Capacity Magazine June / July 2019

VOL 18 ISSUE 4 JUNE/JULY 2018

Big interview GTT CEO Rick Calder speaks to Capacity about the strategic $2.3bn acquisition of Interoute

Business intelligence for the global carrier industry

Capacity asks Rick Calder, CEO of GTT:

What’s your next move?

Capacity

capacitymedia.com

Capacity

| 01

CONTENTS Capacity magazine, June/July 2018

VOL 18 ISSUE 4 JUNE/JULY 2018

Big interview GTT CEO Rick Calder speaks to Capacity about the strategic $2.3bn acquisition of Interoute

NEWS & ANALYSIS

FEATURES

04 EUROPE

26 OFF THE BEATEN

06 EUROPE 08 AFRICA

What are carriers doing to address the less developed parts of the global digital ecosystem?

10 SERVICES IN AFRICA

28 PARTNERING TO

Cover image: Adrian Teal, CartoonStock

Business intelligence for the global carrier industry

Capacity asks Rick Calder, CEO of GTT:

What’s your next move?

TRACK

DRIVE UP CAPACITY

PROTECT SUBSEA

12 MIDDLE EAST

Capacity examines the relationship between the subsea cable community and government

15 LATIN AMERICA

38 TELCO INNOVATION

16 NORTH AMERICA

Major operators are carrying out their own innovation to have their say with vendors and the creation of industry standards

capacitymedia.com

ON THE COVER Exclusive look at GTT’s integration plans after the $2.3bn Interoute acquisition page 22

19 ASIA-PACIFIC 32 US OVERSEES, NEW BOARD AND $2.3BN FINES MEAN ZTE IS BACK

STRATEGIES

43 20 INNOVATORS TO

INNOVATION special report after page 33

35

Executive interview: Alex Wang, Huawei X Labs

36

The big interview: Juan Carlos Bernal, Telefónica

38

Telco innovation

42

Executive interview: Khaled Sedrak, NxtVn

43

20 innovators to watch

WATCH

Capacity lists 20 of the most Capacity prominent names innovating in the wholesale space

05 EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

Pierre-Louis de Guillebon, Orange IC

54 SECURING NETWORKS IN

09 EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

Ƥ automation in networking, what is the cause of the resistence against it?

AN AUTOMATED WORLD António Nunes, Angola Cables

13 EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

THE BIG INTERVIEW page 24 Ajay Chitkara, director & CEO, Airtel Global Business, discusses new areas of growth for the Indian telc0

Ú ǡ

56 MARKET DATA

22 THE BIG INTERVIEW

A forward look at key industry megatrends forecast for 2050

Rick Calder, GTT Communications

24 THE BIG INTERVIEW Ajay Chitkara, Airtel Global Business

Alex Wang, Huawei X Labs

59 A DAY IN THE LIFE

36 THE BIG INTERVIEW Juan Carlos Bernal, Telefónica

Bruce Howe, chair of JTF, professor of ocean and resources engineering, University of Hawaii in Manoa

42 EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

60 THE INNOVATION

Khaled Sedrak, NxtVn

REPORT

50 THE BIG INTERVIEW

Reseachers are working out new Ƥ and wireless links

Michael Wheeler, NTT Communications

THE BIG INTERVIEW page 36 Juan Carlos Bernal, CEO of Telefónica’s international wholesale business unit, talks about the company’s digital transformation

58 APPOINTMENTS The industry’s latest movers

35 EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

53 EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW Dr David Hanson, Hanson Robotics

innovators to t watch c

PEOPLE & DIARY

SPONSOR 52 KOSC TELECOM

Innovate or die – that’s the overarching message emanating from the wholesale telecoms community as of late. With increasing investment in new technologies like 5G, IoT and the cloud, and with numerous project-based field trials and R&D labs popping up left, right and centre, Capacity rounded up 20 names of those innovating in the wholesale space.

It goes without saying that this list could easily have been extended to 50 or even 100 entries, and such lists are always largely subjective. But with the likes of Bob Friday developing AI-driven WLAN and Gal Hochberg leading the charge in blockchainenabled global enterprise payments, we think there’s something in here for everyone. capacitymedia.com

AUTOMATION special report after page 49

50

The big interview: Michael Wheeler, NTT Communications

53

Executive interview: Dr David Hanson, Hanson Robotics

54

Securing networks in an automated world

N EN O T W RI B R A ES O N D PE N EW N !

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Awards 2018

EN

WHOLESALE TELECOM’S

U

E

BIGGEST GLOBAL INDUSTRY CELEBRATION 24 October 2018 Troxy Theatre, London 400+ global senior executives DrinksCapacity reception Black tie gala dinner Fantastic guest speaker

E

E ID S NG O L A

018 E2 P O UR E ITY C PA CA

R

TA KI NG

PL AC

auction

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GUEST SPEA KER Live charity WORL AN D RE NO COR UN D-B CE RE D AK ING : BEN PO S LA AU N R EX DE PL R O RE

2017 SPONSORS INCLUDED: Lead partners

Associate partners

Pre-Drinks Reception Sponsor

Wine sponsor

Social Media Sponsor

Charity Auction Sponsor

editor’s letter | 03

“Creativity is still not enough”

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year ago, I wrote how the adage of ‘innovate or die’ is often used and is relevant to the wholesale industry as we look to grow and find new sources of revenue. Today I refer to Ted Levitt, who was an American economist and Harvard Business School professor, who wrote 40 years ago about creativity not being enough. The father of globalisation theory once said: “Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress.”

This is increasingly relevant today amid new technologies, global expansions, acquisitions, consolidation and creating standards. In this June/July issue we take a closer look at the different technologies helping to shape the world today in our Innovation Special Report (after page 33), which includes a 20 Innovators to Watch feature (pages 43-47), and Automation Special Report (after page 49).

Capacity’s latest issue brings you big interviews with senior executives, such as: GTT’s Rick Calder (pages 22-23), who reveals the strategy behind the $2.3 billion Interoute acquisition, Ajay Chitkara of Airtel Global Business (pages24-25), Telefónica’s Juan Carlos Bernal (pages 36-37), and Michael Wheeler of NTT Communications Capacity (pages 50-51).

This issue will not just be going out to our 4,000+ subscribers but will be distributed at Subsea EMEA in Marseille, France, so we spoke to Pierre-Louis de Guillebon of Orange International Carriers (page 5) about the importance of the Marseille hub and we include a feature which examines the relationship between the subsea cable community and government (pages 28-29).

On another note, the 2018 Global Carrier Awards are now open. The deadline this year for submissions is 15 August, so good luck to all of you entering the Awards!

As always, if you have any news, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!

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Jason McGee-Abe Editor-in-chief, Capacity Media

Follow Capacity on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/capacity-media

Management CEO Ros Irving ros.irving@capacitymedia.com

Sales International sales manager Federico Mancini federico.mancini@capacitymedia.com

Events Product director, conferences Vanessa Barbe vanessa.barbe@capacitymedia.com

Editorial Editor-in-chief Jason McGee-Abe jason.mcgee-abe@capacitymedia.com Twitter: @JasonMcGeeAbe

International sales manager Charles Newman charles.newman@capacitymedia.com

ITW event director Ross Webster ross.webster@capacitymedia.com

Production Production and content coordinator Geralyn Samia geralyn.samia@capacitymedia.com

Accounts Administrative assistant Ruby Ward ruby.ward@capacitymedia.com

Design Freelance designer Billy Newton billynwtn@gmail.com

Marketing Head of marketing Lubtcho Dimitrov lubtcho.dimitrov@capacitymedia.com

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Freelance writers Gareth Willmer Guy Matthews

Digital content executive Uday Bahadur uday.bahadur@capacitymedia.com

Editor-at-large Alan Burkitt-Gray alan.burkitt@capacitymedia.com Skype: alanbg Twitter: @alanburkittgray Deputy editor James Pearce james.pearce@capacitymedia.com Twitter: @jamespearce87 Reporter Natalie Bannerman natalie.bannerman@capacitymedia.com Twitter: @nitnat1989

Subscription enquiries Customer services customerservices@euromoneyplc.com tel +44 20 7779 8610 fax +44 20 7779 8602 Printer Stephens and George, UK Next issue August/September 2018 Published on 21 August 2018 Directors David Pritchard (Chairman), Andrew Rashbass (CEO), Colin Jones, Sir Patrick Sergeant, Andrew Ballingal, Tristan Hillgarth, Imogen Joss, Tim Collier, Kevin Beatty, Jan Babiak, Lorna Tilbian

How to contact Capacity Capacity magazine is published by Telcap, a division of Euromoney Global Limited TelCap, 8 Bouverie Street London EC4Y 8AX, UK tel +44 20 7779 7227 (switchboard) fax +44 20 7779 7228 www.capacitymedia.com Capacity (ISSN 1471-762X) is published six times a year by TelCap. Annual subscription €250, £210, $340. © TelCap, 2018. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may by reproduced, stored or introduced into any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, manual, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners Although TelCap has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this publication, neither it nor any contributor can accept any legal responsibility whatsoever for consequences that may arise from errors or omissions or any opinions or advice given.

04 | europe

TOP MANAGERS GO AS GTT COMPLETES $2.3BN INTEROUTE TAKEOVER

Birkett: Take the summer off — Finnie: No plans at present

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include Robert McNeal, vice chairman, and Jan Louwes, executive VP of sales and marketing.

Those staying with GTT, as the company is now rebranded across Europe, include Andrew Holder, executive VP of customer operations, Mark Lewis, executive VP of communications and connectivity, and Jonathan Brown, VP of marketing.

Brown told Capacity: “The exciting thing for those who are staying is it’s a really good opportunity. It gives us a lot more global scale.”

GTT said in its statement that the addition of Interoute would create “the most comprehensive and competitive global cloud networking platform in the industry”, and add “a large base of marquee multinational clients, balanced across geographies and verticals, with very high levels of recurring revenue”.

It would strengthen “GTT’s leadership in software-defined wide area networking” and enhance its global team.

GTT said in March that two smaller shareholders in Interoute, Aleph Capital Partners and Crestview Partners, would invest $175 million in common stock in the combined company.

EO Gareth Williams and most of his C-level team have left Interoute as GTT completed its $2.3 billion takeover.

Along with Williams, CFO Catherine Birkett, CTO Matthew Finnie and group general counsel Maurice Woolf all left on 31 May 201 as GTT’s Rick Calder moved in to become president and CEO to oversee the integration.

GTT completed the acquisition just three months after announcing the deal to buy the unlisted London-based company from its investors, including the Swiss-

based Sandoz Family Foundation.

Calder said: “Our enhanced scale, expanded network footprint and award-winning product capabilities reinforce our position as a global leader Capacity in cloud networking.

We look forward to bringing the benefits of this acquisition to our valued clients across the world.”

Finnie told Capacity that he has “no plans at present but will take some time to think about my options”. Birkett said she will “definitely do something else but [is] going to take the summer off”.

Among others who left the company

DEUTSCHE TELEKOM INCREASES OTE STAKE IN €284M DEAL

TIM WARNS FALLING WHOLESALE PRICES MAY HIT SEPARATION PLAN

Deutsche Telekom has completed the purchase of an additional 5% in shares of Greek operator OTE. DT now has an additional 24.5 million common registered shares making its total stake in the company 45%. The deal was done using DT’s right of first refusal towards the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, which forms part of the shareholders agreement between OTE and DT. This also means the deal was not subject to any regulatory approvals.

Srini Gopalan, Deutsche Telekom board member for Europe, said: “OTE is a strong cornerstone of our strategic ambition to become the leading European telco. Growth can be achieved primarily through convergence and digitisation and OTE is an essential part of our coordinated strategic efforts to make this happen.”

Italian regulator AGCom is starting a public consultation on TIM’s network separation plan – but TIM’s CEO Amos Genish is worried about falling wholesale prices.

The separate NetCo could be operational at the beginning of 2019, Genish said after the regulator decided TIM’s project to divide the company was “acceptable”.

The regulator, Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCom), will now include network separation in a public consultation with operators for market analysis on network access.

A TIM spokeswoman told Capacity that “this is a positive outcome”, because including network separation in a wider enquiry was “much faster than having an ad hoc consultation solely on NetCo project”. NetCo will include all national infrastructure in Italy but will not own Sparkle, the international wholesale network.

Find out more in our Rick Calder interview on pages 22-23

Genish welcomed AGCom’s decision, saying it was “a milestone” and confirming the plan to launch NetCo by early January 2019. “AGCom is satisfied by all the documents we have presented,” he said. But he called on “everyone to play their part” in developing the regulatory framework. “It is not a one-sided act.”

Genish said he was concerned that an annual decline of wholesale access prices “does not always seem to take into account NetCo’s actual cost and sustainability”.

TIM said the annual price decline was “dramatic”, with prices “among the lowest in Europe”.

TIM said it hoped and expected “an evolution of the regulatory landscape allowing NetCo to be a sustainable and independent business, capable of affording the investments needed to give Italy and the market a technological best-in-class infrastructure”. june/july 2018

executive interview: pierre-louis de guillebon | 05

MARSEILLE IS FRANCE, AND FRANCE IS ORANGE Pierre-Louis de Guillebon tells James Pearce about the importance of the Marseille hub to Orange International Carriers

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arseille is, and always has been, a melting pot of cultures, food and styles. It has belonged to the Greeks, Romans and, of course, the French.

These days, it is well known for its musical scene and grand views, and was named European capital of culture in 2013.

Last year, it was home to Capacity’s Subsea Connect event – a location picked in part to reflect its emergence as a key meeting point for subsea cable systems, with 13 currently landing in the city.

These come from Africa, the Americas, the Middle East and Asia, with connectivity back into the rest of Europe.

For Orange, host sponsor at this year’s Subsea Connect EMEA which will also be held in Marseille, the city is seen as a key location. Pierre-Louis de Guillebon, CEO of Orange International Carriers says the city is in a “fantastic situation” for the subsea cable industry.

He explains: “There are 13 cables

Marseille”. In fact, four billion people are estimated to connect through the French port. For Orange, its presence in Marseille is a key part of its connectivity strategy.

“Marseille is France, and France is Orange,” he adds, pointing to the French firm’s heritage as France Telecom. “We are playing at home. We have a huge terrestrial network that can connect to cables across Europe and we are selling capacity on submarine cables, backhaul and terrestrial network – 10G or 100G. We can have several routes from Marseille to other cities, often three routes,Capacity which for security is fantastic. We also have a very simple pricing methodology selling 10G and 100G, meaning we have a very simple offer. And we promise to deliver in two weeks, compared with two months on Orange before.”

So what has led to Marseille becoming such a key hub for the subsea industry?

CEO de Guillebon points to two factors: “history and placement”.

There are 13 cables arriving, landing in Marseille, and they are coming from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. If you consider that in Asia you have India plus China, that’s more than three billion people. All of these people want to connect to fast content, and that is located in Europe in places like Marseille, Frankfurt, London and Amsterdam – data centre hubs” Pierre-Louis de Guillebon, CEO, Orange International Carriers arriving, landing in Marseille, and they are coming from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. If you consider that in Asia you have India plus China, that’s more than three billion people. All of these people want to connect to fast content, and that is located in Europe in places like Marseille, Frankfurt, London and Amsterdam – data centre hubs.”

For Orange customers looking to connect to AWS or an application that is housed in Europe, they will “go through capacitymedia.com

Marseille has always been a key port in the Med, simply because of where it sits.

But now, with so many subsea cable systems landing there, the onward connectivity to the rest of Europe – the so-called FLAP cities of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris – means it is attracting more cables.

He adds: “Italians are trying to place Sicily as a key hub over Marseille. And so are people from Spain. But in the wholesale industry, it is all about numbers.

Right now, most cables land in Marseille and you have strong onward connectivity to FLAP cities. It is easier for new cables to arrive and land in Marseille.

“To land a new cable, it takes a lot of work – you need permissions, you need the technical elements like the network to be available, and this is all already set in Marseille. Cables are already very complex so you don’t want to spend additional time finding a new location to land.

Marseille is already prepared for new cables and so I think it is one of the best locations in Europe.”

Orange is all in when it comes to Marseille. The company sponsors Olympique de Marseille, the city’s football (or soccer for those of you in the US) team, including its stadium, the Orange Velodrome.

It also has an established partnership with Interxion, which recently opened its second data centre in Marseille. The Orange International Carriers CEO was on hand for the opening, and said its partnership with Interxion was an important part of Orange’s strategy there. Orange now offers a direct connection between Marseille and Penmarch in Britany, opening a unique access to West Africa with two additional cables.

“We’re working with Interxion, which owns one of the biggest data centres in Europe – and Marseille is growing,” he adds. “We can provide facilities through our network to connect different Interxion locations. What we also have is an agreement which sees us able to resell and integrate part of Interxion’s solutions. So we can integrate not only our own network solutions but also bits of Interxion’s service by reselling and aggregating what we have signed with them.”

We spoke just before l’OM – as the locals call their football team – played Atlético Madrid in the UEFA Europa League final in Lyon, and de Guillebon said he’d be in the city the night the game was being played. Sadly for him, Marseille lost 0-3. But from what he says, the city of Marseille is a real winner.

06 | europe

CLOUD 5G ‘COULD TRANSMIT 100GBPS’, AFTER EUROPEAN TELEKOM SLOVENIA TRIAL

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European-wide research project has successfully demonstrated cloud technology for the next generation of mobile telecoms, achieving 2.5Gbps data speeds.

The iCirrus project, led by two UK universities and a German research institute, means that innovative fronthaul solutions could achieve even higher data rates – up to 100Gbps.

“We were able to demonstrate for the first time an Ethernet-based front-haul solution for millimetre-wave signals that achieves the high data rates expected for

5G,” said Kai Habel, project manager at Germany’s Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (Fraunhofer HHI).

The researchers carried out the successful trial with Telekom Slovenia in Ljubljana, but Orange, Cyprus’s PrimeTel and Spain’s Wellness Telecom were also involved in the trials.

The project included Adva Optical Networking, Viavi Solutions, IAG – a radio specialist – and InterDigital Europe.

The UK’s University of Kent led the academic side of the project, working with another UK university, Essex, as well as

Fraunhofer HHI. The two universities’ roles in future European Union projects will be threatened if the UK does leave the EU. The aim of this three-year, €3.8-million project was to develop solutions for the intelligent cloud-radio access network (cloud-RAN) in the new 5G mobile communications standard.

The iCirrus results show that it is possible to achieve the goals of a 1000fold area capacity at a tenfold-tohundredfold higher user data rate, compared with today’s 4G LTE.

MTEL THIRD EXPANSION FOR IXCELLERATE DATA BULGARIA’S IS REBRANDED A1 BULGARIA CENTRE IN MOSCOW IXcellerate has opened what it claims is the largest data hall in Russia as part of the third expansion of its Moscow data centre campus.

The expansion sees IXcellerate house 1100 racks within a single, undivided space of 2500 square metres, with 10% of it already pre-sold.

The Russian firm said investment into the new Moscow One module, which began construction in Q4 2017, has topped $20 million, following a $15 million convertible loan deal from the likes of Goldman Sachs.

Guy Willner, IXcellerate CEO, said:

“This project was, five years ago, a start-up.

Today IXcellerate is a fully-fledged international company more than serving its initial purpose – to become the most advanced data centre in Russia with the best technology, customer service and team.”

IXcellerate said the site is in the final Capacity stages of passing the Uptime Institute audit and obtaining Tier III certification, with this due to be completed in late June 2018.

“Year after year we boost our clients’ trust, maintaining safe storage and processing of data within the Russian territory for both Russian and international customers,” said Willner.

The A1 Telekom Austria group’s Bulgarian subsidiary has rebranded as A1 Bulgaria, continuing an alignment of the Austrian telco’s brand strategy across central and eastern Europe. Ultimately all of its operations will use the A1 brand.

A1 is already used in Slovenia and at A1 Digital, as well as for the international corporate brand.

TELIA CARRIER LAUNCHES NEW POP IN BELGRADE Telia Carrier has installed its first point of presence (PoP) in Serbia, giving customers in the region access to its global backbone.

The PoP, in Belgrade, will serve as a connectivity hub for surrounding countries and act as an interconnection point for international customers requiring a dedicated connection into Serbia.

Henrik Almroth, sales director at Telia Carrier, said: “We are constantly looking to meet customer demand for access to our backbone. The appetite for online services, in both a business and consumer context, has reached a point in Serbia where we saw a compelling need to expand our network into the region.”

Telia Carrier’s customers had previously needed to route via Frankfurt, Vienna or Budapest in order to access Telia Carrier’s AS1299 global IP backbone.

Almroth said: “Many of the world’s leading telcos, cloud and content providers already connect directly to the

Telia Carrier backbone and this expansion brings our customers in Serbia and the surrounding countries ever closer to the content and services they need.”

Alejandro Plater: We benefit from the distinct value proposition of A1

Henrik Almroth: The new PoP will meet growing customer demand

Group CEO and COO Alejandro Plater said: “With the rebranding in Bulgaria, we are able to benefit from the distinct value proposition of A1 in one more important market within our footprint.”

The group hopes the A1 brand will build a perception of it as an international provider of convergent services. Plater said: “This rebranding and those that are about to follow will support our goal to further enhance the group’s engagement in its core region of interest as one company, with one strategy and one brand that stands for the life in the digital age.”

june/july 2018

Capacity

08 | africa

SEACOM COMPLETES 1.5TBPS SUBSEA CABLE UPGRADE

INTELSAT JOINS SMART AFRICA TO HELP BRIDGE AFRICA’S DIGITAL DIVIDE

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Intelsat has joined Smart Africa, a publicprivate organisation that supports and develops Africa’s digital transformation.

