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Sparkle to expand Nibble in Northern Europe by July

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Nibble is Sparkle’s new European network based on software-defined tech.

Sparkle is the international arm of Italy’s TIM. Nibble, will be extended to London, Amsterdam and Brussels, and describes itself as the first pan-Mediterranean optical network.

The expansion was announced at the Sicily Hub in Palermo between Sparkle’s CEO Elisabetta Romano (pictured) and Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs Manlio Di Stefano.

Nibble has a 6,500 km photonic backbone and connects Sparkle’s two major submarine landing stations in Sicily – Palermo and Catania – with Milan, Marseille, Frankfurt and Paris to the west and with Athens,Istanbul and Tel Aviv to the east.

Low latency and resilience

The connectivity is provided by different fibre backbones to ensure maximum reliability and uses DWDM technologies to achieve “high performance, low latency and the highest speeds available on the market, with scalable and guaranteed services to meet the growing demand of companies and operators,” according to Sparkle.

By July 2021, Nibble will extend a further 6,300 km to northern Europe, interconnecting London, Amsterdam and Brussels, reaching a total length of 12,800 km with a redundant network architecture for seamless connectivity from the Mediterranean basin to Europe.

“Sparkle demonstrates once again its pioneering role in the global telecom Industry, reaffirming Italy’s leadership in Europe and in the Mediterranean” declares Romano. “Today, we can offer our customers instant activation of seamless, secure and ultra-reliable capacity services.”

Sicily Hub

The Sicily Hub is the technological heart and intelligence of the Sparkle network and the main exchange point for Internet traffic in the Mediterranean, due to to its proximity to North Africa and the Middle East and to the connection with all international cables landing in Sicily.

By 2022, Sicily Hub will be also the landing point of BlueMed, the new multi-fibre submarine cable that will cross the Tyrrhenian Sea connecting Sicily with Genoa and Milan with up to 50% latency reduction compared to terrestrial cables.

Vodafone announces key partners for its commercial European Open RAN

Samsung Electronics’ big European break: the operator group named the Korean firm alongside Dell, NEC, Wind River, Capgemini Engineering and Keysight Technologies.

Vodafone said it would work with these strategic partners to jointly deliver the first commercial deployment of Open Radio Access Network (RAN) in Europe.  “The company believes the move will spark other large-scale Open RAN launches and spearhead the next wave of digital transformation across Europe,” it said in a statement. 

Vodafone has signed an MoU with Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and TIM to promote Open RAN and the five have published a technical priorities white paper.
 
Vodafone’s initial focus will be on the 2,500 sites in the UK that it committed to Open RAN in October 2020.

The operator claims the UK roll out will be “one of the largest deployments in the world,” and starts this year. The vendors will work with Vodafone to extend 4G and 5G coverage to more rural places across South West England and most of Wales, moving into urban areas in a later phase. Vodafone is also working to launch Open RAN in other countries in Europe and Africa.

Strategic choices
 
Samsung will be a reference RAN software provider, tasked with delivering an open and disaggregated network in the UK.

Samsung and NEC will supply Massive MIMO with Samsung and Evenstar radio units, which establish a signal between users’ smartphones or devices and the mobile mast.

Evenstar radios are part of a joint effort between Facebook and Vodafone to create white-box radio units within the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and are a key component of Open RAN.

Evenstar will provide vendors with detailed specifications needed to develop compatible radio units much more cheaply and are designed to encourage new players to the market to boost the ecosystem and stimulate innovation.

In its COTS infancy

The initial deployments will be implemented using commercial off the shelf (COTS) Dell EMC PowerEdge servers to support the combined distributed unit/centralized unit (DU/CU) function running Containers as a Service (CaaS) software from Wind River Studio.

This will provide a distributed cloud-native platform hosting the Open RAN applications and virtualised RAN from Samsung, enabling Vodafone to mix, match and install new software releases and upgrades more easily. 
 
Keysight Technologies will deliver its Open RAN test solution portfolio to support conformance, interoperability and E2E system testing. Capgemini Engineering will be the key partner to ensure interworking of the Open RAN multi-vendor ecosystem.

