You can tell a CEO who’s spent too much time ‘in the cloud’. They believe their own customer satisfaction surveys. Either that or they are deliberately gas-lighting us. To improve customer experience, Mobile Europe sought simple ‘people pleasing’ advice for telcos from people who really know the customer. In the first of an occasional series, Maria Harju, Foundever’s Chief Revenue Officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, describes The Seven Deadliest Customer Experiences and how mobile network operators can avoid them.
Repetition.
Repeating your story to multiple people is enough to make 57% of Europeans hang up. Yes, some problems demand escalation, but if you’re moving your customer across an omnichannel platform it’s omni stupid not to move the information from channel to channel too. A CX should systematically do that. This averts another massive frustration, disregard for the customer’s history. How can you pretend to care about the customer experience when you show you are demonstrably oblivious to it? All the information across all channels is captured and should be correctly stored and retrieved so that your agents can do their best jobs.
Rate your experience.
OK, we need performance feedback, but customers are suffering from survey overload. Every trip to the toilet now involves an invitation to rate the experience. There are better ways to learn how customers feel about service and how they perceive your brand. Speech and text analytics are instant, less obtrusive and more accurate.
Chatnots.
If you don’t acknowledge your chatbot’s limitations, you’re setting your brand up for a CX failure. If your customer knows it’s an automated system, they’ll treat it as such and adjust their expectations accordingly. But when the bot goes beyond its domain intelligence it must hand off to a live representative and pass on the information shared up to that point.
Chats …. with delayed response. Chat’s rationale is about immediacy and accuracy but long wait times and vague unfocused responses will demolish that advantage. Immediate contextual support can help a customer take action or make a decision. Avoid the temptation to set high chat concurrency targets for agents. The more conversations they handle the less likely they are to resolve complex issues or satisfy each customer. Use your best pre-scripted responses in early conversational stages so that agents have more time to find a resolution. Cross train your CX staff so that they can work across channels based on peaks in demand.
Undervaluing CX
If each interaction doesn’t meet expectations it will damage your brand. So stress its value in your proposition. A superior customer experience should be reflected in the price of a product or service. If you’re cheap very hard to hold on to customers, especially in the current economic environment. Here is the value of CX. Three in four consumers will walk after a single disappointing customer experience, yet 42% would pay more for an identical product or service if it were supported by a superior CX. Being in the latter camp starts with understanding who your customers are, their wants, needs and expectations.
Treating vocal interaction like a necessary evil.
Test yourself before you test their patience. Voice is about people not managing processes, so IVR should solve customers’ problems, not stress test their patience and short-term memory on the altar of your management processes, said Harju. Most consumers are frustrated by complicated menus then agitated by the agent that takes over. A happy resolution is an uphill battle. An IVR should minimise menu options, as part of the identification or authentication process so that more of the conversation is focused on the customer and their issue, and use it to coach the customer. Rather than playing a message saying the call is important, a message asking if a person has the reference number or other relevant information to hand is going to make everyone’s life easier.
Kyivstar’s CEO and CTO talk about the power of grit and operators pulling together
In a small, quiet meeting room on the sidelines of Mobile World Congress with executives from Ukraine’s largest operator Kyivstar, the discussion was in stark contrast to what was going on at the show. While other European operators talked about fair-share politics and future immersive experiences, Kyivstar provided an update on how it has kept people safe and its network up and running after one year of war.
Oleksandr Komarov, Chief Executive of Kyivstar, acknowledged having a somewhat “alien” feeling here as the operator has “very different challenges and priorities” compared to the rest of the industry.
In an interview with Mobile Europe, Komarov and Volodymyr Lutchenko, Chief Technology Officer at Kyivstar, shared how network resilience challenges have changed dramatically over the last year and how people have pulled together to preserve communications services. (Also see Telecoms in time of war)
National roaming
Cooperation among the country’s three operators – Kyivstar, Vodafone Ukraine, and Lifecell – has been “essential” for overall network resilience, and they have been “exchanging capacity and providing equipment to one another,” said Komarov.
Indeed, one of the first and most important steps the operators took after Russia invaded a year ago was to implement national roaming, so that if network services are down on one network, users are automatically switched to another. National roaming is unusual and difficult, but the Ukrainian operators were able to launch it in about three weeks with support from the national regulator.
The service is “working well to keep services going,” said Lutchenko. When the country suffered power blackouts in November last year, he said more than 2 million people per day used the national roaming service.
When the war started, the government also issued additional frequencies free of charge to the operators to give them extra network capacity. Meanwhile, equipment suppliers and local businesses have also rallied to help keep the networks going.
Komarov cited an example where Ericsson stepped up to support a “very big ambitious project to roll out a national core site in the western part of Ukraine … to mitigate the risks related to the potential loss” of other sites, he said. In peace time, such a project would take 12 to 18 months. But with everyone cooperating, he said they started the project at the start of 2022 and it was completed in early May, taking less than five months for a major deployment.
