upgrading the speeds and services our customers experience over that network for decades to come.”

Symmetrical tech

Emir Halilovic, Principal Analyst at Global Data, said: “25G PON is market-ready and…becoming the technology of choice with operators that need faster than 10 Gbps broadband speeds along with the flexibility to grow capacity in the future.

“Being a symmetrical technology, 25G PON provides operators with technology capable of supporting SME or enterprise connectivity, as well as 5G transport.”
 
Sandy Motley, President Nokia Fixed Networks said, “The key to unlock the virtually unlimited capacity that fibre offers is to develop new generations of fibre technology – and faster chips. Nokia’s Quillion chip allows us to have a solution that supports three generations of PON technology from a single platform that is already in the Openreach network. Having GPON, XGS-PON and 25GS-PON all on the same fibre means Openreach can efficiently evolve the network capabilities, address new opportunities and connect more consumers, businesses and 5G cell sites.”
 
Openreach is building ultrafast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre broadband to 43,000 premises every week, playing catch-up for getting into the full fibre market relatively late. Its aim is to reach 25 million premises all over the UK by end of December 2026.

BT claims fastest 5G roll-out, the long road to converged infrastruture winds on

Annie Turner
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BT claims fastest 5G roll-out, the long road to converged infrastruture winds on

Yesterday BT laid out its strategy for network evolution over the next decade. It was presented by CTO Howard Watson and Marc Allera, CEO of BT’s Consumer division.

The roadmap (summarised in the graphic below) shows it intends to have 5G coverage just about everywhere in 2028. This might seem like a very long time, but it puts BT ahead of its rivals, for the time being at least.

At the moment, its 5G networks covers about 40% of the UK population in densely populated areas. The interim target is to reach more than 50% by the end of 2023.

This is slow compared with the rate of roll-out of 5G, but Covid slowed things down and of course BT like the other UK operators is also obliged to replace all the Huawei kit in its infrastructure due to the government’s security concerns.

BT needs to keep its lead in 5G: it never misses an opportunity to claim its network is the biggest and best, and it needs to be able justify that claim now and in the future.

This will become more of a challenge, with Vodafone rising like a phoenix from being the least popular operator five or so years ago, and the merged Virgin Media O2’s stated intention of taking BT’s crown.

Much of the UK’s terrain is hard to cover, such as the mountains in Wales and the Scottish Highlands, not to mention areas such as Pennines and Peak District (pictured) in England. Here BT intends to be creative, pointing to its investment in the OneWeb satellite constellation (along with the British government and others), but current plans are only to provide 5G backhaul.

It is also considering the use of portable base stations and even high-altitude platforms (HAPs).

The core of the matter

Less headline-grabbing but probably more important is BT’s claim move to a converged core infrastructure. It’s been a long haul – the journey to converged infrastructure began back in 2016 when BT acquired mobile operator EE.
 
The move to 5G Standalone which has begun in earnest across the industry this year, will bring new capabilities such as network slicing and low latency.
 
The operator is also developing its BT Network Cloud and deploying a single IP/optical infrastructure to replace the current patchwork of optical and packet networks that have arisen over several generations of technology.
 
Nokia and Ciena are key partners in this endeavour, which is expected to take some years yet:

Managing subscribers

Ericsson’s technology is playing a key role in BT’s move to have a single platform to manage subscribers’ data, control policies, manage APIs and monitor services – this is for all its customers, fixed and mobile.
 
This is in addition to the contract it won last year to provide a cloud-native, dual-mode core that manages 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G and will run on BT’s Network Cloud platform that already has more than 100 ‘cloudlets’ deployed.
 
Note that BT/EE intends to turn off the 3G networks by 2023 and 2G some time later in the decade to reduce infrastructure complexity and reuse the spectrum.
 
All this convergence and the business and operational benefits it will bring to BT is now being promised for the mid-2020s.
 
Asked about its intentions regarding Open RAN (enthusiastically embraced its neighbouring operator groups), CTO Watson said BT has other priorities.

 

Telia and Ericsson test 5G tech that lowers latency, prolongs battery

Annie Turner
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Telia and Ericsson test 5G tech that lowers latency, prolongs battery

Tech makes efficient use of mobile network resources, powered by Snapdragon Modem-RF System, and should boost IoT, cloud gaming.

Long-term partners Ericsson and Telia joined forces with Qualcomm Technologies to test yet another industry-first in Telia’s commercial 5G network.

This new 5G Standalone feature – the inactive state of Radio Resource Control (RRC Inactive) – reduces the amount of signaling required during state transitions (on-off), reducing latency and battery consumption.

These attributes are crucial requirements for many IoT and 5G use cases, including critical control of remote devices, enhanced mobile broadband, and smart transport.

Avoids being idle

RRC Inactive was implemented using Ericsson’s software and 5G Standalone network nodes, and a test device powered by the Snapdragon X60 Modem-RF System. The companies were able to demonstrate the transition between a connected state and inactive state without the device falling back to idle.

The access latency was shortened by up to three times, which the partners claims will have a big big impact on user experience in applications like cloud gaming where multi-player interactions require 20-30ms end-to-end latency.

For an immersive VR gaming experience, the latency and reliability requirements are even more demanding.

As shorter latency reduces the inactivity timer, the partners were also able to save the modem’s battery power by up to 30% compared to not activating the feature.

Although the screen and its associated electronics are the most power-consuming components in a mobile device, implementing the feature will result in a longer battery life for a 5G smart phone user, too.

Critical step

Jenny Lindqvist, Head of Ericsson Northern and Central Europe, comments, “We’re proud to jointly with Telia and Qualcomm Technologies demonstrate a world-first innovative solution that will provide a significant boost in 5G benefits for a better mobile experience.

“This is already a huge milestone in taking 5G technology to the next level, and Radio Resource Control will continue to play a critical role for 5G networks for years to come.”

The development of the inactive state has largely been driven by the growing field of Machine-type Communication (MTC). This is part of 3GPP standardization where Ericsson says it has had a leading role in defining the functionalities.

In most MTC scenarios, the amount of data that wireless devices typically exchange with the network is small and usually not urgent enough to justify the high battery consumption required to handle all the signaling involved in the legacy idle-to-connected transition.

For current and future 5G use cases with a large and growing number of devices, improved connection, state, and mobility handling have been identified as key elements of efficient support.

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