News

The global Sustainability Survey, conducted by the FTTH Council Global Alliance (FCGA) has examined environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies amongst network operators, service providers, and vendors across five geographical regions, Europe, Latin America (LATAM), North America and Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and Asia Pacific.

It found that 81% of European respondents already have an ESG / CSR strategy, followed by LATAM (45%), North America and MENA (both at 16%), and Asia Pacific (15%).

The survey referenced a Boston Consulting Group report that estimated that the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector is responsible for up to 4% of all global emissions—twice the levels of the aviation industry.

Research conducted for the sustainability survey by market research firm RVA, LLC and the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) find that fibre consumes less energy than other broadband technologies and as a result Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) connectivity directly reduces carbon output, leading to a 34% reduction in internet CO2 emissions.

Gary Bolton, President of the Fiber Broadband Association said of this finding, “Fibre is the only way to simultaneously deliver high-speed, reliable internet services and support ESG and CSR goals, green energy, less waste, and the greater good of society.”

Other findings of the sustainability survey include:

• Supporting customer Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction programs through the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology enables businesses to identify sustainability enhancements and develop GHG impact estimates for early-stage innovation programs.
• Most companies are working on plans to achieve at least a 40% reduction in GHG emissions by 2030, with long-term goals of net zero by 2040.

The FTTH Council Global Alliance comprises six regional FTTH Councils with the common goal to accelerate fibre broadband adoption. The councils include the Digital Council Africa, Fibre Broadband Association, Fibre Broadband Association LATAM Chapter, Fibre Connect Council MENA, FTTH Council Asia Pacific, and FTTH Council Europe.

Kholoud Aldorgham, Director General for the Fibre Connect Council MENA said “The telecommunications sector has a significant role to play in reducing carbon emissions and achieving sustainability goals. Fibre optic technology is one of the most sustainable broadband technologies available today. Not only does it consume less energy, but it also has a longer lifespan than other technologies, which reduces the amount of waste generated.” He added that the MENA region had work to do on developing sustainable practices in telecoms but that investment in the deployment of fibre optic networks would be a step in the right direction.

CEO of the FTTH Council Africa, Juanita Clark, is a judge for the annual World Communication Awards which include a sustainability category which will be looking for CSP’s own sustainability initiatives and how they are enabling customers to reduce carbon emissions. Download the categories brochure to find out more.

VIEWPOINT

Communications service providers across the world are adopting strategies to grow revenue from the enterprise segment as they play a crucial role in the digital transformation of enterprises. The ever-increasing 5G ecosystem helps them provide reliable and ultra-high-speed networks while allowing them to offer innovative use cases to businesses to improve productivity, operational efficiency and customer experience.

China Mobile International (CMI), one of the leading information service providers in the world, is at the forefront of providing a superior experience for the B2B digital service. It has already built more than one million 5G base stations and its number of 5G users has ranked top in China. In addition, the service provider has also built a large number of 5G industry applications to address the needs of enterprises from different business verticals.

“CMI will establish a new information service system of “5G + computing network + capability service” to provide quality services of “Intelligent Global Connectivity” to global customers. CMI will also transfer its excellent experience in China to global markets to promote 5G+ capabilities, including 5G industry solutions (smart factories and smart ports), 5G application capabilities such as OneCyber, 5G platform services and 5G consulting, and information services,” explains Harley Tan, general manager of the Product Management Department of China Mobile International.

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Further, with respect to the computing network, cloud and network integration will be the key investment direction in the next two to three years. “Global traffic will become decentralized, and CMI’s global network will evolve towards computing network, achieving leapfrog development. For example, we will continue to expand terrestrial cable resources, build global data centers, improve core data center capabilities, and continuously cultivate potentials to optimize the overall computing network,” added Harley Tan.

CMI is also planning to build cloud-network integration service capabilities, further promote 5G+ cooperation, develop ecosystems, and build capabilities such as big data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain, and security to support the intelligent digital transformation of the whole society.