The company says it wants to work with governments and other organisations to reduce the digital divide.

Speaking on the announcement, Stephen Spengler, CEO of Intelsat, said: “It is only by working closely with local governments, partnering with other stakeholders throughout the ICT landscape and sharing our knowledge through training programmes that we will be in a strong position to provide all of Africa with high quality, affordable broadband connectivity.”

“Intelsat has worked tirelessly over the past four decades to ensure that the people of Africa have access to high quality, affordable and reliable broadband connectivity,” said Hamadoun Touré, the executive director of Smart Africa, who helped to found the Broadband Commission when he was secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union.

“By partnering with all the key stakeholders, I am confident that we can continue to narrow the digital divide and create a sustainable broadband network that accelerates Africa’s digital transformation and spurs further economic development across all areas of Africa – urban, suburban and rural,” added Spengler.

EACOM has completed its 1.5Tbps upgrade of its subsea cable system linking the Southern Eastern African coastline to Europe.

The upgrade project was announced back in 2013 and used Ciena’s 6500 PacketOptical Platform and OneControl Unified

Claes Segelberg: Connectivity services in Africa are booming

Management System to carry out the works.

At the time, Claes Segelberg, chief technology officer at SEACOM, said: “Connectivity services in Africa are booming due to the growing needs of business IT users, the rise of “cloud” based services, and growing requirements for the processing and storing of personal data” The current upgrade adds an additional 500G of capacity to the subsea system, after a previous upgrade of 500G was carried out a year and a half ago.

The plan forms part of SEACOM’s wider strategy to develop the African internet and open broadband tap for African service providers, as well as business people and entities. In particular the upgrade will provide increased capacity in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa.

The works also used 100Gbps coherent DWDM technology which allows SEACOM to add more capacity as and when is needed.

MTN PARTNERS CISCO TO LAUNCH Capacity IOT SERVICES IN SOUTH AFRICA MTN and Cisco have announced the availability of the Cisco Jasper Control Center for all companies on MTN’s network in South Africa.

The availability of the automated IoT connectivity platform will enable business customers to launch, manage, and monetise IoT services worldwide.

Commenting on the new launch, Mariana Kruger, general manager for ICT solutions at MTN Business, said: “We’re excited to see the early adoption from our business customers, and it’s clear that organisations in every industry are eager to deliver powerful connected services that

help transform their businesses. More businesses worldwide rely on Cisco Jasper Control Center than any other platform to deliver these IoT services, and combined with our powerful network, we are providing customers with the premier IoT connectivity solution in South Africa.”

Since rolling out the new offering the company’s say they have seen quick adoption of the service from its customers indicating strong demand from across all industries, but with particular interest from the connected car, vehicle tracking, building security & automation, and logistics industries.

SPRINT BOOSTS ITS AFRICAN CAPABILITIES WITH CMC AND JOHANNESBURG POP Sprint has enhanced its South African network capabilities after opening a Johannesburg point of presence (PoP), further extending its global wireline backbone network.

Sprint’s strategic relationship with CMC Networks, a pan-African provider, has been extended to incorporate the operation of the Johannesburg PoP to enhance Sprint’s global Tier 1 network, which serves multinational business and carrier customers in 195 countries around the world.

“This new service node in South Africa continues to demonstrate Sprint’s

commitment in providing cost effective, scalable and highly available connectivity services to customers who have multinational or in-country requirements,” said Mark Harris, Sprint managing director for International Wireline.

“We are delighted to partner with CMC Networks to continue providing the best possible service to our customers.”

With this new PoP Sprint will provide an enhanced experience to customers in South Africa and surrounding countries.

“The fast-growing data demand in Africa and the Middle East has created some

Stephen Spengler: Intelsat works with Smart Africa to close the digital divide

tremendous new opportunities,” added Martin Springer, CEO at CMC Networks.

“The CMC team is enthusiastic about continuing to grow our relationship with Sprint, and helping them address their clients’ and partners’ global expansion and diversity requirements.” The news comes just over a month after the announcement that Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile US is to take over SoftBank’s Sprint in a non-cash deal that will create a powerful US mobile operator worth $146 billion to compete with Verizon and AT&T. In the deal, the new company – temporarily called New T-Mobile US – will be smaller than the other two but will be within meaningful competing distance, especially as they all start to roll out 5G. june/july 2018

executive interview: antónio nunes | 09

ACROSS THE SOUTH ATLANTIC – AND ON TO THE INDIAN OCEAN? As Angola Cables’ new SACS cable goes into operation, CEO António Nunes tells Alan Burkitt-Gray of his idea for a terrestrial extension across southern Africa

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ngola Cables is looking for a terrestrial route across Africa to extend its new Atlantic cable to the Indian Ocean and on to Asia.

The South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) is operational and will go into service from Fortaleza in Brazil to Sangano in Angola in July or August. At Sangano, SACS connects to a number of other subsea cables and to Angola’s own fixed and mobile service providers, which are its shareholders. But no further.

I sat down with Angola Cables CEO António Nunes at International Telecoms Week in Chicago in early May, and he was already thinking about the next step.

“We have a border with Zambia, and Zambia has borders with Tanzania and

in a very efficient way. And from Angola we can reach Nigeria and South Africa.

We are in the middle.”

Fortaleza is becoming a vast data junction on the Atlantic coast because of the number of subsea cables already landing there. Before SACS, Monet – in which Angola Cables is a shareholder – was just the latest, calling into Fortaleza on its way from Florida to southern Brazil. There are “15 subsea cables in Fortaleza”, he says. Those other subsea links connect to the east coast of the US –Capacity Florida, Virginia and New York/New Jersey.

The place is helping to open up the north of Brazil, which until now has had “relatively poor infrastructure and

If we don’t have the infrastructure, we won’t survive in new markets. We are getting one step forward so when the market is ready, the highways are there” António Nunes, CEO, Angola Cables Mozambique,” he says. And both of those countries are on Africa’s Indian Ocean coast, giving access to cables running to the Gulf, to India and beyond.

In Tanzania, cables land at Dar es Salaam; in Mozambique, the only landing is at Maputo in the far south.

But a connection from the west coast of Africa to the east coast would provide “a big portion of the traffic” on SACS, he says. It could be a joint venture with an African terrestrial fibre company. “We’ve already started the research, but I’m not sure of the timescale.”

Even before that terrestrial extension is planned and built, the new SACS opens up new routing possibilities for the world’s carriers. “SACS is a completely new route,” says Nunes.

“People don’t yet know the route. From Fortaleza you can serve South America capacitymedia.com

connectivity”, he says. “We’re building two data centres, one in Angola and one in Brazil.”

At the eastern end, SACS connects to the West Africa Cable System (WACS) and will connect to the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) cable. Both of those give connections to South Africa and, to the north, Nigeria and Europe. “When SACS is live it will expand the demand from South Africa to the US.” Both Angola and Nigeria are oilproducing states. “There’s a lot of interaction between Nigeria and Houston,” says Nunes, suggesting potential traffic from the oil industry for WACS from Nigeria to Angola, SACS across the South Atlantic, and then Monet to Florida to connect with Houston. Angola Cables will be a one-stop shop for the WACS-SACS-

Monet route, he says.

The normal current alternative runs into London and then across the North Atlantic before heading to Texas. “This offers redundancy for the North Atlantic route,” says Nunes.

At the same time, Angola Cables has joined DE-CIX’s reseller programme, so it can resell peering points and connect its customers to DE-CIX’s hubs in North America and Europe.

“We are proud to become the first Angolan reseller of DE-CIX premium interconnection services, targeting Africa and South America,” said Nunes. “The recent implementation of DE-CIX reseller services highlights our commitment to helping our customers expand into new markets, lessening the digital divide, and improving the internet experience for end-users in main markets of Africa and South America.”

Angola Cables will connect to the DE-CIX locations in New York, Frankfurt, Madrid and Marseille, and the agreement with DE-CIX indicates that the African and South American networks will have an alternative route between Europe and North America.

Angola Cables is already expanding its horizons to Asia, even before Nunes realises his dream of a terrestrial cable across Africa. WACS ends at Cape Town, where there are connections onwards to Asia. “You can now link South America efficiently to Asia, avoiding the US and Europe,” says Nunes. “In terms of network configuration that’s a new type of diversity.”

Nunes and his team have started to market SACS to carriers. “At the beginning not many believed we could do it. The big challenge will start right now.”

SACS is vital to the economic future of Angola, he says, as the economy moves from crude oil to data. “If we don’t have the infrastructure we won’t survive in new markets. We are getting one step forward so when the market is ready the highways are there.”

10 | analysis: africa

SERVICES IN AFRICA DRIVE UP CAPACITY “AFRICA IS GROWING FROM A MARGIN MARKET TO A VOLUME MARKET”

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hat’s according to Norman Albi, CEO of AFR-IX Telecom during a recent interview with Capacity TV. As the continent goes through a transitional period, the shift in the market has sparked a number of new investments and projects, also driven by the growing demands of the volume consumer market.

The finance sector has been quick to pick up on this market shift and it has responded in kind with Telecom Egypt being the most recent recipient of this new surge in investment. In May, the company was awarded a $200 million loan from the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank). The deal was negotiated by the Egypt branch of the Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank and the newly acquired funds will be used for working capital as well as future investments.

MTN Group is also reportedly now preparing for its speculated $500 million Nigerian IPO. The company says it is hoping to raise at least $400 million in funds to help reduce its telco debt, though no applications for the offer have been received by the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

Capacity requires cables The African subsea market is experiencing particularly high growth in the region with numerous new projects scheduled for completion over the next 12-18 months.

One being Ghana’s Eastern Corridor subsea cable that has begun its final phase of development. Once finalised, the new cable will be followed by a 165km cable extension linking Accra to Ho. The €38 million project is funded by a loan from the government of Denmark, the Danish International Development Agency.

Similarly back in April, Globacom announced that it was building a new fibre-optic subsea cable in Nigeria. The multi-billion naira cable called Glo2 is to be built by Huawei.

“The new submarine cable will be approximately 850 km long and will be named Glo2. The cable will be integrated to Globacom’s existing terrestrial backbone network to provide additional service

redundancy,” said Sanjib Roy, Globacom’s regional director of technical.

It was also this month that Angola Cables’ 6,500km South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) from Sangano in Angola to Fortaleza in Brazil, became ready for service.

In Northern Africa, Algeria’s government confirmed that the country would have two new subsea cables by the end of 2018. One connecting Algeria to Spain, and the second interconnecting an exsiting cable providing onward connectivity to the US and Asia.

In the cloud space, global cloud infrastructure revenues for the Middle East and Africa region increased by 27.5% between 2016Capacity and 2017.

Project-wise, Tata Communications and Dreamtime Technologies partnered together to build a cloud-based virtual mobile network to serve African mobile and internet of things (IoT) providers.

They hope that the new offering will lay the foundation for next-gen mobile and IoT services across various sectors such as: healthcare, transport, mining, agriculture, banking and retail.

Data market grows In line with the growing need for capacity and data, data centres expanded at the same time. Africa Data Centres has expanded facilities at its flagship East Africa Data Centre (EADC) in Nairobi, Kenya.

PAIX Data Centres and NSIA Technologies revealed that they would jointly develop carrier neutral data centres in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and Dakar, Senegal.

Because of the rural landscape across much of the continent, satellite communications revealed itself as another high growth area. Vodacom Business Nigeria partnered Intelsat to expand its enterprise broadband connectivity in West Africa.

Under the agreement Vodacom will be able to offer new and enhanced services to its customers.

Intelsat joined Smart Africa, a publicprivate organisation that supports Africa’s digital transformation. The satellite company says it wants to with governments and other organisations to reduce the digital divide.

MainOne has ramped up its expansion plans, having secured a C1B licence allowing it to expand national and international connectivity services in Côte D’Ivoire (The Ivory Coast).

Regionally, the Zimbabwean telecoms industry has been doing particularly well.

Back in March telecoms revenue for the country reached approximately $1 billion in 2017 according to figures from Zimbabwe’s regulator.

Interestingly, the majority of this revenue was made up of mobile operators, which increased 17.6% year on year to reach $849.8 million in 2017. Mobile subscriptions grew 42.5%, reaching 4.7 million by the end of 2017, indication growing mobile penetration in the region.

Asian telecoms companies have begun increasing its presence in the market largely

The expansion of services in Africa is driving capacity needs and Africa is leading the pack in terms of growth” Norman Albi, CEO, AFR-IX Telecom

through partnerships and cooperations.

In May, Korea’s KT expanded its ICT cooperation with African countries based on its successful nationwide LTE network project in Rwanda.

Similarly, Liquid Telecom and China Telecom Global partnered to offer its enterprise and wholesale customers of extended network coverage.

But I leave AFR-IX Telecom’s Albi with the last word as he surmises it perfectly: “The expansion of services in Africa is driving capacity needs and Africa is leading the pack in terms of growth.”

Be sure to join us at Capacity Africa 2018, 5 & 6 September in Kigali. june/july 2018

africa | 11

ANGOLA CABLES ADDS NEW PEERING LOCATIONS TO EXPAND ITS GLOBAL IP NETWORK

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ngola Cables has added additional peering points to its international locations in IX.BR São Paulo and Fortaleza, Equinix Ashburn and Miami (formerly NOTA) and NIIX and DE-CIX in New York.

The recent introduction and commissioning of the Monet cable system has enabled Angola Cables to offer higher volume, high speed connectivity capabilities and services which is predicted to enhance connectivity between the USA and Brazil.

Commenting on the news, Darwin Costa, IP product manager of Angola Cables, said: “The new peering points will further enhance the overall performance and significantly reduce the latency for our customers globally, making AS#37468 more robust and reliable.”

The company already has existing peering

capabilities at the following exchange points: Angonix in Luanda, Angola, GigaPIX which is in Lisbon, Portugal, LINX in London, UK, DE-CIX, located in Frankfurt, Germany, AMS-IX in Amsterdam, Netherlands, France-IX in Marseille, France, Espanix based in Madrid, Spain and Nap of Africa in both Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa.

“The recent move into the Americas is part of a directed global strategy to continuously improve our IP network by connecting to advanced, full-service collocation and data centers in Boca Raton in Miami, and São Paulo and Fortaleza in Brazil. Collectively, these initiatives are having a positive impact on the quality IP transit ecosystem, backhauling and Mpls/ VPN products on a carrier-class IP network,” added Costa.

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Darwin Costa: The new peering points will enhance performance for Angola Cables’ customers

12 | middle east

TELECOM EGYPT UNIT ACQUIRES ALL OF ORASCOM’S SHARES OF MENA SUBSEA CABLE FOR $90M

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gyptian International Submarine Cables Company (EISCC) has agreed to purchase Orascom Telecom Media and Technology’s (OTMT’s) shares of its subsidiary MENA subsea cable for $90 million.

EISCC is Telecom Egypt’s 50%-owned subsidiary and it previously announced on 10 May 2018 that its board of directors had approved the acquisition of the Middle East and North Africa Submarine Cable (MENA), by its subsidiary EISCC, with a total enterprise value of $90 million to be financed through a shareholder loan from Telecom Egypt.

“We are pleased to have concluded the [agreement] with OTMT. As earlier communicated, the decision to acquire MENA Cable is one of the most important steps towards implementing the company’s strategic plan to ensure the sustainability of submarine cable revenues and reinforce the contribution of the USD revenue stream,” said Ahmed El Beheiry, managing director and chief executive officer of Telecom Egypt.

“The new cable will add to Telecom

The MENA subsea cable

Egypt’s network of submarine cables fortifying TE’s network offering to the maximum number of routes between India and Europe as well as add a new gateway to Europe through Italy.”

The decision to acquire MENA Cable is in line with Telecom Egypt’s strategy to achieve a short-term return from this investment and to preserve the revenue stream of the submarine cable systems.

MENA Cable is licensed in Egypt and Italy to operate a submarine telecommunications

Capacity

system connecting Europe to the Middle East and South East Asia.

The sale and purchase agreement states that the transaction aims to be concluded in 60 days, after the fulfilment of all conditions precedents.

Earlier this year, Telecom Egypt signed a three-year wholesale transmission and infrastructure agreement with Vodafone Egypt, valued at the equivalent of more than $133 million.

BEZEQ FORCED TO SHARE ITS TELEPHONY INFRASTRUCTURE Bezeq Israel Telecom has been notified by the Ministry of Communications that as of 1 August it is required to make its telephony infrastructure available for leasing. The news relates to the Bit Stream Access + Telephony service portfolio (BSA) that

Bezeq is required to provide both separately and as an add-on.

Under the BSA, published in 2017, based on a decision by the current acting Minister of Communications, Bezeq is required to supply telephony service in resale format for

SES LAUNCHES NEW SATELLITE COVERING MIDDLE EAST AND APAC SES has partnered with SpaceX to launch its latest satellite, aiming to offer video, fixed data and mobility services across the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific.

SES-12 will operate under the authority of the Netherlands and will replace and augment services already provided by SES’s NSS-6 satellite, which was launched in 2002.

The launch of SES-12 was on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida on 4 June. The satellite, one of the largest geostationary satellites that SES has ever launched, was constructed by Airbus Defence and Space.

SES-12 will reach 18 million TV homes, along with SES-8, providing services for pay-TV operators through its six wide beams and 72 high-throughput user spot beams. It takes SES’s fleet in operation to seven geostationary and 16 medium-orbit satellites across Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

Overall, it has 50 geostationary satellites.

Martin Halliwell, chief technology officer

at SES, said: “More content. More immersive viewing experience. Blazing internet speeds.

Reliable cell coverage. All of these dynamic customer requirements can now be met with the successful launch of SES-12, which will provide incremental high performance capacity and offer greater reliability and flexibility to our customers.”

Martin Halliwell: More content

a year from July 2017. At the time the ministry said that it was going to review and possibly extend the resale arrangement or make it permanent.

The company has told the ministry that in order to make this new mandated wholesale service possible, a switch needs to be replaced as part of a very protracted process, in order to make this technologically feasible. As such Bezeq has indicated that it will be unable to meet the schedule provided by the ministry but it is working with them to find a solution.

Bezeq says that the implementation of the service portfolio will negatively affect the company’s financial results, though at this stage it can’t be sure of the extent of the impact. At the time of the statement from Bezeq the company’s shares were trading almost 4% lower than usual.

Israel is implementing a wide-scale wholesale market reform in an attempt to drive down consumer prices and increase competition. At present Bezeq is one of two companies providing telecom infrastructure but is still the country’s most dominant player.

The outlines were originally laid out in 2014, but rollout slowed as Bezeq said the wholesale reform in its original version was technologically impossible to implement, leading to the current resale version now proposed. june/july 2018

executive interview: sUBGGBO göjeryd | 13

TELIA CARRIER IS POPPING UP EVERYWHERE Telia Carrier has recently launched points of presence in Mexico, Serbia and Rome. CEO StBffan Göjeryd talks the move into Mexico and what is next for the carrier

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he opening up of some elements of the Mexican telecoms market from an oligopoly to a more competitive landscape means the door is open for the international carrier community to enter.

That is the view shared by Telia Carrier CEO Staffan Göjeryd as Capacity sit down with him at ITW to discuss the company’s latest expansion – a point of presence (PoP) in the city of Queretaro, just north of Mexico City.

With a population of more than 120 million people and a growing demand for broadband services, Mexico offers a “significant market opportunity” for Telia Carrier, Göjeryd tells Capacity.

He adds: “If you look at Telia Carrier

Telecommunications Institute (IFT) said that the smaller markets still lacked options in this space.

Göjeryd explains that Telia has already had numerous requests from both companies based in Mexico, but also from existing international customers, most notably on the over-the-top content side, who wanted the carrier to expand directly into Mexico.

Capacity “That’s the logic for us in terms of expanding there and it is a close proximity to where we have our network footprint, so a lot of the logic is that it is a vibrant market going through a lot of changes, including deregulation,” he adds. “That gives a lot of opportunities, with smaller players popping up.

It has been a very conscious move from the Mexican government to deregulate many different sectors – it was definitely a factor for us to enter now, rather than earlier” StBffan Göjeryd, CEO, Telia Carrier and the footprint we have in the US, we have positioned ourselves near the border crossings a couple of years ago so we’ve been addressing a lot of the Mexican customer base from those different locations, whether it is there or in the California area. Most of the major players are someone we already have a relationship with today, but it has reached a point where we need to go in market.”

New regulations in Mexico and the launch of the Red Compartida wholesale wireless service are set to drive broadband penetration, though a recent report from the Federal capacitymedia.com

You can’t serve them from outside the country – you have to be in it.”

Why enter now? Göjeryd says that, although Telia Carrier won’t be going directly for the 4G space following the launch of Red Compartida, the general regulatory environment in the country, driven by policies introduced by president Enrique Peña Nieto which aims to uproot monopolies, is favourable.

The privatisation of Telmex in 1989 produced a huge and sorely needed investment in Mexico’s telecommunications networks, but the decision not to open up the market to new competitors led to a powerful monopoly.

In March, the IFT approved a plan to separate part of Telmex - America Movil’s fixed-line unit - into new companies. Its network includes telephone poles and copper cables, which transmit fixed-line calls, mobile data and internet.

Göjeryd says: “We’re not playing in the 4G space but the general sentiment of trying to deregulate many different markets plays into our decision. That is why the timing for this is very good for us. So far it has been a very conscious move from the Mexican government to deregulate many different sectors – it was definitely a factor for us to enter now, rather than earlier.”

This hasn’t been the only expansion for Telia Carrier recently. It also announced its first PoP in Serbia, offering greater reach and IP services for customers in the Eastern European market, and a new PoP in Rome.