The O-RAN 7:2 split

The O-RAN Alliance specification for the 7-2x split, which defines the interface between the radio antenna and the baseband unit, will be used in the deployments, after test and simulations indicated it is the best option.

The resulting Open RAN network is expected to improve energy efficiency compared to traditional RAN products.

Andrea Dona, Chief Network Officer, Vodafone UK, said, “This is another major step forward in making OpenRAN a reality, and demonstrates our commitment to this ecosystem.

“With these new partners, 2,500 sites marked for deployment, and the Test and Integration Lab on our Newbury Technology campus, we’re making massive progress in establishing Open RAN as a key part of the telecommunications industry.

“This technology remains a critical component of our network strategy moving forward, and now we have these partners on board we can accelerate the development of OpenRAN and the supporting ecosystem.”

Programmable network

Johan Wibergh, Vodafone Chief Technology Officer, said, “Open RAN provides huge advantages for customers. Our network will become highly programmable and automated meaning we can release new features simultaneously across multiple sites, add or direct capacity more quickly, resolve outages instantly and provide businesses with on-demand connectivity.
 
“Open RAN is also reinvigorating our industry. It will boost the digital economy by stimulating greater tech innovation from a wider pool of vendors, bringing much needed diversity to the supply chain.”

Kevin Dallas, President and CEO of Wind River, said in a blog, “A key reason Vodafone selected Wind River was based on the fact that we are the only field experienced disaggregated cloud infrastructure supplier based on our work where we are deploying our Wind River Studio technology at scale in the US market with Verizon, and where we played an instrumental role in the world’s first successful end-to-end virtualized 5G data session.

“Together with an ecosystem of partner companies, we will validate and define the commercial blueprint for Vodafone’s future network deployment.”

Starting with a distributed cloud, Wind River Studio provides a production-grade Kubernetes cloud platform that runs on a very small footprint for managing edge cloud infrastructure: Studio compiles open-source technology to deploy and manage distributed networks.

Once a distributed cloud such as cloud RAN is deployed, Studio manages the distributed cloud system by consuming and processing data through machine-learning algorithms, to produce meaningful insights for decision-making.

As Huawei sets in the West, Samsung rises with Open RAN

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Richard Webb Director, Network Infrastructure, CSS Insight, comments on Vodafone chosing Samsung for its commercial Open Ran.

This partnership represents a major market breakthrough for Samsung and a strong validation of its 5G RAN portfolio.

CCS Insight has been tracking Samsung’s progress in the 5G network equipment market for some time and the Vodafone deal is the culmination of good momentum Samsung has been building.

Rising credibility

The contract win shows that Samsung is becoming a credible 5G RAN equipment provider. Although Ericsson and Nokia have established market leadership in Europe, there is room for alternatives and now that Huawei position has been undermined by trade restrictions, it leaves the door open to Samsung to stake a claim for a growing share of the market.

It still has a long way to go to catch Ericsson and Nokia though, but Samsung has a well-rounded 5G RAN portfolio across mobile broadband, fixed wireless access and private 5G networks so it should be seen as a genuine contender.

OpenRAN is helpful for Samsung, no doubt, as it potentially is to any competitor seeking to disrupt the dominance of the so-called Big Three [Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia] in the 5G RAN market: vendor diversity is one of the principal tenets of the open RAN concept, robustly supported by Vodafone and other major European operators.

That said, we shouldn’t be too surprised to see a notable win for Samsung in the European market – it is a well-established network solutions provider that is capable of delivering at scale.

It already counts tier-1 operators such as NTT DoCoMo, KDDi and Verizon as customers as well as SK Telecom in its home market in South Korea.

This contract win adds to its credibility and could be a signal for other European operators to consider Samsung as an option.

European ehealthcare accelerator launches in Paris

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Sanofi, Capgemini, Generali and Orange have created a joint venture to launch Future4care.

The four partners formed an ehealth ecosystem in January and describe Future4care as “Europe’s only health-focused startup accelerator program.

“The objective is to stimulate the development of e-health solutions and their go-to-market, for the benefit of both patients and health professionals.”

