Interview

At this year’s Connected America conference, we caught up with with Chris Sambar, President of AT&T Network, after his fiery morning keynote session to discuss the latest trends in 5G and the company’s strategic approach to Fixed Wireless Access

America’s 5G journey

The US was one of the first countries in the world to launch 5G services back in 2019 and, since then, the country has raced to become a world leader in the new technology. Nonetheless, the journey to 5G maturity is far from over, with AT&T’s Chris Sambar noting that there is still huge potential for the 5G ecosystem to develop.

“LTE showed us what’s possible when the ecosystem develops together. 5G’s going to be very similar,” said Sambar. “It’s taking its time, but its also more complex than LTE […] We’re beginning to see it slowly come together, and the experiences are getting better and better.”

Part of this 5G evolution is the rollout of the more powerful standalone 5G architecture, a process which is already underway at AT&T.

“We’ve rolled out our standalone core at AT&T, we’re scaling it, and we’re starting to put some of those new services on there, like gaming, augmented reality and virtual reality,” said Sambar. “We’re pretty excited about the monetisation opportunities that these new services represent.”

The Fixed Wireless Access debate

Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) has become a major talking point in the US over the past year, proving to be an exciting and often profitable use case for 5G at a time when monetising the new technology is challenging.

But while Verizon and T-Mobile are placing major bets on expanding 5G FWA services, AT&T’s FWA strategy is notably more reserved.

“Our view’s a little different from the other two operators in the US,” explained Sambar. “We see the RAN as the point of congestion. It’s a simple physics equation: how much load or bandwidth can spectrum provide to the users? One of our peers quoted that they are seeing up to half a terabit a month of usage on their fixed wireless network – that’s a lot. It’s a lot of bandwidth to put on a wireless network and congest the air interface very quickly.”

As a result, FWA can only be reasonably offered to limited number of customers in each sector before mobile service quality begins to be impacted – a fact that is only exacerbated by the growing consumer demand for bandwidth year-on-year.

The primary solution to this challenge is simply to deploy more mobile infrastructure to meet demand, which is very expensive, particularly compared to the average cost of a fixed fibre connection.

“[FWA is] not a true replacement for broadband,” said Sambar. “We’re going to reach a time when we’re going to struggle to provide services if we deploy it too broadly and I think that’s what the other two operators in the US are going to struggle with.”

Instead, AT&T’s primary target for FWA will be to offer services to those customers currently using legacy copper networks, a move that will both offer these customers an increase in service quality as well as allowing AT&T to sunset these older networks.

Building the sustainable network of the future

Finally, one of the biggest themes at Connected America 2023 – and, indeed, in the telecoms world more generally – was sustainability. According to Sambar, AT&T not only has a moral imperative to help take better care of the planet, but also a major economic incentive.

“AT&T’s power bill is well over a billion dollars a year. The faster we can get consumers off the copper network, the faster we can shut down the infrastructure in the offices where the copper is running, and that saves a whole lot of money,” he said.

He noted that AT&T’s power consumption is actually decreasing year-on-year as a result of more efficient technologies and the sunsetting of legacy network infrastructure, despite the increase in data demand. This is not only due to the deployment of more energy efficient infrastructure, but also the incorporation of AI, automation, and machine learning. These novel technologies allow for far greater network optimisation, not just for daily network functions but also for logistics, like site maintenance.

“A machine can look at a tower that’s scheduled for three upgrades over a year and, instead of sending an engineer three times, combine them all into a single visit. It sounds like a simple thing, but a human has a really hard time doing that with tens of thousands of towers in the network. It’s going to save us a lot of money and it’s also going to help us with our carbon footprint.”

You can view our full interview with Chris Sambar from AT&T from the link below

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Planning for Connected America 2024 is already underway! For more information about how to get involved, contact Maddie Hicks at Maddie.Hicks@totaltele.com

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EXATEL talks expansion into subsea connectivity sector

News

The Nasdaq-listed Liberty claims the move is to better align itself with the US regulations

According to reports, independent shareholders in Liberty Global are likely to vote against a proposal to domicile the company in Bermuda at an upcoming extraordinary general meeting.

Liberty Global, which has telecoms businesses interests in numerous markets across Europe, including Virgin Media O2 in the UK, first filed a preliminary statement with US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the move back in April. The filing indicated that the company would be reincorporated in Bermuda, arguing that doing so would help simplify relations with the company’s predominantly US-based shareholders.

