Capacity Magazine October / November 2018 by Capacity Media

VOL 18 ISSUE 6 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2018

Cover sponsor: OTEGLOBE

Business intelligence for the global carrier industry

Capacity

VOL 18 VOL ISSUE XX 6 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER ISSUE XX MONTH 2014 2018

Big interview Rolf Nafziger speaks exclusively on the launch of Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier Special Report Capacity takes a look at the ongoing journey to empower women in telecoms

Business intelligence for the global carrier industry

Will YOU answer the call for equality? Capacity

capacitymedia.com

Capacity

| 01

CONTENTS Capacity magazine, October/November 2018

VOL 18 VOL ISSUE XX 6 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER ISSUE XX MONTH 2014 2018

Big interview Rolf Nazinger, of Deutsche Telekom ICSS, on Special Report Capacity takes a look st the ongoing journey to empower women in telecoms

NEWS & ANALYSIS 04 EUROPE

Cover image: Adrian Teal, CartoonStock

Business intelligence for the global carrier industry

Will YOU answer the call for equality?

08 EURASIA ANALYSIS 10 MIDDLE EAST 12 AFRICA 16 ASIA & ASIA-PACIFIC 24 LATIN AMERICA

capacitymedia.com

45 IMC Q&A: MARK STEWART

special report

PREPARING NETWORKS FOR HAPPY HOLIDAYS ON FRAUD

86 CAPACITY’S

PEOPLE & DIARY

Capacity speaks to a number of prominent female execs as part of our empowering women in telecoms special report (page 57)

18 EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW Vincent English, Megaport

90 APPOINTMENTS

50 THE BIG INTERVIEW

Rolf Nafziger, Deutsche Telekom

54 THE BIG INTERVIEW Bruno Lopez, STT GDC

FEATURES 32 MEF TO TACKLE

ENTERPRISE NEEDS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH WAN SUMMIT

36 WE JUST DON’T KNOW, BUT WE DON’T NEED UNCERTAINTY

40 Q&A TÉLÉCOMS SANS FRONTIÈRE

Executive interview: Annette Murphy, Zayo

The big interview: Gina Nomellini, GTT

The big interview: Katia González, BICS

20 Women to Watch

The industry’s latest movers

91 A DAY IN THE LIFE Mary Clark, Synchronoss

92 THE INNOVATION 22 EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW Capacity Lisa Miller, CenturyLink

84 TAKING LEADERSHIP

28 AMERICA IS BUILDING TO SCALE

after page 57

47 WHEREVER YOU ROAM:

CONFERENCE CODE OF CONDUCT

STRATEGIES

Rolf Nafziger speaks exclusively to Capacity about the company’s relaunch as Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier.

EMPOWERING WOMEN IN TELECOMS

EUROPE

26 NORTH AMERICA

ON THE COVER

THE BIG INTERVIEW page 50-51

42 MAKING WAVES IN

REPORT

BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION special report after page 71

5G mobile spectrum

SPONSORS 35 NTT COMMUNICATIONS

38 A1 TELEKOM AUSTRIA 41 OTEGLOBE 44 INTERNET MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS

49 VIRTUAL1 76 VEON 78 HUAWEI

Executive interview: Roberto Kung, Orange

Huawei tackles business transformation

Creating a one-stop-shop for Eurasia

Atonomous network and service 2.0

Transformation for the enterprise market

Meet with the UK’s largest Ethernet Network at Capacity Europe 2018

Over 3,000 POPs enabled for 100MB and 1GB

23-25 October, London | Meet us at stand 2 www.talktalkbusiness.co.uk/carrier

'(876&+( 7(/(.20 */2%$/ &$55,(5 &211(&7,1* 7+( :25/' )25 <28 The telco landscape is rapidly transforming. Nowhere is that clearer than in our business, where a new era of global connectivity has already begun. To more quickly respond to our clientsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; changing wholesale needs, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve reinvented ourselves. By simplifying processes, intensifying collaboration and enhancing agility. Plus, our expanded portfolio offers all you need from one source. Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier delivers the Capacity most innovative, future-proof solutions that guarantee a long and secure tomorrow for your business and the entire industry. Get in touch: globalcarrier.telekom.com

editor’s letter | 03

Diversity is strength!

