The Philippine government’s new project to expand the reach of fibre broadband across the country will result in more lines deployed, but it won’t get more people connected if services are too expensive, says analyst firm BMI Country Risk & Industry Research.

Last week, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) approved the Philippine Digital Infrastructure Project (PDIP), which aims to improve and expand fibre broadband infrastructure across the country, especially for remote areas.

The PDIP includes building backbone, middle-mile and last-mile FTTx networks, as well as network security and project management. The NEDA has authorized a price tag of P16.1 billion (about US$274.4 million) for the project, which will be funded by loans from the World Bank.

However, according to local media outlets, a report from Fitch Group’s BMI earlier this week said that whether the project helps to boost the Philippines’ internet population will depend on whether the resulting services are more affordable than they are now.

BMI estimates that fibre connections in the Philippines will reach 1.58 million this year, and then grow to just 1.83 million by 2033. BMI stressed that the main obstacle to fibre uptake is cost, “particularly stemming from the elevated costs of rollout that are further increased by the Philippines’ archipelagic configuration.”

Much of the projected growth is expected to come from uptake in metro and suburban areas, driven in part by moved from PLDT, Globe Telecom and Converge ICT Solutions to offer low-cost fibre packages. Consequently, the BMI report said, “the PDIP may only provide marginal upsides to our outlook.”

That said, BMI reckons the PDIP could help by executing and managing the project in ways that encourage wholesale network providers and ISPs to lower the price of fibre packages, particularly “by extensively co-financing last-mile area rollout”.

According to 2022 figures from the World Bank, the Philippines is one of the most expensive fixed broadband markets in ASEAN, with prices more than double the regional average. 

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No prizes for guessing that AI stole everyone’s attention at Digital Transformation World in Copenhagen this year. In every keynote and session, the two letter acronym left the lips of every single person that took a stage.

It is no wonder that AI dominated the show after so much fanfare already this year. The much hyped technology promises so particularly to birth new use cases that can save costs and generate fresh revenues.

Axiata Group CEO and Executive Director, Dr Hans Wijayasuriya said in his keynote that the telecoms industry can double its size to US$2 trillion dollars if it can “move from connectivity to a world where we sell end-to-end solutions”. He pointed to AI being a key technology to digitally transform operators into technology companies with this sort of scale and capability. He warned MNOs that do not jump on AI with haste, will be left behind to languish. 

On the same panel, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison President Director and CEO Vikram Sinha and Jio Platforms boss Kiran Thomas pointed to how AI can generate GDP growth for Indonesia and India respectively.

TM Forum CEO Nik Willetts pointed out in his speech that only a handful of MNOs are seeing bottom line increases from AI, but added many operators are still early in their digital transformation journeys. 

Autonomous networks

In the telecoms space, automation of networks has been viewed as an eventuality to cut down costs but also create new services, and is a key use case for AI in telecoms.

Bradley Mead (pictured, right), Ericsson Head of Managed Network Services, said “autonomous networks is ultimately where we need to go” as an industry, but acknowledged it is a long journey but “starting it is vital”.

The ultimate goal for all sectors tapping into AI is to achieve ‘Level 5’ said Mead, which means full automation. This is considered the ‘holy grail’ for all automation projects, regardless of industry – Level 5 is akin to a fully driverless car with no need for a steering wheel, or a network that runs completely by itself with no engineer.  

“Hopefully it [Level 5] will unlock new revenue streams for operators because ultimately, that’s what we all need for the industry to be successful,” said Mead.­

Sunil Gupta (pictured, left), Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB)’s Head of Digital Delivery, spoke about the challenges and opportunities of navigating autonomous networks in Malaysia’s singular 5G network.

Malaysia has a rather unique telecoms landscape, as the government decreed all six MNOs must equally share a single 5G network run by DNB, which was set up in 2021 to handle the deployment.

Gupta explained this is a Multi-Operator Core Network (MOCN) set-up, a key innovation in 5G that enables multiple operators to share common infrastructure while maintaining individual services and brands.

The idea was that this would cut down on expensive deployments, reduce rollout time and of course adapt to new technologies such as AI at speed. But in the time that Malaysia’s government has taken to strike deals with its operators, peers in Asia-Pacific such as Thailand and Indonesia have launched commercial 5G services.

The government had been steadfast in its strategy, betting there will be long-term returns from of its unique plan.

Gupta stressed that having operators share the same infrastructure and keeping their wealth of data private from each other was a key challenge.

To tackle this, DNB with its exclusive vendor Ericsson pushed through with the network being a “machine or data driven operation,” said Gupta. Through using AI technology, DNB was able to predict in real time where problems on the network would arise – one example was finding out why calls were being dropped in a particular location – and safeguard against it to maintain high levels of service.

Gupta revealed two main targets with its AI-boosted network: to provide enterprise network slicing and autonomous network energy management.

Levels of AI

At another stage, Telkomsel’s Director of Networks Indra Mardiatna (pictured, above) hailed the Indonesian operator’s successful implementation of autonomous network technology, highlighting benefits such as customer complaint handling, reduction of manual tasks, and improved NPS scores.

Mardiatna detailed how Telkomsel’s dive into automating its network has made processes smoother.

