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MTN shows acceleration of webscalers’ blockbuster growth in telecoms

Annie Turner
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MTN shows acceleration of webscalers’ blockbuster growth in telecoms

Based on preliminary stats, overall webscalers ended 2020 with just over $1.7 trillion (€1.44 trillion) in revenues, up from $1.45 trillion in 2019.

While the growth is due to several factors – including acquisitions, a strong digital advertising market and increased cloud spending across verticals during the pandemic – MTN comments, “Webscalers have been attacking the telco vertical for several years. Since the close of 4Q20, over the last three months the webscale sector’s efforts to engage telcos have picked up steam.

“A number of telcos have recently announced new deals with webscalers in the areas of edge computing, service development, digital transformation, and workload shift.

“At the same time, more traditional suppliers to telcos (such as Nokia) have expanded their own collaboration with the cloud providers who dominate the webscale market.

“These deals aim to differentiate [between] traditional telco vendors, prevent webscalers growing too fast in the market, and save costs for telcos.”

Key developments in Q1

Telefonica engaged IBM to act as a systems integrator for an open RAN trial in Argentina.

TIM Brasil announced it migrate all its on-premises workloads to the cloud, using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Microsoft Azure, including mission-critical applications. The idea is to optimise and simplify the management of its IT infrastructure while improving scalability and agility.

In March, Liberty Global’s Belgium unit, Telenet chose Ericsson, Nokia and Google Cloud for 5G deployment.

Nokia in the clouds

Nokia was by far the most active of telco-focused vendors in 1Q21, announcing several collaborations with the webscale sector.

In January, Nokia announced partnerships with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to develop cloud-native 5G core solutions. Nokia is supplying its voice core, cloud packet core, network exposure function, data management, and 5G core, while GCP’s Anthos for Telecom platform will be used t deploy applications.

In March, Nokia expanded its work with GCP, announcing it would also partner to develop cloud-based 5G radio solutions. The collaboration leverages Nokia’s RAN, Open RAN, Cloud vRAN and edge cloud technologies with GCP’s edge computing platform and application ecosystem.

Initial efforts centre around Cloud RAN and aim at integrating Nokia’s 5G virtualized distributed unit and virtualized centralized unit with Google’s edge computing platform running on Anthos. Nokia aims to certify its AirFrame Open Edge hardware with Anthos.

At the same time as the March GCP announcement, Nokia announced deals with Microsoft and Amazon.

Playing the field

The Microsoft agreement is intended to develop “new market-ready 4G and 5G private wireless use cases designed for enterprises”, combing Nokia’s Cloud RAN, Open RAN, radio access controller, and multi-access edge cloud technologies with the Azure Private Edge Zone.

With Amazon Web Services, Nokia and AWS will conduct joint R&D into enabling Nokia’s RAN, Open RAN, Cloud RAN, and edge solutions to operate “seamlessly” with AWS Outposts. The goal is to develop new customer-focused 5G solutions.

Per Nokia, “operators will be able to simplify the network virtualization and platform layers for the Core and RAN network functions by leveraging the agility and scalability of cloud.” Ultimately Nokia will be able to leverage Amazon services like EC2, EKS, Local Zones and others to help automate network functions and deploy end customer applications.

Intel attacks

MTN points out that Intel, which has attacked the telco market aggressively over the last few quarters, signed a deal with GCP in February to develop “reference architectures and integrated solutions” for telcos to enable 5G and edge network solutions.

The collaboration involves three main aspects: virtualised RAN and open RAN solution development; a network functions validation lab; and service delivery to the edge.

Israeli telco vendor Radcom announced the integration of its 5G assurance solution (ACE) with Microsoft Azure. Radcom says that the integration of ACE with Azure “enables operators to assure the quality of 5G services by leveraging AI and machine learning-driven assurance and automation” ACE runs as a cloud native function over the Azure Kubernetes Service.

MTN reckons that vendors’ collaborations with webscalers will continue throughout 2021, no doubt.

Mavenir’s SVP for Business Development, John Baker, addressed this trend indirectly in a January interview with SDx Central: “I really do believe the hyperscalers are going to become the new telecom providers going forward…Apart from the physical radio that goes on a tower, everything we’re doing now follows the data center model, and these guys know how to manage data centers, software, and applications.”

For webscale operators to support all these new activities requires heavy investment in network infrastructure. The figure below shows CapEx by type, on an annualized basis, for the total webscale network operator market since 2016.

A1 Telekom launches Blacknut cloud gaming subscription service

Annie Turner
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A1 Telekom launches Blacknut cloud gaming subscription service

The subsidiary of the A1 Telekom Austria Group is the first operator in Austria to offer cloud-based gaming.

