News

The solar-powered Zephyr drone will serve as a flying base station, delivering mobile connectivity to customers in hard-to-reach areas

Today, aviation giant Airbus has revealed that is seeking external investment as it prepares to scale up, spin-off, and commercially launch its Zephyr drone connectivity business.

Flying around 21km above the surface of the Earth, high above weather and commercial aircraft, Airbus’s Zephyr drone will act as a High-Altitude Platform Station (HAPS), beaming down connectivity to customers too difficult or expensive to reach with terrestrially technology.

The solar-powered drone can remain airborne for months at a time and be piloted directly to in-need locations, whether remote areas lacking in traditional connectivity or areas with high temporary demand, such as those struck by natural disasters.

In addition to Zephyr’s connectivity capabilities, the device’s payload is also modular, allowing it to carry cameras and other sensors for observational purposes.

Airbus has been working alongside Japanese operator NTT and other partners to develop this technology for some years now, with the device having already racked up over 3,000 flight hours by the end of 2021.

By last summer, Zephyr had made significant technical advances, recording a single continuous flight for 26 days, breaking the record for the longest flight by an unmanned aircraft.

When complete, Airbus said it hopes each Zephyr drone will be able to fly continuously for up to six months using the latest solar and battery technologies.

Airbus officially launched its own HAPS Services Business unit last year, aiming to further develop Zephyr technology and target the 3.7 billion people current severely underserved by existing connectivity infrastructure.

Now, however, it seems that Airbus feels the unit will function better as an independent business, with the aviation giant having hired Morgan Stanley to help find and onboard new investors to help rapidly grow the fledging business.

This new unit will be called Aalto.

“Airbus is not a company that offers telecom services,” Samer Halawi, the CEO of Airbus’s HAPS business, told the Financial Times. “The idea of the carve-out is to bring like-minded partners to the equation and to be able to scale this business.”

According to reports, Airbus intends to retain majority control of the business, with talks with various customers and commercial partners already underway.

Halawi says that Zephyr is now “at the final design stage”, with commercial services expected to launch before the end of the year.

As part of the commercialisation process, Aalto expects to set up five or six ‘Aalto ports’ in locations including the US and the Middle East, each of which will serve as a base of operation for Zephyr drones.

How is the rise of non-terrestrial connectivity solutions impacting the traditional telecoms sector? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Connected America conference

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News

According to the operator, the data of 37 million customers has been compromised

Today, US mobile giant T-Mobile has announced it has been hit by another cyberattack, resulting in the data of 37 million customers being accessed by a malicious actor.

The breach was reportedly identified on January 5, with the operator saying they had removed the attacker’s access to the data within 24 hours.

“Our investigation is still ongoing, but the malicious activity appears to be fully contained at this time, and there is currently no evidence that the bad actor was able to breach or compromise our systems or our network,” said the company in a statement.

T-Mobile was quick to play down the severity of the attack, noting that no sensitive data, such as financial information, was compromised. Instead, the operator said that the information stolen was “basic” and “the type widely available in marketing databases or directories”.

Basic or not, this data does include details such as names, dates of birth, and account numbers.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has initiated an investigation into the breach.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time in recent memory that T-Mobile has been hit with a major cybersecurity scandal.

In 2021, the operator reported a breach that had compromised data relating to 76.6 million customers. One year later, the FCC fined operator $350 million and stipulated they must spend a further $150 million on additional cyberdefense measures.

In somewhat related news, the FCC is currently in the process of updating its data breach reporting rules, aiming to have telcos notify customers earlier when their data has been compromised.

Want to keep up with all of the latest news from the US telecoms sector? Join the experts in discussion at this year’s Connected America conference

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Press Release

The companies combine technology expertise to deliver the first demonstration of network slicing using RIC on a live 5G SA network

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and KDDI announced the successful demonstration of Service Level Agreements (SLA) assurance network slicing in a field trial conducted in Tokyo, Japan. For the first time in the industry, the companies proved their capabilities to generate multiple network slices using a RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) on a live commercial 5G Standalone (SA) network. The RIC, provided by Samsung in this field trial, is a software-based component of the Open RAN architecture that optimizes the radio resources of the RAN to improve the overall network quality.

Network slicing enables multiple virtual networks to be created within a single physical network infrastructure, where each slice is dedicated for a specific application or service—serving different purposes. For instance, operators can create a low latency slice for automated vehicles, an IoT slice for smart factories and a high bandwidth slice for live video streaming—all within the same network. This means that a single network can support a broad mix of use cases simultaneously, accelerating the delivery of new services and meeting the tailored demands of various enterprises and consumers.

“Network slicing will help us activate a wide range of services that require high performance and low latency, benefitting both consumers and businesses,” said Toshikazu Yokai, Managing Executive Officer, General Manager of Mobile Network Technical Development Division at KDDI. “Working with Samsung, we continue to deliver the most innovative technologies to enhance customer experiences.”

