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Pandemic propels “record” number of MVNOs into UK market

Annie Turner
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Pandemic propels “record” number of MVNOs into UK market

BT Wholesale’s partner Transatel is supporting seven entrants to the market from a variety of industry backgrounds.

The companies were largely inspired to become mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) by the changes wought by the pandemic according to Transatel.
 
For example, PopIT wants to become Yorkshire’s local mobile operator of choice while UK TELL caters for the Bangladeshi community in the UK. Both are supported by Transatel’s international carrier service with the flexibility to set their own international tariffs to those their own carrier routes. 

Remote workforces

B2B companies are also leveraging new market opportunities such as for companies to keep in touch with remote workforces. Transatel provides converged fixed-mobile services which are being used by CINOS and 9eons to offer SIM-based, unified communications service to their companies.
 
Jacques Bonifay, CEO, Transatel, says, “Transatel has been enabling MVNOs in the UK for the past 12 years, and this experience allows us to know what it takes to succeed in the MVNO market.”
 
Nick Wootten, MVNO Director, BT Wholesale adds, “As we’ve seen this past year through the pandemic, network resilience has been absolutely critical to the success of businesses not only navigating through the uncertainty but allowing them to thrive well after.”

MVNO trends

According to World Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) Market Report 2021-2029, published this month by ResearchAndMarkets.com, so-called migrant MVNOs have garnered lot of interest as they offer customised services to consumers of the same ethnicity.

As of 2020, Europe was the largest MVNO market followed by North America and Asia Pacific. This is because MVNOs are supported by favourable regulation: regulators see MVNOs as a good way to reduce prices and increase competition.

Europe is home to around two-third of domestic MVNOs that operate within a single market and this trend is expected to continue through to 2029.

However, Asia Pacific is expected to become the most attractive regional market with the fastest growth due to the still rising number of mobile subscribers and expanding penetration of mobile communications.

Proximus to launch Doktr app for remote consultations

Annie Turner
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Proximus to launch Doktr app for remote consultations

Belgium’s biggest operator seeks to streamline access to health services and claims a first for the country.

Proximus is to launch Doktr, an video-based, teleconsultation service that allows patients access to basic primary care from a qualified doctor quickly and securely.

The operator says a team of doctors accredited by the national institute that validates the qualifications of medical staff – the RIZIV/INAMI – safe login via itsme and a data privacy policy “ensure a top-quality experience for the patient”.

The application can also be used by doctors to increase their efficiency in dealing with existing patients.

First step

Proximus claims that the launch of Doktr “marks a first concrete step in Proximus’ ambition to bring relevant, innovative digital solutions to the field of eHealth and contribute to a future-proof healthcare environment for Belgium”.

The pandemic is expected to result in a slew of eHealth solutions: the healthcare sector is worth about $8.5 trillion annually – about five times more than telecoms – according to Deloitte.

The new service is part of Proximus’ strategy to move beyond connectivity services and work with partners to offer digital solutions “for people to live better and work smarter”.

It follows initiatives in education, financial services and smart advertising, and aims to relieve pressure on care givers and empower patients.

Local partners

Proximus saw the opportunity to engage with ecosystems of local players to rethink complex local problems and initiated discussions with a variety of stakeholders across the healthcare landscape – including RIZIV/INAMI, the Order of Doctors, health insurance funds and doctors’ associations.

It presented its vision and designed the service based on their feedback.

Proximus is working with Doktor.se, a Swedish eHealth platform provider with extensive experience in running similar services in the Nordics for several years.

The app will evolve and have features added to unlock more possibilities and increase convenience for patients and doctors. Proximus also intends to explore the potential of other initiatives in the eHealth domain.

Rakuten Mobile and NEC to promote Open RAN solutions globally

Annie Turner
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Rakuten Mobile and NEC to promote Open RAN solutions globally

The two have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to that effect.