Healthcare providers, researchers and academics will be “fully integrated into this initiative”, Orange said in a statement, which also involves hospitals, healthcare institutions, higher education institutions, universities, and patient associations.

Selection process

The startup selection process is based on two routes: applicants can respond to a specific call for projects or submit a spontaneous application.

The first call for projects will be launched in September 2021 around two themes: virtual care using digital tools and personalised care (from diagnosis to treatment).

Future4care is both a startup accelerator and an institute providing content on digital health and delivering reference certifications.

Insitute too

The institute is a knowledge centre offering conference programs, conducting constant monitoring of new technologies and their use and connecting members of its community with external experts.

From December 2021, Future4care’s startups and partners will have access to the Future4care BioPark – a dedicated 6,000 square metre space in central Paris – which aims to become the European hub to progress digital health.

Startups choosing to join Future4care can received tailored support through a series of thematic Labs: Creative Lab; Medical/Regulatory Lab; Business & Ethics Lab; Data & AI Lab; and Living Lab.

Through this journey and the collaboration with partners, each startup will have the capacity to design, test, validate and launch solutions that are both concrete and innovative.

Finally, the entire Future4care offer will also be available online, via a digital exchange platform, (www.future4care.com) allowing it to attract European entrepreneurs.

Access to knowledge

As access to data is essential for digital health, the founding members will work together to provide startups with data relevant for their development, in compliance with the applicable ethical and legal framework.

Ultimately, the Future4care accelerator aims to bring together a wide ecosystem of diverse contributors including:
• the four founding members
• 15 corporate partners
• 100 French and European startups
• health, technology and insurance players
• public and private hospitals
• patient associations
• regulators
• schools and higher education institutions.

Agnès De Leersnyder, CEO Future4care, said, “The support we provide to startups is designed to give talented growth companies the means to successfully plan their go to market and to offer concrete solutions that improve both the patient’s life and the healthcare system.

“While we will provide all of our services on our digital platform, we will also open a place of work and collaboration  in the heart of the BioPark in the centre of Paris…All together, they will create ‘made in Future4care’ solutions for patients and healthcare professionals”.

Agnès Pannier-Runacher, French Minister Delegate for Industry, declared, “I welcome the creation of Future4care, which is in line with the government’s priorities to make France a leader in digital health. Indeed, digital innovation is at the heart of our priorities to improve patient care and find more effective therapeutic solutions”.

Excellent optics on 10Gbps PON worldwide

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Dell’Oro Group reckons the global revenue for the broadband access equipment increased 18% in Q1 compared to Q1 2020.

The market was worth $3.3 billion (€2.72 billion) in 1Q 2021. Much of the growth came from spending on passive optical network (PON) optical line terminal (OLT) ports, particularly 10Gbps PON technologies, according to Dell’Oro Group’s Broadband Access and Home Networking Quarterly Report.

However, Q1 2021 was down 6% compared with Q4 2020, which was the higest ever. Even so, unit shipments remained above 30 million globally for the second straight quarter.

Supply chain constraints

“The shift to 10 Gbps PON technologies is happening quickly and on a global basis,” noted Jeff Heynen, Vice President, Broadband Access and Home Networking at Dell’Oro Group.

“The only thing preventing further expansions are supply chain constraints and increased costs,” he added.

The total cable access concentrator revenue increased 15% year on year to $243 million. Though sales of DOCSIS licences were down, new hardware purchases helped push revenue higher.

The boom is down to a combination of the scramble to build out fibre infrastructure for broadband, accelerated by the pandemic, and 5G’s heavy reliance on fibre backhaul etc.

Altice reportedly looking to offload hollowed-out Portuguese assets for €6bn

Reuters reports Altice Europe is sounding out prospective bidders, but the price tag looks steep.

Having just become BT’s biggest shareholder, Altice Europe is sounding out prospective bidders including Spain’s MasMovil for its business in Portugal, according to Reuters.

Altice is seeking to “exit the country after stripping off most of the unit’s infrastructure operations,” three sources told the news agency. Altice is controlled by the French-Israeli billionaire wheeler-dealer Patrick Drahi.

