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Ooredoo Qatar has announced two high-profile agreements this week, one with Dell Technologies and one with Ericsson.

Ooredoo and Dell Technologies have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to strengthen existing collaboration, simplify digital transformation initiatives and explore new growth opportunities through Dell’s APEX multicloud portfolio.

Through the agreement, Ooredoo says it will explore the Dell APEX offerings to simplify its cloud experiences and gain more control over its applications and data.

Dell says APEX will allow the communications service provider to seamlessly manage and orchestrate its workloads while optimizing performance, minimising risk and ensuring high network availability. Ooredoo will also be able to eliminate unnecessary complexity and inefficiency.

The collaboration complements Ooredoo’s current IT environment and builds on the existing technology centred around Dell’s infrastructure, storage and cyber recovery services.

Ooredoo has also announced the extension of a longstanding partnership with technology giant Ericsson that will upgrade 5G connectivity in Qatar.

Designed to increase collaboration on radio access network (RAN) technology products and services, this partnership extension will see Ericsson’s team facilitating the optimisation of Ooredoo’s network with the latest technology – including millimetre wave – enabling multi-gigabit speeds, greater capacity and ‘exceptional’ mobile broadband speeds. This will allow Ooredoo to explore new use cases and connectivity opportunities for customers.

The upgraded technology will also permit improved coverage and capacity; efficient power consumption; network slicing capabilities; and robust security measures. In addition it will enable Ooredoo to leverage the potential of IoT applications and explore emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

Leveraging Ericsson’s advanced technologies and intelligent algorithms such as Ericsson Network IQ Statistics, and Ericsson Network Management, Ooredoo says it will gain greater insights into network performance, traffic patterns, congestion hotspots and incident detection in real-time, achieving greater resource management and an overall enhancement to customer experience.

Ericsson’s new Mobility Report highlights continuing global 5G growth, with India apparently leading the way.

The June 2023 edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report shows that, despite geopolitical challenges and macroeconomic slowdown in some markets, communications service providers worldwide are continuing to invest in 5G. It suggests that 5G mobile subscriptions are growing in every region and are forecast to top 1.5 billion globally by the end of 2023.

However, not too surprisingly, the report’s focus on India is gaining a lot of headlines in that country’s press. Following the launch of 5G services in October 2022, the Indian 5G market is witnessing huge network deployments under its Digital India initiative.

5G subscriptions in India reached about 10 million by end of 2022 and are estimated to account for about 57% of mobile subscriptions in the country by the end of 2028, making it the fastest-growing 5G region globally.

At present, says India’s Economic Times, operators Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are deploying 5G standalone (SA) and 5G non-standalone (NSA) networks respectively. Both service providers aim to complete roll-out by late 2023 or early 2024.

According to Ericsson, enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and fixed wireless access (FWA) are already emerging as the initial use cases for 5G in India. 

Ericsson’s overall global 5G subscription forecast has been adjusted due to delayed spectrum auctions in several countries and continued difficult macroeconomic conditions. It has now projected global 5G subscriptions to reach 4.6 billion globally by the end of 2028, making up more than 50% of all mobile subscriptions.

Subscriptions for 4G have continued to increase, growing by 59 million during Q1 2023 to 5.2 billion, but are projected to start declining from this year as subscribers migrate to 5G.

Globally, around 240 communications service providers have launched commercial 5G services and about 35 have deployed or launched 5G standalone.

The most common 5G services launched by service providers for consumers, says the report, are enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), fixed wireless access (FWA), gaming and some AR/VR-based services, such as training and education.

Winity, which became a new Brazilian national mobile operator in 2021, and satellite operator Hughes have announced a pilot project involving prepaid mobile internet in remote areas.

The project is called RuralChip and uses 700MHz spectrum won by Winity at auction in 2021. Ericsson, Nokia and Algar Telecom are among the partners for the project.

The duo’s proof of concept is taking place in two cities: Presidente Juscelino and Cururupu. Both are in Maranhão state in northern Brazil. In the first city the access network provider is Ericsson. The other uses technology provided by Nokia. Algar Telecom provides the network core along with charging, provisioning, NOC and data centre services.

Both sites will make use of Hughes’ high-capacity satellite backhaul solution, an LTE site and a Winity network core, effectively creating a 4G network to serve RuralChip customers in the areas covered.

The official launch of the project took place last week. The plan is to refine the solution for a future deployment at scale throughout the country, making possible the digital inclusion of thousands of people and the economic development of these regions, in line with Winity’s business plan, which is to get to where no other operator has reached to date.

According to TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, Winity Telecom – which is backed by alternative asset management firm Patria Investimentos – successfully bid on a national 2×10MHz 700MHz licence in Brazil’s November 2021 5G spectrum auction, paying BRL1.428 billion (USD276.8 million) – the highest bid for a single spectrum lot in the auction.

Winity plans to build 5,000 cell towers by 2029 and to establish itself as Brazil’s first wholesale operator.

Spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and satellite communications company SpaceX has launched a new Indonesian communications satellite as part of an ambitious project called SATRIA.

The $550 million project aims to provide high-speed internet access to schools, medical centres and thousands of public and government facilities across the island nation.

The powerful satellite, which is intended to boost broadband access across thousands of islands in the country’s vast archipelago, launched on Sunday. As Reuters explains, roughly two-thirds of Indonesia’s 280 million population already use the internet, but connectivity is limited in the country’s far-flung, underdeveloped eastern islands.

The satellite was built by Thales Alenia Space, which provides space-based systems, including satellites and ground segments, for multiple telecommunications and exploration-related purposes. It will use onboard ion thrusters to circularize its orbit at an altitude of about 35,888 kilometres above the equator at 126 degrees east longitude. 

The CBS news service explains that satellites at that geosynchronous altitude take 24 hours to complete one orbit, rotating in lockstep with the Earth to appear stationary in the sky. That allows the use of fixed antennas on the ground, greatly simplifying the infrastructure needed to send and receive data. The satellite is designed to operate for at least 15 years.

SATRIA is a public-private project between the government of Indonesia and a consortium led by satellite operator PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara, or PSN.

The launch has received enormous press coverage already – and it’s not too surprising given the statistics involved. With a throughput of 150 gigabytes per second, SATRIA will connect some 94,000 schools, nearly 50,000 village offices, other government facilities and thousands of hospitals and medical facilities across the fourth most populous country in the world.

Before SATRIA, Indonesia relied on five domestic communications satellites and four ‘foreign’ relay stations with a combined 50 gigabytes of telecommunications bandwith. SATRIA can provide more than three times the combined national capacities that are currently in use,

Adi Rahman Adiwoso, chief executive officer of PSN, was quoted by SpaceTechAsia as saying « We are confident that SATRIA can be the solution to the digital gap that still exists in Indonesia. »