“There are two different ways we look at expansions,” he explains. “One is extensions from where we are – we have network footprint that ends in country A and country B is the next one, so we can look at expanding there. But there are a lot of other factors to consider.”

The other is “where we see major shifts in the underlying cost structures” often driven by subsea cable systems into certain markets. If a market stops being cost prohibitive, it “could be fair to build out and try to make a business from it without putting too much money on the table”, he adds.

“Ambition-wise, we are trying to make sure everyone can be connected but certain markets can still be very locked down, especially when you’re doing what we’re doing in terms of IP transit traffic.

A lot of markets are opening up more and more and there are more sea cable systems that are being developed so other markets become interesting for us.”

Capacity

latin america | 15

GLOBENET EXPANDS ITS SUBSEA NETWORK INTO ARGENTINA

SEABORN NETWORKS PICKS EDGECONNEX BUENOS AIRES EDGE DATA CENTRE FOR ARGENTINA POP

GlobeNet is to deploy a new 2,500km submarine cable that will link Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to Buenos Aires.

The new cable will connect Argentina to the GlobeNet network in Brazil, effectively linking the Southern Cone of South America to the United States and then the rest of the world.

“Our submarine cable, designed to satisfy low latency and high capacity demands, will be the first new route to provide direct connectivity from Argentina to Brazil and the United States since 2001,” said GlobeNet CEO Eduardo Falzoni.

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dgeConneX has announced that Seaborn Networks has selected its Buenos Aires edge data centre (EDC) as the point of presence (PoP) in Argentina for Seaborn’s ARBR submarine cable.

“EdgeConneX has long recognised the need for edge services across the globe as content delivery and cloud applications require localisation and availability. The Buenos Aires edge data centre, which sits at the hub to hundreds of national and multinational companies at Parque Industrial Pilar, is the ideal facility at which to interconnect our new subsea cable system,” said Larry Schwartz, chairman and CEO of Seaborn Networks.

Through an interconnection to Seaborn’s Seabras-1 subsea network connecting Brazil to the US, the ARBR submarine cable also enables the newest and most direct route between Argentina and the US. The PoP at the EdgeConneX Buenos Aires EDC will provide crossconnect opportunities for all EdgeConneX customers.

Capacity “Through the introduction of cuttingedge technology, the Buenos Aires EDC will enhance economic growth throughout

the region, and combined with connectivity to Seaborn’s ARBR subsea cable, will make Argentina a more attractive location for data investment by enterprises across a wide range of industries,” said Randy Brouckman, chief executive officer, EdgeConneX. “As we continue to expand the edge globally in partnership with subsea cable developers and owner-operators such as Seaborn Networks, EdgeConneX enhances the delivery of cloud, content and network services not only in Buenos Aires but for international organisations seeking to expand business opportunities and connectivity options between North and South America.”

The Buenos Aires EDC provides underserved regions in South America with content delivery, cloud access and international interconnectivity in an N+1 facility. A multi-tenant facility, the Buenos Aires EDC offers customers a robust connectivity and peering platform comprised of extensive fibre, density and peering options along with a highlyinterconnected ecosystem of industry partners.

Eduardo Falzoni: New route to the US

“As a result, individuals and enterprises in the Southern Cone will be able to enjoy unparalleled capabilities when streaming content, accessing cloud services and interconnecting with data centres all over the world.”

The new subsea cable system will use the latest technology and feature a state-of-theart design for the best architectural configuration. It will connect GlobeNet’s cable landing station in Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo via a landing point in nearby Praia Grande, and to Buenos Aires via a landing point in Las Toninas, a coastal town southeast of the Argentinian capital.

GlobeNet has been making extensions and continuous upgrades to its network infrastructure since the inception of its flagship 23,500km submarine cable system; the company recently announced a new level IV data centre in Barranquilla, Colombia, as well as a new central interconnection point for the Brazilian Network Information Centre at GlobeNet’s Internet Exchange Point in Fortaleza, Brazil, that hosts the most important national internet infrastructure in the north and north-eastern regions of Brazil.

The new cable system is scheduled to be ready for service in the first half of 2020. capacitymedia.com

MONET SUBSEA CABLE NOW LIVE AND FULLY OPERATIONAL The Monet subsea cable connecting Boca Raton, Florida to both Fortaleza and Santos, Brazil, is now completed and fully operational.

The 10,556km cable system owned by Algar Telecom, Angola Cables, Antel and Alphabet, establishes an advanced digital gateway between the US and Brazil which will feature six-fibre-pair cable and optical transmission technologies, with an initial design capacity of 64Tbps.

“The completion of the Monet submarine cable system is an extremely significant milestone for the market, by

Monet cable: Powerful, stable backbone

bringing a new generation of technology, in submarine cables, capable of facing the new challenge of digital evolution,” said Antonio Nunes, chair of the Monet Executive Committee.

“The effort to bring this submarine cable to service with direct and low-latency connections will bring real benefits to the economies of the regions. The digital wave opens new horizons and business opportunities, many of them unknown at this time. The Monet will guarantee the contribution to the development and growth of well-being.”

The Monet cable system was designed and built on the SubCom Open Cables concept and incorporates leading-edge submarine technology, delivering exceptional bandwidth design capacity and vastly improved internet latency performance.

The introduction of commercial traffic and services via the cable will improve current connectivity needs between Latin America and the US and offers a powerful platform and stable backbone to accommodate increased capacity demands in the future.

16 | north america

PRYSMIAN GROUP RELAUNCHES AFTER $3BN ACQUISITION

FACEBOOK ADMITS DATASHARING PARTNERSHIPS WITH HANDSET MAKERS, INCLUDING HUAWEI

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Facebook has admitted to data-sharing partnerships with Huawei, Lenovo OPPO and TCL. But Facebook said the deal was purely to allow smartphone users to access Facebook accounts on their devices.

The admission follows a New York Times report that said around 60 companies worldwide have similar agreements with Facebook. They include Amazon, Apple, BlackBerry, HTC, Microsoft and Samsung.

Facebook’s VP of mobile partnerships, Francisco Varela, said: “Facebook along with many other US tech companies have worked with them and other Chinese manufacturers to integrate their services onto these phones. Facebook’s integrations with Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO and TCL were controlled from the get-go – and we approved the Facebook experiences these companies built.”

He added: “All the information from these integrations with Huawei was stored on the device, not on Huawei’s servers.”

US politicians responded to the New York Times story by expressing concern that Huawei and others could access data about Facebook users. The New York Times said that Facebook allowed device makers to have deep access to users’ personal data without their explicit consent.

rysmian Group is relaunching as a new organisation and beginning the integration of General Cable since closing its $3 billion acquisition.

Headquartered in Milan and with sales of over €11 billion the new group will hire approximately 30,000 employees at 112 plants and 25 R&D centres in over 50 countries. The company has also confirmed the appointment of 450 new managers at global level.

“We are proud to have established our

Valerio Battista: We will operate as a single team with shared objectives

second home region in the United States, contributing to the development of the country’s economy with our best technologies and expertise. Today, we begin to operate as a single team with shared objectives,” said Valerio Battista, chief executive officer of Prysmian Group.

“Integrating the two companies’ cultures, business segments, geographical markets, production facilities and staff functions.

Protecting our business and creating value: these are our priorities.”

As a result of the integration North America will now account for approximately one third of the Group’s sales. In addition, the North American head office will be based in Highland Heights, Kentucky with an added 23 plants throughout the region operated by roughly 5,800 staff.

The new organisation will bring together the strengths of both Prysmian and General Cable based on centralised governance, integrated management of global businesses, clear results-based Capacity responsibilities, a focus on efficiency and technological innovation and a customercentric approach. Overall the combining of General Cable will enable further expansion of the range of technologies and products offered by Prysmian Group

GOOGLE AND NEC TO SHOW THE WAY TO TRIPLE SUBSEA FIBRE CAPACITY Google and NEC have doubled the performance of the transpacific Faster cable linking Taiwan to Oregon, and believe they can triple it.

The 10,000km cable was originally designed to carry traffic at 2 bits/second/ hertz, but using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques they increased spectral efficiency first to 3Bps/Hz and then to 4Bps/Hz – twice the original design specification.

Toru Kawauchi, general manager of NEC’s submarine network division, said: “This approach sets aside those [previous] deterministic models of nonlinear

The transpacific Faster cable

propagation, in favour of a low-complexity black-box model of the fibre, generated by machine learning algorithms.”

Google and NEC tested the performance in a field trial performed together with live traffic neighbouring channels. They claim a spectral efficiency-distance product record of 66,102Bps/Hz. It the trial it carried live traffic from Google data centres.

NEC has also carried out offline field trials over dark fibres with even more promising results. They used fibre of the same length and achieved spectral efficiency of 5.68Bps/ Hz and made other measurements that promise 6.06Bps/Hz – three times the original design specification of the Faster cable. NEC said it believes 6Bps/Hz is a “realistic target”.

“The results demonstrate both an improvement in transmission performance and a reduction in implementation complexity. Furthermore, since the black-box model is built up from live transmission data, it does not require advance knowledge of the cable parameters,” added Kawauchi.

AT&T COMPLETES $85BN ACQUISITION OF TIME WARNER AT&T has officially closed its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, a mere two days after the transaction was approved by a federal judge.

“The content and creative talent at Warner Bros, HBO and Turner are first-rate.

Combine all that with AT&T’s strengths in direct-to-consumer distribution, and we offer customers a differentiated, high-quality, mobile-first entertainment experience,” said Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO of AT&T. “We’re going to bring a fresh approach to how the media and entertainment industry works for consumers, content creators, distributors and advertisers.”

Structurally the new company will operate under four key divisions: AT&T Communications, AT&T’s media business, AT&T International and AT&T’s, advertising and analytics business, with Stephenson remaining at the helm.

The deal is set to produce $2.5 billion in increased synergies and AT&T says it will begin consolidating Time Warner results ito its own as of 15 June 2018. june/july 2018

north america | 17

NIKESH ARORA GIVEN $128M TO LEAD PALO ALTO NETWORKS

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ikesh Arora, the former president and COO of SoftBank, has been named as the new CEO and chairman of Palo Alto Networks, in a deal worth $128 million.

Announced by the company’s board of directors Arora assumed the new role as of 6 June, succeeding Mark McLaughlin who is transitioning into the new role of vice chairman of the board.

“I am thrilled and honored to join Palo Alto Networks,” said Arora. “I have developed a deep appreciation for the company’s culture, values and pioneering spirit as innovators and disruptors and I look forward to working with the entire Palo Alto Networks team on our mission of protecting our customers in the digital age.”

According to Bloomberg Arora is set to earn a staggering $128 million in the new

PCCW GLOBAL COMPLETES CONSOLE CONNECT PLATFORM INTEGRATION

M&A ACTIVITIES HELP EQUINIX, DIGITAL REALTY AND NTT MAINTAIN COLO MARKET LEAD Capacity

THE FCC GRANTS SES PERMISSION FOR O3B FLEET EXPANSION

PCCW Global has publicly launched Console Connect after the successful integration of the newly acquired platform onto its network.

Speaking exclusively to Capacity Paul Gampe, CTO of PCCW Global praised the move towards a more software agile approach calling it “a great success and an amazing journey”.

“We actually did a soft launch a few months ago, which indicated to us that we were able to complete having Layer 2 orchestration on the PCCW Global network within 100 days. We can now provision a Layer 2 service across the network in under 50 seconds.”

“We had a good level of assurance that PCCW Global understood our approach to market and what we were trying to achieve, essentially the “LinkedIn of enterprise networks.”

PCCW Global’s Console Connect combines its Tier 1 global IP network, available in 150 countries, with innovative software automation to deliver on-demand, private, global connectivity.

It has created a true software-defined interconnect platform enabling customers to instantly provision direct connections to remote data centres, partners, as well as cloud services.

The rest of Console Connect, including its network assets and customer contracts, were bought by Stephen Wilcox, the former founder and owner of IX Reach, which was acquired by Console Connect in 2015.

Equinix, Digital Realty and NTT have maintained a strong lead in the colocation market, with the gap between them and others maintained by a recent spate of M&A activity, according to Synergy Research Group.

Equinix is out in front with a 13% share of the Q1 2018 co-location market, holding a significant lead over second placed Digital Realty, which has just over 8% of the Q1 market. NTT’s market share was 6.2%, the figures showed.

Combined, the three leading companies control almost 28% of global market share and this has increased over the last 12 months.

Digital Realty leads the smaller wholesale colocation space with a 28% share of retail colocation. Both have benefitted from M&A activity in the past year, including Equinix’s A$1 billion acquisition of Metronode assets in Australia, and its recently closed buy of the Infomart data centre in Dallas. Digital Realty, meanwhile, has bought DuPont Fabros in a $7.6 billion merger “When it comes to operating data centres and colocation services, scale and geographic reach are important,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group.

“Enterprises are pushing more of their data centre operations into colocation facilities and are also aggressively driving more workloads onto the public cloud, where cloud providers themselves use a lot of colocation facilities.”

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted SES permission to expand its US O3b fleet in the Medium Earth Orbit (MEO).

O3b Satellite 300x424By enabling the grant the SES has access to additional frequencies to use in its non-geostationary (NGSO) constellation and enables it to deploy O3b mPOWER satellites into inclined and equatorial orbits, delivering full global pole-to-pole coverage.

“This important FCC grant provides SES with the means to grow and scale our network, connecting the planet and delivering world class solutions to our customers globally,” said Steve Collar, president and CEO of SES. “With the first 7 O3b mPOWER satellites, we will deliver a paradigm shift in performance, bandwidth and service. The FCC grant provides the platform to exponentially scale the network in response to surging demand for global data connectivity.”

As a result a total of 26 new O3b satellites have been authorised, in addition to the existing 16 already operational and in orbit. The grant allows SES to add 4 satellites to its existing constellation, which are scheduled for launch in 2019.

Additionally the grant gives SES the framework to triple its O3b mPOWER fleet by giving it US market access for another 22 high-powered satellites, 7 of which are already in construction and scheduled for launch in 2021.

capacitymedia.com

Nikesh Arora is primed to lead Palo Alto Networks

role making him one of the highest-paid executives in the US. The healthy pay sum is said to be largely linked to equity and will only be awarded if the company’s shares more than double, while the rest is linked to his job. $1 million is Arora’s base salary, with an added $1 million target bonus plus $40 million of restricted stock that vests over seven years. Arora has stock options valued at $66 million that will vest in increments if the shares climb at least 150%, he’ll receive all of them if the stock price quadruples. The company will also match up to $20 million of stock purchases Arora makes in his first month on the job with restricted shares that vests over four years.

Capacity

asia-pacific | 19

EXCLUSIVE: THREE GROUPS BIDDING FOR GCX ONCE RCOM’S FUTURE IS SETTLED hree groups have been shortlisted as final bidders for Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), the international subsea network that also has enterprise and data centre operations in India.

The final bids were originally due in May, but GCX has delayed the process until the future of its current owner, Reliance Communications (RCom), is settled.

Capacity understands that GCX is now looking at a date for clarity about its future at the beginning of July, though RCom is likely to take until August to sort out its own future. However, GCX is ring-fenced from RCom, and the futures of both are being decided separately.

Sources close to RCom and GCX said that all three final bidders for GCX support

T

its Eagle project to build a new cable from Mumbai via the Middle East to Italy, and from Mumbai to Hong Kong. The Middle East is a particular focus of the Eagle project, announced in November 2017.

Sources said that the active parties interested in GCX include one carrier, one private equity group and one party that is a combination of both. Of the three, one is interested solely in GCX but the other two are also interested in the data centre and enterprise business. The Russian group Sistema is not involved in any of the parties, confirming Indian reports in April.

The future of RCom is in the hands of India’s National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), which has appointed three administrators – called interim resolution

SEAX-1 CABLE NOW READY FOR SERVICE

HK’S PCCW GLOBAL LAUNCHES CONSOLE CONNECT PLATFORM Capacity AFTER NOVEMBER ACQUISITION

ISEA Cable Exchange-1 (SEAX-1) is now ready for service. The new cable links Tanah Merah in Singapore to both Batam, Indonesia and Mersing, Malaysia.

The cable is owned by Super Sea Cable Networks Pte Ltd (SEAX), and has been constructed by Huawei International and Huawei Marine Networks.

Speaking on the news, Joseph Lim, chief executive officer of SEAX, said: “Service on SEAX-1 will significantly enhance direct communication between Malaysia and Indonesia and Singapore and lay the foundation for SEAX’s broader plans to provide the ASEAN region with readily-accessible, high-capacity, robust and diverse connectivity options.”

He added: “SEAX’s network plan will help establish the ASEAN region as a broadband corridor in line with the ICT’s ASEAN Cooperation goals, providing an engine of growth for the region.”

The new repeaterless 250km undersea cable is composed of high-speed, large capacity, 24-fibre pairs of fibre.

Once operational SEAX-1 will provide SEAX customers with robust, low latency, high-bandwidth connectivity to meet the growing demand for e-commerce and internetbased services throughout the ASEAN region.

PCCW Global, the international operating division of Hong Kong’s HKT, has publicly launched Console Connect after the successful integration of the acquired platform onto its network.

Paul Gampe, CTO of PCCW Global, spoke to Capacity to hail the move towards a more software-agile approach as “a great success and an amazing journey”.

“We actually did a soft launch a few months ago, which indicated to us that we were able to complete having Layer 2 orchestration on the PCCW Global network within 100 days. We can now

capacitymedia.com

Paul Gampe: Console Connect integration is a great success

professionals – for each of three parts of the RCom domestic business in India.

Separately, RCom has negotiated a settlement of its debt to Ericsson, which applied for RCom to be put into bankruptcy. Ericsson was an unsecured creditor, and RCom was trying to ensure secured and unsecured creditors are treated equally.

RCom is attempting to reduce its debt by selling its valuable spectrum, switches, towers and fibre in India to the unrelated mobile operator Reliance Jio, and its real estate interests to a consortium of Chinese banks.

If this process goes through it should result in RCom’s debt being reduced from $7 billion to $2 billion.

provision a Layer 2 service across the network in under 50 seconds,” he said.

“We’ve now completed the integration of the Console Connect platform onto the PCCW Global Network. It’s the Layer 2 piece that has been completed (e-line services under the MEF standard).”

PCCW Global’s Console Connect combines its Tier 1 global IP network, available in 150 countries, with innovative software automation to deliver ondemand, private, global connectivity.

It has created a true software-defined interconnect platform enabling customers to instantly provision direct connections to remote data centres, partners and cloud services.

Capacity first broke the news in November 2017 that PCCW Global and a revived company, IX Reach, had split the assets of Console Connect in a pair of separate, but unannounced deals. The transaction involved two parts, with PCCW Global and HKT acquiring Console Connect’s platform, its assets and its intellectual property, as well as its technology team, led by CTO Paul Gampe. “There were over 30 developers, test engineers and the product management team that came across with the acquisition,” Gampe told Capacity, adding that the team has since grown as “PCCW Global has continued to invest in the software team”.

Capacity

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22 |

GTT has bought over 30 companies in 10 years but it has now acquired its largest to date. Rick Calder, CEO of GTT Communications, speaks to Jason McGee-Abe about the strategy behind the monumental $2.3 billion acquisition of Interoute, its integration and what’s next for GTT

GTT: Behind the scenes after the $2.3bn Interoute acquisition Capacity

I

meet Rick Calder, who has headed GTT for just over 11 years, in the company’s ITW meeting suite at in May [Please note, the new confirmed dates for ITW 2019 are 23-26 June 2019]. He’s flanked by his marketing generals: Gina Nomellini, CMO, who joined the GTT family after One Source Networks was sold to GTT back in October 2015, and Randy Slack, VP of strategic communications, who joined in January 2017 with Hibernia Networks. In front of us lies an updated network map, which includes the recently acquired Interoute network, the sale of which was announced and signed on 26 February.

I begin by asking Calder for finer details about the takeover of the European fibre networking provider, which at the time of meeting has not been completed. Calder tells me “we expect it to close by the end of this quarter” and it certainly was.

The purchase was completed on 31 May and provides the company with a significantly more powerful portfolio of high-capacity, low-latency connectivity, and innovative cloud and edge

infrastructure services not only across North America but now in Europe as well.

“The acquisition of Interoute represents a major milestone in delivering on our purpose of connecting people across organisations, around the world and to every application in the cloud,” says Calder. “Our enhanced scale, expanded network footprint and award-winning product capabilities reinforce our position as a global leader in cloud networking. We look forward to bringing the benefits to our clients across the world.”

He starts pointing and referring to the network map on the boardroom table and positioning objects over the map to explain GTT’s strategic expansion. It instantly makes me think of playing a strategic game of chess: hence the inspiration for our front cover in this issue.

Financials

A group of investors being led by Aleph Capital Partners and Crestview Partners, significant shareholders in Interoute, said they would invest $175 million in common stock in the company once GTT closes the

Interoute deal, which Calder says is a “strong vote of confidence in our vision”.

“We successfully completed a debt bank financing round of $1.8 billion in the US and €750 million in Europe. It was highly oversubscribed, led by Credit Suisse and a group of six other banks at significantly lower interest rates than we thought going in. So the debt community responded very well to GTT’s financing.”

Calder stresses that they’ve been really involved in detailed integration planning and the three areas to act on once they close are organisation, systems infrastructure and network.

First, how to put these two organisations together to create one organisation; second, the business is generally run on its core business support system, which is called the client management database (CMD), and GTT will start the work of understanding how it can integrate the Interoute business into this platform; and third, the principal opportunity is to consolidate the backbone and the transits.

