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Openreach names strategic partner to build out UK’s fibre infra

Annie Turner
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Openreach names strategic partner to build out UK’s fibre infra

BT’s access unit picks STL to provide optical cable solutions, integration services and faster installation for its new network.

Under the partnership, STL will be responsible for delivering millions of kilometres of optical fibre cable to support the build over the next three years.

Openreach has plans to use STL’s expertise and innovation to accelerate its Full Fibre build programme and drive efficiency.

Openreach is ramping up the build rate for its Full Fibre broadband programme which has a target of reaching 20 million homes and businesses by the mid-to-late 2020s. The UK is currently one of the lowest ranking countries in Europe for fibre penetration, with Openreach coming late to the party.

Its engineers are passing 42,000 homes and businesses every week, and 4.5 million premises can order a gigabit-capable fibre broadband from service providers using Openreach’s infrastructure.

Openreach and STL

This collaboration builds on a 14-year-old technology and supply relationship between the two companies.

Openreach will use STL’s Opticonn solution – a specialised set of fibre, cable and interconnects designed to improve the deployment process, including up to 30% faster installation.

It will also use STL’s Celesta – a high-density optical fibre cable with a capacity of up to 6,912 optical fibres which is 26% slimmer than the usual loose tube cables.

The design allows 2,000 metres of cable to be installed in under an hour and minimises the use of plastic across Openreach’s new network.

Kevin Murphy, MD for Fibre and Network Delivery at Openreach, said, ” We need partners like STL on board to not only help sustain that momentum, but also to provide the skills and innovation to help us go even further…we’re also trying to make this one of the greenest network builds in the world.”

Romania moves to ban Chinese vendors’ kit from 5G networks

Annie Turner
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Romania moves to ban Chinese vendors’ kit from 5G networks

The bill should pass into law in the first half of the year, paving the way to 5G procurement.

Romania’s centrist government has approved a US-backed bill that effectively bans Chinese vendors including and Huawei from involvement in the country’s 5G network, Reuters reports.
 
Pavel Popescu, a member of the IT&C and National Security Committee told the news agency, “The government just approved this bill of paramount importance for Romania, sealing a 2019 memorandum signed in Washington, meaning that China and Huawei are ruled out from any would-be partnership on 5G with the Romanian state”.

Romania was a staunch US ally before it joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2004. The US government views Huawei as an arm of China’s Communist Party’s global surveillance machinery.

Popescu said: “National security is a key goal, and protecting Romania’s future generations’ personal data is crucial.”

He also said that the bill, which could be passed into law in the next weeks, is needed before Romanian operators can 5G tenders later in the year.

 

CMA provisionally clears £31 bn UK merger of Virgin and O2

Annie Turner
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CMA provisionally clears £31 bn UK merger of Virgin and O2

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) was concerned about wholesale rather than retail activities and possible effects on other mobile service providers.

The UK’s Competition and Mergers Authority has provisionally cleared the proposed merger of Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile with Telefonica UK/O2. The deal is now expected to complete in the middle of this year.

The proposed merger was announced last May, but the CMA’s investigation only began last December because before Brexit was concluded, the deal fell under the jurisdication of the European Commission, which was expected to make a provisional ruling in November last year.

Relative values

The deal values Virgin Media, owned by Liberty Global, at £18.7 billion and Telefonica’s O2 at £12.7 billion. The merger will consolidate 34 million customers on O2’s mobile network with Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile’s 5.3 million broadband, pay-TV and mobile users.

The merger will bring together 34 million customers on O2’s mobile network with Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile’s 5.3 million broadband, pay-TV and mobile users.

A statement from Telefonica when the merger was announced said the joint venture will invest £10 billion in the UK over the next five years and deliver “substantial synergies” of £6.2 billion after integration costs, and equivalent to cost, CapEx and revenue benefits of £540 million on an annual basis by the fifth full year after closing the deal.