Rakuten Mobile, Inc. and NEC Corporation’s MoU builds on their existing partnership – NEC provides 5G radio units (5G RU) for the operator’s virtualized, cloud-native mobile network. They are also jointly developing Rakuten Mobile’s containerized Standalone 5G core network (5GC).

MoU terms

Under the terms of the MoU, Rakuten Mobile and NEC will provide 5G and 4G Radios and engineering services for Open RAN systems in global markets. Their offers are aligned with O-RAN specifications and the idea is to accelerate the global expansion of the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP).

RCP is Rakuten Mobile’s virtualized and containerized cloud-native mobile network platform intended to enable telecom companies and enterprises around the world to deploy virtualized networks at high speed and low cost.

Hastening adoption

Tareq Amin, Representative Director, Executive Vice President and CTO of Rakuten Mobile (pictured), said, “Rakuten Mobile has successfully designed, launched and now operates a fully virtualized mobile network. This unique network architecture built on Open RAN standards continues to attract significant interest from operators, enterprises and governments around the world.

“With NEC’s excellent level of technical expertise in radio and track record of providing our high quality 5G sub-6 RU, this collaboration will accelerate the global expansion of Rakuten Communications Platform and promote adoption of Open RAN in global markets.”

NEC Executive Vice President Atsuo Kawamura. “NEC is already providing Rakuten Mobile with BSS/OSS, 5G RU and 5G core…We hope to continue contributing to the expansion of the Rakuten Communications Platform as it rolls out naround the globe.”

The new life of cities – and those who live and work in them

Annie Turner
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0
The new life of cities – and those who live and work in them

Phil Skipper, Head of Strategy and Business Development at Vodafone Business IoT, looks forward to greener, more easily mobile urban living.

In 2018, the United Nations predicted 68% of the world’s population would live in urban areas by the year 2050.

As the density of cities increases, so does congestion, the demand for services and the need for efficient mobility. These issues need to be addressed in an increasingly stringent environmental and sustainable way.

The past year has shown how flexibility and resilience of city systems have become essential, and how unexpected new ways of living and working may change a city landscape.

For example, the commercial property market is under huge pressure as businesses re-evaluate working patterns, and organisations and workers seek a more flexible approach. Cities and property owners are already reassessing how best to market and operate their estates, looking at ways to reinvigorate the “commute economy”, so vital to many commercial districts. 

Underneath these changes is an desire to build back cities in a greener and more sustainable way. This creates opportunities to improve the quality of city life and accelerate a green economy.

A year of reinvention

Much happened in the past year to stimulate this green transition; governments incentivised more sustainable initiatives in their recovery funds, automakers have fast-forwarded electrification plans and transport authorities are starting to structure services around public and shared mobility. in different time scales and funding mechanisms. Living in a modern, safe and efficient urban environment depends on structuring this ecosystem efficiently.
Considering cities as living, breathing, interdependent ecosystems rather than a conglomerate of individual assets can help city planners and policy makers deal with disruptive changes like the remote working revolution while delivering on the higher expectations regarding sustainability and quality of life.

Connected cities

IoT gives cities the potential to generate the data they need to measure, implement and optimise operations. Whether this is measuring air quality or traffic movement, planning health services, waste collection, public transport, energy consumption or food waste, IoT provides insights to enable cities to use their resources to best effect, to act fast and even learn to predict and prepare for the future.

IoT combined with applications’ platforms allow people, infrastructure, policy makers and service providers to converge and create new, more sustainable, data-driven economic models.
For instance, Vodafone is working with the Sevilla’s municipal government to monitor a range of services across our Smart Cities Platform. The platform integrates a number of data sources and provides analytical capabilities to identify greater efficiency and higher quality services, with the transparency necessary for public bodies.

Connected mobility

The shift towards electrified and shared mobility is at the heart of future cities. This shift could improve access to services, reduce emissions and congestion, and combine different modes of platforms into single, joined-up journeys, eliminating stopovers and bringing the benefits of personal travel to public transport.