A1 Telekom Austria will offer it more than 5 million subscribers access to more than 500 games via Blacknut’s cloud gaming platform.

The games have no in-game purchases of advertising, instead customers pay a monthly subscription for games that can be played on most platforms – PCs and Macs, Android or iOS, or Fire TV stick or Google Chromecast.

There are no additional costs and the two say the catalogue of games will be constantly expanded.

Disney content

Already popular Disney content is on offer, like Disney Epic Mickey – the Power of 2 or Frozen Rush and LEGO games like LEGO Star Wars, but also Farming Simulator, WRC8 or the racing title Asphalt 9 can be found on the platform.

Customers can also choose to subscribe directly in Blacknut’s Android mobile application with the carrier direct billing for more 500 family-friendly premium games.

This new service is already available, and A1 customers can sign up via the A1 mobile app https://www.a1.net/blacknut

Austrian partnership

“Our new partnership with A1 in Austria shows again how cloud gaming is near the top of the agenda for mobile operators,” said Olivier Avaro, CEO of Blacknut. “Latest cloud technology finally gives us the speeds and low latency to fulfil the promise of cloud gaming, delivering a quality experience wherever you are.

“The team of A1 really grasped the potential for gaming as a new service opportunity, and we look forward to working together to make this launch a success.”

Blacknut was founded in 2016 by Olivier Avaro, its CEO, with headquarters in Rennes, France and its services are available to gamers in 40 countries, including through Telecom Italia (taly, Swisscom, Luxembourg’s POST and others.

Q1 2021

James Lee Pearson
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Q1 2021

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Ericsson opens Lab to collaborate with cloud RAN customers and partners

Annie Turner
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Ericsson opens Lab to collaborate with cloud RAN customers and partners

The company’s CEO, Börje Ekholm, said he expects the company to feel the effects of Open RAN from 2023.

Ericsson says the lab is virtually accessible to customers globally although co-located with the company’s Cloud RAN expertise at Ericsson’s R&D site in Ottawa.

The site has 100MHz of indoor mid-band spectrum and 60MHz of indoor/outdoor mid-band spectrum is available for testing and co-creation activities.

Customers and partners can create and test Cloud RAN capabilities based on their own spectral holdings and use case requirements across indoor and outdoor networks.

Continous development

The lab support Ericsson’s Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) approach to dewveloping Cloud RAN technology to help seamless integration of new features and accelerates the feedback loop and design of new features.

This means that software can go live quickly, often within minutes of being developed.

The Open Lab follows on the heels of Ericsson’s announcement of its Cloud RAN product portfolio development.

The lab enables further development of Ericsson Cloud RAN solutions on COTS hardware, bringing higher efficiency and flexibility to customer networks.

It also aims to help service proviicers to develop new deployment and 5G use case scenarios, as well as automation to reduce manual interventio, plus virtualization, management, and orchestration.

Cloud-native

Ericsson Open Lab collaboration is not limited to Ericsson cloud-native infrastructure technology and RAN software advancements on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers and acceleration hardware.

It will also seek to foster greater cooperation in areas such as machine learning, network automation and optimization with communications service providers and industry partners.

These service providers include KDDI, Ooredoo, Orange, Softbank Corp, Turkcell and ecosystem partners such as Intel, NVIDIA, Red Hat and Wind River.

Arnaud Vamparys, Senior Vice President, Radio Networks at ‎Orange, says: “In the Open RAN journey, interoperability, cloudification and automation are key topics for Orange.

“The collaboration with Ericsson, as part of the Open Lab initiative, is allowing us to explore new flexible and innovative technologies like Cloud RAN on COTS hardware for mobile network evolution.”

Digital transformation: where are we now and what next?

Annie Turner
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Digital transformation: where are we now and what next?

Javier Torre de Silva, Global Telecoms Lead at law firm CMS, talked to Annie Turner about what’s next for Europe’s telcos.

Javier Torre de Silva says, “If you have very indebted players that are supposed to make the investments, it’s not going to happen soon because they don’t have enough evidence of returns.

“Probably the best driver of this evolution would be the Internet of Things – up to 35 billion will be connected in the next five years, according to the GSMA and that will be impossible to manage with 4G networks. It needs more dense networks as the volume escalates and 5G can operate 1 million connections per square kilometre whereas 4G can manage 10,000 to 20,000 in that area. Then there will be no other option than to invest in 5G core networks and standalone.”

He adds, “The key is industry, not the monitored fridge at home, with every robot talking to every other one. We will have telcos that did not want to invest in 5G core networks but were obliged to do so.”      

Read more from this global telecoms lawyer in our just published magazine and its special Insight report on digital transformation.