Sold the silver already?

Altice pioneered 5G in Portugal and owns MEO, the largest landline operator in the country, after it bought incumbent Telecom Portugal in 2015.

Still, the €6 billion price tag Altice is allegedly touting for its Portuguese assets is seven to eight times its annual core earnings, which are all but flat, and Altice has already disposed of big chunks of its Portuguese infrastructure assets.

It sold 75% of Towers of Portugal (TOP) in 2018 to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Horizon Equity Partners and a 49.99% stake in its Portuguese fibre network to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners for €2.3 billion in 2019.

Prep allegedly underway

Apparently, Altice is working with Lazard to prepare the sale of Portugal’s largest operator at auction which could being as soon as July, the sources are reported saying.

They also stressed there is no guarantee of any deal and a spokesperson for Altice in Portugal said the company was not planning a sale in Portugal “now or in the near future”.

Nevertheless, the Reuters’ sources claim that Telefonica, Orange and Spain’s MasMovil have been alerted to the upcoming sale along with private equity funds with an interest in telecoms.

MasMovil owns cable TV operator Nowo in Portugal and competing for 5G spectrum in the country where it would benefit from a controversial favourable regulatory conditions for new market entrants.

MasMovil is controlled by Cinven, KKR and Providence, and is known to be keen to expand its presence across Iberia, but emabarked on a takeover bid of €1.2 billion for the Spanish regional operator Euskaltel in March.

TIM and Unimpresa to jointly offer digital services to SMEs

Separately, TIM, the financial services arm of Accenture and Crédit Agricole Italia have signed a ten-year strategic partnership.

TIM and Unimpresa joined the swelling ranks of operators launching offers for SMEs in the wake of the pandemic. They have signed an agreement that aims to accelerate the digital transformation of Italian SMEs and boost their competitiveness.

They will offer technological solutions, as well as training to help develop the digital skills of employees.

SME solutions

The agreement’s main focus is developing IT solutions that include remote communication services, cloud platforms and ‘digital assessment’ services, to certify the level of digitalisation of companies.

To advance digital skills in companies, training sessions will be held on innovation as part of TIM’s Operazione Risorgimento Digitale alliance between institutions and businesses to encourage the spread of digital culture.

SMEs are the backbone of the Italian economy, and TIM is starting its digitalisation efforts with a Smart District project, which aims to encourage entrepreneurship in industrial districts.

TIM offers companies services, drawing on the specialist skills of Noovle for Cloud and edge computing solutions, Olivetti for the Internet of Things, Telsy for Cybersecurity and Sparkle for international services.

Unique cross-industry collaboration?

TIM and Accenture Financial Advanced Solutions & Technology are to manage the integrated technology and telecoms infrastructure for the Crédit Agricole Group in Italy, having signed a ten-year strategic agreement. TIM claims the cross-industry collaboration between telecoms and financial services to pursue the digital transformation and management of the company’s technological centres is unique.

TIM and Accenture are to create an integrated management platform and the understanding involves the migration of the Crédit Agricole Italia systems to TIM’s Noovle’s data centres.

The agreement is intended to bring Crédit Agricole Italia significant savings, as well as speed up its capacity to develop its own range of digital services and enable it to respond more quickly and flexibly to new market scenarios.

Scope of the agreement

Under the scope of the agreement, TIM will also supply the national and international voice and data connections on fixed and mobile networks, with a view to evolving towards 5G technology. It will manage the work stations of the management offices and branches and the customer contact distributed devices, ATM and Totem.

Federico Rigoni, TIM’s Chief Revenue Officer, commented, “We are very satisfied with the stipulation of this agreement with Crédit Agricole Italia, because it confirms TIM’s role as reference partner for the country’s digital evolution, beyond connectivity.

“Our infrastructures and the vertical competences of the Group in all technological areas constitute the basis on which we intend to strengthen the customer loyalty we already enjoy, particularly in a segment undergoing such major transformation, as is that of banks”.