It’s estimated that the average European car is parked 92% of the time: old mobility models are unsuitable and increasingly uneconomic for today’s consumers. The COVID-19 pandemic has led many to consider alternative transport such as carshare, electric scooter and bicycles.

To meet the demands of citizens, they need to book and pay for access to services on the street easily and on-demand – whether it’s a bus ticket, car rental or scooter hire.

The omnipresent smartphone and mobile networks make this possible. The addition of IoT means assets like cars can be located, booked, unlocked, guided, monitored and returned to service. This provides -end-to-end journeys and gives owners the visibility they need to operate and maintain fleets.

Others businesses will benefit from these ecosystems of connected services: IoT will enable them to offer employees shared transport options to reach a specific destination in an automated and environmentally friendly way.

Tomorrow’s cities

Cities’ built environment is a persistent barrier to change, but tomorrow’s cities will be a connected ecosystem where IoT and data enable currently fragmented municipal services to be coordinated in an unprecedented way.

New services will be integrated into the fabric of the city. Retrofitted buildings and renewal will create smarter sustainable properties and mobility plus key products and services will be optimised, lessening demands on infrastructure and allowing cities to scale.

Whether this is through an NB-IoT network keeping street lighting in check or a route optimisation ensuring taxis and delivery vans take the least congested road to get to their destination, IoT is helping create the cities of tomorrow around the world.

Over the next few years, 5G will transform how we can deliver city services – autonomous vehicles will be the most visible example, but it has the potential to revolutionise other healthcare, industry and even entertainment, among other things, and give citizens faster access to them via their mobile phones.

By bringing together the power of the urban ecosystem, cities can become more accessible, flexible and easy to navigate, raising their competitiveness, attracting talent and business while operating in a complex hybrid-work environment.  

Manufacturing has biggest share of 4G/5G private networks

Annie Turner
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Manufacturing has biggest share of 4G/5G private networks

The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) says it has catalogued 311 private networks globally.

The GSA said it has identified private networks in 40 countries or territories based on LTE or 5G, or licensed spectrum suitable for those technologies.

GSA’s data suggests that manufacturing is an early adopter of local area private mobile networks with 67 identified companies holding suitable licences or involved in known pilots or deployments of LANs or probable LANs – up from 51 at the start of 2021.

Mining and ports

Mining is second, with ports trialling and deploying local area private mobile networks. Within manufacturing, automotive is the leader in terms of private network investment and adoption, accounting for 27%.

The GSA report Private mobile networks – market status update (May 2021) includes data on the countries/territories with identified private network deployments (pilot and commercial), and on private mobile network deployments by type (LAN vs WAN), technology (LTE, 5G, LTE and 5G) and status (pilot or production deployment).

Ecosystem play

Joe Barrett, President of the GSA, said, “The private mobile networks market is home to a…range of service providers, including equipment/technology vendors, mobile network operators, systems integrators and the private network end-users, some of whom also take responsibility for installing or operating their own infrastructure.

“GSA has counted 38 equipment vendors that have been involved in the supply of equipment for private mobile networks based on LTE or 5G.

“In addition, we have identified 63 public network operators which between them are known to be involved with 106 projects.

“This broad ecosystem of vendors, operators and vertical markets is one that the GSA is continuing to track and report on for its Members and the wider industry.”
 
The free executive summary of the Private mobile networks – market status update (May 2021) report is available for download here: https://gsacom.com/paper/private-mobile-networks-executive-summary-may-2021/

Enea joins team Telenor in “world’s most diverse” multi-vendor 5G SA core

Annie Turner
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Enea joins team Telenor in “world’s most diverse” multi-vendor 5G SA core

The trailblazing initiative includes a proof of concept for network slicing and an on-going trial with the Norwegian Armed Forces.