Regulation matters

Torre de Silva thinks the decision to invest would be easier, “If the regulation were safer, more predictable, and lighter, this additional return required to offset regulatory risk would be reduced…but the authorities probably don’t see that they are part of the problem.”

However, he does not blame the regulators for the operators’ indebted plight, commenting, “It’s a very bad business when a company’s assets are worth more than the company itself”. and points to a service such as WhatsApp, now owned by Facebook.

He observes, “That is a service that is very easy to organise – the operators had the SMS business which is not dissimilar, but they saw themselves as carriers of signals and did not look outside the box and they lost out on that trend – and it was a big trend.”

Don’t blow it with 5G

Torre de Silva warns, “Now they have a similar situation – [5G] could be a very, very big business opportunity…but they are selling 5G nominally, but really its 4G+ and we have studied almost 40 jurisdictions and in many…they are selling this 5G for the same price or only very slightly higher than 4G…most of us who are not professional gamers don’t appreciate the difference anyway.”

He stresses that he thinks it’s far from game over for the telcos and suggests: “They have a lot of points of advantage in order to develop this business opportunity. First, they have millions of clients – this means data, which means information that can be used in a useful way…for business purposes.”

Telefonica Tech’s example

He highlights the example of Telefonica Tech, which “has the idea of selling [other things] in addition to data transportation and that’s I think the way the correct way of doing things… Telefonica Tech is going to be much bigger, much deeper, and will focus on cyber security…to provide almost one-stop services for everything that a company would need in a digital area”.

Telefónica Tech recently announced a successful proof of concept, integrating its platform with those of two start-ups to develop what the operator describes as “the first 5G blockchain IoT module that natively records device information” – an efficient way of tracing and verifying information gathered by the sensors.

Torre de Silva compares 5G business opportunities to a land grab, where there’s a huge amount for the taking but once it’s all accounted for, it will fetch a high price. He says, “Carriers are in a strong position, they have the spectrum, and they can slice it, but if they don’t colonise it, in ten years’ it will be occupied by other companies.”

Cellnex’s towering ambition is fuelled by selling equity

Annie Turner
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Cellnex’s towering ambition is fuelled by selling equity

Cellnex has raised €7.7 billion from selling equity in the last two years.

Earlier this week, the Spanish infrastrastructure investor sold shares to raise a further €9 billion, to cover new acquisitions in Poland (from Play and Polkomtel) and France (Altice).

This appears to be its business model – to keep buying which pushes up the share price which can be leveraged to sell more shares to fund more acquisitions.

Cellnex’s share price is not rising as fast as it was although its CEO Tobias Martinez has said he expects the company, counting what it is committed to already, will €18 billion by the end of next year.

Cellnex’s income is from very low growth mobile operators – its promise to investors is long term, inflation-proof returns.

Yet the company’s invested capital has increased four-fold since 2017. Bloomberg notes that last year the return on invested capital was barely above zero.

The Financial Times [subscription needed] recommends that Cellnex should stop selling shares and improve returns for investors.

Telia launches private network services in Norway

Annie Turner
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Telia launches private network services in Norway

The operator says dedicated mobile network services are available for enterprise and public sector customers.

Telia’s offer, Enterprise Mobile Network (EMN), leverages licensed spectrum over 4G and 5G to deliver secure, robust connectivity to critical applications in a range of industries like manufacturing, mining and logistics.

In effect, customers have their own mobile network to provide high bandwidth, low latency and safe passage for data traffic to and from systems, such as machines or vehicles, that are part of connected business processes.

Success elsewhere

Jon Christian Hillestad, Head of the Enterprise Business Unit in Telia Norway, claims, “We are at the forefront of 5G in Norway and we want to leverage that position to take a leading role in dedicated private network services as well.

“This type of solution is new to Norway, but we have already implemented Enterprise Mobile Networks for customers in other Nordic countries.

Hillestad continues, “We also see an increased demand in Norway for dedicated networks and other specialized services delivered to customers through our public mobile network.

An example of that is our partnership with Oslo Metro that will use services run over our mobile network to control the subway. Dialogues around similar solutions are ongoing with other customers across the country”.

Variations on a theme

The EMN-solution can be deployed through Telia’s public mobile network, but with a custom-built radio network, or as a complete private network, with both a local core and radio network installed at the customer site.

According to Telia, the latter version is suitable for the most demanding use-cases in terms of data security, bandwidth and latency, for example remote steered machinery in a mine.

EMN was launched in the Swedish market, where it has attracted high-profile customers like mining companies Boliden and Zinkgruvan Mining as well as forestry industry group Södra. EMN will continue to be rolled out across Telia’s markets in the Nordics and Baltics.