Moving targets for resilience
As the months of war have dragged on, the network resilience challenges have changed. In the first few months, Lutchenko said Kyivstar was engaged in “urgent activities” to keep the network going when the infrastructure was physically damaged by rockets, bombs, mines, and tanks, because the biggest problem is that it is often too dangerous to get to the sites to repair damages.
“[The sites] could be in occupied territory or on the front line. The area could be under fire or the fields can be mined so that without supervision from the military, you cannot get there … That’s why your network should be very reliable and still work with multiple damages like ours,” said Lutchenko.
Later in the summer, the resiliency work shifted to “stabilisation” projects. By September, Kyivstar’s network performance KPIs remarkably were “almost on a pre-war level.” Apart from occupied areas where Kyivstar had no access to sites, “the network was really good,” he said.
Attacks on energy pose new threats
The communications resiliency landscape changed in October when Russia started attacking the country’s energy infrastructure. Lutchenko said the challenge is now “really huge” and the “new reality.” In late October, about 20% of Kyivstar’s base stations were affected by power outages. Lutchenko said the worst day was November 24, 2022, when 65% of Kyivstar’s network was without electricity.
In response, Kyivstar has strengthened energy resilience by adding longer-life backup batteries and diesel-powered generators.
Here again, cooperation has been vital. In Kyivstar has “crowd-sourced” access to power generators from local businesses, such as a petrol station located near one of the operator’s cell sites. “We asked businesses and invited people to help us with keeping the network up and running,” said Lutchenko, and now more than 600 sites are connected to diesel generators.
But this is one area where Komarov feels help from the government has been “limited”. Of Kyivstar’s 1500 generators, he said about 40 were provided by the government and the rest were either procured by the operator or acquired from third parties that have “extra power capacity on hand located nearby our sites.” Kyivstar said it has invested around US$5 million just on generators and diesel fuel.
Fighting on two fronts
Kyivstar’s network is under threat from cyberattacks as well as physical attacks. “The Russians want to destroy us not only physically, but virtually as well, so that means we have to fight on two front lines,” said Lutchenko.
The operator took measures to protect its network by relocating certain equipment away from areas that were likely to come under Russian control. Komarov explained that in occupied territories there was a cyber defense effort underway to ensure that despite not having control of all its network, the operator was not “vulnerable to extra threats.”
“We streamlined the architecture of our core infrastructure to minimise the number of potential vulnerabilities,” he said. In Kherson, for example, Kyivstar had “just a media gateway and RAN network” and this “decreased the risk of penetration,” he said.
Restoring liberated areas
As territories are liberated, Kyivstar works on repairing the destruction to its network. Lutchenko said that about 18% to 20% of the telecom infrastructure in formerly occupied regions is “totally destroyed,” meaning “there is nothing from an equipment or infrastructure point of view.” About 30% to 35% is “heavily damaged” and about 40% has “minor damages.” Kyivstar says it can repair nearly 90% of the network in those areas.
“We’re waiting for our military to liberate more territory and we are ready to restore everything,” said Lutchenko.
Losing more than infrastructure
Kyvistar is worried about losing more county’s critical communications infrastructure: it is also working to keep its 3,800 employees and their families safe. In the initial months of the war, the operator provided instructions for where people could go for safety and converted regional offices into temporary homes with showers and washing machines for displaced families.
Around 140 Kyivstar employees have been drafted into the army and thousands volunteer to help the army in various roles. The operator has lost three of its employees in the war and two are missing.
Kyivstar relies on maintenance and construction suppliers, but their situation is “very much worse” because they cannot protect employees “with the same efficiency as Kyivstar” due to its critical infrastructure status, explained Komarov.
Lutchenko joined Kyivstar in November 2021 and has been in the telecom industry in Ukraine for more than 25 years. “I don’t think anyone can plan for stuff like this. The most important thing is we have the greatest team in the world.”
Asked how the war has affected the operator’s business, Komarov said the operator was “in the green” and there is “extremely high pressure on our networks.”
“But let’s face it, it’s less about business and much more about survival,” he said.
Microsoft, VMware, Intel, AMD and OneWeb are the latest to stop trading with Russia – and some with Belarus too
Last week Google blocked Russians’ access to Google Pay and Apple did likewise with its wallet product and product sales in Russia.
Some have criticised Apple’s move, pointing out it could push people towards using Android phones made in China that are more susceptible to hacking and surveillance.
However, Apple made the moves after a direct appeal to its CEO, Tim Cook, by the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Vice
Now more big tech firms are following their lead.
Microsoft has suspended all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia.
The chips are down
Chip giant Intel said in a statement that it, “condemns the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and we have suspended all shipments to customers in both Russia and Belarus.
“Our thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted by this war, including the people of Ukraine and the surrounding countries and all those around the world with family, friends and loved ones in the region.”
Another chip giant, AMD has also stopped shipments to Russia and Belarus.
VMWare is suspending all its business activities in Russia and Belarus due to the unprovoked attack by Russia. It published a statement that read, “We stand with Ukraine, and we commend the bravery of the Ukrainian people. The human toll is devastating and like other global businesses, we are committed to supporting our Ukrainian team members, customers and partners.”