Through this field trial conducted in Q4 of 2022, KDDI and Samsung proved their capabilities of SLA assurance to generate multiple network slices that meet SLA requirements, guaranteeing specific performance parameters—such as low latency and high throughput—for each application. Samsung also proved the technical feasibility of multiple user equipment (UE)-based network slices with quality assurance using the RIC, which performs advanced control of RAN as defined by the O-RAN Alliance.

“Network slicing will open up countless opportunities, by allowing KDDI to offer tailor-made, high-performance connectivity, along with new capabilities and services, to its customers,” Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “This demonstration is another meaningful step forward in our efforts to advance technological innovation and enrich network services. We’re excited to have accomplished this together with KDDI, and look forward to continued collaboration.”

For more than a decade, the two companies have been working together, hitting major 5G networks milestones that include: KDDI’s selection of Samsung as a 5G network solutions provider, end-to-end 5G network slicing demonstration in the lab, 5G network rollout on 700MHz and the deployment of 5G vRAN on KDDI’s commercial network.

Samsung has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions including chipsets, radios, and core. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung drives the industry to advance 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio from virtualized RAN and Core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools. The company is currently providing network solutions to mobile operators that deliver connectivity to hundreds of millions of users around the world.

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News

As fibre and 5G networks continue to be rolled out at pace, the South African telecoms operators are preparing for further severe disruptions to their power supply

For South Africans, the rolling blackouts resulting from ‘load-shedding’ by state-run energy company Eksom have been a simple fact of life for over a decade now. Years of underfunding and mismanagement by Eksom has resulted in an energy grid that simply cannot cope with demand, with the nation routinely plunged into darkness for hours at a time.

In 2022, however, the load-shedding crisis reached new heights, with Eksom announcing Stage 6 measures for just the second time ever, requiring the shedding of 6,000 MW and resulting in cuts over a four-day period for four hours at a time.

Now, in 2023, the situation shows no signs of improvement, with analysts fearing that even more severe loadshedding – up to Stage 8 – could be required to alleviate pressure on the national grid. Indeed, this week the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was forced to cancel his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos due to the deepening energy crisis in South Africa.

But what does this ongoing energy crisis mean for the nation’s telecoms operators?

Networks, naturally, consume an enormous amount of energy to run and account for anywhere between 10% and 40% of an operators OPEX. In cases where insufficient energy can be supplied by the national grid, such as a temporary power outage, these networks typically switch automatically to an alternative energy source, from batteries or localised generators.

In South Africa, however, where outages are increasingly common and are last for a longer duration, these solutions may soon prove insufficient.

For the nation’s mobile industry, this problem is particularly acute. Back-up batteries can typically provide power for 6 to 12 hours, after which they require between 12 and 18 hours to fully recharge. Thus, site batteries generally remain a robust solution up to Stage 4 load-shedding; however, at Stage 5 load-shedding and beyond, batteries alone can no longer handle demand.

“Stage 6 means that batteries have less time to recharge between outages and that they won’t last as long given they haven’t had time to fully recharge,” Vodacom explained to TechCentral, noting that they were doing “all we can” to deploy additional backup power solutions, like diesel generators, to sites across the country.

Indeed, mobile operators are increasingly looking further outside the box to meet their energy needs. In 2021, for example, Vodacom announced it was beginning to deploy solar-powered mobile sites, while last year MTN turned to crowdsourcing power from local businesses to keep its network operational.

A similar story can be heard from South Africa’s fixed broadband network operators. While most of the operators have indicated that their backup power supplies can cope with up to Stage 6 load-shedding, they too are now taking additional measures to ensure their networks remain operational during Stage 7 and above.

“Sadly, it seems our predictions are correct, and load-shedding is with us for the long term,” explained Shane Chorley, chief business development officer of Frogfoot, South Africa’s third-largest fibre network operator. “Over the coming year, we will invest R40 million [$2.33 million] in additional capital expenditure and further increase our resilience across the network as the demand for reliable energy supply increases.”

Ultimately, however, despite these investments, the increasing duration and frequency of outages can take their toll on the networks, necessitating additional maintenance and a closer oversight over damaging power surges.

“The most significant impact of stage 5 and stage 6 load-shedding is the pressure it places on equipment, the associated cost of running generators over an extended period, and requiring more maintenance teams in the field to improve reaction time should failures occur,” said Dewald Booysen, COO of Frogfoot’s rival, Vumatel.

“We have seen an increase in equipment failure due to power surges linked to these stages of load-shedding, putting additional pressure on maintenance teams. We also have areas where substations do not come up after scheduled load-shedding, putting additional pressure on our backup power in these areas,” he added.

It should also be noted that network equipment is not only at risk of technical failure due to load-sharing operations, but also vandalism and theft. Power outages present ideal opportunities for thieves and vandals to act while unmonitored, with incidences of theft and destruction of critical infrastructure in South Africa skyrocketing in recent years.

For the telecoms industry, batteries and cables have been noted as increasingly enticing targets.

So, what does the future hold for the South African telcos?