Follow Capacity on Twitter: @capacitymedia Follow Capacity on Facebook: www.facebook.com/capacity-media

Gartner survey last year showed that only 21% of leaders in the telecoms sector are women – if we look at wholesale, it is arguably even less. Seventy years after ‘Rosie the Riveter’ – a cultural icon of World War II who features on our editorial cover – first appeared, the world has come a long way in terms of equality. However, as several interviews in our Empowering Women in Telecoms special report (p57-70) highlight, there is still a long way to go. Within this special report, we have listed 20 prominent women in telecoms (p65-69) who are really driving the industry forward. Diversity is strength, but the industry needs to overcome passive resistance and stay the course. Empowering Women is a big feature at Capacity Europe so if you are there, don’t miss the must-see panel and drinks (sponsored by Zayo) on Day 1 of the event. It comes as the wholesale carrier community is undergoing a wider digital transformation. Our Business Transformation special report (p71-92) features a number of executive viewpoints on how the industry itself needs to change, as well as the role it can play in transforming other sectors. One company undergoing a huge transformation is Deutsche Telekom’s wholesale arm – for the full scoop on how the company has revamped and why Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier has launched (see opposite page), check out our big interview with Rolf Nafziger (p50-51). This issue is Capacity’s biggest magazine to date and is packed full of news, analysis, Capacity interviews, and features. We’ve also have a new Code of Conduct for attending our events (p86) so please do familiarise yourself with them. Our exclusive market statistics from the Global Leaders Forum (GLF) is on the hot topic of fraud (p84-85). We were extremely happy to announce the launch of our new website in the last issue and if you haven’t signed up or checked it out, what are you waiting for? Good luck to the shortlisted companies for this year’s Global Carrier Awards and congratulations to the eventual winners! If you have any news to share that you want the industry to know at Capacity Europe or throughout the year get in touch with the editorial team (details below)! We look forward to seeing you all at Capacity Europe!

Follow Capacity on YouTube: www.youtube.com/CapacitymagazineTV

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 Anton Fimaier

Marketing Head of marketing Lubtcho Dimitrov lubtcho.dimitrov@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

Graphic designer Samantha Heasmer samantha.heasmer@capacitymedia.com

Marketing manager Simon Murray simon.murray@capacitymedia.com Digital content executive Uday Bahadur uday.bahadur@capacitymedia.com

Subscription enquiries Customer services customerservices@euromoneyplc.com tel +44 20 7779 8610 fax +44 20 7779 8602 Printer Stephens and George, UK Next issue December/January 2019 Published on 20 November 2018 Directors David Pritchard (Chairman), Andrew Rashbass (CEO), Andrew Ballingal, Tristan Hillgarth, Imogen Joss, Tim Collier, Kevin Beatty, Jan Babiak, Lorna Tilbian, Colin Day, Wendy Pallot Freelance writers Gareth Willmer Guy Matthews

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

BREXIT THREAT SPURS COLT’S 150KM EXPANSION IN DUBLIN

rexit – the UK’s expected departure from the European Union – is one of the reasons behind Colt’s expansion of its Dublin network, CEO Carl Grivner confirmed in an interview. Speaking exclusively to Capacity, hours before the company officially announced the 150km network expansion in the Irish capital, Grivner said: “Dublin is already very strong, and Brexit is maybe leading to more activity. It’s not so much Colt as our customers. Dublin is very exciting in terms of what’s happening in this market.” “We already have a strong presence in the city,” Grivner told Capacity. “We looked at 250 cities in terms of growth and data centres. Dublin comes out very forcibly in that area. I can count 25 cranes from my window. There’s lots of new construction.”