“Today, we are incorporated as an England and Wales company, listed on Nasdaq, and as a result there are cumbersome administrative processes,” said Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries. “The proposed transaction will have no change to our listing on Nasdaq, our day-to-day operations or the tax residence of our operating companies. The principal objective of the change in jurisdiction of incorporation is to facilitate shareholder value creation by aligning the US style corporate law of Bermuda with our listing on Nasdaq and the expectations of our largely US shareholder base.”

He further highlighted that the move should streamline various business activities, such as M&A.

“Key components of our strategy to create shareholder value may include, among others, financing, cross-border M&A and investments, share buybacks, self-tender offers, spin-offs and split-offs, all of which are easier to execute as a Bermuda company,” he added in a note to shareholders.

But despite this purported boon in value, not all shareholders are likely to be happy with the move. The shift would reportedly lower the threshold for key shareholder votes from its 75% to just 50%, therefore delivering a disproportionate amount of voting power to Fries and Liberty Global’s chairman, billionaire John Malone.

Together the duo would control roughly 40% of votes, despite only holding 8% of the company’s shares.

This opposition comes at a troubling time for Liberty Global’s leadership, which is already facing backlash for its proposed changes to executive pay packages and governance practices.

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More than two-thirds of U.S. commercial sites have no optical fibre access
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Press Release

The Un-carrier has earned its wings! Valmont Industries Inc. and T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) today announced the completion of an industry-first long-distance BVLOS drone inspection flight enabled by 5G.

Traditional methods for infrastructure monitoring typically require extensive manpower, manned aircraft operations or ground-based inspections, which involve significant safety risks, more time and more money.

But not anymore ― especially now that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is granting more waivers for BVLOS drone operations. And as one of the first companies in the U.S. to receive said waiver, Valmont is ahead of the game.

In under three hours, Valmont accomplished a non-stop 77-mile drone mission from Childress to Aspermont, Texas inspecting vital infrastructure like power lines, railroads, bridges and more. The drone used a Harris Aerial H6E drone equipped with a T-Mobile 5G connected Sony A7RM5 camera. Significantly faster and more fuel efficient, this task was three times faster than conventional methods, while using less than two gallons of fuel.

Mission highlights:

• Valmont drone inspection teams used less than one-fourth gallon of fuel per hour.
• Flight pushes average distance of UAS inspections from less than 20 miles per day to more than 60.
• Even though the route was very rural, T-Mobile 5G provided live data transfer throughout the three-hour flight.
• The Sony A7RM5 combined with the ability to fly closely to utility lines, provided high-resolution details for critical infrastructure inspection.
• The flight proves that drones are a viable, safe, and efficient alternative to helicopters for infrastructure.
• Harris Aerial’s drone and Valmont’s proprietary payload are fully National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) compliant.

“Range has been a hurdle in the drone inspection space, until now,” said Jake Lahmann, UAS Manager at Valmont Industries Inc. “To be able to get this kind of range in a single drone flight is really going to revolutionize the way the industry approaches infrastructure inspections.”

“5G was built to make life easier,” added Ulf Ewaldsson, President of Technology at T-Mobile. “Whether it’s connecting a person on their smartphone or improving long-range drone infrastructure inspections, there is no doubt that the reach and speed of T-Mobile 5G is making it possible for entire industries to revolutionize the way they work.”

With 5G, Valmont’s drone inspection service is another example of 5G-enabled technologies that can be used to quickly respond to or prevent an emergency. By preemptively monitoring infrastructure sites with greater accuracy, Valmont can help prevent malfunctions and breakdowns before they have a chance to have a widespread impact.

Working closely with the FAA on BVLOS drone operation policies, Valmont plans to offer drone-in-a-box (DiaB) services nationwide in 2024. This enables anyone needing aerial inspection services the ability to order a drone, unbox it and watch it run its inspection while a Valmont pilot flies it remotely from virtually anywhere in the U.S.

T-Mobile is the leader in 5G, delivering the country’s largest, fastest and most awarded 5G network. The Un-carrier’s 5G network covers 326 million people across two million square miles — more than AT&T and Verizon combined. 275 million people nationwide are covered by T-Mobile’s super-fast Ultra Capacity 5G, and the Un-carrier plans to reach 300 million people with Ultra Capacity this year — nearly everyone in the country. T-Mobile 5G is available on all T-Mobile phone plans.

What does the future hold for T-Mobile and connected drones? Join the US telecoms sector in discussion at Connected America 2024

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More than two-thirds of U.S. commercial sites have no optical fibre access
Viasat completes Inmarsat merger deal
EXATEL talks expansion into subsea connectivity sector

Press Release

The 5G Open Innovation Lab (5G OI Lab) along with ecosystem partners F5, GXC and Spirent Communications announced a new collaboration to showcase a leading-edge enterprise Private Mobile Network (PMN) solution that not only delivers PMNs in hard-to-reach locations, but offers greater security, control, and resilience with improvements to operational costs.