While it is undeniable that the South African network operators are trying their hardest to mitigate the effects of this enormous societal disruption, the situation continues to worsen. With 2023 already a year filled with inflation and tightened purse strings, the question begging to be asked of these telcos is simple: how long can they keep this up?

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Contributed Article

By Veego

Today’s telcos are failing at segmentation. Instead of slicing and dicing their data to form meaningful user segments, they are relying on a one-size-fits-all approach that leaves value on the table

Here’s how Communication Service Providers (CSPs) can turn those tables and achieve true audience segmentation, and critically – why it matters.

CSPs know very little about their subscribers… and it’s hurting them

So, what do we mean by customer segmentation? Customer segmentation is the process of tagging customers based on predefined parameters and separating them into similar groups of users. Before you can make this happen, you need the right data. Once you’ve collected the right data, you’re in a strong place to analyze and segment to find valuable groups.

In the case of CSPs, customer segmentation can be used to create personalized marketing efforts, as well as to improve the quality of service and subscriber experience.

You might ask, why do these segments matter? Understanding your subscribers and their needs is key to their success and your own. For example, a gamer household requires an internet experience that doesn’t lag and an especially high internet speed. Knowing this, the CSP could proactively offer a larger data package or a WiFi extender that will improve their gaming experience.

Another example could be a subscriber who’s experiencing a lot of interruptions in their service. They are likely to be unhappy with the service and are therefore more likely to churn. Being able to segment this user into an “at risk” category is extremely valuable for the customer service agents and can help the business to retain such customers for longer periods. This household needs a gentle touch and an attempt to restore trust and good service, in direct contrast to our first example, who would benefit from a larger data package. Calling this home and offering them an upsell opportunity is not likely to be well-received, and may even cost you the subscriber altogether.

The data you need to make these decisions, data on subscriber activity, application and device identification, and the quality of each session is all readily available with the right technology, such as Veego’s AI-based data analytics platform. And yet, most CSPs are not utilizing any kind of analytics platform at all. This means they can’t achieve anywhere near the potential that exists from segmentation.

They might be able to segment by the package that subscribers have bought, where they live, or how many times they have called in the last 12 months – but it stops there. They don’t have the contextual data necessary to garner insights into their subscribers’ actual internet experience – their Quality of Experience (QoE).

The segmentation domains that move the needle for CSPs

With the right data to hand, and a QoE score that reflects how subscribers actually feel about their internet experience, you can segment customers and monitor their user experience on an ongoing basis.

Let’s look at four key areas that can make a real difference to both subscriber quality of experience, and business growth. These are, Value, Lifecycle stage, Behavior and Experience:

• Value: How valuable is this household? Are they big spenders, do they tend to say yes to upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and what is their LTV overall? Understanding customers past and predicted expenditure can be vital.
• Lifecycle stage: Where are these subscribers in terms of their lifecycle with you? Are they brand-new subscribers, or long-term brand champions? Your behavior during the first 90 days for example should be different than for a loyal long-term advocate.
• Behavior: How do these subscribers use the web? Segmenting via usage means looking at real-time sessions, and understanding whether users are streaming, gaming, uploading large files, working from home, reliant on smart home devices, and more.
• Experience: This involves proactively tracking the parameters which will indicate quality of experience. This is a combination of QoS parameters such as bandwidth, jitter, uptime, packet loss and latency, alongside recurring malfunctions and how they impact subscriber experience.

Segmentation allows for personalisation

By creating these segments, CSPs are best-placed to use personalization to delight users and boost their own business efforts. According to McKinsey Research, a personalised customer experience is key to retain customers and increase revenue, and 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver. Fast-growing companies drive 40% more revenue from personalisation than their peers.

Think now about how achieving these kinds of segments in your subscriber base, and gaining insight into which WiFi metrics are of importance to which homes can offer personalisation opportunities.

Take a household that performs a lot of video conferencing, for example. It relies on a stable internet connection without any delays. If this household shows a low QoE score during Zoom sessions or a lot of packet loss, you can offer the ability to prioritize these Zoom sessions over any other consumed apps within the same household.

CSPs can also cross-reference information from the different segmentation categories above to add even greater value. A new subscriber would naturally benefit from extra-attention during the all-important initial 90-days after they onboard. This is how you can benefit from the lifecycle segment. However, if you also know what their real-time experience is like, you’re better placed to help. If everything is running smoothly, then a check-in call might be seen as pestering. However, if you can call and say “Hey, we’re happy to have you with us, we’ve noticed you’re having some trouble with performance on your Smart TV, here’s how we can help”, that’s a powerful first impression.

CSPs: If business value is the question, segmentation is the answer

By gathering the right data, CSPs are well-placed to segment their users by intelligent groupings that help with smart and impactful decision making. The success of this strategy relies on how well you can manipulate the data in a way that gives you the most flexibility and visibility.

Ultimately, with the right data in your arsenal, you can shine a spotlight on the true nature of each internet session. By understanding each home, you can better increase subscriber satisfaction with your company, make inroads in reducing churn, and even open up new revenue generators across your install-base.

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