Two new data centers in the southwestern US, and two expansions in eastern Europe. … [visit site to read more]

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Two of the nine core values at Bicom Systems are courage and caring. When it was time to determine a charity to donate to this year, there was no denying that Make-A-Wish was the perfect option. In fact, the Make-A-Wish New Brunswick headquarters is upstairs in the same building as our Canadian office!

Make-A-Wish fulfills life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses in every community in Canada and more than 50 countries worldwide. Children’s wishes range from a bedroom makeover to a trip to Disneyworld.

“Wishes have proven physical and emotional benefits that can give children with critical illnesses a higher chance of survival. When a wish is granted, a child replaces fear with confidence, sadness with joy, and anxiety with hope.” – Make a Wish. 

Over the past few months, the Bicom Systems Canada team has been fundraising to raise money for a child’s wish in Saint John, NB. Here is how it turned out! 

Spare Change Campaign

Our first initiative was our spare change campaign. We set out a jar in the office kitchen and encouraged our employees to add their spare change to it. Although it was a small action, quarters and dimes really add up. 

Bottle Drive

As the days began to get longer and the temperature warmer, that only meant one thing. Cold cans and bottles were being opened! In New Brunswick, the public can redeem their deposit-bearing beverage containers at registered depots and receive money in return. 

The task was simple. On Thursday, July 7th, we asked our employees to bring their containers to the office. Volunteers filled the beds of their pickup trucks and headed to the redemption depot! And just like that, we added $116 to our donation.

The Match

By now, we had close to $500 for Make-A-Wish, and our efforts were not going unnoticed. Bicom Systems announced they would match our donations up to $1,000! The team had until the last week of August to reach this goal and started brainstorming ideas for a final push. 

Once Upon a Time…and a BOOM! POW!

Our final fundraising event for Make-A-Wish was called ‘Once Upon a Time… and a BOOM! POW!’ On August 19th, we invited tiny Bicomers, friends, and family to a meet-and-greet session. Children had the opportunity to meet their favorite Ardenelle Princess sisters and America’s favorite Captain.

The sessions were $25 and included: 

• 15 Minutes with Two Princesses and a Superhero 
• 5-6 Professional Photos 
• A Swag Bag

And guess what? We raised enough money to meet our goal! With all the fundraising efforts and generous matching contributions from Bicom Systems, our team donated $2,050 to Make-A-Wish!

Thank you to each #Bicomer in the Saint John office. Thank you to the company. And most importantly, thank you to those who attended our event. We are thrilled to know this donation is going towards granting a wish for a child in the Saint John area.

We are looking forward to future fundraising endeavors. Follow Along! Facebook – Bicom Systems Saint John 

Lumen will have a new CEO in place when election day rolls around 8 weeks from now. Current CEO Jeff Storey will be retiring, and the company is bringing in some outside talent to take his place. Kate Johnson has been named as Storey’s successor, and will take over on November 7 of this year. … [visit site to read more]

Africa Data Centres is back in the news again. This time the company that describes itself as the largest network of interconnected, carrier and cloud-neutral data centre facilities in Africa has joined forces with Nigeria’s principle internet exchange point, IXPN.

The collaboration with IXPN facilitates reliable, secure, connected colocation and cloud migrations for local customers, say the partners.

Dr Angus Hay, Africa Data Centres Group Executive: IT & Partnerships, explains: « The partnership will enable Nigerian entities to migrate their systems into a world-class data centre with total confidence, knowing they will have access to a highly available, secure and connected ecosystem of strategic partners. »

Effective cloud services cannot be implemented without stable internet access and robust, reliable data centres. This is the essence of the partnership between Africa Data Centres and IXPN – they bring internet peering to the table, and the data centre provider delivers the local ecosystem for customers.

IXPN, Nigeria’s leading internet exchange provider, allows local content and service providers to connect directly for the exchange of local internet traffic rather than having their data travel long distances. IXPN is increasing the speed with which end users can access online resources by bringing the content closer to the customer, resulting in significant improvements in business efficiency.

IXPN Chief Executive Officer Muhammed Rudman says: « We are excited to partner with Africa Data Centres towards providing an additional point of presence to our members within the new Eko Atlantic City. Our partnership with Africa Data Centres provides our members with access to more peering facilities, particularly in Lagos, which will significantly improve connection performance, lower bandwidth costs, and lower latency for Nigerian internet traffic. »

The invasion of Ukraine will forever go down as one of the most infamous moments of this era. It is a conflict that caught the world off guard as all nations began recovering from the pandemic.

The invasion has had ramifications in the telecoms sector as the industry’s two largest vendors Ericsson and Nokia announced plans to pull their operations from Russia and cease supply to operators in the country.

In separate recent updates, Ericsson announced that it had “indefinitely suspended” its business in Russia in April. It noted Russia and Ukraine combined accounted for less than 2% of annual turnover. Around 400 staff will be departing between September and the end of this year.