It added, “We are also seeking to support non-Ukraine-based employees with family members located in Ukraine with information to access available resources. We continue to support our employees in Russia, as they are adversely impacted by the consequences of their government’s actions.
“The suspension of operations includes suspension of all sales, support, and professional services in both countries in line with VMware’s commitment to comply with sanctions and restrictions.”
The board of directors at satellite operator OneWeb has voted to suspend all launches from Baikonur, the Russian cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Social media battles
Meanwhile social media sites are continuing their battle with Russian authorities, which are keen to control the flow of information and the narrative surrounding the war.
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have acted to prevent Russia’s state media making money from ads on their sites. In response, Moscow has said will restrict access to Facebook after its parent company Meta refused to stop fact-checking some Russian media companies’ output.
TikTok has limited access to Russian state-controlled media accounts in the EU and Reddit has stopped users posting links to Russian state-sponsored media.
Philippe Ensarguet’s keynote at Mobile Europe’s recent Telco to techco virtual conference was all about how telcos’ can return to growth in conversation with Annie Turner
Philip Ensarguet is a former winner of Mobile Europe’s CTO of the Year in the Trailblazer category (he then held that role at what is now Orange Business). With “a 100% software background” he is now VP of Software Engineering reporting directly to Orange’s group CTO, Laurent Leboucher. His job is both to be a strategist and an implementer, and his job recently has been “working hard on how to manage and orchestrate the new generation of telco cloud infrastructure, and telecoms shift towards cloud native and becoming a cloud-native telco”.
As a strategic thinker, he contributed to NGNM’s cloud-native manifesto and to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s white paper, which specifies, in great depth, telcos’ requirements to move towards being cloud nativeEnsarguet says that In his regular meetings with analysts and vendors, he finds “they are using one or the other of [those documents] as kind of backbone or map, to explain how they are working to transform themselves to meet those needs”.
He adds, “The relationship with the vendor ecosystem is super interesting because there are a lot of things to support in terms of transformation. The delivery of best practices in software, APIs and automation, for example, is far behind what we had when I was purely [working] in digital. That’s why it’s so exciting.”
The session was designed to probe why so much work has gone into telcos’ transforming themselves and continues, yet it is not reflected in new revenues or share price. So how will network’s ongoing evolution and operational transformation lead to growth? In short by a radical change in how telcos’ infrastructure, implementation and operations…
The following is an edited version of Ensarguet’s answers to the editor’s questions, for brevity and sense.
Ensarguet explains, “To be concrete on this, I want to emphasise that by definition, for instance, a 3GPP functional specification rule how [certain] network services have to work. But all the wrapping and the lifecycle around that is going to change based, for instance, on automated infrastructure, a new generation of deployment strategy, new ways of operation that are opening doors for novel, more optimised operating models.
Ensarguet said he’s not concerned that in the past so much talk was about telcos being behind Big Tech in terms of digitalisation because “it means that we can really learn and grab the best practices that enable or fast track digital and [associated] tools into the telecom ecosystem.”
He believes the big levers regarding growth are: API-isation, automation, the move from a vertical model to a horizontal one and AI – and especially generative AI. The four things are not separate, rather they impact each other. Ensarguet also thinks there are also some topics outside the ‘pure’ telco world that could have a big influence regarding opportunities for growth.
Underlay and overlay
Orange is concentrating on how best to use APIs to leverage the value from the underlay and the overlay networks to differentiate services – a huge benefit of owning the network. He notes there is a big industry focus on CAMARA, the Linux Foundation’s open-source project, including the definition of a new network API that can do two things. Firstly, retrieve information from the network and secondly configure the network.
He acknowledges that with the GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative, the emphasis has largely been on leveraging APIs for mobile connectivity, but says in the context of 5G, both fixed and mobile need to benefit from APIs. Ensarguet comments, “It’s not an option if you want to fully support the promise of what we are calling the programmable network”.
There has been some progress already on the fixed side, he says, such as “the old device policy on-demand or the CPE”. He adds that, “For standardisation, we work to establish end-to-end connectivity, for both. And it’s happening also in the open-source ecosystem. We truly believe that it will definitely help to create the API that has the most impact for the developer communities.”
So there is considerable effort in addressing the APIs in the right order. He says the industry wants to be sure that “We are prioritising the network services that would help B2B or B2B2C company to implement the cases where the API and network could bring a new superpower”.
Orange demo’d three kinds of use cases at Mobile World Congress, with Ensarguet stressing this is just one year after the launch of CAMARA:
• smooth, verified onboarding of users using their digital ID using two APIs from Orange’s production network
• location verification – using face recognition for secure payments between two people and being able to prove that the devices are at the same location. He says, “Here the network is bringing a superpower” combining its less exact location info with their GPS location
• geofencing – ID is used to provide notifications when devices enter a given area.
He says their potential is huge and highlights a Spanish company that is working on preventing gender violence. Ensarguet’s point is that it is not the APIs per se that matter, but the uses to which they are put.
Asked about the progress of network automation, he stresses, “We need to understand that the automation is mainly done with the network function technology we are using. You can automate physical network, you can automate the virtual network you can add to an automated network, but the level of the workload you are manipulating here as absolutely different…and that’s why we engage so much with this cloud-native, horizontal model transformation.”
