Vodafone and WWF partner for phone recycling drive


News

The pair’s “one million phones for the planet” initiative is designed to encourage customers to trade in their old devices and support the circular economy

This week, Vodafone has announced a new partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), initiating a new campaign to encourage smartphone reuse and recycling.

As part of the new three-year “one million phones for the planet” project, Vodafone will launch various strategic initiatives in its European and African markets to promote more sustainable choices by customers, as well as leverage mobile technology to tackle conservation and sustainability challenges.

The largest part of partnership, however, revolves around extending the lifecycle of customer smartphones.

Vodafone says it will offer competitive prices for customers to trade in old handsets, which will be refurbished and resold where possible.

According to Vodafone, purchasing a refurbished smartphone saves roughly 50kg of CO2e (Carbon Dioxide Equivalent) and reduces its environmental impact by 87% compared to a newly manufactured device.

Beyond reuse and refurbish approaches, Vodafone is also rolling out a suite of phone repair services, hoping to extend the lifespan of existing devices.

Phones that cannot be resold will be recycled or repurposed for social or charitable causes.

From today, for each phone traded in to Vodafone during the three-year programme, the operator will donate £1 to WWF conservation projects.

“Every one of us has a role to play in helping to bring our world back to life, and the technology we use every day can play a major role in tackling the climate and nature emergency,” said Tanya Steele, Chief Executive of WWF-UK. “Through our partnership with Vodafone, we will be exploring how everyone can reduce their environmental footprint using digital technologies and services, while also using mobile technology to drive forward key WWF conservation projects around the world. We look forward to working together on our shared vision for the planet.”

The new project will run alongside similar device campaigns Vodafone already has underway in Germany and the UK.

Are operators doing enough in the battle to combat climate change? Join the operators in discussion at the upcoming Connected North conference in Manchester

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22
Nov, 2022

DigitalBridge takes stake in Malaysian data centre operator

Global digital infrastructure firm DigitalBridge Group has announced the acquisition of an ownership stake in AIMS Group from Malaysian telecoms firm TIME dotcom and the formation of an edge data centre platform focused on the high-growth markets of the Southeast Asia region.

AIMS is a leading operator of highly connected ecosystem-centric data centres based in Malaysia. Its Kuala Lumpur flagship Menara AIMS facility anchors the Malaysia Internet Exchange.

AIMS’ facilities provide highly inter-connected environments to a diverse customer base, comprising domestic and international telecommunications carriers, major enterprises, hyperscalers and content distribution networks. AIMS also operates a state-of-the-art purpose-built data centre campus in Cyberjaya and a new facility in downtown Bangkok.

The stake has been sold for about 2 billion ringgit (US$436.7 million). Proceeds from the stake sales will be partly used by TIME to pay a special dividend of up to 1 billion ringgit to its shareholders. The balance will be reinvested into TIME. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close in 2023.

Reuters points out that the deal, announced at a time of political upheaval in Malaysia, underscores booming demand for infrastructure assets such as data centres in Southeast Asia as investors are lured by their stable, long-term returns.

Describing TIME as having a long heritage of building connectivity-linked businesses across Southeast Asia, Justin Chang, Managing Director and Head of Asia for DigitalBridge, has been quoted as saying: “AIMS is a leading operator in the region poised for significant growth, with a strong management team, a robust development pipeline and considerable expansion capacity.”

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22
Nov, 2022

AIS: Adopting Cognitive Tech-Co Strategy to Accelerate Digital Transformation of Thai Businesses


VIEWPOINT

Globally, enterprises are managing businesses in a highly challenging world with increased volatility, uncertainty and complexity. As a result, enterprises need to leverage the latest technologies to enhance their capabilities to address the new-age market challenges.

In this regard, 5G, with its ability to provide ultra-high-speed and extremely low latency, is helping businesses unlock new capabilities to maximize the available market opportunities. However, since 5G is different from previous communications standards and enables several new and innovative use cases it demands, the service providers must transform their own operations and processes to be able to provide relevant 5G-powered use cases to enterprises.

This is all the more crucial as 5G allows telcos to offer new use cases to enterprises, thus opening new revenue streams for them. The 5G enterprise market size was valued at $1,682 million in 2020 and is projected to reach $16,846 Million by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 33.9% from 2021 to 2028, according to Valuates Research.