As 5G infrastructure becomes more mainstream, enterprises and organizations are subsequently deploying more private networks and telco clouds into strategic locations to leverage newly available connectivity, lower latency, and agility. The consistent throughput and capacity on these PMNs bring the promise of 5G to revenue-driven use cases such as IoT and network slicing, while being mindful that security must expand accordingly beyond legacy policies and be thoroughly tested. Especially in edge use cases, one of the requirements most in demand is the need for local breakout to route traffic to as part of a Mobile Edge Compute (MEC) infrastructure or hosted within a data center.

F5, a hybrid and multi-cloud application services and security company, deployed carrier-grade BIG-IP Virtual Editions. These security functions were consolidated with an N6/SGi-LAN solution adding another layer of speed and security at the network level. Critical functions such as Firewall, DDoS, Secure DNS, CGNAT, TCP and Video Optimization with this consolidated N6 configuration are already running in high-volume Tier 1 providers.

GXC, a NaaS communications early-stage tech company which is part of the 5G OI Lab ecosystem, contributed their unique distributed mesh configuration for easier and faster deployment of a private network while providing full coverage and capacity of a cellular network.

This collaboration was validated using Spirent’s Landslide test and emulation platform. The multinational telecom testing company’s solution provided device and RAN emulation to create a diversity of traffic flows across multiple data networks through the 5G core which is monitored and managed by F5 behind the UPF. This delivers UE QoS, Network Slice Management, and offers multi-application monitoring at scale to validate the benefits of a packet core and N6 LAN solution working in tandem in a controlled production environment.

Finally, the entire solution was pressure-tested through technology made available through the 5G OI Lab and its enterprise and operator partners deployed with GXC’s ONYX Portal.

How the solution works:

-F5’s BIG-IP Virtual Editions will optimize these traffic flows between the 5GC and the content network helping to enable end-to-end visibility of user activity and security against unwarranted traffic ingress.

-Spirent’s Landslide AMF Nodal application will bring real-world traffic modelling into the 5G OI Lab to emulate 5G Mobile subscribers and 5G Access Nodes (gNBs) performing a realistic distribution of traffic flows across slices and DNNs towards emulated content servers supported by the core.

About GXC

GXC, previously known as GenXComm, is an Austin, Texas-based company that provides groundbreaking technology for enterprise 5G networks, based on a cellular mesh architecture. This private network platform provides high levels of resiliency, flexible deployments, strong coverage in hard-to-reach areas, and a powerful distributed application platform. The company was founded in 2016 to commercialize years of research and development in interference technology out of the University of Texas at Austin. Enabling full-duplex, high-speed communication, GXC’s powerful technology has the capacity to double the world’s available frequency spectrum. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter and contact us here for inquiries.

About Spirent

Spirent Communications plc. (LSE: SPT) is a leading global provider of automated test and assurance solutions for networks, cybersecurity, and positioning. The company provides innovative products, services and managed solutions that address the test, assurance, and automation challenges of a new generation of technologies, including 5G, cloud, autonomous vehicles and beyond. From the lab to the real world, Spirent helps companies deliver on their promise to their customers of a new generation of connected devices and technologies. For more information, please visit www.spirent.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

About 

The 5G Open Innovation Lab is a new global innovation ecosystem that brings together multi-stage startups, enterprise and global technology platforms and investors to connect and collaborate on developing disruptive new enterprise technologies and solutions that capitalize on the power of edge computing connected to public and private 5G networks.

In just four years, the Lab has attracted a roster of world-class corporate and industry partners including Accenture, Amdocs, Avanade, Dell Technologies, Deloitte, Ericsson, F5, GAF (Standard Industries), Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Palo Alto Networks, SK Telecom, Spirent, T-Mobile and VMware as well as 101 multi-stage enterprise startups who have collectively raised $1.641B of venture capital. Through 5G OI Lab’s unique model of open collaborative innovation, corporate partners work directly with ecosystem startups to accelerate commercialization through proof of concept, go-to-market, and other engagements and opportunities.

F5 and BIG-IP are trademarks, service marks, or tradenames of F5, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. The use of the words “partner,” “partnership,” or “joint” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between F5 and any other company.

News

New research from consultancy Vertical Systems Group shows that small commercial buildings (less than 20 employees) have seen most of the growth in lit fibre in the U.S. during 2022, but that over 3.8 million commercial sites have no optical fibre access to network services.