He adds, “Extended delivery of automation and moving to the autonomous network for us is critical because it’s about saving money on operation and bringing us much more efficient operations. And here of course is where generative AI has a super-disrupting potential.
Industrial model
“We are investing a lot into what we are terming our industrial model to support the transformation from the flows and vertical silos to the horizontal one,” he says. “The idea is to push for an infrastructure, a deployment strategy and operation that’s API-driven and the others things I [am sharing].”
He explains, “We are pushing the level of the intent at a scale, where…our infrastructure is for the cloud native purpose is 100% intent-based and using the GitOps model [so] we are spinning our infrastructure in pure software.”
This approach to achieving a highly strategic foundation for infrastructure rests on the Sylva open-source project whose aim is to “an open Telco Cloud platform of reference” on which automation sits.
Ensarguet adds, “We are adding what we call the network integration factory, that is a total critical assets. The idea is that instead of relying on very specific and proprietary deployment, and lifecycle management tools, we rely on something we build that’s 100% standardised and we leverage the best practices from the digital and the IT world. Today, the network integration factory tooling zone is just a cloud native application we are deploying in our Orange central cloud…[that can]…provide the detailed framework for all the tools for deployment, lifecycle management and continuous testing.
“For us it is critical to be sure that everything has been validated before moving to production or accurate when the deployment is done. Everything about this is moving up to the operation layer and a new way operation that’s much more closer to the digital and IT.”
He continues, “A large part of this automation is thanks to the cloud-native superpower…it’s about the abilities in terms of resilience, of closed loop reconciliation, and risk management. Being able to rely on an orchestrator with such capabilities is a total game changer in the way we can automate and remediate our infrastructure.”
Growth is an ecosystem shift
A great question from the audience was, “How do you maintain the network advantage against competition from systems integrators and hyperscalers while transforming to a telco? Would you go as far as one of your competitors [T-Mobile USA] and [claim to] be an uncarrier?
Ensarguet said the first thing to stress is that integrators and hyperscalers are very important partners as well as competitors. The new, simple API business is leveraging use cases…but you can only have these benefits if you own the network. For me, that is a true differentiator.”
He concludes, “The four components [outlined above] can enable a new business model or new way of building infrastructure or consuming the services. For me [hyperscalers and integrators], are more enablers than real competitors… That’s why the industrial model we are working on right now around the infra layer, implement layer, operation layer is so important. It’s where we want to standardise and apply to mutualisation. It’s what I’m observing with our every telco peer.
“As a final thought, last Monday Orange had a cloud-native workshop where we add up to six or seven telco peers, from Europe and Asia. Basically, they told more or less the same story about the business of transversality is need of regionalisation is needed of some data. And that’s why all the same telcos are working hand-in-hand, supporting the transformation of the ecosystem because here in the new domain for a growth – new ways of implementation.
“We cannot win alone. We need the whole ecosystem. That’s why it’s so important to support the integrators, the vendors, the hardware makers, because we can only win growth for the new generation if the whole ecosystem is shifting.”
Technology, operations and management kept under one umbrella so customers don’t need to worry about platforms, operations, analytics, and reporting
Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier has introduced Magenta Security Roaming which it said offers an ecosystem of secure connectivity for all protocols currently used by its customers: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G non-standalone (NSA) and 5G standalone (SA). For each protocol, corresponding protection layers are in place which work in unison: SS7 Firewall, Diameter Edge Agent (DEA) Firewall, Diameter End-to-End Signalling Security (DESS), phase 1, as well as Security Edge Protection Proxy (SEPP) in several configurations.
The service is available to all the wholesaler’s customers, both its own group national operator companies (NatCos), as well as operators across the globe. The new concept comprehensively addresses operators’ increasing need for low-latency, reliability and security when roaming in today’s interconnected world.
Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier provides all Magenta Security Roaming services with dedicated support and SLAs. The service is designed to help maintain business by increasing the quality of operators’ cyber-defence systems, while reducing cost and complexity, according to the operator. As roaming security will become increasingly heterogenous throughout the world, Magenta Security Roaming offers a way to connect each destination with the top security as required by both operators.
5G SA roaming
For those operators which have already enabled 5G SA roaming, Magenta Security Roaming guarantees that they have options when interconnecting with each other by choosing the security measures they need. Telcos can outsource investment and operation of 5G SA roaming with Magenta Security Roaming’s outsourced SEPP solutions.
They can also opt for hosted SEPP maintenance services, as well as “composite scenarios” that connect individual roaming partners most efficiently. These include Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier’s new Group hosted SEPP for Family & Friends services specifically dedicated to its internal (NatCos) and external operator customers.
Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier claims it is the only carrier to offer DESS, phase 1 for 4G and 5G NSA services, which guarantees end-to-end authentication of signalling messages. “The combination of Diameter Firewall and DESS, phase 1 enables the world’s most secure LTE and 5G NSA exchange between mobile operators,” stated the telco.