Dublin is being tipped as the place many US and other international companies will go for their European headquarters as Ireland will remain part of the EU, even if the UK leaves as the UK government plans on 30 March 2019. Banks, for example, based in Ireland will be able to operate across the 27 remaining EU members – while the position of UK-based banks is still not known while negotiations continue to take place between the UK government and the European Commission. Colt is also planning to announce expansion in Berlin in the near future, Grivner hinted to Capacity. “It has some of the same characteristics – a lot of new growth. It interests us in terms of the density of our network.”

SSE TO BUILD 5G FIBRE RING THROUGH LONDON SEWERS FOR O2 AND THREE SSE Enterprise Telecoms has agreed to build a 5G fibre ring in London for Three UK and Telefónica’s O2 UK. SSE announced in July 2018 that CK Hutchison’s Three UK had picked its wholesale backhaul service. SSE will build a London network for both Three and O2, using fibre largely installed in Thames Water’s waste water sewers in the capital. Both SSE and rival carrier Zayo have fibre attached to the side of London 19th-century sewers. “Networks will fundamentally underpin the UK’s digital economy and will be essential to 5G services,” said Colin Sempill, managing director of SSE Enterprise Telecoms, which is owned by energy company SSE. “With this high capacity core in the London sewers, Three UK and O2 are tapping into our unique, diverse

Capacity connectivity and putting their networks in a strong position to trial 5G offerings, while enhancing its existing services for their customers.” SSE said the service would “significantly enhance Three UK and O2’s connectivity backhaul capabilities and pave the way for further 4G and 5G deployment by connecting cell sites and masts”. Dave Dyson, CEO of Three UK, said: “Our partnership with SSE Enterprise Telecoms and O2 is one of the first examples of using existing infrastructure to improve connectivity in an urban area.” Brendan O’Reilly, CTO of O2, said: “This partnership is a great example of SSE Enterprise Telecoms, Three UK and O2 coming together in a collaborative and innovative way to address the growing challenge and pressure of obtaining access to fibre for mobile backhaul in the UK.”

Carl Grivner: Colt expands in Dublin

VODAFONE GERMANY ROLLS OUT 1GBPS INTERNET IN BAVARIA Vodafone Deutschland (Germany) has announced the launch of its gigabit cable broadband service to approximately 400,000 homes in Bavaria, Germany. The cities of Nuremberg, Landshut, Dingolfing and Fuerth will be the first to receive the new service, which will offer high-speed internet access with a data rate of up to 1Gbps. Nuremberg and Landshut were the first two cities in which Vodafone switched off analogue TV and radio channels and introduced the new cable standard DOCSIS 3.1 on which the gigabit service is based on. Vodafone says that it plans on covering more than 6 million households with the gigabit service by the end of 2018, 11 million by the end of 2019 and a further 50 million by 2022.

NEWS IN BRIEF Orange to partner Google on 6,600km Dunant submarine cable connecting the US to the French Atlantic Coast. Facebook, Airtel Uganda and BCS to lay a total of approximately 800km of optical fibre in North West Uganda. Telesat, SES, Intelsat and Eutelsat have formed the new C-Band Alliance

in response to an initiative from the FCC, dicussing using their frequencies for 5G services. Hawaiki Submarine Cable has chosen Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme solution to increase capacity on its cable by 50%. PLDT is extending its strategic partnership with Amdocs, with a six-

year service agreement overseeing the company’s digital transformation. DE-CIX has filed a constitutional complaint against Germany’s main spy agency after a federal court threw out a previous case. TalkTalk has upgraded its metro aggregation network resulting in a 20-fold capacity increase.

october/november 2018

europe | 05

MAREA CABLE REACHES 200TBPS OF CAPACITY Microsoft, Facebook and Telxius confirm that its 6,600km-long MAREA cable from Virginia Beach to Sopelana, Spain has increased its initial capacity of 160Tbps to a total of 200Tbps. The companies say that they are continuously working to improve the connectivity on its cable to meet both present and future demands. This system provides the lowest latency route between the US and Southern Europe as well as a diverse path to network hubs in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. In September Infinera, a provider of intelligent transport networks, completed a number of successful submarine field trials over the MAREA cable.