The research highlights that fibre connections from three or more providers are available to more than a third (37%) of commercial sites with greater than 250 employees, but as you move down to smaller premises, availability of fibre diminishes. In the medium/large buildings segment (Up to 251 employees) availability has now reached 76.4% whilst in the small buildings (under 20 employees) only 19.1% have access to lit fibre – although this was the sector showing the greatest growth in 2022.

The research includes 5+ million U.S. commercial buildings and data centres, which are defined as lit if they have optical fibre connectivity to a network provider’s infrastructure and active service termination equipment onsite.

Rosemary Cochran, principal of Vertical Systems Group said “Small buildings accounted for the majority of new fibre lit sites during 2022. Suppliers include the hundreds of fibre providers across the U.S. with nationwide, regional or metro footprints,”

“Fiber expansion continues to be boosted by multiple factors, including business demand for higher speed network services, government funding incentives, M&A activity, joint ventures, and private investments.”

Vertical Systems produce a U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD based on commercial buildings lit as of year-end 2022. To make the leaderboard requires more than 15,000 building lit which led to the ranking being led by AT&T, Verizon, and Spectrum Enterprise. Below the top dozen they have identified challengers with between 5,000 and 14,999 U.S. fibre lit commercial buildings.

Connected America returns to Dallas in 2024 – find out more at totaltele.com/connectedamerica

NEWS

American satellite giant completes acquisition of UK based satellite operator, 18 months after first announced following clearance of all regulatory hurdles

The acquisition completes the merger of two of the largest satellite operators, both of whom have been under pressure from Starlink’s expansion into the satellite market. Viasat founder Mark Dankberg will lead the combined company as chairman and CEO, with former Verizon Media executive Guru Gowrappan as president, while Inmarsat CEO Rajeev Suri will step down from his role and serve on Viasat’s Board of Directors.

Mark Dankberg, chairman and CEO of Viasat, commented: ‘The combination of our companies brings together the people, technology, innovation, network assets, spectrum resources and global partnerships needed to help connect the world more affordably, securely and reliably. Together, we believe we are positioned to offer customers a multi-layered network that gives them the right connectivity at the right time, place and price.’

The closing of the Inmarsat acquisition enables the companies to bring together spectrum, satellite, and terrestrial assets, including 19 satellites in space spanning Ka-, L- and S- bands. These complementary assets are expected to deliver connectivity and key safety services across maritime, aviation, government and consumer markets with speed and reliability of connection front of mind.

The acquisition was subject to a lengthy approval process, with both the UK and EU regulatory bodies approving the merger earlier this year. Under the terms of the deal, Inmarsat’s shareholders received an aggregate of $551 million in cash and approximately 46.36 million shares of common stock. The cash portion of the purchase price was reduced from $850 million to $551 million after Inmarsat paid a $299 million special dividend to its shareholders in April 2022.

The shares issued to the Inmarsat shareholders at the closing represent an aggregate of approximately 37.6% of the total shares of Viasat common stock on a fully diluted basis.

Viasat drew down approximately $1.35 billion of its committed financing package, including a $617 million secured term loan facility and a $733 million unsecured bridge loan. Viasat said the lower financed amount reflects the reduction in the cash component of the purchase price.

“Our goal is to be the undisputed leader in satellite communications with a sharp focus on providing the best products and services for our customers,” said Gowrappan. “We are more than the sum of our parts. This combination broadens the global fixed and mobile services available to customers in an industry-defining moment. We intend to move quickly to bring the best from each company together in a way that creates much deeper value for our stakeholders and ensures we deliver on our synergy commitments.”

Interview

Total Telecom caught up with Tomasz Dylik, Director of Investment and Maintenance Department at EXATEL, ahead of his talk at Submarine Networks EMEA on how EXATEL is expanding into the subsea sector

EXATEL has a network in Poland and in Europe, but has not been involved in subsea investments so far. What is the reason for your interest in this direction?

For many years, EXATEL has mainly focused on transit services on the East–West line across Europe. We have plenty of interconnections with all our neighbours and have been increasing our international presence for last few years with new POP and Exchange hubs across the Europe. We believe that right now is time for us to grow not only on the North–South data axis but in the worldwide transit industry. This won’t be possible without getting involed more directly in subsea projects.

What other new projects are you planning over the coming years?

For 10 years, EXATEL has been growing in various areas of the telecommunications industry, from being a legacy fibre telco to also offering wireless and cybersecurity services. We have also developed satellite communication services and added them to our portfolio, and we are building our own solutions like TAMA (anti-DDOS) or SDN network based on our own equipment.  We are planning to continue developing new services that will allow us to grow with the telecom industry; e.g., we plan to launch a nationwide Public Protection and Disaster Relief network (i.e., a network for first responders) using spectrum in the 700MHz band.