Wholesale concerns

Virgin Media and O2 provide some wholesale services to other mobile network operators in the UK, as well as retail services to consumers, and this was the main area of focus and concern by the CMA: the overlap between Virgin Mobile and O2 was no seen as an issue given the small size of Virgin Mobile’s customer base.

The CMA investigated whether the merger could lead to reduced competition in wholesale services: Virgin Media provides wholesale leased lines to mobile operators Vodafone and Three for as backhaul while MVNOs Sky and Lycamobile run on O2’s network.

The CMA was concerned that after the merger, Virgin and O2 could raise prices or reduce the quality of these wholesale services, or withdraw them altogether, thereby affecting the others’ quality of service or putting prices up which would be passed on to consumers.

This could make Virgin and O2’s own mobile service more attractive to retail customers, but would ultimately lead to a worse deal for UK consumers.

Phase 2 investigation

These concerns led to the merger being referred to a group of independent CMA Panel members for an in-depth Phase 2 investigation after which the CMA has provisionally concluded these negative impacts are unlikely because:

• backhaul costs are a relatively small element of rival mobile companies’ overall costs, so it is unlikely that Virgin raising backhaul costs would lead to higher charges for consumers.

• other players offer leased-line services, including BT Openreach, which has a much greater geographical reach than Virgin, so Virgin needs to remain competitive or lose customers itself

• O2 is not the only choice of network for MVNOs hence O2 needs to remain competitive with its wholesale offers.

Martin Coleman, CMA Panel Inquiry Chair, said, “Given the impact this deal could have in the UK, we needed to scrutinise this merger closely.

“A thorough analysis of the evidence gathered during our phase 2 investigation has shown that the deal is unlikely to lead to higher prices or a reduced quality of mobile services – meaning customers should continue to benefit from strong competition.”

Vodafone Deutschland boosts gigabit links, plays down network failure

Annie Turner
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Vodafone Deutschland boosts gigabit links, plays down network failure

The operator has added 400,000 more gigabit connections, but suffered network outages after a power failure on Tuesday.

On 12 April, Vodafone Deutschland announced that an additional 400,000 connections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Baden-Württemberg now offer gigabit speed. Vodafone now supplies a total of 22.4 million households in 16 federal states with gigabit speed.

Around 80% of all gigabit connections in Germany come from Vodafone which aims to will complete the gigabit upgrade in its network by 2022 at the latest, bringing gigabit speeds to 24 million homes.

Bad timing

Two days later, on 14 April, after a brief power outage in Frankfurt am Main (pictured), there were nationwide failures in Vodafone Deutschland’s cable, DSL and LTE networks.
 
From 3.45pm the Allestören website recorded almost 40,000 complaints from German households. Some users reported that their broadband worked, but could not load websites or only slowly.
 
Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland quoted Volker Petendorf of Vodafone saying there were “No noteworthy failures” and added, “The power failure led to a minimal restriction for individual customers that only lasted a few seconds, since redundancies [in the network] took effect immediately”.
 
The operator also pointed out that failures are often caused by factors beyond an operator’s control: The location in Frankfurt is used by several providers, Vodafone said, saying this is why there were also isolated reports of network issues among Deutsche Telekom or 1 & 1 customers.
 
 

 

Orange declines to raise bid in Belgium

Annie Turner
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Orange declines to raise bid in Belgium

The operator says its offer is fair for the outstanding minority stake in Orange Belgium – stakeholder says it’s like being asked to give away a Picasso.

Orange has dismissed demands for a higher price per share than the of €22 per share it is offering to minority shareholder Polygon Global Partners for the 5% outstanding take in its Belgian subsidiary.

Polygon is refusing to sell its 5% stake at the rate on offer and wants upwards of €40 a share.

Orange has pointed out that the its offer is in line with an independent report carried out by financial services company Degroof Petercam (DP) which found the offer “did not disregard the interests of minority shareholders”.