The trials achieved new records for trans-Atlantic real-time spectral efficiency, peaking at: 6.21 bits per second per hertz (b/s/Hz) over 6,644 km, translating to a fibre capacity of 26.2Tbps and 4.46 b/s/ Hz over 13,210 km for a total of 18.6Tbps fibre capacity. The trials were conducted using Infinera’s fourth-generation Infinite Capacity Engine (ICE4) advanced coherent technology. In addition, the company employed several advanced technologies including precision, multi-carrier common wavelocking based on Infinera’s large-scale photonic integrated circuit (PIC), digitally synthesised subcarriers with “near Nyquist” pulse shaping, enabled by the ICE4 real-time

coherent digital signal processor, and operation over a high-optical power, largearea optical fibre cable.

DE-CIX SET TO OPEN SECOND LISBON IX IN Q4 2018 DE-CIX has confirmed that it will open another Internet Exchange (IX) in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. Having established the fastest-growing IX via its subsidiary in Madrid in 2016, DE-CIX will install a second IX in the strategically important Portuguese capital of Lisbon by the end of 2018. “After the continuous success in Madrid, DE-CIX is opening a new chapter of interconnection for the Iberian Peninsula with our newest Internet Exchange in Lisbon as a response to the dynamics of Internet traffic and to our customers’ needs,” explained Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DECIX International. DE-CIX expanded its Iberian presence one year ago through an agreement with Itconic, which ran five data centres

Capacity

Ivo Ivanov: DE-CIX meets growing customer demands with 2nd Lisbon IX

across Spain and Portugal. A month later, Equinix announced it had entered into an agreement with the Carlyle Group to purchase Itconic and its CloudMas subsidiary for $259 million. Ivanov added: “Lisbon itself is the sea cable hub of the Iberian Peninsula, with many major sea cable connections landing there from Western Africa and the Americas. There will be a new regime of trans-Atlantic traffic flows, with the Iberian Peninsula as the new centre of gravity. Networks will meet there instead of needing to go so much further north to reach European networks and international content providers. With Internet Exchanges in both Lisbon and Madrid, DE-CIX will support the digital ecosystem on the Iberian Peninsula to further grow and flourish.”

EQUINIX TO OPEN SECOND $19M DATA CENTRE IN SOFIA Equinix has announced plans to open a second $19 million data centre Bulgarian International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in Q1 2019.

Schwartz: New faclity will give companies better interconnectivty options capacitymedia.com

The new facility based in Sofia – called SO2 – will support Bulgarian companies as they transform their businesses through interconnection with digital supply chain partners, cloud adoption and access to new markets around the world. “Data centre colocation provides a powerful level of direct interconnection and empowers enterprises to react in real time, adapt quickly to change and leverage digital ecosystems to create new value and growth,” said Eric Schwartz, president, Equinix EMEA. “The new SO2 data centre in Sofia will provide local businesses and multinationals with the latest interconnection options to accelerate business performance and support their IT transformation initiatives.”

The company also announced plans to open its first $73 million International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre to meet the growing needs of its cloud customer in Q1 2019. The site will give enterprises greater access to top providers at Equinix through low-latency and private connectivity options. In addition, Equinix says it will also extend its relationships with strategic partners, and strengthen its leadership position in the general cloud ecosystem. The new facility – called PA8 – will be Equinix’s eighth data centre in the Paris metro area and will include round 850 cabinets in the first phase of its build out. The area is already home to 200+ CSPs including AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Salesforce and Microsoft Azure.