Enea has announced it is part of the Telenor team whose aim is to build the most vendor-diverse Standalone (SA) 5G core network and said the core is ready for deployment, to support high performance telecom and enterprise applications.

Having met stringent security requirements, Telenor’s solution is being trialled by the Norwegian Armed Forces and is a pioneering use case for network slicing.

Disguise and manage

The solution manages Telenor’s cloud-native 5G data, including Unified Data Manager (UDM) that can support up to 10 billion data entries at a rate of 1 to 500,000 transactions per second. 

The UDM has built-in Subscription Concealed Identifier (SUCI) capabilities to safeguard users’ data by camouflaging the permanent identifier that is inherent to a subscriber’s activity on the network.

Enea’s solution automates end-to-end encrypted communications from the core to the edge. Telenor also deployed Enea’s User Data Repository (UDR) and Authentication Server Function (AUSF) to for 5G data management.

As well as providing better data security, Enea’s solution is designed to maximise uptime by conducting automated end-to-end testing of the 5G Core.

This ensures that applications on the network receive data seamlessly and perform efficiently – with five-nines reliability.

Cloud native and robust

Patrick Waldemar, Vice President, Telenor Research, said, “Enea’s cloud-native, vendor-neutral data management products are robust and truly innovative. And Enea’s collaborative strategy resonates with our own ethos. By creating a multi-vendor environment, operators and enterprises can foster innovation, reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) and can cut time to market for new services.”

Indranil Chatterjee, Chief Customer Officer at Enea commented, “The initiative provides a blueprint for both operators and enterprises to create a cloud native, best-of-breed 5G environment that, by its multi-vendor nature, eliminates vendor lock-in.”

Sue Rudd, Director Networks and Service Platforms at Strategy Analytics added, “Enea and Telenor’s innovative collaboration demonstrates the service flexibility 5G SA can offer with end-to-end network slicing and seamless [user plane function] assurance.

Enea’s rich heritage of developing truly open, interoperable technologies, and vendor-independent 5G data management solutions embody the benefits of virtualization and the security of network slicing to unleash the economic potential of 5G for operators and enterprises.”

Watch the world’s most diverse multi-vendor 5G standalone (SA) solution in action.

 

BT starts ripping Huawei kit out of 4G network

Annie Turner
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BT starts ripping Huawei kit out of 4G network

The national replacement of the Chinese vendor’s kit will cost £500 million and must be completed by 2027.

BT has started the long job of replacing Huawei equipment in its network at Hull, in the north east of England. It will be replaced by kit from Nokia and Ericsson.

Howard Watson, CTO at BT told Bloomberg in an interview: “We were quite keen to pick one city area and do the whole of that, and make sure that we can really check that we’re not having an adverse impact on customer service.

“The signs are really good for that so far.”

Fateful decision

BT took a decision that surprised the industry in choosing Huawei as its main equipment supplier for its so-called 21st Century network in 2005.

It opened the door for Huawei in Europe despite concerns about Huawei’s close links to the Chinese state being voiced almost from the start, including by the UK’s security services.

Losing its biggest customer spelled the end for the long-established British firm Marconi and damaged Canadian giant Nortel.

Long job

BT’s engineers will have to replace equipment 12,000 of BT’s 18,000 mobile masts, rooftops, and other sites – as 4G and non-standalone 5G are inter-dependent, this means replacing 4G infrastructure too.

Only about 130 have been completed so far, because of the time-consuming process of seeking landlord permissions, closing roads and mobilising hundreds of people at any one time, Watson reportedly said.

The DCMS Minister, who oversees telecoms, Oliver Dowden said the ban would delay Britain’s 5G roll out by as many as three years and cost the UK mobile industry £2 billion overall.

Boris Johnson’s administration finally banned Huawei’s kit from most parts of the UK’s communications infrastructure after much dithering by his predecessor and pressure from President Trump.

Huawei has repeatedly denied its equipment poses any risk.