“We run a Tier 1 backbone and Interoute has two or three different Tier 2 june/july 2018

the big interview: rick calder | 23

1981

Electrical engineering, Yale University

1988

MBA, Harvard Business School

1996

Divisional president, chief marketing officer, Winstar

2001

President, business enterprises, Broadwing

2004

President and COO, InPhonic

2007

President and CEO, GTT

announced that we were moving to operating divisions to own the client experience and be much closer to the client,” he said at ITW. “ We established three operating divisions. In the Americas we have an enterprise accounts division and a carrier accounts division, run by Eric Warren and Jeff Beer, division presidents respectively.

Our business in Europe was much smaller so we actually consolidated both our enterprise and carrier accounts under one leader, Martin Ford [divisional president for EMEA and AP]. We separated out a fourth division which is our small and medium-sized business clients, which we run as a centralised group.”

With the advent of Interoute, Calder says his plan is to most likely maintain this structure.

“This is because it works quite well for us as it really focuses each of our divisional presidents and their teams on the client experience continuum, from selling, quoting, ordering, installing to billing and collections. I think Interoute can fit very

I have one division president so Capacity I may create two or even three division presidents in Europe” Rick Calder, CEO, GTT

IP backbones, so we’ll consolidate them into our network,” explains Calder.

“There’s significant wavelength. All the wavelengths that we and Interoute have purchased for capacity on our backbones will be consolidated onto effectively our bigger backbone,” he says.

“All three of these dimensions will be done within three or four quarters and we’re trying to do it faster if we can. The network and systems can be done relatively quickly.” But Calder warns: “It’s important to create certainty in the whole organisation as to what the team will be across the organisation.”

Changing the guard

As the acquisition closed, Capacity exclusively confirmed that CEO Gareth Williams, CFO Catherine Birkett, CTO Matthew Finnie and group general counsel Maurice Woolf had all left Interoute.

When I asked what the new-look team would be, Calder told me earlier in May: “The big change that I’m contemplating is to be consistent with our organisational structure. About a year or so ago we capacitymedia.com

well into this structure,” explains the CEO. I directly ask Calder whether Ford will now be in charge, and he reveals: “I have one division president so I may need to create two or even three division presidents to run the European operation, like we have done in the US because it’s so big. So I may have a separate division president. I would say Interoute historically has been a little bit more centralised and so we may go to a different organisational structure. I’m not certain as we have to wait until close but that is something that I have spoken about publicly.”

From a branding perspective, Interoute is now GTT. “Publicly we’ll brand Interoute as GTT very rapidly. Our view is that we’re still a relatively small player and building brand identity and awareness across two brands is too difficult. Historically, we’ve integrated and collapsed many organisations into GTT and we’ve always taken that approach to brand one company,” explains Calder, who visited most of the Interoute offices over the six weeks before ITW in May. I start to attain the CEO’s thoughts on

innovation and automation trends in the marketplace today, given our special reports in this issue. “CIOs often tell me that their traffic is growing by 20-30% per annum at every site so the movement to open architecture is critical. The innovation that we see with cloud service providers, infrastructure and software-as-aservice providers is key, as is the need to get seamless access to those applications in the cloud,” he tells me.

“Security is a big focal point for GTT and our fundamental role is to block threats,” says Calder, who is a big advocate for there to be deeper levels of firewall both at the premises and at the network amid surging threats. How is GTT enhancing its security services?

“Intelligent automation and visibility for a CIO of its network will be a huge area of innovation over the coming years, particularly with the vendor community,” Calder says. “It’s an area we haven’t played deeply in directly but we’re thinking about how we can.” GTT’s DDoS product, launched a year ago, does real-time traffic inspections and proactive notifications, so the company is certainly innovating to have more predictive data and analytics.

GTT has been focused on selling to multinational enterprises in the Americas and in Europe and it’ll certainly keep doing this, alongside selling to carriers all around the globe, but what’s the next move for Calder and GTT? “Our strategy has been the same for almost a decade but we recognise our sales force is too small and the market opportunity in front of us is enormous so we’re rapidly trying to boost its ranks pre and after the Interoute acquisition,” he says. “We’ll continue to look for acquisitions. We probably won’t do another major one this year, given the fact that it will take us the balance of this year post close to complete the Interoute deal, but early 2019 is right around the corner so we’d like to be in a position to do other large strategic acquisitions and we continue to do smaller non-material tuck-ins to buy customer bases.”

GTT completed deals with Canada’s Accelerated Connections in March and the Netherlands’ Custom Connect at the beginning of the year, so will the company which is now worth $2 billion carry on with these smaller acquisitions? “We still see lots of those opportunities and we may see one of those close this year as we get through the Interoute acquisition.”

There are clearly bigger things that Calder thinks will be very strategic to think about for GTT from 2019 and he teases that although “we’re more focussed in the Americas and Europe in the short-run, I wouldn’t say that we would never do something in Asia-Pacific”.

24 |

Big network big

responsibility

Ajay Chitkara, director & CEO, AirtelCapacity Global Business & Nxtra Data at Bharti Airtel, speaks to Natalie Bannerman about India’s largest telecommunications service provider’s investments in new development areas and how it’s keeping customers at the heart of it all

O

ur customers are looking to transform and digitise their business,” says Ajay Chitkara, director & CEO of global voice and data business at Bharti Airtel. And it is for precisely this reason why Airtel is actively expanding its range of services and investing in new areas of development.

Seated in the Airtel meeting suite during ITW 2018, Chitkara speaks to me about the next steps for the company and how its recent announcements play into its wider strategy for growth.

Airtel has just launched a new digital carrier platform enabling global carriers to do wholesale voice business ‘at the click of a button’. The new digital platform offers paperless sign-up, timely voice interconnects and real-time traffic analytics for global carriers. “If you look at how the industry is operating, almost all of it is moving towards digitisation,” explains Chitkara about the offering launched in May. “The purpose of moving to the digital platforms for one is speed. Another

driver is that this is an easy and seamless way for customers to interconnect with us.

Overall the platform gives us further transparency to the customer, speed of execution and quality of service, so it’s a win- win for both parties.”

Though Chitkara is unable to talk about the projected traction amongst Airtel’s customers for the new platform, he does say that they always base their projected customer engagement on the 80/20 principle indicating high uptake of the new service. “So 80% of customers should come onto this platform,” he says.

Overall, Airtel is the largest mobile network operator in India and the third largest in the world. With over 300 million subscribers in the region, the company serves approximately 1600 enterprises and 200,000 small to mediumsized enterprises (SMEs). Airtel is India’s largest telecommunications service provider and has a global network of 2,50,000Rkm (of networking cable) covering 50 countries and 5 continents with 1,200 global carrier partnerships.

Capacity recently reported that India data usage grew five times over the last year, and as result carries the world’s most internet data traffic. Of the estimated 2.1 Exabytes of data per month, it’s fair to assume the majority of it is likely to travel across Airtel’s network and therefore influence its business decisions.

Talking about our story and its connection to Airtel, Chikara said: “What we have noticed over the last two years is that although all the data was previously through broadband, now all data consumption is happening on your handheld device. 4G penetration in India has a lot to do with this given the proliferation of both - devices and content.”

“We are also investing significantly to bring content to India,” he adds, as evidenced by content deals like the one with ALTBalaji earlier this year to bring its digital content to Airtel TV app users.

Or indeed the deal back in 2017 between Airtel and Amazon for the latter’s Amazon’s Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote, to create an enhanced online june/july 2018

the big interview: ajay chitkara | 25

2008

Senior VP, data, voice, mobility and cable consortium, Bharti Airtel

2010

COO, global data, Bharti Airtel

2012

CEO, global data and voice, Bharti Airtel

2014

Director & CEO, global voice & data, Bharti Airtel

2017

Director & CEO, Airtel Global Business & Nxtra Data, Bharti Airtel

the exploding data demand in emerging markets like India, Gulf and Africa.

Chitkara says that the move to do this is closely linked to the amount of data traffic it has to carry and the number of customers is serves: “Firstly, India carries the most data traffic in the world and there is large scope for further growth.”

He points to content as another driver highlighting the need to bring as much of it back to India to improve the experience for the consumer. “Secondly, there’s still around 40% of content that is not in India. We are therefore aggressively investing in cable systems with an aim to bring some of that content to India in a very cost effective manner. Acquisitions like GBI are in line with this objective.”

He adds that having full control of the capacity on the cable is a strong benefit of

Security is very high up on our agenda because when you carry the largest network into the Capacity country you carry the largest responsibility at the same time” Ajay Chitkara, director & CEO, Airtel Global Business, Bharti Airtel

content experience for its customers.

He continues: “The third big change that happened is cloud. We have seen almost all of our enterprise customers and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) move to cloud, resulting in very high consumption levels of data.”

Speaking of 4G and mobile offerings in general, Chikara says that although he isn’t directly involved with the ongoing 5G preparations at Airtel, the company is “ahead of the curve in discussions with various companies and doing quite a few trials”.

Over to subsea activity and April saw Airtel acquire the India-Middle EastEurope leg of GBI’s submarine cable. In addition to having full control of the Indian leg of the cable, Airtel will also pick up a significant capacity on Middle East-Europe leg of GBI’s cable system.

Airtel and GBI have also agreed to develop joint go-to-market strategies and use the footprint of their respective global networks to serve global customers. It will consolidate Airtel’s global network and capacity leadership and enable it to serve capacitymedia.com

having ownership over the cable, something that helps Airtel maintain a high quality of service for its customers.

“The route will help us lower latency, create more capacity and give us full control. Once you get full ownership you can quickly solve issues like service speed and fix faults etc.”

Looking at the bigger picture, the acquisition plays well into Airtel’s goal of providing seamless end-to-end solutions, which is why in addition to submarine cables, the company is making heavy investments across a number of different verticals.

“The other part to this is that we’ve started building large data centres with an aim to lead the big players entering India to onboard our data centre which offers a gamut of seamless solutions,” he adds. “We have a full suite of services. We are also reaching out to the content players with a plan to help them monetise their business better. With our mobile value added services, we help these companies to easily bill their customers.”

For a telco that plays across so many

different industry sectors I was curious to know how Airtel manages the various security risks across its entire business.

“There are three particular lines of business that are very important to us. First is security, second is data centre and cloud, and the third is the internet of things (IoT) side. For us, security has two parts: first is the security, which is a business opportunity given the increasing demand for it; and the second part is about ensuring that our network and infrastructure is secure.

“Security is very high up on our agenda because when you carry the largest network into the country you carry the largest responsibility at the same time.”

The aforementioned announcements aside, Chitkara has a clear picture of the future goals for the company on the B2B side and he is ready and primed to execute them.

“One of our initiatives is to create a digital platform for any and all type of products and services that caters to the whole customer lifecycle end-to-end, whether its acquisition, delivery or support.”

As a key player in the infrastructure space as well, Chitkara adds that the company “will continue to build large and stable infrastructure to support the stability of our customer’s networks”. “We are making large investments on that front as well, whether it’s domestic fibre, towers, access build up or submarine cables.”

In keeping with this promise of not straying from its core infrastructure business, the company recently announced its plan to expand its data footprint in Maharashtra and Goa by rolling out 8,000 new sites and 4200km of optic fibre all within the FY 2018-19. The planned rollout will see Airtel’s sites go up by an added 25% to a total 38,000, while the additional optic fibre would increase its fibre backbone to 21,600km.

Chitkara also emphasises some of the company’s other investment plans in newer revenue streams and adds: “Apart from our existing bouquet of network-related products, we are aggressively also working towards products for the future including cloud security, managed services, IoT and data centres.”

The company already has a number of IoT solutions that leverages Airtel’s vast network that enables MNOs to implement M2M connectivity and market it to global enterprises. And thanks to its wholly-owned subsidiary, Nxtra Data, it also has 10 data centres across seven locations across India, managed services which includes dedicated hosting, storage and back up and four levels of cloud infrastructure: hybrid, public, private and back up.

Chitkara goes on to stress that whatever’s next for the company, Airtel has a very clear underlying focus on the customer: “We are obsessed with our customers.”

26 |

Off the

beaten track Capacity the less developed parts of the What are carriers doing to address global digital ecosystem? Guy Matthews looks at what is being planned to connect the remaining pockets of underdevelopment

A

s the world’s wealthier economies gear up for new connectivity frontiers like autonomous vehicles, 5G and the embedding of artificial intelligence into software-driven networks, it is easy to forget that many countries remain in the telecoms slow lane, under-invested and under-developed.

Ever alert to an untapped revenue source, the international carrier community continues to look for ways to bridge this digital divide, sometimes battling protectionist governments and at other times partnering with local service providers to get past barriers like antiquated national infrastructure, civil unrest and highly distributed rural populations.

Africa probably has the largest concentration of countries that can be considered under-developed in telecoms terms. Over half of all Africans live in rural areas, and despite much terrestrial and subsea development, many are still facing a limited choice of services, if they can get services at all. The continent remains the target for investment, both from international development agencies and from the carrier community.

Capacity Africa 2018 will be taking place

in Kigali, Rwanda, on 5 & 6 September for those of you wanting to attend.

“BICS is present, or selling, across the continent, with business relations in 53 African countries, making it a really important market for us,” says Clémentine Fournier, regional vice president, Africa with the Belgian wholesaler.

“Africa is a varied region, and because of this we have found we need a mediumto-long-term approach when it comes to planning and investment,” she says. “Not all players are able to operate at the same pace, and constraints – whether regulatory, political, or geographic – differ from country to country.”

She says BICS has chosen three relatively developed African locations as bases from which it can address the surrounding countries, depending on their levels of regulatory and political stability. From Kenya it serves the Africa’s east coast, from Nigeria its west coast, with South Africa as its hub for the southern end of the continent.

“In regions that lack access to reliable or affordable broadband connectivity, it’s mobile connectivity that many people depend on to access internet-based services,” Fournier adds. “As with most of

the rest of the world, Africa is also going through an IoT boom, with use cases and IoT-driven start-ups increasing in number – so strong, reliable connectivity is key to success in this area.”

Fournier points out that while deregulation always puts welcome downward pressure on the pricing of services, it can have the knock-on effect of making it hard for local operators to profit, despite help from BICS in setting up new cellular revenue possibilities appropriate to local conditions and budgets, like A2P services: “In smaller countries in West Africa, such as Togo, Gabon, Congo and Benin, the mobile marketplace is competitive, with many operators struggling to break even.”

Angola is not usually top of the list when world-class connectivity hubs are mentioned. But António Nunes, CEO of Angola Cables, has plans to change that.

The company is poised to launch the South Atlantic Cable system (SACS), which will link the west African country to Forteleza in Brazil where it will interconnect with the already in-service Monet cable running from Boca Raton in Florida to South America. Nunes believes the two cables between them will help to june/july 2018

feature: emerging markets | 27

bring numerous poorly connected places onto the grid, both in Africa and Latin America.

“When SACS is ready we’ll be able to serve Africa and Latin America at the same time,” he explains. “We will be able to connect our Africa customers directly to the US, and US and South American customers to Africa. It will be the lowest latency connection between Africa and the US. Brazil too will be able to link to Europe without going through the US.” He admits that a route of such groundbreaking diversity will take time to achieve acceptance, but that it will eventually put Angola on the map as a major hub for multi-continental cross connections.

“We are equidistant between Nigeria and South Africa, making us a very strategic point, and very efficient for distribution of traffic to those two markets,” he says. “There will be a knock-on effect in other less developed placed that Angola borders, like DR Congo, Namibia and Zambia – already big customers of ours. We are also building terrestrial links to the border of Zambia and later will provide services to Mozambique and from there have connectivity into Asia.”

He anticipates being able to bring welcome prosperity to Brazil’s northern region: “Brazil is a continent in its own right, with the south quite developed but the north east still poor,” he observes.

“There is big demand in the north, but not many operators there offering services. I’d expect other South American countries to benefit too, but some of them are quite small markets in terms of demand.”

Ari Lopes, principal analyst with Ovum, says all the bigger Latin American countries – Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia –have whole regions that are pretty much untroubled by modern connectivity services.

“Brazil, for example, has 5,600 or so towns and cities, and fixed broadband penetration in 40% of those is at less than 5%,” he points out. “Most of the 40% is in the north and north east.”

He points out that Brazil has no national broadband strategy or universal broadband fund, unlike Argentina and Columbia. “What’s going on instead is a lot of smaller service providers, around 4,000, who offer broadband in often quite small areas where the incumbent and big operators are not interested in going,” he explains. “Compare that to Central America and the Caribbean where large companies like Digicel and Cable & Wireless are doing a lot of investment everywhere.”

Colombia, says Lopes, is a notable broadband success story: “In 2010 they had around 100 cities connected to the national fibre network, and 1,000 still capacitymedia.com

unconnected,” he claims. “Now all 1,100 cities are connected. Venezuela by contrast is a disaster, with the government making it almost impossible for companies to invest.”

Many governments make it a priority to stimulate investment, not only in their jurisdiction but in other places where they deem it in their interests to do so. Alan Mauldin, research director at analyst firm TeleGeography, pinpoints China’s One Belt, One Road policy for much current investment in under-developed places.

“There’s the SAIL subsea cable being built between Brazil and Cameroon by Huawei Marine Networks and backed by China Unicom, and there’s another plan for a project between Chile and China,” he says. “There’s also the PEACE cable from Pakistan to East Africa another Huawei Marine project – all part of One Belt, One Road.”

Mauldin points also to a plethora of domestic cables being built to empower the many small nations of Oceania: “There’s one that’s just been completed in Tonga, and another

Across the vast centre of Russia, there are several carriers building infrastructure to fill gaps and attract traffic looking for low latency between the Far East and Europe. In Eastern Europe meanwhile there remains a clear developmental distinction between EU and non-EU countries.

“In the Balkan region, for example, you’ve got countries in various stages of development,” points out Vlad Ihora, director of wholesale at Colt. “The geopolitical situation is quite stable now, and the strategic location of these places is good for global carriers looking for alternative routes into Europe from the Middle East and Asia. Diversity is important and there’s an attraction to building in these under-utilised places, as an alternative to submarine options.”

Ihora says the game changes as one looks further east into former Soviet countries, where it’s still common at best to find a duopoly and sometimes still a monopoly of operators. Prices, he says, are high in places like Kazakhstan,

We will be able to connect our Africa customers directly to the US, and US and South American customers to Africa. It will be the lowest latency connection between Africa and the US. Brazil too will be able to link to Europe without going through the US”

Capacity

planned for Polynesia,” he says.

“There’s also a cable in prospect for East Timor – its first.

António Nunes, CEO, Angola Cables These projects are often backed by a regional development bank because they are not Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, always very good commercial propositions.” and Uzbekistan where for a number of Asia is mostly well served with reasons international carriers have been connectivity, but does still have pockets kept out. That may soon change, he of relative underdevelopment. The mobile believes, as market pressures start to market in Myanmar, for example, has gather strength. been experiencing a rush of new “Ukraine is doing well as a regional competition, although a slowdown in hub, with a lot of eastern and western fresh subscriptions is forecast for the next carriers now meeting in its Internet five years by analyst firm Buddecomm. exchanges and swapping really large The country’s fixed-line sector is still volumes of traffic,” he claims. “The same highly underdeveloped and may remain so. goes for Bulgaria which is important Find out more at Myanmar Connect 2019, partly because it borders Turkey which taking place on 18 & 19 September in has for years been an important route for Yangon. It’s a similar story in Mongolia trade east to west.” where wide open spaces and a distributed The connectivity-lite part of the world population make mobile broadband a first map is shrinking fast, a fraction of what it choice and the basis for the country’s fast was 10 years ago. But there are still expanding digital economy, supported by pickings for those prepared to combine satellite initiatives. patience and boldness.

28 |

Partnering to protect subsea Submarine cable systems carry 98% of the world’s internet Capacity traffic. But despite the mission-critical nature of these systems, governments and the subsea community remain largely disconnected, writes Natalie Bannerman

M

ost submarine cables, particularly in developed markets, are owned and operated by private companies.

However, in emerging markets these projects are typically led by local government.

In Algeria for example, the minister of posts, telecommunications, technology and digital, Houda-Imane Faraoun, recently announced the construction of two new submarine cables by the end of 2018.

But at a time when there are growing threats – such as cyber-attacks and espionage – as well as an increasing amount of damage being done to these multimillion pound systems, there isn’t enough collaboration between the private and public sectors.

Lack of understanding There is a lack of understanding on the part of governments that is partly to blame for the poor collaboration between the subsea industry and public authorities, say a number of key figures in the subsea cable industry.

“Governments often struggle to understand the importance and broad impact these networks can have on their countries,” says Artur Mendes, CCO of Angola Cables. “Developing better cable

connections in a country can have a significant positive impact on GDP – not only by connecting their citizens, but also by fostering domestic telecommunications sectors. This lack of understanding can, in many cases, mean that governments do not make significant efforts to partner with and facilitate conversations with subsea cable companies.”

But what’s the reason for this lack of understanding? Peter Jamieson, vicechairman at the European Subsea Cables Association (ESCA), says: “I think subsea cables have until very recently been a silent infrastructure and their importance had not been recognised. Only in recent years has there been a dawning realisation that pillars of modern and future society and pretty much anything you can think of are underpinned by the infrastructure our members install.”

He notes that a recent report by Huddersfield University found that subsea cable infrastructure enabled £65 billion to the UK economy. “You can’t ignore those kind of numbers,” says Jamieson.

In my conversations with the wider subsea community, I found that the group observe a constant challenge. Representatives in

governments often move departments, so just as one official begins to understand that subsea cables are critical infrastructure, they move on to a different department.

Additionally, some governments offer challenges relating to sabotage, while others are keen to protect cables as critical infrastructure – for example through patrolled cable protection corridors.