06 | europe

KPN’S IBASIS SALE TO TOFANE ‘TO BE COMPLETE BY YEAR END’ AS ALTICE DEAL EXPANDED

Alexandre Pébereau’s (pictured) Tofane Global has completed its acquisition of Altice’s wholesale voice business – and the deal has been extended to include mobile voice. A further deal, to acquire iBasis from KPN, is likely to be completed by the end of 2018, Pébereau told Capacity. Both deals were announced in March for undisclosed prices, but the Altice acquisition has been significantly expanded since the original announcement, Pébereau said. “Our target is to build a true unified communications operator and to build services at a global level,” said the former Orange International Carrier CEO, adding that Tofane Global “wants to become more and more of a challenge to BICS”, naming the offshoot of Belgium’s Proximus that competes in the international services market. Patrick George, a senior advisor to Tofane, was a VP at BICS for more than eight years. Altice sold off its wholesale arm – covering France, Portugal and the Dominican Republic – to Tofane after over-expanding in both Europe and North America. Since then the group, led by Patrick Drahi, has demerged its businesses on each side of the Atlantic. The deals mean that Tofane is “now the ninth player in the voice business”, Pébereau told Capacity. “We carried 14 billion minutes last year, worth €500 million.”

ILIAD, TIM AND VODAFONE SPEND €2BN ON ITALIAN 700MHZ SPECTRUM FOR 5G Italy has received winning bids worth €2.8 billion in its 5G auction, with three companies winning spectrum in the 700MHz band for just over €2 billion. The government said that the first day of the auction, saw an increase of €345 million in the initial bids, and more bidding is going on today. TIM will not to be able to use its spectrum on the 700MHz band until 2022, the company said in a statement. But then “the 5G ecosystem will be widespread, connecting billions of smart objects – cars, public transport, domestic meters and the control elements of water and gas networks,

bins, street lamps, buildings and all what is related to smart cities”. TIM said: “These frequencies will also sustain the growth of data consumption from video services, such as virtual and augmented reality, video surveillance and telemedicine services in the most challenging conditions.” The Ministry of Economic Development, which is conducting the auction, said it had received bids from Iliad, Fastweb, Wind Tre, Vodafone and TIM. The 700MHz spectrum licences will run until 2037. Until now the band has been used for terrestrial television.

FRANCE-IX AND ACORUS NETWORKS PARTNER ON CYBERSECURITY France-IX and Acorus Networks, a cybersecurity specialist, have partnered to provide advanced cybersecurity solutions. As part of the agreement, Acorus Networks will join the France-IX Marketplace giving members of the FranceCapacity IX peering community access to Acorus Networks security solutions, which doesn’t require the installation of hardware on premise. “We are pleased to welcome to our Marketplace, both Acorus Networks and its co-founder, Raphaël Maunier, especially as he was a founder-member of FranceIX when he was CTO of Neo Telecoms. Now members can optimize their peering connection with competitively priced, advanced anti-DDoS solutions, efficiently accessed via their peering connection, which is a valuable addition to the range of services currently available,” said Franck Simon, president of France IX Services. Acorus Networks will offer three complementary services in roughly 1-2 business days, directly from its France-IX Marketplace 100Gbps port to any peering member’s France-IX port via rapid VLAN provisioning. The services include: a DDoS

Franck Simon: Cybersecurity solution

mitigation service; a IP Transit service (from 100Mbps to 100Gbps); DDoS protection specifically for http/https Web sites. “We are also delighted that Acorus Networks is joining the leading Internet networks who have chosen to increase their France-IX peering capacity via 100Gbps ports, which has become the new interface for large-scale IP networks in recent years,” added Simon.

GTT TO UPGRADE ITS NETWORK IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE GTT Communications (GTT) has announced the upgrade of its fibre network spanning central and eastern Europe (CEE), including new routes. The company says that the network upgrade and additional high capacity fibre routes enhance the diversity, scalability and performance of GTT’s Tier 1 global IP network footprint for its enterprise and carrier clients in the CEE region. “GTT is delivering on its purpose of

connecting people across organisations, around the world and to every application in the cloud,” said Rick Calder, president and CEO, GTT. “Central and eastern Europe is a significant market for GTT, and this network upgrade results in an even stronger set of cloud networking services for our clients.” GTT is upgrading its routes between its network points of presence in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey,

adding a diverse, lower-latency route from Budapest to Sofia. GTT deployed next-generation optical technology along the routes, doubling the available optical capacity per fibre in the initial upgrade, with the ability to add capacity to align with client demand. In an exclusive quote for Capacity, Gina Nomellini, CMO at GTT said, “We expect the network upgrade to be completed by October 2018.” october/november 2018

