Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
Subscribe to our FREE weekly email newsletters for the latest telecom info in developing and emerging markets globally.
Unite Private Networks has a new metro market in mind, and it’s not within their usual midwestern and southwestern territory. Yesterday they announced an expansion of their footprint into Augusta GA. … [visit site to read more]
Operator Ooredoo Qatar and Reailize, a company that says it injects automation intelligence into every aspect of telco operations, have announced that Ooredoo Qatar has implemented Reailize’s Continuous Assurance (CA) solution to digitize its network operations centre (NOC) and provide what is described as a single pane of glass into the health of its network, service and customer experience.
To ensure a seamless customer experience, Ooredoo Qatar recently partnered with Reailize to transform its network operations using the CA Solution. This was put to the test at the World Cup when Ooredoo Qatar experienced record-breaking data traffic exceeding 800 terabytes, and more than 12 million voice calls.
Sports events taking place in Qatar generate an enormous surge in mobile communication and put significant pressure on the network. To prepare for this, Ooredoo Qatar leveraged Reailize’s Continuous Assurance (CA) and Anomaly Detection solution to drive network and operational optimization squarely focused on customer experience.
The Reailize team of domain experts partnered with the operations team at Ooredoo to achieve real-time monitoring, early detection of potential network issues, and proactively address customer and service impacts. The CA solution spans the Radio Access Network (RAN), core, IMS, and transmission networks and monitors 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G domains.
Reailize combines automation and artificial intelligence (AI) with customer experience measurements to detect network anomalies, identify root causes of associated degradations, and recommend actions based on predicted customer impact.
This will, it seems, continue. Ooredoo Qatar says it is adopting CA as a unified solution, providing customer experience-driven preventive, proactive, and predictive assurance, enabling the company to focus on achieving optimal network performance and customer satisfaction while maintaining seamless operations.
This week, BT has announced the latest steps in its ambition to help create the world’s largest drone superhighway, with a new trial seeing drones travel successfully between two Midlands hospitals.
The trial, jointly conducted by Skyfarer Ltd and Medical Logistics UK, was initiated in October 2022.
Using connectivity from BT’s network, the trial saw 130 drone flights conducted on the 32km route between the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust sites. This included travelling in complex airspace, close to urban areas.
Cumulatively, the drones in the trial travelled over 1,900km, including 220km in a single day. Over 30 hours of these flights were beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) – the first time BVLOS drone flight has taken place over-land in the UK.
As well as delivering the obvious benefits of being faster and more direct than comparable car travel between the two locations, drone deliveries will also bring major sustainability benefits; Skyfarer recorded the carbon emissions of a drone delivery as being 99.98% lower than a diesel van and 90.5% lower than an electric van.
“This trial would not have been possible without our consortium of partners. BT Group’s support has enabled a considerable amount of application learning and development, pushing Skyfarer and our consortium closer to a point where turn key long range BVLOS drone operations are an everyday occurrence,” said Georgia Hanrahan, Business Manager, Skyfarer.
“The Skyfarer and BT Group relationship will be the driving force for this revolutionary innovation and its adaption to day-to-day life. With BT Group providing the technology and communications expertise, Skyfarer is able to offer long-range BVLOS capability in return to justify and prove systems.”
BT has been increasing its activity in the drone space for a number of years now, viewing ubiquitous mobile connectivity as a cornerstone for BVLOS drone flight. In fact, last year, a consortium including the operator introduced “Project Skyway”, a plan to build a 165-mile drone corridor spanning Reading, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Coventry, and Rugby.
Since then, BT has expanded its relationship with the consortium’s leader, Unified Traffic Management (UTM) specialist Altitude Angel, by entering into a £5 million deal to help the Altitude Angel scale up its ARROW tower network beyond its initial goals outlined in Project Skyway.
According to BT, the opportunity here is enormous – in healthcare alone, the recent research suggests that commercialised drones could increase the GDP of the sector by £4 billion by 2030.
Perhaps it should comes as no surprise, then, that BT is not the only operator expanding its drone-related activities in recent years, with both Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom among the major telecoms players helping to develop this ecosystem.
How will mobile networks enable commercialised drone flight? Join the experts in discussion at this year’s live Connected North conference
Also in the news:
NTT and Microsoft collaborate to enhance corporate cyber resilience
Vodafone to cut around 1,300 jobs in Germany
Ofcom raise automatic compensation payments for UK ISP connectivity failures
Some metro fiber, some software-defined interconnection, some 800GE, and a significant federal contract award: … [visit site to read more]
Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
Subscribe to our FREE weekly email newsletters for the latest telecom info in developing and emerging markets globally.
Several interesting items from late last week that are worth keeping up with: … [visit site to read more]
NTT Ltd., a leading global IT infrastructure and services company, today announced the launch of its Managed Detection and Response (MDR) security service to help companies achieve business performance objectives through improved cyber resilience. The cloud-native, analytics-driven offering combines human and machine expertise with leading technologies and threat intelligence to reduce the mean time to detect and respond to cyber-attacks.