Transforming from CSP into a Cognitive Tech-co 

Thailand’s AIS, the country’s leading digital service provider, is moving away from being a traditional Communications Service Provider (CSP) and transforming itself into a Cognitive Tech-Co, so it is able to leverage technologies like data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide improved and truly differentiated service and solutions to its enterprise customers.

“This will help us to drive towards the mission that we want to achieve in terms of the way how we can accelerate the digital transformation for Thailand businesses,” says Tanapong Ittisakulchai, Chief Enterprise Business Officer at AIS, who recently attended The 2nd Business Executives Roundtable at the 13th Global Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF), and also joined Win Win Live in Bangkok for a dialogue on Thailand’s digital transformation.

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AIS is Thailand’s biggest service provider and was the first operator to launch 5G in 2020. Now it boasts of around 45 million subscribers, more than 70% of which are active data users. AIS’ 5G covers more than 80% of the country’s population.

AIS believes that 5G also allows it to contribute to the Government’s Thailand 4.0 vision, which was launched recently. The Thailand 4.0 policy is designed to promote and support innovation, creativity, research and development, higher technologies and green technologies.

“As a trusted, smart digital partner, serving Thai organizations to accelerate their digital transformation with a comprehensive suite of digital technology and delivering services with trusted professionals,” says Tanapong Ittisakulchai. The service provider is aiding the digital transformation of Thai enterprises in different verticals like manufacturing, healthcare and energy.

“Our key strategy is to focus on investment, you know, in the intelligence networks, building 5G ecosystem partners with the cloud convergence and AI. You know, we can provide a better data-driven business solution for the customers and more importantly, we partner and build a platform to focus on the vertical industries as well,” explains Tanapong Ittisakulchai.

In this context, the importance of collaboration in building an ecosystem can hardly be exaggerated. However, service providers typically work in silos. As a result, their processes are traditionally not designed to collaborate with other players. To address this problem, AIS is building a “partnership framework that integrates the technology side with the customers, which is more of a vertical solution requirement and then co-creates a sustainable business model.”

Further, AIS is also enabling the digital transformation experience of its enterprise customers by leveraging its own experience. It provides AIS with a unique perspective on the problems enterprises face in digitally transforming their operations.

“At the same time, we learn from the customers as well as about their vertical industries, their requirements, and their challenges, and co-create the solution which is more sustained and builds the proper sustainable solution for the future,” says Tanapong Ittisakulchai. This way, AIS is better able to address the changing requirement of enterprises.

AIS is at the forefront of transforming its operations and has set an example for other service providers to reimagine their processes to better serve the changing needs of the enterprise segment.

21
Nov, 2022

Amazon develops, buys sustainable energy in Indonesia

Amazon penned an agreement to develop four solar panel projects in Indonesia with state-owned energy company Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN, AKA Pesero), from which it will acquire 210 megawatts of renewable energy capacity. 

Data and Storage ASEAN reported the new renewable energy projects are located in Bali and Java on the Java-Madura-Bali grid.

“The Indonesian government is committed to reducing greenhouse emissions to achieve net zero goals by 2060,” said Darmawan Prasodjo, president director of PLN (Persero).

“PLN is fully committed to supporting the government’s program to enable clean energy and is accelerating this with a clear roadmap to achieve that mission. This collaboration between the private and public sectors is a key strategy to ensuring a future of clean and affordable energy.”
 
“PLN will build four new utility-scale power generation projects included in the 2021 – 2030 Electricity Supply Business Plan (RUPTL), which is the greenest RUPTL we have had in national history with the addition of 20.9 gigawatts of renewable energy power plants. With this agreement we are supporting Amazon on its path to 100% renewable energy, and hope this initiative will inspire future collaborations with other aspiring environmentally-conscious multinational corporations,” Darmawan added.

“We are delighted to announce our first renewable energy projects in Indonesia in collaboration with PLN, putting Amazon on a path towards 100% renewable energy,” said Amazon Web Services managing director of data centre planning and Delivery for Asia-Pacific, Japan and China, Carly Wishart.

“PLN and Amazon teams have worked together to unlock a new way for corporates to procure renewable energy in the country. Our renewable energy projects will supply energy for Amazon’s operations in Indonesia and help advance Amazon’s goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions across its business by 2040. We look forward to this continued collaboration with PLN to enable more renewable energy projects in Indonesia.”  