International WHOLESALE Services

Connecting your world As a leading global provider of integrated communication solutions, Telefónica provides customers with high quality connectivity, digital platforms and a wide range of innovative, end-to-end solutions. When combined with our extensive international network, cutting edge infrastructure and global footprint, it means we are where you need us to be with the services you expect. Telefónica International Wholesale Services provides services to ﬁxed and mobile operators, service providers, wholesale carriers and OTT-Media companies. With particularly strong presence in Latin America and Europe, our global portfolio includes new digital platforms and solutions for enterprises, as well as more established carrier services: • Voice • Carrier Enterprise • Mobile • Satellite • Security • Cloud • IoT • Big Data wholesale.telefonica.com sales.wholesale@telefonica.com

Capacity

Winner

Best IPX Service

Telefónica Business Solutions

08 | eurasia analysis

CAPACITY RETURNS TO THE HEART OF THE DIGITAL SILK ROAD

SEPTEMBER SAW CAPACITY EURASIA RETURN TO ISTANBUL, TURKEY, WHICH IS TRULY AT

Ç¤ ÍŽÍąÍŹ Ç§ EXECUTIVES TO THE EVENT WHERE SOME OF THE KEY TOPICS CENTRED ON CAPEX INTENSITY, INVESTMENT AND MORE PARTNERSHIPS IN THE REGION, WRITES Ç§ Capacity

here have been a number of political and economic problems in the region over recent years, as is the case with most regions, but Dino Andreou, CEO of OTEGLOBE, said that for our industry the biggest challenge for international wholesale is price aversion. Speaking on the keynote panel from Day 1 of the event, he said: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a global challenge. This business is a capital hungry business; you need to invest in your networks and there is a lot of money that you need to spend in order to facilitate the business of your clients. We need to do this more and more but the margins are getting smaller and smaller.â&#x20AC;? All the panellists from the keynote panel agreed with Andreou that capex intensity is a huge challenge in the industry. The OTEGLOBE CEO then gave an example about seeking additional capital today: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why should I give you money when you have an 8-10% margin and not give this money to retail which has 30-40%. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not easy and you have to prove yourself. I believe the answer in the future is more partnership with other providers in order to minimise your capital expenditure and continue to grow.â&#x20AC;? Radwan Moussalli, SVP and head of sales for Middle East, Central Asia and Africa from Tata Communications, agreed and said: â&#x20AC;&#x153;When youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in the wholesale business and you sell Terabits of capacity then every single fraction of a cent makes a

big difference. Especially as we know that 95% of that capacity is used for IP/the internet, which is a commodity. Therefore, price sensitivity is a big challenge and the cost is very important.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;When youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re constantly transiting that causes prices to go up and from a cross-competitiveness perspective the submarine cables become less cost effective. Therefore, the regulatory environment needs to mature to cater for global carriers like ourselves to use Turkey as a hub more often,â&#x20AC;? added Moussalli. Stuart Evers, group chief commercial officer TĂźrk Telekom International (TTI), had mentioned during the keynote panel discussion that over the next 24 months the company predicts that its traffic will go up from 8.3Tb to 24Tb. In the Q&A session at the end of the session, Evers responded to a question from Capacity about how TTI is preparing for this huge surge in such a relatively small amount of time. Evers responded: â&#x20AC;&#x153;The British Army has the five Ps saying: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Poor planning leads to piss poor performanceâ&#x20AC;?, so weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re kind of following that mindset with what weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Planning is key and we have regular meetings with TTIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parent so we have rolling forecasts so this didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come to surprise to us at all. In 2015, we were providing around 2.8Tb, so we knew that this year would be between 8-9Tb and that it would lead to around 24Tb. These forecasts have really given us time to plan