TDC inches closer to separating network and services

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The Danish operator was acquired by Macquarie and three local pension funds in 2018.

TDC announced it had separated its businesses into two legally and operationally individual subsidiaries, TDC NET and Nuuday, in June 2019. It will finalise the separation of TDC Group as of January 1, 2022 with the aim of “establishing two market leaders within their individual sectors”.

TDC NET is Denmark’s largest mobile network and broadband provider focused on building Denmark’s digital infrastructure. Nuuday is Denmark’s largest connectivity, communication, and entertainment service provider, consisting of nine brands, delivering digital solutions to various customer segments.

A conclusion

The process will be concluded on December 31, 2021, at which time employees in the shared group functions in TDC Group will have been transferred to either TDC NET or Nuuday, and the future composition of the Board of Directors for both TDC NET and Nuuday will be in place.

The separation of TDC Group will be completed and the management of TDC Group, consisting of CEO Henrik Clausen, CFO Lasse Pilgaard and Senior Executive Vice President Jens Aaløse will be stepping down.

The objective is to make TDC a holding company with Nuuday and TDC NET operating as stand-alone companies. Lasse Pilgaard and Jens Aaløse will step down from their respective positions on the Board of Directors of Nuuday and TDC NET, while Henrik Clausen will continue as Chairman of TDC NET. He has been in the role since February 2020.

From setting up separate tower holding companies (like Vodafone and Orange), selling off passive infrastructure (like Telefonica), to splitting their businesses in various ways (see today’s story about the SK Telecom split), and seeking third-party investors to fund fibre build outs (in the UK and the Netherlands, for example) telcos everywhere are striving to create more value from their assets and share their prices.

It seems to be working – investors are piling into undervalued telcos.

SK Telecom’s board approves splitting up the group

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The board of directors agreed to separate the company into SK Telecom and SKT Investment.

SK Telecom is widely seen as one of the most forward-thinking network operators in the world. Now its board has approved this move as a “horizontal spin-off” – the creation of two separate companies – which was first mooted last October.

Two is more than one

The idea is that the two separate companies are more valuable than one: “SK Telecom and the new entity both have the vision to increase enterprise value and shareholder value by accelerating growth in their respective fields of business”.

The spin-off will be effective on 1 November, 2021 after an extraordinary meeting of shareholders to be held on October 12, 2021. To make shares more accessible to shareholders and increase enterprise value, SK Telecom will promote a stock split simultaneously with the spin-off.

The stock split is expected to boost minority shareholders’ investment by increasing the number of outstanding stocks.

“The horizontal spin-off will mark the beginning of a new era for SK Telecom,” said Park Jung-ho, CEO of SK Telecom. “We will make best efforts to contribute to the advancement of the ICT ecosystem by achieving new and sustainable growth.”

SK Telecom is also planning to spin off its ONE Store this year, and appears to have accelerated its plans ahead of a change in the Korean law: the new so-called fair trade law, which comes into effect next year, stipulates that newly established holding companies must have a 30% or more stake in publicly listed subsidiaries, up from 20% now.

It is interesting this announcement came at more or less the same time as TDC announced the separation of its business has been finalised but here the split is putting the network assets and the customer-facing services business into two distinct entities. CETIN in the Czech Republic took the same route in 2016.

The rump

The rump, SK Telecom, will be “an AI and digital infrastructure company that sustains stable and solid growth” The intention is to grow in fixed and wireless access, and home media based on its leadership in the 5G market.

It will advance its services like Metaverse and subscription-based offerings by applying AI technologies. It will also build on AI and its digital infrastructure to increase investment in data centres and its mobile edge computing (MEC) cloud business for new revenue.

Investment arm

SKT Investment is the temporarily-named investment company spun out to invest in semiconductors and ICT. The permanent name will be announced in due course.

It is to pursue mergers and acquisitions in the global semiconductor market. It plans to build a semiconductor ecosystem with SK Hynix by investing in innovative technologies including future semiconductor technologies.

It will also strive to strengthen its competitiveness by attracting domestic and overseas investment in diverse ICT areas including security (ADT Caps), commerce (11st) and mobility (T Map Mobility) and promote initial public offerings (IPOs) of its subsidiaries to secure future growth engines.