In a recent report, Undersea Cables: Indispensable, insecure, UK thinktank Policy Exchange found that subsea cables could be vulnerable to being deliberately severed in a terrorist or state-sponsored attack. Governments should take more action to protect the world’s subsea cables against sabotage, said the report, written by Rishi Sunak, a Conservative Party politician in the UK parliament.

The report said that, although the private ownership is positive for taxpayers, this means undersea cables do not get the attention from governments they deserve.

Sunak said the next Strategic Defence and Security Review should specifically address threats to Britain’s security from attacks on the country’s undersea cable infrastructure. He called on the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure to june/july 2018

feature: subsea cable project | 29

review and improve security at UK landing sites where cables come ashore.

He said Britain and NATO should work together to ensure their maritime resources are adequate to deal with new security threats, following the example of Australia and New Zealand.

And he called for cable protection zones to be set up around communications corridors and said a new international treaty was needed to protect undersea cables.

Most interesting was his recommendation for closer collaboration between government and the private subsea sector to “install more backup dark cables and improve monitoring at sea”.

Education on both sides

But ultimately education of the public sector on the importance of subsea infrastructure and greater efforts for better communication between the two seem to be the key to improved relations in the future.

“Ultimately it’s about educating governments that increased connectivity is actually good for their economy,” explains Byron Clatterbuck, CEO of S&"$0..

“Having the right amount of diversity, the right amount of capacity and the right amount of subsea cables landing in your country drives business and economic growth.”

He adds: “Outside of that, it’s about making sure that a variety of companies are able to get the necessary licences and have the ability to land and operate international capacity into a healthy domestic communications infrastructure.”

But all is not lost, the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) has been involved in a consultation about international subsea cables with the UK Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology, reinforcing the idea that governments are reaching out to the subsea community to discuss the security of telecommunications.

But as ever it’s a two way street. Mendes says that we can’t just place the blame on

and maintain these important relationships and avoid disconnects,” says Mendes. “By working tirelessly alongside these government bodies, better routes of communication can be opened to showcase the importance of submarine cables and allow new projects to advance.

Rather than seeing governments as a barrier, cable companies need to see them as an opportunity.”

He adds: “By committing to educational programmes for government officials and politicians, there is much that cable companies can do themselves to develop closer partnerships.”

ESCA, on the other hand, is an independent subsea organisation that has a great working relationship with government, but even then Jamieson says there’s so much more that can be done.

“No matter what is being done, more can always be done,” he says. “We want to partner with governments to ensure best practice is undertaken and to help fill knowledge gaps that governments may have about the sector.”

He quotes an example of this in the UK. “We collaborated with the government regulator the Marine Management Organisation in producing Capacity relevant and accurate guidance for their case officers when processing applications.

We now also have quarterly meetings with the government department that oversees electronic communications.”

Smart cables

The protection of submarine cables will ultimately be the primary goal of both government and industry because of the unique position afforded to these systems and their ability to span various oceanic territories. But there also exists an opportunity to provide a platform for gathering deep-ocean and seabed data for a range of environmental issues.

The joint task force (JTF) is an orgnaisatio that was formed in 2012 by

Rather than seeing governments as a barrier, cable companies need to see them as an opportunity” Artur Mendes, CCO, Angola Cables

government: the telecoms industry has to do its part in fostering positive relationships too.

“Rather than pointing the finger at governments though, there is much more that the cable companies can do to build capacitymedia.com

the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO/

IOC), as well as the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

The JTF is tasked with developing what they call SMART (Scientific Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications) cables – specifically the availability of submarine repeaters equipped with scientific sensors for ocean and climate monitoring and reducing the risk of potential disasters such as tsunamis.

Bruce Howe, chair of the JTF, explains that despite the innovative work of the organisation it still faces a lot of resistance from its key stakeholders.

“The biggest challenge we face is getting acceptance from other stakeholders – and these are the telecoms industry and governments to some extent. It’s really about getting a demonstrable pilot out there in the water to show that it can work,” he explains.

The JTF has to ensure “that what we do doesn’t jeopardise these cable companies from a legal perspective and of course proving the commercial case for what we’re doing.”

The reality is that, without the support of government from a planning, maintenance and regulatory perspective, these systems are vulnerable and discourage investment in the sector as a result of the legislative barriers.

Clatterbuck says: “We need governments to continue to help us try to maintain our assets which are a backbone to their international connectivity and ultimately economic growth. By helping private and public subsea cables to make sure that our investments are protected and our assets work, we all benefit.”

He adds: “Local governments can help to ensure that there is adequate enforcement of regulations regarding protecting subsea cables, which are ultimately an important fundamental component of a country’s communications infrastructure.”

And though progress is slowly being made, speed is an important factor in these relations – especially in a fast-paced industry that is constantly innovating to meet ever changing demands.

Jamieson says: “Governments are slowly coming around to the importance of subsea cables and that their environmental impact is low. This can only be beneficial in the long run. But it has to be quicker.”

Governments need to “start interacting and partnering with industry to ensure that everybody has the connectivity they need and deserve for now and the future,” says Jamieson.

It’s pretty clear what needs to happen in order to keep this vital infrastructure up and running: education, communication and collaboration, in that order.

The work needs to be shared, as does the responsibility of these cables that affect us all so greatly.

Capacity

Capacity

32 | analysis: zte

US OVERSEERS, NEW BOARD AND $2.3BN FINES MEAN ZTE IS BACK ZTE HAS AGREED TO THE TOUGHEST TERMS AS A CONDITION FOR GETTING BACK INTO BUSINESS. ANALYSIS BY ǧ

Z

TE will be working with embedded US overseers monitoring its every action for the next 10 years.

Appointed by a unit of the US Department of Commerce (DoC), they will be there to ensure the Chinese vendor never again smuggles its equipment and software to telecoms operators in Iran and North Korea.

This was probably the most humiliating – for ZTE – part of the settlement, announced in early June, that will allow the company to get back to work after April’s denial order. That earlier proclamation meant no one was allowed to facilitate “the acquisition or attempted acquisition by a denied person of the ownership, possession, or control of any item� that requires a US licence. ZTE’s staff and agents were all declared to be denied persons.

Now that ZTE is back in business, the DoC itself admits that this is the first time it has “achieved such stringent compliance measures in any case�. Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross said: “We will closely monitor ZTE’s behaviour. If they commit any further violations, we would again be able to deny them access to US technology.�

Last year, in an earlier settlement, ZTE agreed to pay $1.19 billion in penalties, $892 million in cash and $300 million suspended for seven years as a guarantee of future good behaviour. June’s deal means the total penalties will reach $2.29 billion if it fails to honour the latest agreement.

Oh, and it has to replace the entire board of directors and senior leadership within 30 days. That’s after it had already replaced many of those whose signatures were on the infamous 2011 documents – marked “top secret, highly confidential� – that set out in detail how ZTE proposed to smuggle goods and services to embargoed countries. The DoC leaked those to the world in 2016 when it started its action against the company.

It’s clear that ZTE was stupid and arrogant – stupid for setting down its

detailed plans on paper in 2011 to break the embargoes, and for getting the signatures of the then CEO, Shi Lirong, and other leaders on them.

Arrogant for believing that, once it had won a settlement from the DoC in 2017, it could ignore conditions beyond that $892 million fine. They were relatively mild: disciplinary action against 39 officials and executives, in the form of reprimands plus cancellation and withdrawal of their bonuses.

That’s what ZTE ignored – and now the whole company of 80,000 people has been reprimanded before the telecoms world and humiliated by having those US observers in place until 2028.

Contrast theCapacity position of ZTE’s bigger rival, Huawei. Both are banned from supplying kit to major US carriers, but Huawei appears so far to have escaped the scrutiny of the DoC. It was mentioned in those leaked 2011 documents – codenamed F7, but with enough evidence to identify it positively – and in April 2018 there were rumours of a DoC investigation.

Incidentally, Huawei people refer to ZTE as “number 26�, not just because of Z’s position in the alphabet but also because of a Mandarin pun: according to a Chinesespeaking colleague, “26� is pronounced “er-liu�, which also means “second class�: A senior official from Huawei, based at the head office in Shenzhen, China, told Capacity in April: “Huawei complies with all applicable laws and regulations where it

illustrates how it approaches the world differently from ZTE. Huawei talks to people and responds to questions. It runs conferences for telecoms executives in major cities around the world. It holds receptions and concerts in European capitals to which it welcomes the great and the good (and the media, including representatives of Capacity).

ZTE, on the other hand, tends to be opaque and unapproachable – and not just over the last two years of its existential dispute with the US. It’s been that way for a long time.

Huawei and ZTE are both based in different parts of the city of Shenzhen, which is almost Hong Kong’s northern extension across the border with mainland China. They are both elements of China’s huge technological success over the past 10-15 years. Their systems are embedded into networks across the world – including both north and south of the US, in Canada and Mexico. Operators including Deutsche Telekom, Orange, SoftBank, Telefónica and Telus rely on them – as does AT&T, in its Mexican mobile network.

Huawei and ZTE are at the centre of work to develop 5G mobile standards, which are likely to be used in commercial networks from 2020 onwards. It would be practically impossible to remove all of their contributions from the work that 3GPP is doing to complete the standards.

In the long term the US-versus-ZTE saga might be to the benefit of the Chinese technological economy. It has shown We will closely monitor ZTE’s the government and the behaviour. If they commit any further companies how dependent they are on US hardware violations, we would again be able to and software, from such as Intel, deny them access to US technology� companies Microsoft, Oracle and Qualcomm.

Wilbur Ross, US commerce secretary Their answer will be to develop home-grown replacements, so never operates, including the applicable export again will Washington be able threaten to control and sanction laws and regulations close down a Chinese company. of UN, US and EU.�

Humiliate someone and they either But even the fact that Capacity was able shrivel and die – or they bounce back, determined to survive and grow. to get a comment from a Huawei official june/july 2018

special report

INNOVATION June/July 2018

35

CONTENTS Executive interview

Alex Wang, CEO, Huawei X Labs

36

The big interview Juan Carlos Bernal, CEO, Telefรณnica international wholesale business unit

38

Telco innovation Major operators are carrying out their own innovation to have their say with vendors and the creation of industry standards

Capacity

42

Executive interview Khaled Sedrak, CEO, NxtVn

43

20 innovators to

watch

Capacity lists 20 of the most prominent names innovating in the wholesale space

capacitymedia.com

NE B W RA FO A N R WAD 20 R 18 D Awards 2018

Wholesale Innovation Disruptor of the Year Capacity

Which award will you be entering this year?

Wholesale Innovation Disruptor of the Year Best Voice Service Innovation – Emerging Markets Best Voice Service Innovation – Mature Markets Best Data Service Innovation – Emerging Markets Best Data Service Innovation – Mature Markets

Best Network Technology Innovation Best SMS Innovation Best Anti-Fraud Innovation Best Subsea Innovation Best Cloud Innovation 'JXY :SN‫ܪ‬JI (TRRZSNHFYNTS .SST[FYNTS Best OTT Partnership Best IPX Service Best Enterprise Partnership

As part of Capacity Media’s Innovation series awards@capacitymedia.com

ŏġŏENTER TODAYŏġ WWW.CAPACITYMEDIA.COM/GLOBAL-CARRIER-AWARDS

executive interview: alex wang | 35

AI IN THE NETWORK ‘WILL HELP THE NETWORK BECOME AUTONOMOUS’ Alex Wang of Huawei’s Wireless X Labs says carriers have to simplify their networks and optimise them for people’s connections. The most challenging issues are broadband issues, he tells James Pearce

W

hy are telecoms vendors investing billions in developing future technology? Microsoft founder Bill Gates put it accurately: “I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and learn the basic facts.”

Among these vendors is Chinese company Huawei, which launched its X Labs division in 2016.

So what is Huawei’s Wireless X Labs?

It looks at use cases for innovative new technologies such as the internet of things (IoT) and 5G. And it bring, together the operators, vertical

process data with no latency?”

At a briefing in Huawei’s office in London, Wang – who is usually based in China – demonstrates three examples of projects Huawei is working on. These are in autonomous vehicles, cloud-based AI and virtual reality.

What I want to know is what the demands for thisCapacity kind of work will be on the underlying network. Are we ready for these cutting-edge processes?

Or does the carrier community need to up its game?

He replies by pointing to a need to simplify the network. “Through the whole networks there are so many issues

The digital world and the physical world are becoming more connected because of AI and the cloud.

AI will be everywhere, but this will run on the cloud.

How can we introduce AI with me, with everyone, so it can instantly process data with no latency?”

Alex Wang, X Labs CEO, Huawei

industry partners and industry leaders to jointly drive innovation in business and technology.

Speaking to Capacity, X Labs CEO Alex Wang says the goal of the division is to promote an open industry ecosystem to discuss cutting-edge technologies, such as AI, cloud and IoT. “The digital world and the physical world are becoming more connected because of AI and the cloud. AI will be everywhere, but this will run on the cloud. How can we introduce AI with me, with everyone, so it can instantly capacitymedia.com

to resolve. But what we propose is a simple network idea. We want in future to simplify the carrier network and optimise it for people’s connections.”

This, at least in part, reflects a change in the core purpose of telecoms networks. We’ve already seen the main uses of networks change from voice calls to data, but this is, for the moment at least, primarily driven by the individual user.

The internet of things will generate a staggering 400 zettabytes (ZB) of data a year by 2018, according to a report from

Cisco. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes.

This is up from 113.4ZB in 2013.

Wang adds: “In the future, 99% of the network will be used by things – by cars, by robots, by drones, by aeroplanes. So we need to totally rethink and re-optimise the whole network. So we call it ‘simplify IoT’.”

He is discussing the bits behind Huawei’s wireless technology – the bits the vendor is working on with carriers and other vendors in order to optimise, to make sure the connected world it envisages has the infrastructure in place to work.

He says: “This is a broadband network, not a narrowband network.

Much of IoT is going to be supported by narrowband IoT but the most challenging network issues are broadband issues. We are focussing on these challenges and, step-by-step, by focussing on the core and transit networks, and the backbone and transmission, we can optimise all of this to overcome these issues. Also we have different milestones for different network elements. But ultimately we need to optimise the entire network.”

The last question is how this will happen and the answer is simple, says Wang. Automation, AI and making networks smart and innovative enough that they can overcome the challenges brought about by a greater volume of complex data.

He concludes: “We believe automated networks plays a key role in improving networks. Take autonomous vehicles – we propose the idea of an autonomous network. If there is an issue, the network should identify it itself. This is why Huawei is sternly focussed on AI in the network. But it helps the network become autonomous.”

36 |

On the journey to become a

digital

wholesale carrier Telefónica as a group is focussed on innovation, Juan Carlos Bernal, the CEO of the international wholesale business Capacityunit, tells James Pearce. It is on a journey to become a ‘digital wholesale carrier’

W

holesale perhaps isn’t known as the hotbed of innovation – but the need for creative new services and utilisation of advanced technologies is perhaps more pressing than ever.

For the likes of Telefónica – one of the top 10 telecoms operators in the world by revenue and a behemoth of an organisation with more than 343 million customers spanning operations in 17 countries across the globe – innovation makes up a vital part of its strategy.

This group level dedication to innovation is also prevalent in the Spain-based giant’s international wholesale division, according to Juan Carlos Bernal, CEO of the international wholesale business unit at Telefónica.

“Telefónica as a group is focussed on innovation,” he says as we chat over a telepresence system from two separate Telefónica offices – Bernal is in Madrid while I’m in London. “We are addressing this based on both internal innovation, through a unit that looks at critical technologies, and also through external

innovation such as start-ups.”

So what about wholesale? “In wholesale, we are doing this to bring into our service portfolio the different technologies and services that the group is launching for its retail side,” he adds. “Last year, we created a digital unit in the wholesale operation that is focussed on promoting and discussing with different partners how we can help them to include digital services that we have already developed in their portfolio. We have high expectations for this unit. What it is doing is bringing in the different innovations that the Telefónica group has developed into our portfolio for carriers.”

This innovation strategy ties into Telefónica International Wholesale Services’ three so-called pillars, which Bernal highlights. These are boosting its service portfolio by developing new, innovative services; improving operational efficiency; and increasing coverage.

For the first, he explains: “International carriers have a challenge to increase service portfolios from international voice to completely new services that allow us to

become a more digital and sophisticated company. We are following this strategy.”

One example of a new product recently launched by the wholesale arm is its new Data Optimisation service. The new service is designed to enable mobile operators to enhance their customer experience with faster access to mobile content. Importantly, Data Optimisation can optimise a wide variety of content, over different protocols, including the most popular services such as Netflix, YouTube, and Facebook.

It means carriers can face issues with surging data and congestion by allowing the carrier to optimise subscribers’ data sessions when they are abroad, reducing the roaming inter-operator tariff costs.

“On top of mobile, we are also increasing our portfolio in digital products; in IoT, with connected car solutions for carriers; security; satellite services – we have merged with another part of the Telefónica group to create the most powerful digital satellite solutions footprint, and we are operating this across the carrier, b2b and even consumer side.” june/july 2018

the big interview: juan carlos bernal | 37

1990

Marketing director, radio products, Alcatel

1998

Sales director, Latin America new operators, Alcatel

2000

Marketing director, international services for corporates, Telefónica

2004

Director, international voice business, strategy and resources, Telefónica

2012

Director, strategy, business development and alliances, Telefónica Global Solutions

2014

Global director, B2B business development, alliances and marketing communications, Telefónica Business Solutions

2017

CEO, international wholesale business, Telefónica International Wholesale Services

Digital wholesale carrier A big part of innovating is the adoption of new technologies, and the key buzzwords for the wholesale industry over the last few years have been network function virtualisation (NFV), software-defined networking (SDN) and blockchain.

On NFV and SDN, Bernal says Telefónica is on a journey to become a “digital wholesale carrier” which means the transformation of not just how it manages its relationship with customers but also a transformation of its own backend systems.

“It is a very big transformation,” he admits, and includes overhauling Telefónica’s network with SDN. “We are fully aligned with the guidelines that are coming from Telefónica’s global CTO not only for the international arm but across the entire company. We are fully following his recommendations and we launched SDN last year.”

This includes developing APIs that will determine how Telefónica’s network interconnects with other carriers across the international wholesale community. This,

On top of mobile, Capacity we are also increasing our portfolio in digital products” Juan Carlos Bernal, CEO, Telefónica International Wholesale Business

Improving operational efficiency is “in the DNA of international carriers” and to this end, Telefónica has taken steps such as automating elements of its wholesale operation. It also transformed its voice business into a full-IP operation.

One way Telefónica is expanding its coverage is through the deployment of virtual points of presence (vPoPs).

The wholesale unit has over 115 international points of presence in 69 cities across more than 40 countries, but it has now deployed seven vPoPs, with plans to roll out more.

“A key pillar for us is increasing our coverage, and one way we are doing this is through virtual PoPs, which can be deployed very quickly and help save money,” he explains.

“It makes it quite easy to increase the coverage based on virtual PoPs in regions where either we have a presence and want to expand it, like in America and Europe, or where we don’t already have a presence, like in Asia or Turkey. It is a good way to increase our coverage with a reduced capital expenditure.” capacitymedia.com

he adds, means taking an active part in industry forums such as MEF (formerly the Metro Ethernet Forum) and the Global Leaders’ Forum (GLF).

“Involvement in industry forums – I think that is critical,” he explains. “Networks have evolved”, he says. “In the past it was quite easy because we have a standardisation of protocols and we had a physical interconnection. But on virtual networks, the paradigm changes completely. So we need to find a common layer of understanding on how we are going to migrate services from one network to another.”

This is down to flexibility, an inherent benefit of software-based services. “Letting customers manage bandwidth dynamically without any intervention from the operator means we must make sure this functionality works when we use a partner’s network. It is very important to have a common understanding across carriers about the rules of the game both technically and commercially. Services are more interconnected now.

“So this is why big forums where most of

the carriers are represented are very relevant.

MEF is more focussed on the technical phase for SDN services and GLF is responsible for making sure this is progressing properly.”

The traditional carrier business is “based on process, on technical and technological evolution” but with software-based services that changes. That is because “the definition of services becomes completely different” he adds, with time-to-market greatly reduced, and some of the capability to manage a network handed directly to customers.

To address this, Telefónica is changing the organisation both on the sales side and on the operational side.

“In the International arm of Telefónica, we are looking at the real and critical activities we will need in the future. You have to work hard to have the right skills for the future, and find the skills that are not so critical. As a result of this process, some of the critical skills that we have outsourced in the past we decided to bring in house last year.

“People specialising in making software. As soon as they become part of the network, we discover they can develop functionality for services on their own which we never used to do internally. We’d use vendors or other partners. And this is a very radical change in the mindset of our employee base. This is a long-term process and will take time.”

Blockchain moves Another key industry consideration has been blockchain. I ask Bernal what his views on this are, given that at ITW the GLF launched new blockchain initiatives – with new proof of concepts being developed, and Telefónica named as one of the companies involved.

“For us, blockchain is an interesting new technology,” he replies. “When the information is shared by all of the different people involved in a process, we cannot modify this data without permission from the rest. And this is the key attribute for blockchain that could make it very interesting for the wholesale business.”

The key reasons, he adds, include efficiency, particularly when settling traffic with different carriers.

It will also help carriers develop new services that can cross borders, which is partly the reason that Telefónica has built up a group of internal blockchain experts who analyse new technologies.

He explains: “We are participating in several proof of concepts around the carrier market to be sure we are choosing the right strategy. We want to ensure all carriers are following the same trends, which is so important when it comes to adopting new technology. What is important is that most of the carriers see blockchain as a way of interchanging settlements.”