Study claims Swiss mobile infra has reached capacity

Annie Turner
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Study claims Swiss mobile infra has reached capacity

The data transmitted over the cellular network has multiplied by a factor of 200 since 2010, and a network upgrade is needed urgently.

These findings are from a new study carried out by the Sotomo research institute on behalf of succèSuisse, a think tank.

It found that rural areas made up a disproportionate amount of the growth in data, which has helped reduce the digital urban-rural divide, but has also increased the number of cell phone sites operating at their maximum capacity.

Can’t cope

The study concluded that the Swiss mobile infrastructure will not be able to cope with requirements for much longer without modernisation and is to set up a working group to advocate a better framework for digitization and innovation.
 
succèSuisse argues that a reliable mobile infrastructure is key to the success of the Swiss economy, which is why it commissioned the report.
 
Another finding is that there are three times as many smartphones in use in Switzerland as there were in 2010 and that data usage doubles every two and a half years.

Rural areas as drivers

In absolute numbers, rural areas, especially the Alpine region, have the highest average data consumption. “Especially in remote regions with an underdeveloped network infrastructure, mobile data is particularly important today,” explains Sotomo’s MD and Study Director Michael Hermann.
 
The study examined network utilization of the networks and found that the boom in traffic could only be catered for to a limited extent by increased 4G capacity and that since 2019 network congestion has increased disproportionately to growth.
 
It concludes that without 5G deployment, system failures will be inevitable. The report does not seem to mention the obstructions mobile operators meet regarding finding new sites and health scaremongering that greatly slow deployment.

Delaying the inevitable

“It’s like after-work traffic: the traffic runs smoothly for a long time, but suddenly the system tips over, a traffic jam forms and nothing works”, says Michael Hermann.
 
The report says that the pandemic delayed the inevitable because mobility was reduced, and the shift from public to private transport prevented peaks in traffic caused during commuting and in metropolitan areas.
 
However, it is hoped that normal life will be resumed soon. “The amount of mobile data has also increased during the pandemic. If more intensive load peaks form again when commuter movements normalise, we will see new failures.
 
We must therefore act now,say’ s Ruedi Noser, member of the succèSuisse sponsorship and the FDP Council of States.
 

Spectral efficiency for OpenRAN – the dollars are in the details

Annie Turner
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Spectral efficiency for OpenRAN – the dollars are in the details

Mobile Experts claims enhanced channel coding could save a “typical” US operator $193m on O-RAN compliant infrastructure.

AccelerComm, a spectral efficiency specialist, announced the findings of a report,The dollars are in the details, it commissioned from Mobile Experts.

Lack of resources

Joe Madden of Mobile Experts explains, “The major OEM vendors in the 5G market have invested a lot of resources into optimising their LDPC [low density parity coding] decoder implementations, but emerging O-RAN vendors just don’t have the resources to optimise each step in the processing chain.

“Many are using general-purpose LDPC coders and decoders, with generic architectures and algorithms derived from Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or 3GPP networks and therefore are not optimised for 5G environments.

“As this research shows, replacing these with dedicated tailored solutions, such as those offered by AccelerComm, can deliver significant performance and cost enhancements.”

The analyst firm modelled nationwide US deployments based on O-RAN technology using standard LDPC decoder implementations and AccelerComm’s Advanced LDPC IP to identify the impact on the spectral efficiency of 5G mmWave O-RAN networks.

It concldued enhanced channel coding could reduce the number of gNodeBs required by 2,550, saving $193 million (€159.77).

Correction scheme

LDPC is a linear error correction scheme helps overcome noise and interference in 5G data transmissions. AccelerComm’s solution can provide a 3dB improvement in uplink signal to interference plus noise (SINR) ration.

It does this by adopting a holistic approach to the design of the physical uplinke shared channel resource (PUSCH) decoder chain, including LDPC, channel estimation, and MIMO equalisation functions.