Polygon is unimpressed by the report’s findings, suggesting it understates Orange Belgium’s expected growth, disagrees with its CapEx assumptions and complains that the operator’s tower are not valued because they are not included in TOTEM, Orange group’s towerco.

TOTEM polls

TOTEM was finally announced in February (having been promised at the end of 2019) and will start operations with its tower infrastructure in Spain and France, then gradually consider the tower estates in the other countries on a case by case basis.

In a statement, Polygon said, “The argument that an asset does not have value simply because its potential owner does not intend to sell it astounds Polygon. We liken the tower portfolio to a prized Picasso.

“If a neighbour offered to buy your house and its contents, including your Picasso, would you agree to discount the value of the Picasso to zero simply because your neighbour claims they do not have plans to sell it? The notion seems absurd.”

Polygon believes Orange’s offer is “derisory” with its estimated value for the business at more than €40 a share.

Orange has argued that there is “no hidden value” in the tower assets, citing Belgian regulation in concerning the sharing of antenna sites.

Swisscom shuts down 2G network

Annie Turner
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Swisscom shuts down 2G network

European operators have varied approaches to the use of 2G and its longevity.

After almost thirty years, Swisscom has shut down its 2G network which was launched in 1993 to carry phone calls and texts.

By the end of 2020, it was carrying less than 0.03% of traffic as the way people use their phones has changed dramatically, with data use soaring.
 
Swisscom will use the 2G spectrum for 4G and 5G, including for phone calls in “the best HD quality”. Swisscom said it covers the whole of Switzerland with 3G, 4G and 5G mobile technologies.

More attractive tech for IoT

The operator said in a statement that “data transmission, streaming and gaming, solutions for the networking of devices and…[IoT]…are becoming increasingly important.”
 
Swisscom offers its customers a low power network as well as LTE-M and NB-IoT which are based on 4G: NB-IoT is designed for massive IoT and LTE-M for critical IoT.
 
The operator has been encouraging customers to move to 4G devices since 2015.

Germany’s story

In neighbouring Germany, operators incumbent Telekom Deutschland, and rivals Vodafone and Telefónica/O2 are taking a different approach.

In an article in Golem.de, Florian Streicher, a spokesperson for Telefónica/O2 was quoted saying [translated from German], “The 2G network will be retained. For this we use the frequencies at 900MHz. With our very well developed 2G network, we supply almost 100% of the German population with mobile communications.
 
“As a base network for mobile telephony, SMS and simple M2M solutions – for example for eCall in vehicles – 2G will ensure the basic supply of our customers in the coming years”.
 
Vodafone provided a similar comment: Telefónica and Vodafone have announced plans to shut down 3G services in 2022.
 
Telekom Deutschland has a slightly different spin, saying 2G would stay in use because  it will discontinue 3G this summer so those with older devices that do not use 4G will have to rely on 2G.

Sponsored: Automated fulfilment shouldn’t be an afterthought in the new network era

Annie Turner
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Sponsored: Automated fulfilment shouldn’t be an afterthought in the new network era

Yogen Patel, Head of Product & Solution Marketing at Amdocs, explains how to improve responsiveness, keep pace with customer expectations and hold off the threat of the new entrants.

Building in automated service fulfilment and orchestration right from the conception of new services is how to succeed –whether the customer is a building company requiring temporary connectivity on a construction site, or a hospital rolling out connected diagnostic equipment across its campus and emergency vehicles, speed and accuracy of deployment are critical to the success of that engagement.

Yet, too often, when it comes to service fulfilment and orchestration, communication service providers (CSPs) remain somewhat limited in their agility and speed of responsiveness due to disjointed systems and manual processes.

However ambitious and innovative operators may be in their designs for new network services and customer experiences, it’s also important to ensure these services are matched with slick delivery and issue resolution capabilities – which is proactively incorporated from the outset.