38 |

Wow effect at the centre of telcos’ hunt for cool tech Major operators carry out theirCapacity own innovation so they can look vendors and standards groups in the face. They need to find ‘really cool technology’, writes Alan Burkitt-Gray

T

elecoms operators are on the hunt for start-ups to boost their innovation in key areas. That’s the consistent message from companies such as BT, Orange and TIM, all of which want not only to ensure they play a leading role in such areas as 5G, but also to help steer vendors to deliver what they need.

And all are aware that the giant over-the-top (OTT) companies are competing with them to develop new services for the same customers.

All told similar stories about the areas they regard as priorities – artificial intelligence (AI), security, the internet of things (IoT) and 5G appeared in all their lists. Softwarisation, the new and still awkward term that encompasses software-defined networks (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) is there too.

Most operators are looking for ways to interact with their customers more effectively – and here Orange is working together with Deutsche Telekom on a project to compete with the voice-activated assistants that OTTs

such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft already have on the market.

“Our personal assistant is Djingo, for the B2B [business-to-business] and the B2C [business-to-consumer] market,” says Luc Bretones, the executive vice president of Orange’s Technocentre and of Orange Fab, the French group’s unit to find and invest in start-ups.

“It has been invented to be deployed across the Orange footprint. We began work on Djingo two years ago and that’s when it was first integrated with Orange apps.” It has natural language processing with a small speaker in the home “but in the future you will be able to manage Djingo in a car or with third-party devices.”

And Deutsche Telekom has joined forces with Orange to adopt Djingo, though the German operator will have its own name, says Bretones. “The customer relationship is our precious asset,” he says. “We cannot address all their needs but it is important to deliver the service.”

Both Orange and Deutsche Telekom will need to adopt the software for different languages across their markets

and for localised services. “It will be different for different countries,” he says. And there will be business applications. “We have great traction with Orange Business Services to use it as a service platform – so businesses can design and build their own services with Orange engineers. We want to focus 100% on our services.”

Will other telcos be welcomed into the Djingo club? Bretones won’t say, but he points to SoftAtHome, the company that is developing middleware for services.

It’s a telco club, he says. For Djingo there are “a few partners at first, but when you have scale and speed you join forces with others.” At the moment the focus is on Deutsche Telekom but “the competition is global”. He adds: “SoftAtHome is a great success and we are thinking of this model.”

It’s the bigger carriers that have the resources to have their own innovation operation. In the old days when the original AT&T was fondly – or not so fondly – referred to as “Ma Bell” it ran Bell Labs, without a doubt one of the most successful industrial innovation machines ever, with more Nobel Prizes june/july 2018

feature: telco innovation | 39

to its name than most countries.

Bell Labs is now part of Nokia as the latest stage in the process that began with the splitting up of the old Ma Bell in 1984 – and see page 60 for more of what it’s doing now. But the 21st century version of AT&T as well as Verizon have their own labs. Other global telcos with their own innovation labs include NTT in Japan and BT in the UK as well as the Orange Technocentre.

Tim Whitley is BT’s managing director of innovation, based at the company’s Adastral Park lab in the east of England.

“Innovation has been a thing BT has been passionate about for 181 years,” he says, laying claim again to BT’s idea that it dates back to the UK’s first telegraph companies.

Innovation has “got to be useful”, he says. “We don’t do blue-sky research.”

But the company works with “40 or so universities” – not to pay them to do contract research, with a collaboration between BT staff and PhD and post-doc academics in a number of universities in the UK, China and elsewhere. He notes 5G innovation at the University of Surrey in the UK as well as work with the universities of Cambridge and Bristol and with King’s College London.

He works alongside Jean-Marc Frangos, the managing director of global innovation scouting, normally based in Silicon Valley, but on a visit to Adastral Park when we spoke.

BT uses Silicon Valley as a base to look for start-ups. “We cannot say today that the world is completely centred in Silicon Valley,” says Frangos, “but every non-US start-up comes to the US to raise funding and they sometimes knock on our door.”

BT no longer looks to invest in start-ups but Frangos likes to form partnerships “that give us more freedom of choice”, he says. “We meet 500 start-ups a year worldwide and one in capacitymedia.com

10 we do some sort of work with – that could be diligence that we share back, or a proof of concept.” Why? “We have some of the world leaders and we see if what’s going on [in BT] is world-class.

We ask if anyone has something that is really useful.”

In Italy, TIM is also on the lookout for start-ups, says Mario Di Mauro, the company’s chief of strategy, innovation and customer experience. TIM has what he calls an open innovation paradigm. “You cannot arrive at a commercial launch of a new technology and then wonder how to position the service,” he says.

This marks a different approach from the old days, when the industry delivered a new technology and then people looked for applications. Di Mauro recalls that he was around for the launch of 2G, 3G and 4G: the next, 5G, will be different, he implies.

TIM is working with several partners, including digital companies, small and medium enterprises, universities, local authorities and start-ups, he adds. “We try to anticipate what would be the service of the future. We have several trials, not only technology trials, but

Capacity

new business models. We felt the need to deploy open innovation for the 5G programme,” he says.

“We need to create additional value and we need to work in new markets.

How can we add value and provide new services? We absolutely have to engage a lot of partners and new industries. Otherwise we have to work with the old paradigm.”

Whitley echoes this view that the telcos need to work with a wide community in order to find new services. “Why do companies continue with industrial research?” he asks. The answer: to find “really cool technology that improves services that we can launch into the market”.

But there’s another side: a company such as BT can take innovations to market and “compete on the global stage”. There are two reasons for this, he says. First, a telco needs to influence the global supply chain, “by conducting research to understand the art of the possible, particularly with operator colleagues and the supply base, companies like Huawei, Cisco, Ericsson and Nokia”.

That helps operators – in advance of procurement proposals – “to guide the global supply chain to produce the things that we want and to guide international standards”. For an operator to guide the standards organisations “you’ve got to be an active participant in international research – you need technology credentials”, he says.

Companies also need to look for what TIM’s Di Mauro calls “the wow effect”. He says: “We need to exceed the expectations of our customers.

We need to see how the whole set of technology is developing to find what the customers want.”

Di Mauro believes that the industry – in Italy at least – is emerging from what he calls “a lost decade”, when OTTs gained momentum and telecoms companies lost value. But the new digital technologies “can give us some of the great opportunities we lost in the last 10 years”, he says. “If we see 5G as an evolving technology, then if we just look at throughput speed there will be no wow effect and no incremental revenue. We lag behind the digital native players.

We have a problem we need to fix.”

Or, as Orange’s Bretones might put it: “Djingo, we have a problem.”

Capacity

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Tel: +44 (0) 207 779 8646

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New dates announced 23-26 June 2019

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42 | executive interview: khaled sedrak

NXTVN BOSS PROMOTES SUBSEA MESH NETWORK TO COVER MEDITERRANEAN Khaled Sedrak of NxtVn believes new subsea fibres across the Med will help to build a highly resilient network linking cities on all coasts. He explains his idea to Alan Burkitt-Gray

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he head of data centre company NxtVn is trying to coordinate a move by Mediterranean subsea operators to build a mesh network of cables across the sea between southern Europe, north Africa and the Middle East.

Khaled Sedrak, chairman and CEO of the Amsterdam-based company, says he has the support of ministers and the mayors of major coastal cities that are existing landing sites or could provide new landing stations.

He’s calling the initiative the NxtVn Open Mediterranean Mesh (NOMM), he told me at the Datacloud Europe conference in Monaco in mid-June. “This is a concept. No one is laying the cables tomorrow,” he warned.

There are already many cables running west to east along the Mediterranean – typically from Marseille or Palermo to Alexandria, from which they head to the

far there is no corporate representation of the NOMM initiative. “Once interest reaches a certain level, we can then set up a company. We want to be a catalyst, but we don’t want to operate cables.”

But if the initiative works it will help to provide more commercial opportunities for NxtVn’s existing and planned data centres, he says. “The more connectivity there is between any two cities, the more freedom of [data] movement,” he adds.

“The more movement, the more Capacity connectivity and the more open access there is, that is the better for us.”

Which places is he looking at? Sedrak lists a number of cities from the western end of the Mediterranean to the east, including Barcelona and Marseille in Spain and France as well as places on the coast of Morocco and Algeria.

At the other end of the Mediterranean he has a map showing Egypt, Lebanon,

NxtVn’s idea is that subsea cables should be treated as a commodity. We would want to operate them on a cost-plus basis. Infrastructure should be built transparently” Khaled Sedrak, CEO, NxtVn

Indian Ocean and then both Africa and Asia. But with some extra links, the existing cables can be expanded into a resilient mesh network, he suggests.

He was speaking to Capacity at the BroadGroup’s Datacloud Europe event in Monaco in mid-June, where he was a panellist. BroadGroup is part-owned by the Euromoney events, publishing and information group, which owns Capacity.

He says he is taking “a supportive role”, with technical, regulatory, commercial and procurement teams on the project. So

Turkey and other coastal countries that would benefit from enhanced connectivity.

“NxtVn’s idea is that subsea cables should be treated as a commodity. We would want to operate them on a cost-plus basis. Infrastructure should be built transparently.”

He wants costs to be shared so that companies that use the cables would pay a fair price. “No games,” he smiles.

“Companies would pay just a fraction of the cost – just a percentage.”

His vision of a mesh network covering

the Mediterranean would mean customers would have greater resilience. With costs being driven “not by profitability but sustainability”, he says, operators would be encouraged to innovate on services.

He is busy collecting support from cities and countries, he says, eager to be “a flag carrier for each cable”.

He and his supporters are also looking at new routes, including Tunis to Alexandria and Valencia to Barcelona and Marseille, that would enhance the existing infrastructure. “We believe they will be new digital ports” where cables would land, but they would also bring in terrestrial infrastructure and data centres.”

But they would also offer competition to existing subsea operators, he notes.

“NxtVn wants to make sure not too much of the power is concentrated at infrastructure level. It’s a new digital divide.” More cities need connectivity and can be home to data centres, he says.

He reels off a list of coastal cities whose mayors he says he has talked to or countries whose ministers of telecoms he has the personal number for – “That’s the number they answer; don’t use the other, they never answer that,” he says of one to a colleague at Datacloud Europe.

Unfortunately the financial sector still harbours bad memories of subsea cables from the dotcom era, he warns.

A mesh would allow new commercial opportunities for carriers, content companies and data centre operators – with data on one side of the Mediterranean backed up at a city on the opposite coast, he suggests.

He compares landing stations to the conventional ports that have been at the heart of the Mediterranean’s economy for thousands of years. “A very efficient port is good for us but is also good for the whole ecosystem.” NxtVn will not lay claim to exclusivity for access to data centres, he insists. “If you want to build your own data centre, then fine, fair and well. It will be good for the whole community.” june/july 2018

Capacity

I

nnovate or die – that’s the overarching message emanating from the wholesale telecoms community as of late. With increasing investment in new technologies like 5G, IoT and the cloud and, with numerous project-based field trials and R&D labs popping up left, right and centre, Capacity rounded up 20 names of those innovating in the wholesale space.

It goes without saying that this list could easily have been extended to 50 or even 100 entries, and such lists are always largely subjective. But with the likes of Bob Friday developing AI-driven WLAN and Gal Hochberg leading the charge in blockchainenabled global enterprise payments, we think there’s something in here for everyone. capacitymedia.com

to watch c Compiled by Natalie Bannerman

44 |

Ajay Chitkara Bharti Airtel Director & CEO of global voice and data

A

jay Chitkara’s leadership style is succinctly described as simplify and transform. As a result of this approach he has helped Airtel’s global business grow to

Alexandre Pébereau Tofane Global CEO and founder

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his year Alexandre Pébereau made his triumphant return to the wholesale telecoms industry after a short break.

Within a matter of days he announced

Andreas Hipp Cataleya CEO and chairman

A

ndreas Hipp is described by his team as a man who embodies the true essence of innovation, entrepreneurship and passion. Having successfully founded

Bankim Brahmbhatt Bankai President and CEO

B

ankim Brahmbhatt has more than 27 years’ experience in the industry,

Bob Friday Mist Systems CTO and co-founder

M

ist is the first AI-driven WLAN and indoor location services company that is changing the game when it comes to

over 1,200 customers, achieve a high customer satisfaction score and develop a team with the highest productivity index.

This success has been achieved by Chitkara’s sharp focus on driving innovative business models, strategic network infrastructure growth and strengthening core business processes for improved customer experience.

Chitkara believes technology has the power to improve the way the businesses work and operate. Under his leadership a

number of innovative products and solutions have been developed such as the carrier digital platform and bandwidth-ondemand platform for global carriers, carrier billing platform and content.

The company has developed IP peering ecosystems for OTTs and content players, plus next generation data centres for large enterprises across the globe that are eyeing India as the next big destination for growth.

that his new company, Tofane Global, was to acquire two substantial international businesses.

The first acquisition was KPN’s wholesale operation, iBasis; the second was the wholesale voice business of the Altice Group, which owns French mobile operator SFR and the former Portugal Telecom. Pébereau says the two deals will push Tofane to a leadership position in the wholesale business.

He is leading the charge in a new wave

of much-needed consolidations in the industry and challenging old business models in the process.

Once both deals are complete Pébereau will be busy integrating the two companies into Tofane. But he still has his eyes set on future acquisitions and deals in the sector, saying that “there is money available for transformation and consolidation. It’s about having a clear business model with a track record.”

and led Epsilon, he is now again building innovative solutions that will enable the transformationCapacity of the industry.

A little over a year after taking the reins at Cataleya, Hipp has succeeded in doubling its number of customers and revenue, while launching disruptive business models, partnerships and cloud platform solutions.

He also is the founder of Incipio, a startup accelerator through which he promotes

entrepreneurship and innovation, while keeping humanity and society in mind.

Through this initiative, he has made contributions to four promising start-ups – Cataleya, Cirrus Core Networks, Teragence and Resolver. Additionally he is a member of YET, the Young Entrepreneurs Taskforce, an organisation that creates opportunities for young businesses and programmes that foster innovation and social inclusion.

and through his strong business acumen, keen leadership skills and foresight, he has enabled the company to scale up to its global footprint.

An early opportunity identifier, Bankim has worked closely with multi-functional teams across all four of the company’s divisions to develop and launch new products.

These divisions are Broadband

Telecom, BridgeVoice, CallnRoam and Panamax.

He has been an innovator producing disruptive products like BridgeVoice Pluto which have changed the course of online routing.

next-generation Wifi and cloud services.

Formed of the who’s who of the wireless space, Mist’s team comes from the likes of Cisco, Trapeze, Aruba, Airespace and Aerohive. Bob Friday is the chief technology officer and co-founder of this disruptive company leading the charge in next-gen Wifi and disruptive location-based services.

As a wireless entrepreneur Friday is focused on developing and bringing to

market unlicensed wireless technologies.

He was also a key contributor to the HS2.0 industry standard and holds over 15 patents.

Prior to Mist, Friday served as CTO at Cisco and co-founded Airespace, a radio and mobility architecture company. Friday is a champion of disruption, and Mist frequently works with data and AI startups such as Ople, Cortical.io, Medial EarlySign and Experfy.

june/july 2018

20 innovators to watch | 45

Dan Warren Samsung Head of 5G research

A

s a former technology executive at both Vodafone and then the GSMA, Dan Warren has been instrumental in developing

Ellie Sweeney Telstra Executive director, global sales

E

llie Sweeney has worked in the global telecommunications industry for 20 years and has held key senior roles in consumer,

Enrique Blanco Telefónica Global CTO

E

nrique Blanco joined Telefónica roughly 26 years ago and though he has held numerous positions with the company,

Funke Opeke MainOne CEO

F

unke Opeke is founder and CEO of MainOne, which built west Africa’s first privately-owned subsea cable system that

Gal Hochberg Clear Co-founder and CEO

G

al Hochberg is the co-founder and CEO of Clear, a blockchain technology company that aims to

capacitymedia.com

a number of specifications and innovations.

He led the GSMA’s definition of VoLTE for the global industry, as well as being a lead technology expert on rich communications and all IMS-based projects, embedded mobile and WiFi roaming.

This unified the technology for the placing of high-quality voice calls over higher-capacity 4G networks. When he joined the GSMA back in 2007 he also led on projects on IP-based interconnect, application awareness

and quality of service. Now at Samsung, Warren is in charge of creating mobile networking equipment compatible with current existing 5G standards, as well as helping to create 5G-ready smartphones and other areas within the 5G ecosystem.

Warren is tasked with spotting technological innovation and market opportunities that can be used to create new Samsung products.

small business, enterprise and government and operations divisions.

Earlier, as executive director for global wholesale at Telstra, Sweeney was responsible for leading, communicating and executing the global wholesale and over-the-top strategy.

Prior to that, she was executive director of solutions sales at Telstra, leading the domestic and global sales teams across voice, mobile, data, cloud, UC, security, managed services, industry solutions and alliances. Throughout

the year the company has unveiled a number of expansions to its network.

Telstra boosted its Middle East business expanding its programmable network to a new point of presence in Dubai.

The new PoP will offer flexible and dynamic access to Telstra’s high bandwidth, low latency and secure network to support businesses operating in the region.

currently serves as global chief technology officer of Telefónica, within the global resources division.

During his tenure,Capacity Telefónica has successfully ushered in a period of pre-5G initiatives at the company and has been a noted advocate of Telefónica’s move to virtualisation.

In September 2017, Telefónica and Nokia carried out tests to evaluate technologies that are on the way to 5G. Using Nokia’s 4.5G and 4.5G Pro and

4.9G technologies to conduct trials that make the most of Telefónica’s existing network assets, helping the company to meet the growing demands of individual subscribers and IoT. Additionally, it was under Blanco’s influence that Telefónica completed its first massive MIMO trial in Europe with ZTE, as well as partnership with Ericsson to demonstrate remote driving technology using 5G connectivity at MWC 2017.

interconnected Nigeria, Ghana and Portugal in 2010.

Under her leadership, MainOne has grown to become a leading provider of wholesale and enterprise connectivity and data centre services across the region – and the company has played a major role in changing west Africa’s internet landscape.

In March 2018, the company embarked on an ambitious collaborative project with Avanti to build a satellite gateway. Avanti’s

earth station will be hosted on MainOne’s data-centre operation MDXI’s satellite farm in Lagos.

Expansion has also been top of Opeke’s plans for the company.

In April 2018, MainOne was granted a C1B licence allowing it to expand national and international connectivity services in Côte D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). The company will now be able to land its submarine cable and build transmission infrastructure in the country.

transform global enterprise payments across various industries.

Throughout the past 12 month Hochberg has proved himself a true innovator in his field. Earlier this year Clear, under the leadership of Hochberg and his co-founder Eran HaggiBH, completed a blockchain trial in partnership with Colt and PCCW Global, believing that the technology will reduce

fraud and settlement times and increase efficiency.

In this first proof of concept Clear was able to settle a month of traffic in less than one minute between the two carriers.

Outside of his disruptive projects, Hochberg also co-founded HiredScore, an AI HR company used by Fortune 500 companies to identify the best candidates for roles.

46 |

Håkan Eriksson Telstra CTO

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ppointed in 2016, Håkan Eriksson joined Telstra from Ericsson where he served as group CTO and CEO of

Ian Massingham AWS Chief EMEA evangelist

A

WS has grown to become a $20 billion run-rate business, growing by about 45% year-on-year with a market share of approximately 35%. The rise of

Jerzy Szlosarek Epsilon CEO

J

erzy Szlosarek, CEO of Epsilon, makes it onto our list because of his vision in executing cloud-centric networking. For the

Luis Jorge Romero ET4I Director general

S

ince his appointment as ETSI director general in 2011, Luis Jorge Romero has led the steady charge on the much-needed

Dr Marcus Hacke

ngena founder and managing director

I

t was two years ago that Dr Marcus Hacke founded ngena, the Next Generation Enterprise Network Alliance.

Australia and New Zealand. For the last two years Eriksson has been focused on guiding the company to become leaders in key technologies, drive value through advanced capabilities and accelerate business and cultural innovation.

Since then Eriksson has kept true to this vision with the development of Telstra’s A$6 billion services and solutions business for enterprise. The company increased its European footprint with the availability of

its programmable network via new points of presence in Frankfurt and Paris.

It has expanded its service to provide more bandwidth options and lower latency on its Hong Kong to Singapore and Japan to Hong Kong subsea routes.

As for investing in innovations, at the start of the year Telstra launched a new 5G innovation centre in Australia aimed at testing and developing next generation mobile services ahead of 5G.

AWS is thanks in part to people like Ian Massingham, the company’s chief evangelist for EMEA. With a role that many companies would describe as developer relations, Massingham educates and builds awareness among software developers and architects, who use the vast array of APIs available within AWS, so that they can be affective users of the platform and how to put AWS to work to help them build products or services. With over 20 years’

experience in the IT industry, Massingham has a individual technological interest in the development of connected device and IoT applications, and in server-less architecture patterns for the deployment of applications in the AWS cloud.

Working with start-ups to large enterprises, he brings innovative thinking back to headquarters to improve their services.

last 12 months he has been spearheading initiatives around inter-carrier automation, federated APIs Capacity and delivering 100G on-demand from a web-based portal.

As part of his inter-carrier automation strategy, Epsilon’s infrastructure has been opened to the world’s largest networks so that they can offer on-demand connectivity anywhere in the world.

Through APIs, Epsilon has turned networking into a utility that can be

integrated into existing platforms and used by all kinds of service providers and start-ups.

The 100G on-demand service is preparing the network to serve the massive amounts of demand generated by new cloud, IoT and big data initiatives.