Many parts

The new investment unti will have the following 16 companies under its umbrella: SK Hynix, ADT Caps, 11St, T Map Mobility, One Store, Contents Wavve, Dreamus Company, SK Planet, FSK L&S, Incross, NanoEnTek, Sparkplus, SK Telecom CS T11 (an esports joint venture between SK Telecom and Comcast Spectaco), SK Telecom TMT Investment (handles investment activities in the US), ID Quantique (a quantum-safe cryptography company based in Switzerland) and Techmaker (the techn joint venture between SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom).
 

And the winners of the CTO of the Year Awards 2021 are…

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CONGRATULATIONS to Telefonica’s Enrique Blanco who won the Gamechanger Award 2021 and to Philippe Ensarguet of Orange Business Services, our Trailblazer of the Year 2021.

We are delighted to announce the winners in our eighth CTO of the Year Awards, who were chosen by an independent panel of judges*.

The judging panel chose Telefonica’s Group CTIO, Enrique Blanco (pictured below), as Gamechanger of the Year 2021 because it felt he best fulfilled the criteria: a CTO or CTIO who excels at leveraging assets through increasingly lean, efficient and effective network operations, and who make use of technologies such as AI, open platforms, open APIs. We were looking for a CTO who run ‘business as usual’ in anything but a usual way.

As Patrick Ostiguy, Founder and Executive Chair at the Awards’ sponsor Accedian noted, Enrique is known for his original thinking and long-term vision, and his ongoing execution of that vision to bring about transformation.

Philippe Ensarguet of Orange Business Services is our Trailblazer of the Year 2021 (pictured below). He has spent his career in software and on taking up the newly created post of CTO in 2019, was tasked with defining and orchestrating both the technology vision and strategy, and bringing the resulting advantages to Orange Business Services’ multinational customers.

So, for example, in less than two years Philippe has overseen the migration of more than 40% of its IT portfolio toward a Kubernetes-based environment, and the corporate software factory he set up has saved some 2,500 developer days a year in maintenance.

Special mentions

The judges were also keen that Ingeborg Øfsthus, CTO of Telenor Norway, should receive special mention in the Gamechanger category. Under her leadership, Telenor is now 2.5 years into an ambitious four-year plan to decommission its copper network, a huge task that was originally expected to take eight years.

In a unique move, instead of striving to maintain the life of the copper infrastructure as long as possible, Telenor focused on the customer preferences and migrating many customers new types of connectivity, including 5G and fibre solutions. This move should also cut Telenor Norway’s energy consumption by about 25% which equates to 100GWh annually.

The judges wanted special mention to be made of Yusuf Kıraç of Turk Telekom for overseeing the creative use of AI in operations and the very first deployment of the Open Network Foundation’s SEBA, and increasingly data-driven operations. How successful its many efforts have been is reflected, for instance, in a 15% increase in broadband subscribers during 2020.

The shortlist

The shortlisted CTOs and CTIOs who were invited to attend a virtual roundtable debate before the Awards were announced, were:

Hatem Bamatraf, CTIO, Etisalat Group
Enrique Blanco, Telefónica Global CTIO
Philippe Ensarguet, CTO, Orange Business Services
Yusuf Kıraç, Technology Assistant General Manager, Turk Telekom
Kim Larsen, CTIO, T-Mobile Netherlands
Kalle Lehtinen, CTO, Elisa Finland
Charles Molapisi Group CTIO
Ingeborg Øfsthus, CTO, Telenor Norway

We would like to thank our sponsor Accedian and congratulate all who entered the Awards this year for pushing the bar so very high.

Judging panel

*The judges were: Caroline Gabriel, Founder and Director, Rethink Research, Kester Mann, Director, CCS Insight, Bengt Nordstrom, Founder and CEO, Northstream (an Accenture company) Patrick Ostiguy, Founder and Executive Chair, Accedian, Annie Turner, Editor, Mobile Europe & European Communications.

Each judge had one vote of equal weight in both of the two Awards categories.

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