What are your expectations for the Submarine Networks EMEA event?

We are looking for partners to get involved in our transit projects, anchor customers, and technological partners who are willing to participate in our investments to build a TransitHUB for the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region.

EXATEL are sharing their expansion strategy today at Submarine Networks EMEA. Join the discussion now using the hashtag #SubNetsEMEA

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Press Release

Liquid Dataport, a business of Liquid Intelligent Technologies (Liquid) (https://www.Liquid.Tech), a pan-African technology group, has launched its newest fibre route connecting Mombasa, Kenya, to Muanda on the west coast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). This is the shortest route connecting East to West Africa, reducing data transmission latency by 20 milliseconds. The much anticipated 3,800km route marks a new era in East-West connectivity on the continent, adding to Liquid’s One Africa Digital Network, which now spans 110,000 km.

The fibre route connects Kenya and DRC, passing through Uganda and Rwanda and bringing more reliable and affordable broadband connectivity to over 40 million people living and working in all the major cities along the route. The latest route complements Liquid’s earlier achievement, already a first, in 2019, linking Dar Es Salaam to Muanda on the West Coast of  DR Congo via Zambia.

Hardy Pemhiwa, President & Group Chief Executive Officer of Liquid Intelligent Technologies, said, “The real challenge today is closing the access-usage gap in Africa so that more Africans can use the internet technologies available to them, now and in the future. This East-West route which compliments our existing Pan Africa fibre network, is significant because it is helping to solve that problem – it not only brings global traffic to the continent but also improves the cost economics of Africa’s broadband Internet access.”

The new East-West route enables Liquid’s customers to take advantage of capacities ranging from 1Mbps to 100,000Mbps. It enables cloud supplier redundancy with access to multiple data centres and cable landing stations, ensuring maximum uptime. This is hugely beneficial to the many businesses in East, Central & Southern Africa that are embarking on their digital transformation journey.

In order for African enterprises to expand continentally and compete with their global counterparts, they need stable, reliable connectivity with low latency and access to numerous digital tools to optimise their businesses.

“We have a significant number of wholesale, enterprise and hyperscale customers along this route, and we fully support them in operating their global networks. The availability of our latest and shortest East to West route brings many proven economic and social benefits – from providing access to online educational resources to creating more jobs and driving the adoption of new technologies,” said David Eurin, Chief Executive Officer of Liquid Dataport.

The Mombasa-Muanda route will help global organisations looking for Internet resiliency avoid the Red Sea and Europe routes which have become bottlenecks for global internet traffic, and will provide faster fibre connectivity to landlocked countries on the African continent, creating significant attractiveness for growing connectivity hubs in Kenya and DRC.

Press Release

The record uplink speed was achieved in an interoperability development test at an Ericsson lab. The test was performed with RAN Compute Baseband 6648 and a mobile device using MediaTek Dimensity 9200 flagship 5G smartphone chipset. The Uplink Carrier Aggregation combination involved a frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD) channel, in a frequency range widely deployed in today’s 5G networks.

More precisely, the combination used was 50MHz FDD n1 and 100MHz TDD n77. By aggregating these two bands, communications service providers can considerably increase their uplink speeds, resulting in better network performance and user experience.

Sibel Tombaz, Head of Product Line 5G RAN, Ericsson, says: ”Super-fast uplink speeds make a big difference in the user experience. From lag-free live streaming, video conferencing and AR/VR apps, to more immersive gaming and extended reality (XR) technologies.”

“The 440 Mbps upload speed achieved by Ericsson and MediaTek will help make that difference,” she adds. “We are also continuously designing innovative solutions for optimizing 5G networks so our customers can make the best use of their spectrum assets.”

Service providers are seeking innovative ways of boosting capacity while using existing spectrum efficiently to meet growing demands for wireless data and applications. This is where carrier aggregation comes in, optimizing the service provider’s spectrum assets to bring to users better coverage, increased capacity, and higher data speeds.

HC Hwang, General Manager of Wireless Communication System and Partnership at MediaTek, says: “The successful result of combining Ericsson’s state-of-the-art 5G Baseband and MediaTek’s flagship smartphone chip has achieved another 5G industry milestone, and paves the way for superior mobile experiences to benefit users every day.”

Uplink speed is becoming more crucial with the expected uptake of gaming, XR, and video-based apps. For example, as AR devices gain popularity with larger augmentation objects, rendering becomes more demanding. This increases the demand on networks to deliver higher throughput and lower latency.

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