Prioritising dynamic OSS

Although not all CSPs have seen overhauling their service fulfilment and orchestration as a strategic imperative up to now, in the new network era – which will see operators battle each other to launch ever more innovative services and fresh user experiences – setting these up for customers swiftly, provisioning them correctly and billing for them accurately will become increasingly important.

Over-reliance on cumbersome manual fulfilment processes – already exposed in inaccuracies, delays and order fallout with standard connectivity services – will undermine operators’ success with more ambitious offerings. Meanwhile, slow problem resolution – due to disconnected fulfilment and assurance systems – has no place in the future experiences CSPs want to offer.

Achieving light touch, quick to activate, and fully joined experiences will rely on modern system capabilities and process automation, in place of the unwieldy combination of manual handoffs, workarounds and glue that make up most operational support system (OSS) environments.

More complex propositions require streamlined handling

Monolithic, siloed IT systems and fragmented fulfilment and orchestration processes jeopardise the ability to launch and deliver new services efficiently. Next-generation network services may simplify life for customers, but behind the scenes they are more complex propositions – often involving wider ecosystems and partners. This means there are more pieces to coordinate, rendering traditional OSS and manual processes unfit for purpose.

So what does good look like?

CSPs should be aiming to streamline service fulfilment by decomposing the mesh of ‘product-to-service’ mappings into a clear set of activation tasks, while accounting for relevant links and interdependencies. They should be looking to reduce order fallout by setting auto-triggered policies for automated error handling. And they should be striving for a 360˚ view across all network elements, service inventory, order and fulfilment tracking activity.

All of this comes back to making the right choice of OSS/fulfilment system capabilities for the new network age.

Maximising the options with a flexible, modular, cloud-based approach to OSS

Simplicity and efficiency are paramount, so CSPs should be looking to standardise service and resource modelling and to define reusable service ‘building blocks’. Further priorities should include unifying service design, creating and composing service chains, workflows and polices via a unified catalogue and intuitive user interface, and – crucially – accelerating delivery by automating end-to-end service lifecycle management.

Please click to enlarge

For problem resolution, it’s important to look for capabilities that support the proactive identification and resolution of issues with real-time service order status view and triggered notifications. Enhanced visibility will be important here too, via an advanced, cross-silo graphical user interface enabling end-to-end views and data access across the network.

Finally, a single accurate and complete repository of activated services and supporting network resources will enable closed-loop operations and boost service assurance.

Amdocs NEO is a comprehensive service and network automation platform that meets all of these needs in a modular, open standards-based, cloud-native solution which CSPs can harness to manage innovative services in the new network era.

View our interactive guide to Digital-to-Network Automation

 

Mavenir and Xilinx claim giant boost to Open RAN Massive MIMO

Annie Turner
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Mavenir and Xilinx claim giant boost to Open RAN Massive MIMO

The two companies say they have integrated a mMIMO solution, end to end, applying Open RAN rules.

Mavenir, a cloud-native network software provider, and Xilinx, which specialises in adaptive computing, announced they are collaborating to produce a unified 4G/5G massive MIMO (mMIMO) portfolio that complies with O-RAN Alliance principles.

The first mMIMO 64TRX joint solution is expected to be available by the end of the year.
 
At Mavenir’s lab in Bangalore, India, the integration covered various deployment scenarios that were evaluated by six network operators.

Mavenir provided the vRAN) support for mMIMO, including the core network, centralised and distributed units, and Xilinx the Category B O-RAN Radio Unit.

Platform

The products will use Xilinx’s technology platform including RFSoC DFE and Versal AI for beamforming, to offer an integrated hardware and software mMIMO solution.
 
Pardeep Kohli, President and CEO, Mavenir, commented, “This integration demonstrates an efficient Open RAN massive MIMO solution to achieve diversification of the telecommunications supply chain.

“This is an important milestone in the delivery of open and interoperable interfaces enabling the deployment of mMIMO in high density, high mobile traffic metro areas.”
 