“Security in roaming is a major issue in our industry. For the first time, we work with 5G SA as a technology where security is built in, while we still have to protect all the other protocols effectively to ensure roaming security across the board,” said Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier VP voice and mobile solutions Nicholas Nikrouyan.
“Magenta Security Roaming is our answer to this all-or-nothing scenario with highly innovative roaming security services, as well as our world-exclusive offer of DESS, phase 1,” he said. “Our innovative roaming concept allows us to avoid 5G hubbing and move to a world where security is there by design.”
First hosted SEPP 5G SA roaming
Last October, T-Mobile US and Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier completed successful testing of 5G Standalone (5G SA) roaming, utilising the wholesaler’s Security Edge Protection Proxy (SEPP) to complete the world’s first hosted SEPP 5G SA roaming T-Mobile US and Sunrise and a direct SEPP to SEPP interconnect with AIS Thailand.
The program used Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier’s Internet Protocol Exchange (IPX) and Hosted Security Edge Protection Proxy (SEPP) solutions with Sunrise and AIS, successfully completing 5G SA roaming between the US and Switzerland and the US and Thailand.
The telco said 5G SA roaming networks will offer faster speeds, lower latency, and higher capacity compared to non-standalone (NSA) networks. SA roaming is also crucial for supporting massive IoT deployments and critical IoT applications.
The vendor sees sales and RAN market in decline in Q1 but first-quarter operating profit and earnings per share still above market expectations
Ericsson president and CEO Börje Ekholm said customers remained cautious about investing in their networks, after the vendor saw network equipment sales in Q1 2024 were down 19% from a year earlier. Meanwhile CFO Lars Sandstrom suggested Dell’Oro’s forecast that the global RAN market will decline 4% this year was “a bit optimistic as we see it now”.
Ekholm however seemed cautiously optimistic that while the global market isn’t going to take off, the company was seeing signs it will be less bad than 2023. He said if current trends continue, sales should stabilise in the year’s second half, “benefiting from recent contract wins and the normalization of customer inventory levels in North America.” He added that gross margin in the second quarter should be in the 42% to 44% range, bolstered by an improved business mix.
Despite the sales decline, markets reacted positively to Ericsson’s results due to its gross margins excluding restructuring charges improving to 42.7% in the quarter – comfortably ahead of market expectations. Net income improved to SEK 2.6 billion, from SEK 1.6 billion YoY.
Europe’s telco market needs to change
On the company’s earnings call, Ekholm pulled no punches when asked if the business is drifting without a catalyst for increased spending by operators. Firstly, he addressed the investment pause was starting to impact operator network capacity.
“The reality is we see the traffic growth in the networks continues. And you start to see – in many markets, not singling out anyone specifically, but you’re starting to see congested networks, which means that when it’s crowded, you’re in a crowded space,” said Ekholm.
“You may actually get the signal, but you can’t really use it. You have simply no capacity left in the network. We’re starting to see those signs. We start to see signs that sites are congested,” he said.
He then said what we already know – the industry has a problem with return on investments. “I think personally we need to see in-market consolidation actually start to [happen] and start to get approved. When that happens, we will get bigger scale. And it’s interesting, when you look at this from a global perspective, the average European operator is about 4.5 million subscribers,” he said.
“It’s 95 million, I believe, in the US, 300 million in India, 400 million in China,” he said. “So the scale in Europe is simply too small. So, there is consolidation needed. The second part that needs to happen, and that’s what we try to do with the Global Network Platform for network APIs, is actually to change the pricing model in the industry.”
Changing the pricing model
Ekholm said the current monthly subscription pricing model has decoupled from network traffic, network investments and so on, putting a squeeze on the operator profitability. “What we need to see happening to unlock investments is that you’re able to monetise the network features,” he said. “And that – think about it as speed, latency, could be location, could be different quality of service or differentiated experiences.”
“You can offer network slicing, for example,” he said. “We need to define that new type of use cases that unlocks those revenue streams. Otherwise, the customers, our operators, they’re not going to see growing revenues. And if they don’t see growing revenues, they’re not going to invest.”
He added: “That’s the perfect rational decision. So, I think we have that, call it, opportunity or maybe responsibility to create those new type of revenues coming out of leverage in the 5G technology in a better way. That’s why you see our investments on the Enterprise side being so important.”
In Enterprise, sales grew organically overall but declined in Global Communications Platform, impacted by a low-margin customer contract loss in Q4 and Ericsson’s decision to reduce its operations in some countries, with the impact expected to continue throughout the year. The vendor said it will continue to focus on “leveraging the current business to support the build-out of our Global Network Platform for network APIs.”
Outlook for the company
Ericsson said if current trends persist, it expects sales to stabilise during the second half of the year, benefiting from recent contract wins and the normalisation of customer inventory levels in North America.
In the second half, the vendor’s margins should benefit from its improved business mix. Ekholm said the company also remains highly focused on delivering stronger cash flow, based on its operating discipline. “While near-term dynamics are challenging, we remain fully committed to our long-term targets, and we continue to be focused on increasing shareholder value,” he said.