Outside investment pours into sub-sea sector

Annie Turner
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Outside investment pours into sub-sea sector

Aqua Comms, which owns and operates subsea networks running from the US to Europe, is to be acquired by an investment company, Digital 9 Infrastructure (DGI9).

Last week the investment firm raised £300 million (€351.3 million) from an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange – then agreed £157 million to acquire Aqua.

DGI9’s shares start trading on the London Stock Exchange today, after which it will complete the acquisition of Aqua Comms.

The sub-sea cable company owns and operates America Europe Connect-1 (AEC-1), America Europe Connect-2 (AEC-2), and CeltixConnect-1 (CC-1), which run between the US and Europe – specifically, the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia.

DGI9 said its goal is to build a portfolio of companies primarily related to subsea cables, data centres, terrestrial fibre, tower infrastructure and small cell networks (including 5G).

Its primary focus will be digital infrastructure investments that are operational and have customers.



And separately…

Facebook says it will build two more subsea cable networks to connect the west coast of the US with South-East Asia.

To be named Echo and Bifrost, they both avoid China and will involve partners, including Indonesian companies Telin and XL Axiata, Singapore-based Keppel and Google. They are subject to regulatory approval. More information here.

Orchestrator controls and manages Wi-Fi, LTE and 5G for Industry 4.0

Annie Turner
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Orchestrator controls and manages Wi-Fi, LTE and 5G for Industry 4.0

The automation tool for private networks has been trialled in large scale deployments.

Zeetta Networks, which provides software automation tools for networks, has released a new version of its orchestrator for private networks. The software provides unified control and management of mobile (LTE and 5G) and Wi-Fi from one dashboard.

The technology has been deployed at 5G-ENCODE, a pioneering project that aims to make the benefits of 5G a reality for UK manufacturers. 5G-ENCODE is the UK’s largest trial of industrial 5G and one of the UK Government’s biggest investments in 5G for manufacturing.

Large scale

The technology has already been tested in large scale deployments, including smart city initiatives, Bristol is Open (pictured) and Bournemouth Smart Place, and multi-purpose venues including Ashton Gate stadium.

It was developed based on open standards, meaning it is compatible with O-RAN and other open networking technologies, making it both technology and vendor agnostic.

This supports the UK government’s recent 5G Supply Chain Diversification Strategy, which advocates deployment models based on open interfaces and interoperable standards.

Vassilis Seferidis, Founder and CEO, Zeetta Networks, says, “Zeetta is the only company in the world able to visualise, control and manage connectivity services in such a vendor and technology agnostic way…when combined with network slicing and splicing, [it] will be revolutionary for designing and operating networks now and in the future”.

SES selects OTE’s satellite teleport to bring connectivity to underserved areas

Annie Turner
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OTE’s Satellite Teleport in Thermopylae selected by SES as an O3b mPOWER Gateway to provide connectivity

 

  • 10-year contract for integrated satellite services by OTE: interconnection between satellites and ground, 24-hour support & management of satellite infrastructure

 

30 March 2021

 

The OTE Group’s Satellite Teleport in Thermopylae was selected via an international tender by leading content connectivity satellite-based solutions provider, SES, as a Gateway site for its O3b mPOWER system, enabling the delivery of connectivity services to underserved and under-connected regions across the globe. Leveraging its satellite infrastructure and considerable know-how, OTE Group will provide SES with integrated Gateway services for the interconnection between satellites and the ground segment, 24-hour support and management of satellite ground infrastructure under a 10-year contract.

 

For the needs of the project, OTE Group prepared the appropriate infrastructure in Thermopylae in record time, successfully mitigating the challenges of the pandemic. SES will subsequently install satellite antennae and equipment that form the ground network-gateway, to communicate with its O3b mPOWER constellation that operates in the medium earth orbit. The data will be transmitted via the Gateway installation to and from the satellites, with the data rapidly reaching the terminals of telecommunications providers across parts of the globe.

 

“With our O3b mPOWER satellites under construction and scheduled for launch later this year, the SES team has been working hard to ready an automated and intelligence-powered ground infrastructure. Having worked with OTE in the past, we have confidence in their expertise and look forward to delivering low-latency managed services from Mbps up to multiple Gbps worldwide,” said Stewart Sanders, SES’s Executive Vice President of Technology and O3b mPOWER programme manager.

 

OTE Group’s Corporate Customers Sales Director, Mr. Dimitris Nonas noted: “In COSMOTE, we use technology in order to provide our customers with specialized solutions and services that meet their needs. With advanced know-how and state-of-the-art satellite teleport infrastructure in Thermopylae and Nemea, OTE Group is a partner of choice for major satellite service providers around the world. It is our pleasure that one of the largest companies in the field, SES, has entrusted us with such a demanding project. With technology, we create a better world for all.”

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