The MDR service is built on Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft’s leading next-gen security information and event management (SIEM) platform, powered by AI, automation, and threat intelligence. Sentinel enables organizations to collect data at scale across all users, devices, apps, and infrastructure, both on-prem and in multicloud environments.
Using analytics, machine learning, and threat intelligence, the service hunts for suspicious activities and minimizes false positives. With built-in orchestration and automation of common tasks, enterprises can respond to incidents rapidly and remotely isolate threats.
This latest offering represents another step forward in NTT and Microsoft’s multi-year Strategic Alliance Agreement (SCA) signed in 2020. Since then, the two companies have collaborated to build advanced solutions in public, private and edge cloud, data & AI, digital & app innovation, modern workplace, and now most recently in security.
With over 25 years of Microsoft experience, including 5000+ Microsoft engineers, and more than 10,000 Microsoft certifications, NTT provides an advanced combination of application and systems integration, advisory and managed cloud, and security services that are built using Microsoft platforms and can be delivered globally.
“Organizations are typically utilizing a patchwork of security technologies that lack alignment,” said Charlie Li, Senior Executive Vice President: Managed Cloud and Infrastructure Services, NTT Ltd. “This disjointed approach has left businesses often unable to detect hard-to-find threats and lacking the necessary agility to mitigate them. Many are simply adding more security layers, increasing complexity, and generating even more logs and alerts that go untreated.”
“NTT’s MDR service helps organizations stay ahead of attackers and has a direct impact on workforce productivity and customer satisfaction through real-time and long-term threat correlation, advanced analytics, and continuous monitoring of digital transactions. It delivers a strong cyber-resilience posture, directly impacting an organization’s operational, financial, and resource resilience,” he added.
“Our research indicates that IT security professionals are in high demand, largely driven by more threats that have sprouted with the expansion of today’s hybrid workforce and the magnitude of the increased volume of digital transactions impacting businesses,” said Craig Robinson, Research VP, International Data Corporation (IDC). “MDR services are greatly assisting organizations in taking a pro-active stance to protect all forms of digital transactions and providing those organizations with high-impact, real-time, advanced analytics and professionals 24X7X365.”
“We’re extremely pleased to expand on our existing strategic relationship with NTT through the launch of the new MDR service, based on Microsoft Sentinel, to further help protect and support our joint customers,” said Csaba Deme, General Manager, Global Security Sales at Microsoft.
NTT is well-positioned to enhance its strategic partnership with Microsoft, having earned the esteemed Microsoft Azure Expert Managed Services Provider status, as well as 8 Specializations. NTT is a member of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) and boasts a strong legacy with over 20 Microsoft Partner Awards, including the prestigious Partner of the Year.
The global managed detection and response market size is predicted to increase from $2.6B in 2022 to $5.6B by 2027. Some of the factors that are driving market growth include shortage of skilled cyber security professionals and budget constraints, government regulations, and strict compliance for adoption of MDR services.
NTT’s MDR base service includes service tiers and deployment options, as well as support for add-ons that provide additional capabilities to expand detection capabilities and response actions. Current add-ons are MDR for Endpoint and Security Device Management (SecDM) for MDR, for Security Devices and Services.
Need to switch to a new Service Provider quickly? Our in-house migration team can help you make the move today without compromising your business, your brand, your way.
Our hosted solution is ready to implement at any time. You can install PBXware virtually through a few quick and secure steps. With a simple, user-friendly interface, you can do it all yourself whenever you are ready. Or turn to our in-house migration team for 24/7 support and troubleshooting. Learn more in our 5 Reasons Switching to Bicom is so Fast one-pager.
As we always tell our partners: your success is our success. It is in our interest to support you from your first phone call, through your transition process, and throughout your journey with Bicom Systems. As a global company, we have team members available 24/7 via phone, email, and live chat to keep your business up and running.
Cybercriminals are a real threat to your business, your data, and your customers. That is why the Bicom Systems team is constantly innovating. We stay ahead of the hackers and threats by researching emerging security weaknesses and developing regular software updates with the latest technologies for protection. In fact, our latest software release just this month was focused on security.
True multi-tenancy is easy to set up, integrate, take to market, and adjust for growth. PBXware Multi-Tenant supports unlimited tenants, allowing you to start as small as you need and grow as quickly as you want. We can help you move your customers to our multi-tenant architecture with as little disruption as possible.
You need a new service provider but that doesn’t mean your brand or solution have to change. Our white label products can be implemented behind-the-scenes without changing your brand, your pricing, or your solution. You don’t even have to tell your customers – they will be none the wiser.
Our all-in-one communications solution is based on 18+ years of experience in the industry, ongoing customer feedback, and research on upcoming trends and technologies. We offer PBX, Call Center, Unified Communications, Meeting and more. All of our solutions are fully customizable to meet your specific needs. Learn more at bicomsystems.com/products
Give us a call so we can help you start transitioning immediately. Let’s get your business back up and running and then start moving toward limitless growth via secure innovation.