Dimitris Mavrakis, Senior Research Director of 5G at ABI Research, commented, “5G Open RAN has significant momentum in the market with ABI Research forecasting network vendor spending to reach $10 billion by 2026-27 and then surpass traditional RAN at $30 billion by 2030.

“As Mavenir and Xilinx continue to work together to accelerate O-RAN-based massive MIMO adoption, their solutions will be well-timed to serve this high-growth market with the higher spectral efficiency, performance, power efficiency and cost needed as 5G demand intensifies.”
 

UK government to interfere with infrastructure decisions after Hexit?

Annie Turner
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UK government to interfere with infrastructure decisions after Hexit?

The Financial Times says a new report tells mobile operators from whom to buy network equipment having kicked Huawei out of the UK market.

Last year after much dithering, the UK government decided to ban Huawei equipment (Hexit) from the country’s 5G networks, and it is to be phased out of networks altogether by 2027. This was on grounds of national security and after considerable pressure had been applied by the Trump Administration.

Duopoly worries

In the wake of Hexit, the government set up the Vendor Diversity Task Force, which is about to publish a report that FT says it has seen [subscription required]. In it, operators are being told they must buy 25% of their 5G equipment from smaller companies due to concern about being at the mercy of the Ericsson-Nokia duopoly.

No doubt this is music to the likes of Korea’s Samsung, Japan’s NEC and US firms Mavenir and Airspan.

However, Nokia and Ericsson equipment would be allowed as part of that 25% if their equipment is compatible and therefore interchangeable with that of other vendors.

The FT quotes the report saying, “The task force believes 25% by the mid 2020s should be the initial aspiration for mobile operators”.

State interference

The report suggests the government explores the possibility of giving operators tax relief for deploying kit from smaller vendors, but is against the state providing any subsidy to cover the estimated £2 billion it will cost the UK’s four mobile operators to replace the Huawei equipment they are obliged to remove.

The Tory government sees Hexit as an opportunity for the UK to become a global technology leader in areas such as chip design (ARM anyone?), standards and software.

Task force

The task force is chaired by Lord Ian Livingstone, who in 2013 quit his job as CEO of BT to become a government trade minister in the Tory government.

This move sparked a controversy over “unprecedented” conflicts of interest in his new role, given that he then owned BT shares worth £20 million.

He was subsequently given a peerage.

The report is due for publication by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which oversees telecoms, in the next few days.

How binding its recommendations will be remains to be seen.

Italy’s competition authority probes Cellnex’s Hutchison towers deal

Annie Turner
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Italy’s competition authority probes Cellnex’s Hutchison towers deal

The Spanish infrastructure investor agreed to buy CK Hutchison’s Europan tower estate for €10 billion in November.

Italy’s Competition Authority, the AGCM, has launched an inquiry into Cellnex’s acquisition of Hutchison’s towers in Italy, according to  Reuters, due to concerns about monopoly.

The deal is for 10,000 sites with another 1,100 in the pipeline, currently owned by CK Hutchison’s Italian mobile operator, Wind Tre.

With the CK Hutchison sale, AGCM reckons Cellnex Italia, will control more than 70% of the Italy’s mobile infrastructure, which could limit the “degree of openness” for third-party operators.

The AGCM is also looking into whether the deal could lead to rising prices or limited capacity, benefiting operators who already have long-term agreements with Cellnex, such as Wind Tre.

Inwit involved

The AGCM has said it expects to conclude the probe within 45 days, but is waiting for more information about tower tenancies from Inwit, of which TIM and Vodafone Italy have joint control.

It mostly hosts TIM’s and Vodafone Italy’s RAN equipment.

Cellnex’s deal with CK Hutchison involved towers in six countries, each of which has been handled separately. The transactions are completed in Austria, Ireland, Denmark and Sweden. The UK deal is still in progress.

Italy is the biggest part of the deal, accounting for about 40% of the CK Hutchison towers to be transferred.

 

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