Nokia said in its statement: “The vast majority of our employees in Russia will have moved on from Nokia, and we have vacated all of our offices. We will retain a formal presence in the country until the legal closure is completed.”

According to analyst firm Dell’Oro Group, Russia makes up between 1.5% to 2% of the global RAN market, and around 10% to 15% in Europe. The analyst company estimates Ericsson and Nokia hold between 20% to 30% each of the Russian RAN market but noted to Developing Telecoms an exact picture of the landscape isn’t clear.

According to Counterpoint Research, the operators that are most reliant on Ericsson and Nokia are MTS, Tele2, Veon and MegaFon. All will have to turn to Chinese vendors and domestic outfit Rostec.

Geopolitical situations affecting telecoms are nothing new, especially not since Huawei and other Chinese technology companies faced bans from western governments, citing security concerns. However, the situation in Russia leaves an opportunity for the likes of Huawei and ZTE, to fill in the vacuum left by the Nordic technology giants.

Filling the gaps

Strand Consult CEO John Strand believes Huawei and ZTE will scoop up market share, as their compatriots have in other sectors in the Russian market.

“Chinese companies have stayed in Russia and are often filling gaps left by Western businesses. On the IT side HP and Dell pulled out but Lenovo and other Chinese vendors are still there. This means that Russia will probably be mainly Chinese vendors moving forward,” said Strand.

Counterpoint Research associate research director Gareth Owen pointed out that neither Ericsson nor Nokia are market leaders in the Russian RAN market, which is worth around US$1 billion annually.

“Huawei and ZTE are the major suppliers right now with Ericsson and Nokia responsible for around 35-40% of the market. I don’t think it is a big hit for Ericsson or Nokia, as neither of which are dominant suppliers », noted Owen. « Despite the Russian market being smaller compared to its global counterparts it presents many opportunities for Chinese companies. It is an opportunity not only for RAN equipment but also for other 5G infrastructure such as transport networks, 5G cores, cloud, etc. and also for handsets as well. Sales of Huawei handsets have surged in the past few months as have those of other Chinese handset vendors Oppo and Vivo, but Chinese vendors have to work out how to supply Russia without falling foul of US sanctions and that may be difficult for quite a while.”

Owen pointed out how ZTE almost went bankrupt after the US government ruled the firm had been illegally supplying equipment to Iran, then banning US companies from selling vital components to ZTE. Huawei and ZTE are both still reliant on US semiconductors made by TSMC, Intel and Samsung, noted Owen. With less choice of vendors, operators could potentially see higher prices for infrastructure gears to carry out coverage expansion and 5G deployment.

Owen said: “I think this will hit the Russian telecoms market quite hard, delaying the mainstream launch of 5G. If things stay as they are, it will take them quite a while to overcome this and develop alternative solutions. They might also have problems expanding and maintaining their 4G networks. The problem is that this is not just about Ericsson and Nokia, it also impacts Chinese vendors as well, who risk falling foul of US sanctions.”

Strand however disagreed, believing Russian operators such as Beeline, MegaFon, MTS and Rostelecom will not be missing out on much as 5G does not have a lot on offer in its current release state, hence customers will not be left behind.

“This will not be a society game changer for Russia. Yes, 5G is rolling out big time across Europe and US. But the 5G that was just released in release 15 and in release 16, basically has less functionality than the latest versions of 4G,” said Strand.

“4G right now is more advanced than the 5G solutions we see right now. For 5G to surpass 4G capabilities we had to go up to releases 17, 18, and 19. Right now 5G is just a cheaper and faster way to deploy more network capacity.”

A long-running dispute over unused spectrum in and around the 3500MHz band in Costa Rica appears to be at an end after an agreement this week between the government and the state utility that owned the spectrum.

The widely reported agreement, between Costa Rican president Rodrigo Chaves Robles and Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (Grupo ICE), the Costa Rican government-run electricity and telecommunications services provider, will see frequencies in the 3400MHz-3500MHz and 3600MHz-3625MHz bands returned to the state.

News website BNamericas says the aim is now for the frequencies to be put out to tender so that private operators can deploy 5G services in the country. Indeed, a tender for 5G frequencies is expected within 18 months.

In addition to 125GHz in the 3.5GHz band, Costa Rica has available frequencies in the 700MHz band and other portions in higher bands that could also be included in the bidding process.

As we reported at the time, in May this year the president decreed that ICE had to hand over 5G spectrum that the Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications (MICITT) had awarded to its subsidiary Radiografica Costarricense SA within six months. This week’s agreement comes two months before the deadline.

MICITT has apparently confirmed that efforts will continue to recover unused or underused  spectrum in other frequency bands.

This is an important point. While the returned spectrum is undoubtedly suitable for some 5G uses, its seems that ICE still has the whole of the 2600MHz band to itself. This, some analysts suggest, is unlikely to make 5G spectrum bidding look quite so attractive for operators Claro and Liberty Latin America, let alone attract new entrants.

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