Want to read even more about what Bicom Systems has to offer? Check out our More than a Switch page or our 10 Reasons to Partner with Bicom Systems infographic.
While 5G has been around for three years, its development speed has exceeded industry expectations. Around 240 commercial networks have launched during these three years, with the 5G customer base reaching 1 billion, accessing services through one of around 800 5G-compatible devices launched by a range of vendors.
From an industry and ecosystem perspective, 5G is therefore becoming a mature technology.
The top 20 5G operators globally saw their revenue rise on average between 4% and 6% last year, demonstrating that 5G is delivering for operators in financial terms. Compared to the 1% revenue increase registered across all operators globally, it’s clear that 5G plays a significant role in driving revenue growth.
At Mobile World Congress 2023, Huawei’s President of 5G Marketing and Solution Sales Barry Hou explained the steps that are necessary to capitalize on the strengths of 5G technology, and therefore achieve 5G business success.
Hou noted that based on its own analysis, Huawei has identified four key factors for achieving 5G business success: attracting more users and traffic; increasing ARPU; driving innovations; and improving user experience. There is a level of interconnection among these; by swiftly migrating users onto new services, user experience is improved, which in turn encourages them to consume more data, thereby increasing ARPU. Hou noted that Huawei’s clients saw their ARPU rise by as much as 10%, demonstrating how 5G can provide a foundation for growing business.
To underline the importance of swift user migration, Hou said that it would be possible for an operator to achieve return on investment in less than three years if they managed to convert 30% of their data traffic to 5G quickly enough. He noted that this was an achievable goal, saying that the first step was to make devices affordable to increase the penetration rate. Precise marketing would help to identify valuable 5G users on the network, and these customers can then be targeted with attractive 5G offers designed to meet their requirements, driving uptake.
Once users have been migrated to 5G, the next question is how to continue monetization. Traffic filling has typically been the key method but it is important to explore other avenues. Hou said that experience differentiation is a key draw – the main avenues for this are downlink and uplink monetization, with premium downlink a particularly effective option for service differentiation, offering VIP users better speeds than standard customers. Hou noted that while many operators have already implemented such a system, there are other options for guaranteeing speeds, including 5G slicing. If for example users have an important called scheduled, personal 5G slicing solutions can offer a committed 20Mbps downlink speed at critical moments.
5G Fixed Wireless Access is another aspect of the technology that can deliver results for operators – indeed, Hou described 5G FWA as a ‘quick win’ for 5G monetization, with 95 operators worldwide (around two thirds of global 5G operators) launching commercial 5G FWA offerings. Within two years, the number of subscribers using the technology globally reached 10 million – an incredible statistic. However, Huawei is keen to continue exploring new 5G scenarios enabled by FWA – since the tech can support a maximum of 1Gbps, it has enabled the replacement of copper across Europe.
Within the European continent, there are still around 200 million users reliant on copper access, and they receive slow speeds as a result. By upgrading from copper to 5G FWA, bit rates can be boosted to 300Mbps. In emerging markets, fibre penetration is fairly low – estimated 7.2% – but there is demand for a fibre-like experience for home internet access. 5G FWA is therefore a viable solution for home broadband access in these regions.
Hou was upbeat about the business prospects of 5GtoB, noting that the fast development of the technology in China had resulted in the country’s three main operators nearly tripling their revenue for 5GtoB from 2021 to 2022. He noted similar success in overseas markets between 2021 and 2022, with the number of 5G private networks deployed nearly doubling year-on-year from 62 to over 120. Since most 5G operators already have very good 5G infrastructure, they can use this to their advantage to provide virtual private networks via 5G slicing technology. Also, campus private networks have been deployed to help digital transformation of many industries, including manufacturing, mining, ports, etc.
As 5G evolves into 5.5G, it’s important to learn from its successes. With 5G, shortform video apps are exploding in popularity, and their content is generated by consumers (UGC – User Generated Content). This is a major change from the 4G era, in which video content was typically PGC (Professionally Generated Content), and as AI advances swiftly, we’re likely to see AI-generated content before long. While it is not yet clear what form AIGC will take, it will likely be video or at the very least image based, and the AI technology itself will require even lower latency and a higher data burden – around 50Mbps per user, as compared to using an app like TikTok over a 5G connection, which requires a base level of 4-10Mbps. This means that a single base station would require at least 5Gbps, which can’t be supported by current 5G technologies.
It’s clear that monetization is a key focus of 5G, and all aspects and use cases for the technology must be taken into account to achieve this. Whether this is driving consumer adoption via service differentiation, boosting subscriber numbers by introducing 5G Fixed Wireless Access, or exploring enterprise use cases via 5GtoB, operators have many paths available in the pursuit of 5G business success.