Differentiated network capabilities of CMI 

As digital pervasiveness continues to grow, there is an urgent need to build an advanced ICT infrastructure. As a global digital player, CMI will build an ultra-broadband all-optical high-speed network over the next ten years. This network will cover 87 countries and regions around the world, enabling fast access to 138 cities and 230 PoPs.

“CMI is capable of providing an experience featuring ultra-large capacity, ultra-low latency, and high security and reliability for industry digital connections around the world, enabling every region, enterprise, and individual to enjoy the dividends of digital economy development,” says Harley Tan.

The growing consumption of digital services coupled with the popularity of several high-bandwidth consuming applications means that service providers are constantly under pressure to increase the network capacity. CMI has built a future-oriented ultra-broadband network in the Southeast Asia region as the traffic in the region touched 467 Tbps, with a growth rate of over 40%. It will use the ultra-high-speed 400G technology, with the single fiber capability reaching 100 Tbps, to meet the future requirements of massive cross-border data transfer.

Apart from this, large, medium and small businesses can benefit from the networks with ultra-low latency. “CMI is dedicated to building low-latency connections, providing better service experience for enterprises moving to the cloud, and building high-quality networks. CMI adopts the advanced OXC all-optical networks, which allow flexible selection between different routes and enable end-to-end latency visibility, meeting the ultra-low latency connection requirements of the region,” adds Harley Tan.

The third key area is ensuring security and reliability for businesses during their digital transformation process and migration to the cloud. “More than 90% of the banking, finance, government, and manufacturing customers regard high security and reliability as the primary indicators of private data lines. CMI uses advanced network protection mechanisms and disaster recovery and backup policies to protect enterprises’ core data,” says Harley Tan.

In Conclusion

As the digital transformation picks up in all geographies, the enterprise market offers massive growth opportunities to the CSPs. The service providers will do well to adopt strategies used by CMI in addressing the needs of the businesses.

Interview

At this year’s Connected North conference in Manchester, we caught up with Mark Weller, Director and Head of Infrastructure at ITS Technology Group, to discuss why fibre will play a key role in the UK’s ongoing 5G rollout

The UK’s 5G rollout is well underway, but as networks begin to densify new connectivity challenges will begin to emerge.

“The big challenge with 5G densification and making it work is fibre – it’s the backhaul,” explained Weller. “5G coverage will need to be at street level because the old masts sat on top of buildings are covering too much area. So, you’re looking at traffic lights, street furniture, shop fronts – and all of these will need fibre.”

Similar challenges can also be found with the advent of mobile edge computing; as new edge data centres begin to spring up closer to the customers needs, these too will require a fibre connection to deliver

“We heard in the keynote session this morning just how much the hyperscalers are driving demand for data centre connectivity,” he said. “We’re already deploying a lot of fibre to data centres in city clusters and this will only grow as more and more of our data sits in the cloud.”

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You can watch the full interview from the link above.

Also in the news:
Connected North 2023: The story in pictures
China Mobile mulls HKBN acquisition as it closes in on 1 billion subscribers
Smart lighting: Vodafone leans on IoT for energy savings

News

Nearly five months after previous CEO Nick Read’s departure, Vodafone says it has been “impressed” by Margherita Della Valle’s efforts to steady the ship

Today, Vodafone Group has announced that it has appointed the company’s interim CEO and Chief Financial Officer, Margherita Della Valle, to serve as Group CEO.

Della Valle took over the reins at Vodafone as interim CEO at the start of 2023, following the departure of previous CEO Nick Read, who had held the position for four years.

Vodafone had been facing increasing pressure from activist investors, such as Cevian Capital, to make management changes after Read had failed to put the brakes on the telecom giant’s sliding share price.

Since her appointment, Della Valle has been at the heart of a company-wide strategic shift aiming to reverse this trend, including a greater focus on core markets and various cost-cutting measures.

Her approach has seemingly garnered her much support from investors, particularly from the company’s largest shareholder, Emirati-based e&, which has been gradually increasing its stake in Vodafone for a number of months, seemingly enticed by its depressed share price. Indeed, just earlier this week, e& announced that it had increased its stake from 14% to 14.6% for an undisclosed sum, as well as having entered into discussions with the company over its non-executive directors.