She will take up the role at the start of July, replacing interim CEO Giorgio Migliarina
Vodafone today announced that Marika Auramo will become CEO of Vodafone Business on 1 July and join Vodafone’s executive committee on the same date. She is replacing Giorgio Migliarina who has been acting CEO since the departure of Vinod Kumar last September to join the Everstone Group, “one of Asia’s premier investment groups” as Vice-chair.
Auramo has worked in the global IT industry for more than 25 years, most recently at SAP where she was Chief Business Officer for the EMEA region.
In this role, she was responsible for the go-to-market strategy of SAP’s product portfolio across 89 and managed 14,000 employees. Prior to that, she held a variety of senior roles at SAP since joining in 1999. They include COO EMEA North, Managing Director for the Nordic and Baltic region, Global COO of SAP Database and Data Management in the US, and Interim President of the EMEA region.
Vodafone Business reported service revenue growth of 5% at the Group’s Q3 trading update in February. Apparently, it is “growing across all segments due to strong public sector demand and increasing customer adoption of new digital services, such as Cloud, Security and IoT”.
Spanish newspaper says operator keen to acquire 3.5GHz spectrum which the merged entity must sell as part of the pro-competition remedies imposed on it
Telefónica is said to be negotiations with the newly merged operator MásOrange to acquire spectrum assets it must sell to comply with the terms on which the European Commission granted it permission to merge.
Unnamed sources are cited by the Spanish business newspaper Expansión saying that negotiations are on-going. Telefónica’s 5G coverage (under its Movistar brand) covers about 85% of Spain and the additional spectrum would boost its already strong position.
However, since the merger, Movistar has the second-largest customer base of 20.1 million (at 31 December 2023) as Orange and MÁSMOVIL’s combined total is 30 million.
Remedies and regulation
The European Commission approved the merger in February but imposed remedies to foster competition The merged entity exceeds Spain’s regulation that a single carrier cannot hold more than 140MHz holding of 3.5GHz hence post-merger, it must divest itself of the excess.
In a complex agreement, MVNO Digi Spain, acquired 20MHz. The MVNO is owned by Romania’s Digi Group and has ambitious plans to expand in Spain and become the fourth operator.
Once the dust is settled on the Digi deal, 30MHz MásOrange must still divest itself of 30MHz in the 3.5GHz band.
On the fixed front
At the end of last week, Expansión also reported that MásOrange is in negotiations with Telefónica about a fixed access deal. Apparently the two pair hope to strike a deal that would allow each to offer fixed broadband services using the other’s infrastructure.
The sale of a stake in Sparkle to private funds is still in negotiation
Sparkle’s shareholders met to approve the 2023 financial statements and to renew the Board of Directors. It appointed Alessandro Pansa as Chair and confirmed Enrico Maria Bagnasco (pictured) as CEO.
He has held the post since November 2022, having previously been CTO at Sparkle since 2019. Overall, Bagnasco has worked within the TIM group for almost 30 years.
The new board comprises seven members with a 40% female representation and met for the first time after the Shareholders’ meeting.
Sparkle is TIM Group’s global operator arm which offers infrastructure and global connectivity services. They include capacity, IP, SD-WAN, colocation, IoT connectivity, roaming and voice. Sparkle’s customers range from to national and international carriers, to ‘over the top’ service providers, ISPs, media and content providers, and multinational enterprises
Sparkle owns and manages a network of more than 600,000 km of undersea fibre linking Europe to Africa and the Middle East, the Americas and Asia. Its sales force is active worldwide and distributed across 33 countries.
The sale of a stake in Sparkle to private funds has been under negotiation for months. TIM is in the throes of separating its domestic infrastructure business into a NetCo, a complex process and transaction, largely driven by American asset fund KKR.
Trial was conducted over 1648km existing fibre link connecting research facilities at Nikhef, CERN, and SURF
Nokia and the collaborative organisation for IT in Dutch education and research SURF have successfully reached a single carrier 800Gbps optical transmission over SURF’s existing cross border, multi-vendor research and education network infrastructure. The transmission, based on Nokia’s photonic service engine technology, will help accelerate the massive data exchange between the CERN particle accelerator – the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – and the NL Tier-1 (NL T1) research IT facilities at SURF and Nikhef, the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics.
The upgrade has become necessary because according to CERN, the four main LHC experiments have so far produced more than 1,000 petabytes of data and this data is accessed and analysed by thousands of scientists and ICT companies around the world, who are studying disciplines such as high-energy physics, radio astronomy, meteorology and biomedicine.
By reaching 800Gbps per channel on older fibre varieties, Nokia and SURF prove that existing infrastructure still has tremendous potential, and that legacy optical fibres can be used to meet future capacity demands of the huge data streams generated by international scientific research instruments.
The trial was conducted over a 1648 km point-to-point fibre link connecting Amsterdam and Geneva, crossing Belgium and France. The fibre link is part of the SURF-network, which connects national research and education institutes in the Netherlands, such as Nikhef. Additionally, the SURF-network is also well connected to other research networks and experiments worldwide, including the LHC Optical Private Network (LHCOPN). The LHCOPN provides access to data at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
For this trial, CERN, Nikhef, SURF and the ATLAS LHC experiment have collaborated to include real production workflows that are expected when the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) is operational.