He pointed out the “legacy” way of handling a customer complaint had too many steps for subscribers, taking up valuable time. Now, Telkomsel customers only have to answer two questions, with analysis of their query coming “automatically from the network” including the root cause.

From this, Mardiatna claimed user complaint handling had improved by 88%, and that Telkomsel’s NPS score is 20% above the industry average.

Mardiatna noted that Christmas, Ramadan and New Year’s were three recent events when Telkomsel experienced heavy network traffic. These special days on the calendar used to require a lot of manual tasks to be completed to ensure the network ran smoothly.

“Previously when we experienced a push in threshold level, someone would have to execute manually an automation request, but now this can be done by machine,” said Mardiatna.

Telkomsel’s network was “90% automated” during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan for crowd management, as worshippers gathered daily at Mosques to pray. Mardiatna stated this worked six times better than having an engineer manually divert traffic to other parts of the network. This led to a 20% decrease in customer complaints, noted Mardiatna.

Looking ahead, Telkomsel is aiming to achieve level 4 AI automation in 2025. But Mardiatna acknowledged a few key challenges must be overcome to hit the target of having a “zero touch network” – a network that can heal and adjust itself based on the data it collects.

The first challenge that many operators have highlighted is quality of data and improving data validity. Mardiatna said due to poor data in the early days of using AI, the operator saw results that were a complete “disaster”.

Second, was cost for equipment such as GPUs to install into data centres to tap into AI software. Finally, third was reskilling staff, as the operator has “a lot of legacy telco people” who need convincing an autonomous network is the way forward.

“Despite all of these challenges, we believe autonomous networks will unlock all possibilities. We can achieve more and we believe also we move forward together,” concluded Mardiatna.

EXA Infrastructure has been working hard to develop new paths to and through markets in the Middle East, and yesterday they unveiled plans for a brand new alternative. They are teaming up with SOCAR Fiber to develop a new terrestrial route across Türkiye to Georgia. … [visit site to read more]

A previously little-known company with the interesting name of Natural Environment Solutions (NES) has announced that it has launched a 5 MW data centre in Pune, India, marking its entry into the country’s fast-booming data centre industry.

The company says it plans to scale up to over 100 MW of data centre capacity across the country in the next three years, capitalising on the country’s fast growth in digital infrastructure and regulatory support for data centre investments (which has been reported here a number of times).

NES says it is dedicated to revolutionising data centre infrastructure development, optimising efficiency and cost-effectiveness through advanced automation and digitisation.

NES founder and CEO Umesh Sahay is quoted by India’s Economic Times as saying that the company is actively securing long-term power supply agreements with utility generators, ensuring cost-effective, environmentally responsible operations aligned with stringent sustainability standards.

He also says that the company’s modern data centres adhere to global regulations, integrating cutting-edge security measures to protect data integrity against evolving cyberthreats and that the company’s focus on edge computing “responds to the growing demand for ultra-low latency and high bandwidth solutions crucial for hyper-personalised customer experiences and the rapid adoption of 5G and new-age applications”.

India’s data centre capacity has doubled between 2020 and 2023, highlighting its emergence as a prime hub for technological advancement, according to the company, about which little information seems so far to be available.

However, Umesh Sahay is also a founder and CMD of Entrepreneurial Facilitation Centre, a leading real estate enterprise offering managed office space solutions for entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises and large corporations.

India’s big three private operators, Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, have put up their tariffs. This is the first time in three years they have done so. It was, however, widely expected.

Reuters reports that Bharti Airtel plans to raise tariffs by 10% to 21%, Jio by 13% to 27%, and Vodafone Idea by 10% to 23% across a number of prepaid and postpaid plans, starting on 3 July for Jio and Airtel and 4 July for Vodafone.

Massive investment in 5G rollout is one obvious reason for the price rises. Spectrum auctions and infrastructure spending probably made some sort of price correction inevitable. Reuters quotes an analyst estimate that 5G rollout alone would have cost the companies around US$18 billion, with only a modest return on investment likely to date. Indeed, India’s Economic Times says that Jio and Airtel have been offering free 5G services in a bid to attract customers to 5G.

Of course Vodafone Idea hasn’t reached 5G rollout stage yet, though it has outlined an aggressive capex plan to expand 4G and roll out 5G.

Another important factor has been the Jio-led price war that forced competitors to keep prices low. This has made India very cheap for subscribers but has hit operator ARPU.

The predicted rises in ARPU as a result of the new tariffs will undoubtedly help. At the moment Vodafone Idea is behind with ARPU of 146 rupees (US$1.75) in the first quarter of the year compared to Jio’s 182 rupees (US$2.18) and Airtel’s 209 rupees (US$2.50). Reuters says Airtel’s higher ARPU is a result of its recent strategy to focus on higher-paying subscribers. 

India’s Economic Times adds that an analysis of the post-tariff-hike prices shows that Reliance Jio’s popular prepaid plans are as much as 20% more affordable than the similar prepaid plans offered by its competitors. It also seems to have an edge in the postpaid segment.

Nevertheless, the hope is that a united front on tariffs will ease pressure on the operators’ balance sheets, notably that of Vodafone Idea, which has quite a lot of spending to do to catch up with its rivals in 5G – and 4G – provision.

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