“On behalf of the Board, I am delighted to announce the appointment of Margherita as Group Chief Executive, following a rigorous internal and external search,” said Jean-François van Boxmeer, Vodafone Group Chairman. “Margherita has a strong track record during her long career at Vodafone in marketing, operational, commercial and financial positions. Over the last few months as interim Group Chief Executive, the Board and I have been impressed with her pace and decisiveness to begin the necessary transformation of Vodafone. Margherita has the full support of myself and the Board for her plans for Vodafone to provide better customer experience, become a simpler business and accelerate growth.”

In accepting the role, Della Valle acknowledged that there is still much work to be done to turn Vodafone’s fortunes around.

“I am honoured to have been appointed as Group Chief Executive. Vodafone has a unique position in Europe and Africa with strong customer relationships, networks and people,” said Della Valle. “To realise our potential Vodafone needs to change. We know we can do better. My focus will be to improve the service for our customers, simplify our business and grow.”

Della Valle will continue to also hold the role of Chief Financial Officer until a replacement can be found.

Also in the news:
Connected North 2023: The story in pictures
China Mobile mulls HKBN acquisition as it closes in on 1 billion subscribers
Smart lighting: Vodafone leans on IoT for energy savings

Lots of international items this week, here’s another set to keep up with: … [visit site to read more]

Press Release

Virgin Media O2 Business is bolstering its product line-up with a comprehensive range of market-leading cloud and security solutions, alongside network transformation services

It comes as Virgin Media O2 Business begins a new partnership with Telefónica Tech, the strategic digital business unit of Telefónica, to offer their cloud and security professional and managed services to enterprises and public sector organisations within the UK.

According to Gartner, worldwide public cloud spending is forecasted to grow 20.7% to total $591.8 billion in 2023, up from $490.3 billion in 2022. Recognising this trend and growing demand from business customers to securely migrate their data to the cloud, Virgin Media O2 Business is now offering a wide range of products and services to support businesses’ digital transformation. This includes Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) with leading Cloud Service Partners, alongside Private Cloud Hosting and Managed Detection and Response (MDR) security services. This is in addition to existing cloud networking Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) and cloud security Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions.

Customers will be supported by Telefónica Tech’s cloud professional and managed services team which is based in the UK. Telefónica Tech UK&I now has more than 1,000 highly qualified technology professionals following the acquisitions of CANCOM UK&I and Incremental.

Virgin Media O2 Business’ enhanced services offer a range of benefits to medium and large organisations. This ranges from local authorities that want to unify their data and processes; healthcare providers that want to migrate sensitive data to the cloud; and retail businesses looking to scale e-commerce opportunities in the cloud, powered by high-speed, low latency connectivity to support video conferencing and live chat services.

Jo Bertram, Managing Director, Business and Wholesale at Virgin Media O2 Business, said:

“Private businesses and public sector organisations are embracing digital transformation like never before and looking for ways to do this securely. To support this, we’re launching best-in-class cloud and security services for our customers to provide them with a comprehensive product line-up alongside our industry-leading fixed and mobile connectivity solutions.

“Our growing cloud networking expertise coupled with our new partnership with Telefónica Tech will help customers to migrate and manage their data and systems in the cloud, enabling them to be more efficient, productive and secure.”

María Jesús Almazor, CEO of Cyber Security & Cloud at Telefónica Tech, said:

“At Telefónica Tech we have a unified cyber security and cloud value proposition because we understand that migration to the cloud is the first step in the digital transformation of a business and that cyber security must be integrated from the beginning of any technological process.

“Our managed and professional cloud and cyber security services will enable Virgin Media O2 Business to offer its customers the most comprehensive threat prevention, detection and response techniques to ensure a secure digital transformation with the support of Telefónica Tech professionals in the UK and Ireland.”

Also in the news:
Connected North 2023: The story in pictures
China Mobile mulls HKBN acquisition as it closes in on 1 billion subscribers
Smart lighting: Vodafone leans on IoT for energy savings

On the regional infrastructure front, two network buildouts, an edge data center, and an equipment upgrade. … [visit site to read more]