More data, deeper insights
SURF is preparing its network for CERN’s LHC upgrade to the HL-LHC that will become operational in 2029. The discovery of the Higgs boson by the LHC has already revolutionized the world’s understanding of the universe. Expectations are that the future HL-LHC will reveal even deeper insights into the fundamental building blocks of the cosmos.
This upgrade will not only provide more insightful research results and improve the potential for groundbreaking discoveries, but it will also produce enormous amounts of scientific data. The HL-LHC is expected to generate data at a rate of five times the speed of its predecessor. Therefore, it depends on advances in SURF’s high-performance network, as demonstrated in this trial, to enable fast and reliable data transfer to the NL T1 for further scientific exploration.
“This trial is an important milestone for us as we prepare our network for the future demands of scientific research and education, including the upgrade of CERN’s particle accelerator. By emphasizing testing and the adoption of advanced technology, SURF ensures optimal service and support for its research partners’ innovative, data-heavy projects and applications,” said SURF board member and chief innovation officer Ron Augustus.
“We are committed to helping SURF prepare its network for the upgrade of CERN’s particle accelerator, and look forward to working with other research and education networks around the world to advance their missions and enable cutting-edge discoveries,” said Nokia VP and GM optical networks James Watt.
Nikhef IT-Architect Tristan Suerink added: “The 800Gbps technology demonstrated together with SURF and Nokia, shows us that getting the data from the HL-LHC at CERN to Amsterdam will be very feasible. Nikhef is working hard to design and build the detectors that will be part of the HL-LHC and therefore it’s crucial to be able to transfer the massive amounts of data that will be generated by the experiments.”
Kit used by Nokia
Nokia’s sixth-generation super-coherent Photonic Service Engine (PSE-6s) was deployed on the Amsterdam-Geneva link, in combination with SURF’s line system with equipment from a third-party on an older fibre link. It showed that the partners were able to achieve 800Gbps transmission using 16QAM-shaped PCS modulation.
The trial needed to cross four countries – from CERN in Switzerland, through France and Belgium – to reach the data hub in Amsterdam. Never before had these large data volumes been tested over such a large physical distance using outdated fibres. The trial also needed to take into account that the line systems and transponders used by SURF came from two different suppliers.
To cope, the existing data stream was transferred to an upgraded connection where the data points were equipped with the latest Nokia transponders, high-speed network equipment and servers. New amplifiers from supplier Ribbon were also installed on the fibre to facilitate the test.
Middle Eastern traffic routes and internet exchange points continue to proliferate, threatening Egypt’s dominance
Oman telco Awasr has joined forces with regional digital infrastructure services company Alliance Networks, Amsterdam internet exchange AMS-IX to launch the Oman-IX internet exchange point at Equinix’s neutral carrier data centre, in MC1 in Muscat. The partners said they had been working on getting operational for at least a year – they went public with their collaboration in September last year.
The move is part of the overall acceleration of fibre cable connectivity being built or proposed as operators seek potential alternatives to passing through Egypt which has traditionally been an expensive route.
Egypt has dominated Asia-Europe traffic with an estimated 17 to 30 per cent of all global internet connectivity running through the Red Sea and across Egypt. Egypt Telecom to its credit is already building out more cables and internet exchanges but new terrestrial cables are also being planned through Saudi Arabia which inevitably make Oman’s role pivotal in how things shape up from here. For example, already, SubCo’s 9800km, 48Tbps Oman Australia Cable is underway and Equinix is handling the cable landing station in Muscat.
Oman incumbent Omantel offers connectivity to more than 20 subsea cable systems and operates five separate landing stations in Oman.
Big IX plans
The companies said the launch of Oman-IX aims to revolutionize digital infrastructure services in the region by establishing a neutral internet exchange and connecting leading telecom industry networks providers, hyperscalers, data centres and cloud services across the Middle East and beyond. Awasr, Alliance Networks, and AMS-IX will collaborate to build digital ecosystem and infrastructure services, leveraging Alliance’s and Awasr’s expertise in the region.
“We are delighted to officially launch Oman-IX in collaboration with Alliance Networks and AMS-IX,” said Awasr chief commercial officer Eugen Comendant. “We are confident that we will open new horizons for Oman in the field of digital data, enabling efficient internet traffic exchange and enhancing digital innovation across sectors towards enriching the customer experience.”
“The collaboration between AWASR, Alliance Networks, and AMS-IX strengthens Oman’s digital landscape and accelerates the Sultanate’s interconnectivity to global networks through public peering, Oman-IX will serve as a vital hub for digital services, internet and data exchange, providing an enhanced user experience and promoting digital innovation,” said AMS-IX CEO Peter van Burgel (pictured, top).
Alliance Networks CEO Adel Al Daylami added that the partnership with Awasr will contribute to enrich connectivity and facilitate seamless data exchange across borders.
Regional aspirations
Oman is not the first Middle Eastern foray for AMS-IX. Last month, Batelco renewed its partnership with AMS-IX to enhance MN-IX services in Bahrain, with the aim of further improving the Internet experience for users across the MENA region and beyond.