With a 20-year career that started at Ciena and then took him to Dynergy Europe, gradually Szlosarek is preparing Epsilon’s partners to deliver the future of networking.

development of technology specifications across the industry.

These include the oneM2M global standards initiative for machine-tomachine communications and the internet of things (IoT).

This brings ETSI together with eleven other leading standards bodies, forums and consortiums throughout the world, and with 200 of their member companies to define the specifications needed for scalable, secure

deployment of M2M and IoT services.

He has also ensured that ETSI is well positioned to take an active role in the development of future 5G standards, both within ETSI and 3GPP, of which ETSI is a founding member.

In May 2016 he said: “We have set a clear calendar to get to 5G, which will follow the normal process in the 3GPP. In late 2019, the plan is to make the submission to the ITU on 5G.”

The mission of this organisation is to foster network services built on shared partner networks around the world.

As a result of his leadership, the organisation has gone on to recruit the likes of Deutsche Telekom, CenturyLink, Reliance Jio and SK Telecom as its four founding members, with a total of approximately 20 active members today.

Ngena was Hacke’s brainchild. He is an avid champion and advocate for such

concepts as the formation of a strong global alliance of leading telecommunication providers, connecting the regional networks of telcos to one SD-WAN, use of end-toend automated service orchestration to provide hybrid VPNs and creation of a central B/OSS cloud portal.

Prior to founding ngena, Hacke served for over ten years at Deutsche Telekom.

june/july 2018

20 innovators to watch | 47

Mayra Arevich Marin ETECSA President

M

ayra Arevich Marin has been president of Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba (ETECSA), the Cuban fixed and

Pascal Menezes MEF CTO

T

he work of the MEF and in particular its new global services framework, MEF 3.0,

Phill LawsonShanks EdgeConneX Chief innovation officer

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n industry veteran with more than 25 years in the telco sector, LawsonShanks is an executive with eight global technology patents under his belt. As chief

Rajiv Datta Colt COO

H

aving joined Colt back in 2016 as CTO, in less than 18 months Rajiv

Rolf Nafziger Deutsche Telekom Senior vice president, International Wholesale Business Unit,

D

uring his 20-year tenure with Deutsche Telekom, Rolf Nafziger has become well-known as an industry thought leader and driving force behind

capacitymedia.com

mobile operator, since 2012. During her six-year term in the role Marin has managed to navigate the tumultuous position.

The Federal Communications Commission permitted direct phone connections with the US in 2015 and a number of US operators set up roaming deals. In April 2016 she was chosen as one of the 100+ members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, and later in the year Eric Schmidt, then chairman of

Google parent Alphabet, met her to agree an internet access deal.

Most recently ETECSA partnered with SES Networks for satellite services to enhance connectivity. SES Networks will enhance ETECSA’s terrestrial infrastructure with its high-performance fibre-like medium earth orbit (MEO) capacity – resulting in Cubans and visitors to Cuba having additional access to reliable and uninterrupted connectivity throughout the island.

has been transformative in its impact on telecoms. The framework moves beyond carrier Ethernet to look at automated and virtualised services by providing a suite of lifecycle service orchestration APIs that offer an on-demand, cloud-centric service.

At the heart of that work is Pascal Menezes, MEF’s first-ever CTO. In his position Menezes works in the areas of cloud scale architectures, real-time media

networks, software-defined networks, network function virtualisation and lifecycle service orchestration.

Since his appointment in March 2016, he has been instrumental in the development of a number of new standards and frameworks from the industry body as well as working with bodies outside of it including the IETF, MEF, IMTC and the Broadband Forum.

innovation officer at EdgeConneX, Lawson-Shanks is at the forefront of the company’s newest developments.

In January 2017, EdgeConneX deployed Megaport’s elasticCapacity interconnect fabric in its edge data centres, enabling more direct connectivity to leading cloud providers.

The company also collaborated with the Sacramento Internet Exchange in August 2017 to build a connectivity node directly into its edge data centre.

As a result Sacramento is longer

dependent on the San Francisco Bay area for content delivery, as the node enables the localisation of traffic to the market and provides tenants with peering independence and redundancy.

Lawson-Shanks is also a general partner and mentor of Fortify.vc, a technology start-up fund, another area where he’s pushing the boundaries of innovation.

Datta was appointed as COO for the company, tasked with bringing together Colt’s operational and technological capabilities, customer experience strategy, and product and innovation teams under one organisational framework.

Since he entered the role in September 2017, Colt has been at the forefront of a number of innovative projects and trials.

Earlier this year Colt in partnership with

Verizon successfully demonstrated two-way inter-carrier software-defined network orchestration during a live trial demonstration. During the showcase the two companies were able to make real-time bandwidth changes in each other’s networks through an Equinix interconnect. The industry first has been described as the first step towards enabling real-time cross-carrier automation.

initiatives that have helped advance the entire market.

His ability to identify future challenges encouraged him to make choices that have led to unconventional solutions. This includes deciding to move away from familiar practices and helping reinvent in-flight connectivity with the European Aviation Network, a first hybrid network based on LTE and satellite that provides unprecedented broadband to passengers travelling across Europe.

As a result this has fostered external partnerships which have delved into areas such as IoT and A2P. With Nafziger’s innovation focus, the International Wholesale Business Unit has launched new services such as the MPLS-based mobile IP-VPN.

METRO CONNECT EUROPE 12 & 13 September 2018 Amsterdam The only C-level meeting advancing communications in fra st ru c tu re & conve rge n ce i n E u ro pe fo r fibre, tower & data centres

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special report

AUTOMATION June/July 2018

CONTENTS 50 The big interview Michael Wheeler, VP, head of global IP network business unit, NTT Communications

53 Executive interview Dr David Hanson, founder, Hanson Robotics

Capacity

54 Securing networks in an automated world Increased security, reduced costs and enhanced network visibility are just some of the benefits of adopting automation in networking, but what is causing the resistence aganist it?

capacitymedia.com

50 |

Stable, predictive, cheaper, more

efficient with network automation NTT Com’s Michael Wheeler has seen two decades of improvements through network automation – since long before Capacity anyone heard of SDN or NFV. He tells Alan Burkitt-Gray of the benefits

A

utomation has been central to NTT Communications’ strategy since long before it was part of NTT. “It’s one of the core secret sauces that’s behind much of our business success,” says Michael Wheeler.

The automation story started, he recalls, in the Verio days back in the late 1990s, when its engineers wanted to reduce cost and create efficiencies, and they didn’t want to hang around for all the manual tests that then had to be done.

NTT, the Japanese telecoms giant, completed its purchase of Verio in August 2000, for a price of $5.5 billion. Wheeler joined Verio in 1997 and has been with the group as it transitioned to NTT Communications ever since, apart from a two-year interval in 2000-02.

Now, for the past nine years and 21 years after joining Verio, Wheeler is officially global IP network EVP at NTT Communications – still, fundamentally, Verio as it was. And many of the people who pushed ahead with the company’s automation project back then are still there, he says.

“It was 1997 when we first did it, thanks to the global engineering team,” he says.

“They are still part of the development team. They were more than software engineers: they were part of running the network. That was the original driver.”

And why? Then, as now, “customers get a more stable, more predictive environment”, he says. They wanted “standard programmatic management of the network”, an automatic way to configure the network. This was, he points out, long before anyone had thought of, or even dreamed up the terms for, softwaredefined networks (SDNs) or network functions virtualisation (NFV). But the arguments applied now were the arguments that the Verio engineers applied back in 1997. “From an operational perspective automation is a critical component of how to run a network effectively,” he says.

And there was a little impatience in their rationale. Engineers need to make frequent changes to the networks, and when they do that they spend a lot of time checking and double-checking. Engineers were “tired of waiting”, says Wheeler, but really they

wanted to drive up efficiency and reduce time. “They were asking: ‘How can we do this differently?’,” he recalls.

But Verio was ahead of its time. “There were no standards then,” says Wheeler.

“We weren’t pigeon-holed. We wanted to reduce cost and create efficiencies.”

And that work has continued from the Verio days right through to NTT Communications today, he says. “We’ve taken the mindset from then and we have learned some things since then,” he says.

“It’s a cultural thing as much as an operational thing. There are different tools available now.”

And NTT Com has been able to build on this work by providing tools for customers for use in the configuration and management of their own network. It’s not self-provisioning, he says, but it’s a vital part of the service. “When you have a business that’s on our scale, it’s definitely continued to be a big part of our offer,” says Wheeler.

Outside NTT Com, which provides IP network services, other parts of the NTT group have “similar mindsets”, he says.

Software-defined wide area network june/july 2018

the big interview: michael wheeler | 51

1997

Director of strategic accounts, Verio

2000

Principal, StreamGroup

2002

Director of business development, NTT Com

2004

VP, sales and business development, NTT Com

2009

EVP, head of global IP network business unit, NTT Com

(SD-WAN) specialist Virtela has automation of systems in the private network business, he notes. NTT announced its acquisition of Virtela in 2013 for a reported $525 million.

And NTT Com’s approach has helped to focus the minds of equipment providers Cisco and Juniper Networks, says Wheeler.

“We’ve been very transparent with our ideas,” he says. “Both of them have shown a willingness to share information. It’s been helpful for them and for their broad set of customers. It’s helped them to work out what’s important and why.”

Cisco, he says, was “very aware of how we wanted to interact with the software”, he says. “We don’t dictate our approach but we do it at a programmatic level.” Others have built their own automation technology, he says, but “the concept, the philosophy has become part of the industry. Every company ends up implementing it in different ways.”

And the advantages? He’s clear. “The benefit for the customer is the stability and reliability of the network.” This is particularly the case when changes are capacitymedia.com

made to the configuration. “When you implement changes across the network, the level of error is very low, it’s dramatically reduced,” says Wheeler.

Changes are common, of course, and this is where automation is really “more impactful for customers”, he notes. “You are able to do things about customer migrations and movements. For example, when we are doing a major migration of a router platform, we might get 200 customers on a router.” With automation, “we’re able to reduce the maintenance time to a couple of hours”.

By automating the preliminary work, errors can be checked for, and the configuration can be right. “That’s the physical part of the transition.

Automation means maintenance windows are shorter and more reliable. You preload all of those changes.”

How often are changes needed? “With a network our size, hardware and software changes regularly,” says Wheeler. Changes happen two or three weeks of every month.

A network doesn’t stay in a static state.”

Customers see a fair amount of the impact of automation, and the benefits.

It’s been an industry-wide change, but Wheeler is firmly of the belief that NTT Capacity Com has been “a positive contributor” to the industry’s transformation. “We’ve had of lot of discussions with competitors,” he says. “People have taken the idea and adapted to the reality. We’re contributing in a very positive way.”

What have been the topics of these discussions? Wheeler replies: “Our conversations have been about routing security and IPv6. We’ve been big evangelists of IPv6 for 10 years. We’ve created a positive attitude to the need for better network security.”

But he turns back to the economic and operational benefit of automation. “The other big benefit of automation is cost.

Compare the number of people running our network with the other four or five leading networks globally,” he says. “We have a smaller number of people. If you take a cost and business perspective, others are larger with respect to staff numbers. For us, it means an agile, flatter organisation.”

It’s “hard to quantify”, he says, conceding that some of NTT Com’s rivals are “great, but compare the head count.”

Numbers? “For our entire operational people, fewer than 130-150 globally. It’s a pretty small organisation. For the IP network we’re smaller than Level 3 or Telia,” he claims. “The benefit is that it allows us to be cost effective.”

He admits it’s hard to prove, especially as on the IP side NTT has not bought any company since the Verio deal 18 years ago.

“Most of our acquisitions have been on colocation and services.” He contrasts the

You are able to do things about customer migrations and movements. For example, when we are doing a major migration of a router platform, we might get 200 customers on a router.” With automation, “we’re able to reduce the maintenance time to a couple of hours” Michael Wheeler, EVP, head of global IP network business unit, NTT Communications

position with other companies – Level 3, which bought Global Crossing and then itself got bought by CenturyLink; or Zayo, where acquisition is “the whole strategy”, he says.

“In all honesty if we did an acquisition of an IP network then the automation would allow it to be a lot more efficient,” he says.

And he says other carriers accept that “what we are doing makes a lot of sense”, warning that it’s important to differentiate between NTT Com’s full automation and many others’ partial automation. “They are two different things,” he says.

Where’s it going? Automation isn’t complete yet. “There are still a number of ways for automation to continue to expand,” he says. “There are benefits we haven’t got yet.

We still want to make improvements.”

In particular, he says: “We are going to continue to enhance the core control.” The company wants migration tools, tools to allow migration of points of presence and tools to allow route security.

“We are creating more and more tools.

We are creating better and better capability for customers to use our network in an automated way. These toolkits will be available because of automation. It means customers won’t need an engineer to look at the network.” This is important when a network moves to new hardware. “It reduces the time needed to ensure it’s working correctly.” And that is what you want from a network.

52 | SPONSORED Q&A

CONNECTIVITY AS A SERVICE: AUTOMATION POWERED BY KOSC TELECOM AN O NE O RN ERǥ EO O OS E E O ǥ E REN O ESA EǧON AAS PRO DERǥ TALKS TO CAPACITY A O T O ONNE T

T AS A SER E Č? AASČŽ S T E T RE O O R TELE O ND STR high bandwidth, with fibre. In addition, as a wholesale-only carrier, we don’t and won’t ever compete with our customers. Our focus is to partner with B2B carriers, helping them to win more deals and keep on growing their business. For this purpose, we have designed a competitive portfolio of data Layer 1 and Layer 2 services, with unprecedented offers in France. From these data services, our customers can build innovative value-added services.

What are your strategic priorities for 2018?

We have announced a brand new wholesale fibre portfolio to cover all the connectivity needs in France. For the very first time, a wholesale fibre complete portfolio dedicated to businesses is now available in France. We are now accepting orders for our best effort fibre services and we are launching E-Access fibre, which is a complementary offer with SLAs. Best effort fibre already brings a breakthrough with bandwidth up to 1Gbps download and 250Mbps upload – and now with e-access fibre we will also ensure guaranteed Capacity symmetrical bandwidth. As a driver on the wholesale telecom market, our ambition is to pave the way for full fibre migration.

Antoine Fournier, CEO, Kosc Telecom Beside the fibre offer itself, we are offering the ability to connect businesses wherever they are located, not only in the major cities, like Paris, Lyon or Marseille. In fact, one of our What makes Kosc Telecom unique as a strategic priorities for 2018 and the coming years is to keep connectivity provider? extending our 7.6 million fibre plug coverage.

Created in March 2016, Kosc Telecom provides nationwide local access solutions to carriers with real-time CaaS How is Kosc Telecom growing its footprint management tools. Our network is powered by a state-of-the- outside its domestic market? art broadband and fibre-optic infrastructure, connecting over Our strategy is to stay focused on wholesale and connectivity only on one hand and on local access coverage on the other 180 cities. CaaS is a whole new way of looking at business hand. Regarding coverage, Kosc Telecom has one main goal: activity and is at the core of our strategy. This is a big undertaking – but thanks to a fully integrated and automated complete a 100% coverage in France to provide the best available connectivity portfolio for all premises located in France. e-portal available through web services (extranet & APIs), we can offer this Connectivity as a Service solution. Simply put, we have virtualised our network for our customers and they can have What would be your tips for global carriers which are looking for connectivity in France? full control of it, from eligibility checking to ticketing, in just one user interface. Our motto is to help our customers drive their Automation is a must-have to drive telecoms business worldwide. Through our CaaS e-Portal, we are glad to offer a business into the digital era! relevant wholesale portfolio, with a nationwide coverage, What are the key challenges in the carrier market manageable from a unique interface, to global carriers. and how is Kosc Telecom preparing to tackle them?

Checking the eligibility, drafting and placing orders, tracking Automation is one of the key challenges. In these times of the service delivery status, launching diagnosis and accessing digitisation, our industry must transform itself to get agile and our 24/7 customer service has never been easier. Our CaaS customer-centric. No one can sell digital transformation to its solution is designed to be compliant with the proof of customers, if one hasn’t been through this transformation! concepts for the development of MEF 3.0 services. Thus, it is We first started to design our information system from scratch, easy to integrate within any carrier’s information system and then we built our network around a digital platform: CaaS through our APIs. e-Portal. Through it, we are offering innovative services to the Finally, international carriers all have a common wholesale business market that are reliable, transparent and easy denominator:the need for simplicity, reactivity and flexibility to use. Thus, operations are modernised to get the best customer to aim for network on demand. Dedicated to wholesale-only return on experience. connectivity on the French wholesale market, Kosc Telecom Another key challenge is the advent of new hyper-specialised is a human-sized company that perfectly matches these needs. actors on the market: wholesale-only carriers are now bringing a So, why not improve your supplier portfolio by choosing the new high-feature and cost-effective model for investment in very French wholesale-only CaaS provider? june/july 2018

executive interview: david hanson | 53

TELECOMS TO PLAY ‘INSTRUMENTAL’ ROLE IN FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES Dr David Hanson, founder of Hanson Robotics and creator of Sophia the Robot, talks James Pearce about automation and the role of networks in robotics

I

f you ask the man or woman on the street what they think is meant when we discuss automation, most will probably point to self-driving cars, heavy machinery or the old favourite – robots.

There is something iconic about robots that has made them become recognised as the cutting edge of technology. But, as is often the case, this cutting edge technology needs to be backed by a cutting edge network.

That is the view of one of the leading experts in robotics, Dr David Hanson, when I meet ahead of his keynote presentation at May’s International Telecoms Week. Hanson is known as the founder of Hanson Robotics and the creator of several robots, most famously Sophia – the first robot to ever be granted citizenship.

Sophia doesn’t need to be connected to the internet at all times, but the

her motor functions “but it is something less than a megabyte right now”.

Human levels of performance and interaction in the real world will require “considerably more” data, says Hanson.

“You’d have a vast amount of surface sensor data and the tactile data becomes very important. Right now, her tactile data is very limited but we will be adding a lot more of those kinds of sensors in the future. Some of that can be processed locally. We’re seeing much better vision processing and deep learning that you can Capacity do on graphics cards in real time and dedicated machine vision and learning modules and processors,” he says.

“However, I can imagine for humanlevel intelligent performance, for the kind of learning you need, you’d be looking at a minimum of 20MB. We expect that if we have more powerful local processing, such as mobile computing, you might

My impression is that telecommunications will adopt a technology once it is proven and scaled.

Then the industry will adopt it like wildfire. Passing through that gate can be somewhat complicated. The computing you have in a mobile device has been in a very competitive space” David Hanson, founder, Hanson Robotics computational power she uses greatly increases when she is part of a network, Hanson says. When not connected, she uses just 1MB of processing power.

“When Sophia is not connected to the internet she can answer questions and interact just fine, but when she does have a connection, she can provide much deeper set of answers, running with our MindCloud AI service,” he says.

The data she is managing now includes camera data, 3D sensor data and microphone data, plus a lot controlling capacitymedia.com

only need to send a few megabits a second to the cloud network.”

This is where he gets excited. It seems to be discussing newer, more cuttingedge technologies that thrills Hanson, who moves onto mesh computing.

“You can also load-balance some of that processing against mobile devices and other small connected IoT devices.

If we consider that we may be able to utilise a mesh network of phones and other mobile computing devices and, through machine learning, be able to

pick up data, you would decrease the loads on the cell towers and other networks,” he says.

“You could also take the resulting machine-to-machine models and share those with the cloud, so you don’t have to share the raw data but the resulting, interpreted models.”

That is going to reduce the load on the networks enormously – meaning networks could be directed to supporting other functions. Once machines get smart, he adds, they can do more with less data.

The impact of artificial intelligence on future communications networks will be huge, Hanson expects. AI will help telcos to create more robust networks through adaptive problem solving and this kind of product is already being tested on some networks. Data analytics mixed with AI can also help networks become more agile and more reliable.

So how does this impact telecoms and wholesale? “Scale becomes really important. Tools available in telecoms are essential to the future of these things because they are already scaled,” he says.

“Designing these tools so that they can scale through telecommunications becomes instrumental. The telecoms industry provides an optimised balance between power and price and that is where the real-world implications spring forth.

The ideas are great but they are only relevant when they hit the real world.”

For Hanson, telecoms will play a key role in supporting an AI-powered future.

But it will also benefit from this kind of next-gen technology. I ask him if telecoms is one of the quicker industries at adopting this.

He pauses before answering. “My impression is that telecommunications will adopt a technology once it is proven and scaled. Then the industry will adopt it like wildfire. Passing through that gate can be somewhat complicated. The computing you have in a mobile device has been in a very competitive space.”

54 |

SECURING NETWORKS IN AN AUTOMATED WORLD

Increased security, reduced costs and enhanced network visibility are just some of the benefits of adopting automation in Capacity networking. Gareth Wilmer investigates this and looks at what’s causing some of the resistance against it

W

annaCry, DDoS attacks, ransomware, botnets – the world has become unhappily familiar with such terms in the past few years. This has come about as cyberattacks have grown in sophistication alongside the surge in number of connected devices, with some of the latest wave hitting record-breaking sizes in 2018.

At the same time, carriers and other organisations are undergoing major digital transformations as they move towards technologies such as SDN, NFV and 5G. This is triggering greater network automation, calling for new ways of running security alongside these technologies.

The transformation from legacy environments to “programmable, horizontally abstracted, open-partner ecosystems” means that “service providers have to build security-oriented thinking into every aspect of their ecosystems”, says Daniel Bar-Lev, director in the office of the CTO at the MEF industry association.