Rob Barnes, VP Sales and Marketing of AccelerComm, said, “While there are significant benefits to O-RAN technology, there are still areas where it lags behind the major vendors, in particular in the area of 5G NR uplink sensitivity.”

Public cloud services reached $312 bn in 2020

Annie Turner
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Public cloud services reached $312 bn in 2020

Amazon Web Services and Microsoft are vying for the top spot, according to IDC.

The worldwide public cloud services market grew 24.1% year on year in 2020 with revenues totaling $312 billion (€19.95 billion), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Tracker. 

This includes Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), System Infrastructure Software as a Service (SISaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).P

The combined revenue of the top five public cloud service providers (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Google, and Oracle) accounted for 38% of the worldwide total, rising 32% year on year.

Due to an expanding portfolio of SaaS and SISaaS offerings, Microsoft now shares the top position with Amazon Web Services in the whole public cloud services market with both companies holding 12.8% revenue share for the year.

Navigating disruptions

“Access to shared infrastructure, data, and application resources in public clouds played a critical role in helping organizations and individuals navigate the disruptions of the past year,” said Rick Villars, Group VP Worldwide Research at IDC.

“In the coming years, enterprises’ ability to govern a growing portfolio of cloud services will be the foundation for introducing greater automation into business and IT processes while also becoming more digitally resilient.”

Overall public cloud services market grew 24.1% in 2020, consistent with the past four years, while the IaaS and PaaS segments have consistently grown at much faster rates.

Cloud foundations

This highlights the increasing reliance of enterprises on a cloud foundation built on cloud infrastructure, software defined data, Compute and Governance solutions as a Service, and cloud-native platforms on which enterprises deploy internal IT applications.

IDC expects spending on foundational cloud services (especially IaaS and PaaS) will continue growing at a higher rate than the overall cloud market as resilience, flexibility and agility guide IT platform decisions.

“Cloud service providers are rapidly expanding their portfolio of infrastructure and platform services to address confidential computing, performance intensive computing, and hybrid deployment scenarios,” said Dave McCarthy, VP, Cloud and Edge Infrastructure Services at IDC.

Lara Greden, Research Director, Platform as a Service at IDC added, “Extending these foundational cloud services to customer premises and communications networks enables a broader set of use cases than previously possible.”

“The high pace of growth in PaaS, IaaS, and SISaaS, which combined account for about half of the public cloud services market, reflects the demand for solutions that accelerate and automate the development and delivery of modern applications”.

IoT and edge progress

“As organizations adopt DevOps approaches and align according to value streams, we are seeing PaaS, IaaS, and SISaaS solutions…increasingly adopted and, at the same time, grow in the range of services and thus value they provide. Innovations in edge and IoT use cases are also contributing to the faster rates of growth in these markets.”

Frank Della Rosa, Research Director, SaaS and Cloud Software at IDC said, “SaaS applications is the largest and most mature segment of public cloud with 2020 revenues of $148 billion.

“Organizations across industries hastened the replacement of legacy business applications with a new breed of SaaS applications that is data-driven, intuitive, composable, and ideally suited for more distributed cloud architectures. Organizations looking for industry-specific applications can choose from a growing assortment of vertical applications.

“The SaaS apps market is dominated by a longtail of providers that account for 65% of the total market”.

Combination tells a story

Looking at the segment results, a combined view of IaaS, SISaaS, and PaaS spending is relevant because it represents the foundational set of services that end customers and SaaS companies consume when running, modernising, building, and governing applications on shared public clouds.

In the combined IaaS, SISaaS and PaaS market, the top 5 companies (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, and IBM) captured over 51% of global revenues. But there continues to be a healthy long tail, representing nearly half the market total.

These are companies with targeted use case-specific PaaS services or cross-cloud compute, data, or network governance services. The long tail is even more pronounced in SaaS, where customers growing focus on specific outcomes ensures that over two thirds of the spending is captured outside the top 5.

IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Tracker looks at 500 cloud services companies across 49 countries.

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