Last October, AMS-IX signed a partnership agreement with datacentre specialist Wingu to launch a new Internet Exchange in Djibouti. That exchange is called AMS-IX Djibouti and will launch with the 20+ connected networks of Djix, Wingu’s existing IX in Djibouti, which will be consolidated in the new platform.
Last week, on the other side of the Mediterranean, AMS-IX signed a reseller agreement with telco and DC operator Lancom in Greece. Lancom’s customers now have access to the AMS-IX network from their proprietary data centres, including Balkan Gate Thessaloniki and the upcoming Balkan Gate in Heraklion, Crete. Additionally, Lancom’s PoPs in third-party data centres throughout Greece are interconnected with AMS-IX.
The partnership extends to central Europe, with connectivity points in Telepoint Sofia, Equinix FR5 Frankfurt, MIX Milan, and Cineca Caesar Rome. This expanded reach offers Lancom customers enhanced network connectivity and access to global internet traffic. Interconnection to AMS-IX is powered by multi 100-Gigabit DWDM.
Operator says it identified AI and ML operational use cases that will reduce Network Operation Centres’ alarms by 70%
Orange announced it is adding the Augtera Network AI platform to its Network Operation Centre (NOC) tools to apply AI and ML to daily network operations. Augtera specialises in AI and ML-powered network operations platforms,
They expect this move to reduce the number of alarms in the NOC have to addressed by 70% daily due to Augtera’s auto-correlation based on its knowledge of network topology.
Augtera’s Anomaly Detection should also help avoid network failures as it can predict incidents so they can be addressed before impacting customers.
Completed by end 2024
This integration in Orange Global Network will start this month and completed by the end of this year. Orange Global Networks a worldwide IP network service that serves wholesale and B2B customers. It comprises thousands of IP routers in 800 Points of Presence across 100 countries.
Incorporating the Augtera tech into the networks follows a two-year production trial of Augtera in multiple Orange networks including the French backbone, Orange Global Network and SD-WAN Network.
The trial involved thousands of backbone and provider edge routers and thousands of pieces of customer-premises equipment for SD-WAN. It evaluated Augtera Network AI technical capabilities along with quantifying the business value of AI and ML in multiple use cases.
70% reduction
The 70% reduction in alarms by Augtera would allow Orange’s operations staff to focus on “true incidents and improve their proactivity, identifying network incidents before they are noticed by its customers, for improved customer experience,” according to the press statement.
Augtera is directly integrated with Orange International Networks in Orange Private Cloud to capture network topology and various network related data. The Augtera Network AI platform on-premises builds ML models using data from Orange via unsupervised and online learning.
The models include for anomaly detection on metrics, logs and models for auto-correlation built using auto-discovered network topology.
Tech cap and business outcomes
Jean-Louis Le Roux, Executive Vice President International Networks at Orange, commented, “Over the past two years we have been evaluating Augtera AI in various production environments to assess both the technical capabilities and business outcomes. Through a systematic evaluation of multiple use cases, we have identified two initial ones that produced excellent results during the trial.
“We are pleased to be moving forward to integrate Augtera with our existing NOC tools to bring transformative efficiency and predictability to our operations. This aligns with our ongoing commitment to pioneering the adoption of AI/ML and innovating to provide the best-in-class experience to our customers.”
Rahul Aggarwal, Founder & CEO at Augtera Networks, said, “Orange has been a visionary in the adoption of AI/ML for network operations and was among the pioneers to trial Augtera.
“We are delighted to integrate our Network AI platform as part of Orange’s NOC tools following the excellent results from the production trial. This not only underscores the industry-leading AI algorithms, scale, and maturity of our platform but also highlights AI’s capability to deliver transformative business results for network operators.”
Enter the Industrial Metaverse and Discover New Opportunities for 5G Monetization
With the arrival of 5G, telcos focused primarily on winning over the consumer market. Now they are seeking new use cases to monetize 5G, and the industrial metaverse offers great opportunities to do this. Harnessing AI/ML, the IoT, 5G MEC and URLLC, it offers new routes to human-machine cooperation, while promising to raise productivity in manufacturing.
However, unlike the relatively captive consumer sector, the manufacturing industry needs to be convinced that 5G and smart factories are more than about connectivity. Thus, telcos need to build and demonstrate persuasive use cases that prove the inherent business value and benefits of the industrial metaverse. Such use cases can pave the way for partnerships that benefit both sides – helping the telecommunications monetize the 5G networks and gain a return on their substantial investments in this area, while making manufacturing smarter, more efficient and more productive.
The capabilities and the technologies are already there to achieve all these goals and more, and will ultimately also open the door to innovative interaction between machines and humans, impossible until now.
The latest episode of Comarch’s 2023 telco excellence campaign is your guide to all of this and beyond. It consists of a short video introducing the industrial metaverse, and a free white paper that digs deeper into the concepts, technologies, challenges and opportunities behind it. With this expertise to hand, the door to the industrial metaverse will be wide open to you.