After identifying needs for security services caused by rising deployment of

SD-WANs and use of NFV, the association is starting a project with its members in the area of security-as-aservice (SECaaS) under its MEF 3.0 framework. In line with this, Bar-Lev foresees the opportunity for a whole new market segment opening up for service providers specialising in WAN-oriented security services.

“Securing SD-WAN services running in NFV environments is a challenge that will only grow in scale and complexity,” adds Bar-Lev. To date, he says, security work has often been focused within service providers’ IT groups rather than their networking departments, but he emphasises the need to move towards development of security throughout the organisation.

Bar-Lev highlights that automation can reduce the attack surface by lessening the opportunity for human-associated vulnerabilities. But, he notes, the flip side is that automation can spread vulnerabilities rapidly in a hyperscale environment. “Automating security in a WAN service provider environment is very much more complex than what we have been accustomed to until now. Service

providers are clearly working towards a DevOps approach where they deal with security enhancements in real time.”

Chris Richter, VP of global security services at CenturyLink, explains that the pace of change as activities become more automated in the move towards technologies such as SDN, NFV and 5G is such that carriers have to change their overall processes to keep up. “Changes to IP and the network core are central to that transformation, and there’s a security transformation that goes hand in hand with that,” he says.

Struggling CIOs In line with this rising automation, Richter says CenturyLink is therefore going through a transition both to aid its own business and that of its customers. “I talk to many CIOs who are struggling with the challenges of moving to automated networks,” says Richter.

“They’re faced with having to upgrade all their infrastructure and are under pressure to reduce their networking costs.

In doing so, they have to make a decision about where their security controls are going to reside.” A key way for carriers to june/july 2018

feature: automation | 55

aid with this, says Richter, is to help their customers move to cloud-based security, reducing the cost and complexity of the overall security framework.

“That’s what drove us to create a new security model that was compatible with technologies such as NFV and SDWAN,” says Richter.

CenturyLink is also moving to enhance automation in security itself and is offering automation in some of its security controls, but customers need to opt in to get this. “Not everybody trusts automation, so we give customers a choice,” says Richter. “As we begin to trust technology more, there’ll be more automation in the backbone.”

Carriers, meanwhile, note the benefit of having to build in security from the start with the new raft of technologies. “From a security perspective it’s actually good, because it forces network designers to think first and then build,” says Stefan Schröder, a security expert at Deutsche Telekom. “That gives us as security experts a good opportunity to be included in the design to make sure that we have designed for security and privacy right from the start.”

And Orange, for example, is also following a principle of “security by design”, says Yves Bellego, director of European networks at the company. This could help in areas such as mitigating potential increased risk in the use of more open-source processes in the industry.

One way that Orange is dealing with this is by working within the industry in open source communities and standardisation bodies. This may also help in, for example, bolstering security mechanisms for 5G, where network slicing is set to lead to new interfaces with new types of player and bring its own security issues, says Bellego.

Virtualising workloads, meanwhile, calls for central coordination of security policies and for having controls virtualised and able to expand along with workloads, says Brian Rexroad, VP of security platforms at AT&T. He points out that identity and access management are “significantly more complex” in this environment, so there is a need to change in line with this and alter the philosophy around network architecture.

But he emphasises that this is a step-by-step process, and is about learning over time to ensure a thorough understanding of what works. “The entire network infrastructure isn’t changing to virtualised overnight,” he says.

The dynamic changes in the network that SDN and NFV enable mean that sometimes additional security controls will be needed, but there is a big upside in capacitymedia.com

Not everybody trusts automation, so we give customers a choice” Chris Richter, VP of global security services, CenturyLink

being able to automate many functions based on a known event and moving to automate security, says Lee Field, associate director of solutions architecture at Verizon Enterprise Solutions. “Let’s say, for instance, we see ‘known bad’ traffic or actors,” he says. “We can automate change into the core of the network... to proactively defend against it.”

One big thing that Verizon has done in recent years, says Field, is to look at how data gleaned from the company’s core network can be better used to defend its own and customers’ infrastructure – capitalising on the oversight offered by its extensive global IP network and its in-depth tracing of cyber-threats over the years.

Working together

Capacity Carriers are also looking to launch alliances to deal with the new breed of threats. Telefónica, for instance, has just teamed up with Etisalat, Singtel and SoftBank to create a Global Telco Security Alliance, allowing the members to share intelligence on threats and security capabilities to help protect enterprises. The alliance is also open to bringing in new members over time.

“The collaboration between partners within the alliance helps to bring different views on security and allows [us] to share intelligence such as tested technologies,” says Pedro Pablo Pérez, CEO at Telefónica’s cybersecurity unit, ElevenPaths.

CenturyLink’s Richter agrees that interaction will be important. “One way that we as carriers will be able to battle that traffic is by working together and communicating more transparently,” he says. “That way, we can keep the internet as clean as possible of malicious traffic.”

While working with enterprise customers, a key requirement that CenturyLink itself keeps in mind is the need to cooperate with other carriers to ensure network-agnostic security controls, he adds. Richter points out that about 90% of the company’s SD-WAN customers use more than one carrier to ensure diversity, so accommodating this is important.

Something that might, meanwhile, aid inter-carrier security in future is blockchain technology. Indeed, Colt Technology Services and PCCW Global, along with blockchain start-up Clear,

recently ran a proof of concept to show how the use of blockchain can slash inter-carrier settlement times from hours to minutes in a reliable way.

“This is a good example of how Colt is looking at emerging technologies to try and not only automate processes but also find a secure way in which to do so,” says Ashish Surti, chief information security officer at the company. “Blockchain by its very DNA is inherently secure, and as a business Colt is investigating how blockchain and other technologies can be used to ensure that security is a major pillar of everything we do.”

As security itself becomes more automated, meanwhile, there may be challenges resulting from a more hands-off approach.

But Christian Wollner, head of product management for mobile world at Deutsche Telekom International Carrier Sales & Solutions (ICSS), explains one way this might be managed effectively.

For instance, on the mobile side the company operates firewalls for SS7 and SMS, and uses automated algorithms to carry out this screening efficiently and in real time – but this also ensures that experts at Deutsche Telekom doublecheck traffic patterns.

“This enhances the level of security because we know that ‘the other side’ uses human intelligence as well,” says Wollner.

Jay Coley, EMEA director of security at Akamai, flags up a different challenge – that, for instance, automated provisioning could push carriers’ customers into new pricing during a surge in traffic from a DDoS attack.

“Akamai can help by mitigating threats at the access layer of the internet rather than at the core, potentially preventing large amounts of traffic aggregating in the core,” says Coley.

Ultimately, cutting off threats as quickly and cleanly as possible clearly offers a huge upside for carriers.

“Defending earlier protects the network and performance,” says Verizon’s Field.

“Think forward to being able to use machine learning and AI to make these decisions, and we have some real potential to implement self-defence through automation on a carriergrade scale.”

56 | market data: megatrends

TOWARDS 2050 – THE INDUSTRY’S MEGATRENDS

B

MI Research published the second edition of its Towards 2050: megatrends in industry, politics and the global economy report in April 2018. Dexter Thillen, senior ICT analyst at BMI and part of technology, media, and telecom (TMT) team, contributed to this report and found three key megatrends: • IoT and big data: the main megatrends • The disruptive impact of AI, blockchain and quantum computing • Telecoms operators focusing on services and content Cybersecurity, while not a megatrend, is also a key element of BMI thinking, as it will have an impact across all industries. As well as the report, BMI conducted a survey of 250 senior executives across various sectors and countries. From this BMI highlighted the key results, showing how prepared the telecoms industry is for these upcoming trends as it is uniquely placed, being both a provider and a user of these new technologies.

Dexter Thillien, senior ICT analyst, BMI Research

IoT The main megatrend BMI Megatrends Survey – % of respondents who said the following technology would have a high impact of disruption on their sector in 30 years

Capacity

Iot ,# +# *# )# (# '# &# %# $# #

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Source: BMI Research –Megatrends Survey 2018 Looking across the different industries, it is clear that the IoT is seen as having the most disruptive impact, with a score of 80%. Automation/robotics, and climate change, follow with 75% and 70% respectively, while other technologies, such as AI and blockchain, are further behind, with scores of 66% and 54% respectively.

The IoT is global and not a tech-specific trend and, while operators are strongly positioned to take advantage, they also need to realise they require partnerships to offer the best possible service. Operators

can be the main interlocutor to the end-user, but they need others to meet the specific demand from other industries.

Looking at respondents from the TMT sector only, IoT is also a key trend, as it will be used to improve internal processes and lower costs as well as a new product to external clients.

BMI found 89% of respondents believe it will have a high impact in the next five years, dropping to 84% in the next 30, and this matches the current investment cycle, with 78% of respondents saying that the IoT was one of the main areas of current

spending. AI is also an area of investment, with 73% of respondents saying it was a current area of spending, but over a longer timeline than IoT concerning its impact.

Only 65% of respondents said they would have a high impact in the next five years, which increases to 76% in the next 30 years.

AI will have a key role with the development of software-enabled solutions into the network, such as SDN or NFV, while standards for 5G will include the use of machine learning. june/july 2018

| 57

Cost reduction and new revenue streams lead the way BMI Megatrends Survey – % of technology and telecoms respondents who see a high impact from these technologies on areas of their business Business impact ( ' & % $ # " !

Source: BMI Research –Megatrends Survey 2018 The survey highlights that the biggest impact from IoT, automation and big data will be in terms of cost reduction and additional revenue streams, with respective average scores of 69.4% and 64.9%.

BMI has long held the view that technology is first used for cost savings, so that companies can find higher margins in markets where revenues are

stagnant, with the second stage being to use these technologies to create new revenue streams, through an evolution of their business model. This is also why enterprises will be the first to adopt new technologies, before moving into the mass-market consumer space.

The survey also shows that only 68% of respondents are investing heavily into Capacity the personalisation of services: BMI

expected more. The ability of technology to switch from a product to a service will be a key element of any updated business model. Also for telecoms operators it is important to realise that connectivity, while important, is not enough. Personalisation will act as a key differentiator for operators but this also requires a change of mind-set and a shift in culture to meet these new challenges.

Prepared for cybersecurity BMI Megatrends Survey – % of respondents who thought their sector was well prepared to deal with cybersecurity concerns Cybersecurity

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Source: BMI Research –Megatrends Survey 2018 Cybersecurity is another key area of investment according to 76% of respondents, and 84% believe that the TMT sector is well prepared to deal with cybersecurity issues, second only to the pharmaceutical industry. The TMT capacitymedia.com

sector has more experience than others when dealing with these threats, but optimism should not turn into overconfidence.

Nothing is fully secure, as anything connected can be hacked, with the

ubiquitous and interdependence of devices making it a clear risk.

Operators can become key players in the cybersecurity battle, because without trust, none of these technologies will have the impact we all expect.

58 | appointments

Anders Olsson Telia Sweden Anders Olsson has been named as the new executive vice president and CEO of Telia Sweden. The former senior vice president, chief operating officer and head of global services & operations at Telia Company, enters the role having spent nearly 20 years prior at Tele2 .

“It was an easy decision to say yes to Sweden’s most exciting job within telecom. I’m really looking forward to continuing the great work the Swedish organization is doing to create a new generation telco,” said Olsson.

Olsson replaces Johan Dennelind, the present president and CEO of Telia Company and assumes the new position as of 1 June. “I’m very happy that Anders has accepted to head our Swedish operations,” added Dennelind.

“We need a strong execution focus on our strategic agenda.”

Jatinder Sispal CMC Networks CMC Networks has appointed Jatinder Sispal as its new executive vice president of global sales. Sispal will be based in the UK with a team located across the US, UK, Africa and Asia.

With over 20 years of carrier expertise, Sispal has worked for the likes of Telstra, for which he was instrumental in the creation of Telstra’s wholesale division in Europe, as well as spending 10 years at Colt, where his last position was being responsible for all of Colt’s indirect sales and marketing business channels across Northern Europe.

“We are delighted that Jatinder has joined CMC Networks. He brings the sales leadership, International network and a track record that reflects our ambitious growth plans as the wholesale carrier of choice,” stated Martin Springer, CEO of CMC Networks.

Philippe Dumont EulaLink

Nick Read Vodafone Group Current chief financial officer for Vodafone Group, Nick Read is to replace Vittorio Colao as group chief executive. Read has been group financial officer since 2014 and previously served as Vodafone’s chief executive officer for Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, as well as board member for both Vodacom and Vodafone India.

Read will become chief executivedesignate at Vodafone’s Annual General Meeting in July, before officially taking over from Colao when he leave the role in October.

“Nick has been the co-architect of the Group’s strategy together with Vittorio. I am confident Vodafone will benefit greatly from his experience, insight and wisdom in his new role as group chief executive,” said Gerard Kleisterlee, Vodafone Group chairman.

EulaLink, the developer and holding company of EllaLink, has appointed Philippe Dumont as its new chief executive officer and has been elected to its board of directors. “We are very pleased to have Philippe join us,” said Alfonso Gajate, chairman of EulaLink. “Philippe brings with him his tremendous experience and network of the subsea cable industry, which will surely benefit this project.”

Dumont enters the role with over 20 years international telecoms experience having been the former president and CEO of Alcatel Submarine Systems, a provider of submarine cable systems. “I look forward to assisting EulaLink in its ambitious plans to improve connectivity between Europe and Latin America and joining a great team of professionals,” added Dumont.

Capacity

Brad Kneller Aqua Comms Aqua Comms has appointed Brand Kneller as its new senior vice president of operations and engineering. Kneller had been head of global networks at Global Cloud Xchange (GCX) for the last 10 years, during which he was accountable for the successful for the operation of the company’s largest privately-owned submarine cable networks.

“I’m very excited to be joining the AQC team and to work on AQC’s world leading submarine cable networks. This is an important time in the evolution of the submarine cable industry and I look forward to working with the team to further advance the company’s position in the global marketplace,” said Kneller.

Juan Pablo Cofino Intelsat Intelsat has named Juan Pablo Cofino as its new regional vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean. In his new role Cofino will be responsible for the development and implementation of Intelsat’s sales and regional go-to market strategies for the company’s broadband, mobile, media and government customers operating across the region.

“Juan’s understanding of Latin American business culture, track record for recruiting and leading high-performing sales teams, and ability to cultivate valuable partner and customer networks make him an important addition to our team,” said Kurt Riegelman, senior vice president of sales, marketing and communications.

David Zimmer Seaborn Networks Seaborn Networks has appointed David Zimmer as its new chief sales officer.

In his new role Zimmer will be responsible for all of Seaborn’s direct sales, channel strategies and inside sales, in addition he is being apointeed to Seaborn’s board of directors.

Zimmer formerly served as senior vice president of the carrier services business unit for Earthlink. Before that, worked at Level 3 Communications over a 13-year period, ending in his serving as vice president of sales for wholesale markets.

“We are very pleased to add Dave to the Seaborn executive team,” said Larry Schwartz, chairman and CEO of Seaborn Networks. “His expertise is an invaluable resource to lead the continued growth of our Sales organisation.”

Suwit Pruckwattanonon mu Space mu Space has appointed Suwit Pruckwattananon, the former Qualcomm exec, as its new chief business development officer. In his new role Suwit will lead the company’s business development activities, as well as oversee its expansion into new markets.

“We are excited to welcome Suwit to the mu Space family! His experience, leadership and knowledge in the telecom sector will create a significant value for the company as we transition to the next phase of our long-term business expansion in the ASEAN region and the US,” said James Yenbamroong, CEO and founder of mu Space. Before joining mu Space, Pruckwattananon spent six years at Qualcomm.

Tell us your move

Capacity is keen to hear from readers about new roles and appointments in the industry.

Send details to natalie.bannerman@capacitymedia.com, with a high-resolution picture

june/july 2018

Capacity

60 | innovation report: shannon limit

Shannon has his limits, but we all need more capacity than ever Claude Shannon predicted in 1948 how much information you can carry over a channel. Seven decades later fibre and wireless designers are pretty much at that limit. That’s creating challenges as the industry faces new data demands, writes Alan Burkitt-Gray

T

he wireless industry is getting ready for an increase in the data it can carry of at least 100-fold, perhaps 500-fold – and the fibre industry is going to have to gear up for all the backhaul that the new low-latency networks will need for this era of hyperscale data.

Three factors will come together to boost the available capacity: more spectrum, especially in the 20-100GHz range, millimetre waves; more efficiency, thanks to steering these high-frequency waves right at the user; and tiny cells, meaning frequencies can be reused – if you have the fibre connections.

At the same time the internet of things (IoT) is going to change the demands on the system, so dense networks will be a necessity, not an option. One of the requirements of the future networks is low latency – of one millisecond or less.

If you have a spare half-hour, go to the website of this year’s Optical Networking and Communication Conference (OFC), which took place in San Diego. There, Marcus Weldon, president of Bell Labs and CTO of Nokia, gave an outstanding presentation of why we will need all this capacity and what the industry is doing to supply it.

At the same conference, scientists from Google and NEC also talked about how they have been able to double – maybe triple – the capacity of a subsea cable. They showed what they can do to push long-haul limits, but Weldon explained eloquently that it’s on short-haul connections that the industry needs to focus.

Weldon explained in that OFC keynote speech that industrial networks – for connected vehicles and so on – need a latency of no more than 1ms. Why? He didn’t say this, but this is my rough

calculation. Take a car going at 50km/h (or 30mph): in one millisecond it travels 14mm. If you’re going to avoid collisions with other vehicles, which are likely also networked, or with people, whether pedestrians or cyclists, which aren’t, you’ll need that sort of accuracy.

It’s not justCapacity vehicles. Industrial machines and other IoT services will need low latency. A round-trip time of 1ms means the distance to and back from the data centre must be 100km or less.

If you’re in Hong Kong, London or New York, you’ll probably have a data centre within 50km – though maybe not the right data centre. What happens when you get more than 50km away: does your autonomous vehicle lose its autonomy?

So welcome to the world of the edge cloud – which makes one realise how prescient were the founders of EdgeConneX. Data will need to be no more than 50km from everyone. That will mean a complete rethink of everyone’s ideas of how networks are designed.

It gets worse, because part of this surge in demand for data will come from the virtual radio access networks (vRANs) that will be used for 5G mobile. These base stations will need high capacity but also even lower latency in their control plane. Weldon put it at 30 microseconds (30µs), around a thirtieth of the current 1ms requirement.

So, does that mean data needs to be stored no more than 1.5km away from anyone on a vRAN? Quite a challenge.

One of the more intriguing presentations at the OFC was from a joint Google/NEC team on how to squeeze more and more out of subsea cables. They said they have doubled the performance of the Faster cable linking

Taiwan to Oregon, and they believe they can go on to triple it.

The 10,000km cable was originally designed to carry traffic at 2 bits/second/ hertz, but using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques they increased spectral efficiency first to 3b/s/Hz and then to 4b/s/Hz – twice the original specification.

Toru Kawauchi, general manager of NEC’s submarine network division, said they’d used machine learning algorithms in place of the previous “deterministic models of non-linear propagation” through the fibre.

Google and NEC tested the performance on the Faster cable itself in a field trial carrying live traffic from Google data centres. NEC has also carried out offline field trials over dark fibres with even more promising results. They used fibre of the same length and achieved spectral efficiency of 5.68b/s/Hz and made other measurements that promise 6.06b/s/Hz – three times the original design specification of the Faster cable.

That means 6b/s/Hz is a “realistic target”, said NEC. Both the Google/NEC team and Weldon from Bell Labs paid frequent tribute to Claude Shannon, the Nobel prize-winning Bell Labs mathematician who 70 years ago this year worked out the theoretical limits to how much information you can carry on a particular chunk of spectrum.

We’re pretty much at that Shannon limit now: NEC is close with Faster in the subsea world, and the wireless world is nearly there too. Densification and millimetre spectrum are the only hopes to get more wireless capacity. For subsea?

More wavelengths and more fibre.

june/july 2018

WHICH EVENTS WILL YOU BE ATTENDING? REGIONAL SERIES

EUROPE EAST 2018

AFRICA 2018

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5 & 6 September 2018, Kigali

EURASIA 2018

CENTRAL AMERICA & ANDEAN 2018

September 2018, Istanbul

3 & 4 October 2018, Bogotá

MESSAGING

NORTH AMERICA 2018 5 & 6 September 2018, Denver

EUROPE 2018 23 - 25 October 2018, London

ASIA 2018

INDIA & SAARC 2019

5 & 6 December 2018, Hong Kong

February 2019

CARIBBEAN 2019

MIDDLE EAST 2019

LATAM 2019

12 & 13 February 2019

March 2019, Dubai

March 2019, Brazil

& SMS WORLD

27 & 28 November 2018, London

RUSSIA & CIS 2019 Spring 2019, Moscow

Capacity CONNECT & SUBSEA SERIES SUBSEA EMEA

SUBSEA AFRICA

10 & 11 July 2018 Marseille

6 September 2018 Kigali

METRO CONNECT EUROPE

12 & 13 September 2018 Amsterdam

(part of Capacity Africa)

MYANMAR CONNECT

18 & 19 September 2018 Yangon

SUBSEA MIDDLE EAST

March 2019 Dubai

SUBSEA AMERICAS

3&4 December 2018 Fort Lauderdale

MEXICO CONNECT

June 2019

METRO CONNECT

29, 30 & 31 January 2019 Miami

(part of Capacity Middle East)

WAN SUMMIT SERIES

11 & 12 SEPTEMBER 2018, SINGAPORE

27 & 28 JUNE 2018, FRANKFURT

17 & 18 OCTOBER 2018, LONDON

APRIL 2019, NEW YORK

www.capacityconferences.com @CapacityMedia

@CapacityMedia

@CapacityMedia

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