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Putting the art into AI


STARTUP STORIES

Essen based startup, Your Easy AI, thinks it has a solution to the skills shortages preventing so many from capitalising on artificial intelligence with software enabling development of artificial intelligence within minutes, without programming or AI knowledge. Their Startup Story is the latest in our regular series.

Tell us about your start up
The lack of artificial intelligence experts prevents many companies from realizing the potential of their data. Our software enables companies to create AI without these experts. With Your Easy AI, decision-makers can create AI that solves their business questions without prior programming or AI knowledge.

Our customers are businesses, that do not have their own (or a small) data science department and most are currently located in the DACH-Region.

What is your USP?
Existing software solutions can either only be operated by a data scientist or are so complex that normal employees cannot use them to analyse data. With our software, we empower employees to solve business questions independently.

What is your relationship with the telecom sector?
The telecom sector is a very important component of the growing AI and Auto-Machine Learning market. A partnership provides the necessary infrastructure to deploy our software, as well as ensure interoperability across platforms by utilizing cloud-based computing.

How have you got to your current stage of development?
Jan and Patrick started to work on the prototype in 2020 already. After successful prototyping throughout 2021, the company was officially founded in April of 2022. We are proud to have received support from the startup-incubators startport, and BRYCK. A few months after founding, we finalized our first pilot projects and received our first revenue. We were able to win the Unicorn-Pitch, the SlushD Cash Award, as well as the RuhrPitch. We are also very happy to have recently been accepted by the AI-Founders program!

Why did you establish the business?
The founders, Patrick and Jan, have known each other since their days in the same chess club. During Patrick’s time teaching non-parametric statistics, he realized, that the lack of data scientists is one of the biggest hurdles for companies in adopting AI for process optimization. In 2020 he paired up with Jan, who received awards for programming artificial intelligence and both started to work on a prototype that drastically simplifies the analysis process.

Who inspired you?
Wolfgang Grupp (German entrepreneur)

What does the future hold for your business?
We are planning to reach profitability in Q1 of 2023 and start to scale up after that. Future technological developments include a project to teach an AI how to program another AI.

COMPANY CV
HQ: Essen, Germany
Employees: 6
Last Funding: Private Loan, Still bootstrapping
URL: https://youreasyai.de/
Founders
Patrick Imcke, CEO & Founder
Jan Dette, CTO & Founder

Come and meet Your Easy AI at Connected Germany, 6 – 7 December 2022 – Mainz Congress, Germany

UK broadband networks may be wrongly valued by up to 20%


PRESS RELEASE

UK broadband providers may be inaccurately valuing their businesses by up to 20 percent because they don’t have the right oversight of their networks, leaders of the UK’s alt net sector have been told today.

The industry’s typical approach to the designing, building and operating of a fibre network can result in poorer quality of data being gathered, this is because of the multiple systems that are used across the network lifecycle. The lack of an integrated network information system can also cause delays to build and, ultimately, lost revenue.

“The traditional approach to the lifecycle management of a network is silo based. This means different people, sometimes from different companies, are using different systems throughout the lifecycle. This process is error prone, lacks efficiency, and lowers the quality of the data for every step”, said Digpro’s Joel Pirard at the annual INCA Conference in Liverpool.

Inefficient data collection can cause inaccurate network potential valuations and estimates of how much capital needs to be invested into the network. According to Mr Pirard, this can lead to value under or over estimations of up to 20 percent. Inaccurate valuations can also cause problems like under or overvalued bids for networks.

“To avoid this, companies should embrace a Digital Twin for their network”, said Mr Pirard. “A Digital Twin creates a simulated replica of the network and can provide much of the information that investors, for example, would want to know.”

The Digital Twin clearly provides the data for a network owner to explain what they have invested in. Additionally, an investor might want to know where the network is, how it is connected, who the end-customer is, and the committed uptime. A Digital Twin will provide that information in a structured way.

The network model is continuously refined by all parts of the business as it is being built and updated. It is also used to expand and improve the network. All of this matters when looking at the value of the network. This is also of great importance when analysing how much it will cost to expand the network versus the revenue it will bring in.

“The network model, and the Digital Twin created from it, is the heart of the fibre network business. It is incredibly useful for all sizes of suppliers, from the largest national companies to the smaller more local businesses, as well as regional alt nets. With the Digital Twin, UK broadband providers will not only be able to estimate what the network is worth today, but also how much it will be worth in the future”, said Mr Pirard.

18
Nov, 2022

Celcom-Digi merger gets the all-clear as Axiata and Digi boards approve

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