effectively.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;One of the major things we did was getting involved in SEA-ME-WE 5, where we were able to get 2Tb and with subsequent upgrades that will take us up to 6Tb,â&#x20AC;? said Evers. â&#x20AC;&#x153;With great cooperation with Dino and OTEGLOBE we built a new terrestrial route across Greece from Turkey. We are looking at building additional subsea cable capacities in the future and we are upgrading our terrestrial network. We have three major routes going through the Balkans corridor two through Romania and one through Serbia. Next year weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing a huge upgrade by tripling or quadrupling capacity them. So weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve gone from 2015 with two routes, which we carried around 1.2Tb with each, to having we hope seven routes of which we will carry 1.5Tb â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 3Tb each.â&#x20AC;? However, linking in with the main capex intensive and funding themes of the keynote panel, this costs a lot of money and involves a lot of planning. For those facing those challenges, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not about today or tomorrow but â&#x20AC;&#x153;itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really about looking ahead and planning today for the next five years as you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t meet that incremental demand instantaneously or even in the short-term,â&#x20AC;? added Evers. Capacity will be back in Istanbul next year with an even bigger and better event! We look forward to seeing you all there in 2019! october/november 2018

Capacity

10 | middle east

TELECOM EGYPT COMPLETES $90M DEAL TO BUY MENA CABLE FROM ORASCOM

El Beheiry: Telecom Egypt will recoup MENA investment after Airtel IRU deal formalised

elecom Egypt has completed its $90 million acquisition of Orascom’s subsea cable linking Italy with the Middle East and India. The company first announced the proposed deal to buy the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) cable from Orascom Investment Holding in May. The cable runs from Sicily in the west to Mumbai in the east, via a number of connections in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Gulf. “I am very pleased with the closing of this transaction that will add MENA cable to our international cables network in line with the company’s strategy to expand its international connectivity to enable Egypt’s vision of becoming a digital route,” said Ahmed El Beheiry, managing director and CEO of Telecom Egypt.

AVANTI COMMUNICATIONS SIGNS SEVEN-YEAR $84M CAPACITY LEASE DEAL Avanti Communications has signed a seven-year wholesale capacity lease agreement, worth $84 million, with a major international satellite service provider. Although the identity of the service provider was not included in Avanti’s announcement, Comsat recently announced a seven-year master distribution agreement (MDA) with Avanti, which would see them benefit from the Avanti advanced satellite fleet, in particular from the Hylas 4 satellite, a high-throughput satellite (HTS), focussed on the Middle

East and Africa. Capacity The company will receive $12 million per annum in quarterly instalments for the duration of the agreement once it has commenced. The capacity lease agreement, which is expected to commence in Q3 of the company’s next financial year ending 31 December 2019, is for its Hylas-fleet of satellites and will significantly increase the company’s usage and fill-rates. “This agreement is a major vote of confidence in the Avanti network and offer,” said CEO Kyle Whitehill.

AFGHANISTAN’S ROSHAN SELECTS DIGITALK CARRIER CLOUD FOR WHOLESALE CONNECTIVITY Digitalk Carrier Cloud has been selected by Roshan, the Afghanisatanbased telecoms provider for wholesale connectivity. Digitalk Carrier Cloud replaces Roshan’s legacy solution and gives it access to Digitalk’s Session Border Control (SBC), Business Support Systems (BSS) and Business Intelligence offerings. “We needed a solution provider that would work in partnership with us to ensure delivery of highest quality international connectivity, while being completely carrier neutral”, said Faiz Hassan, director of international & roaming at Roshan. “Digitalk met all Roshan’s requirements and we look forward to building on our strong and

mutually beneficial partnership.” Justin Norris, CEO of Digitalk, the provider of cloud-based communications platform as-as-service (CPaaS), added: “We are delighted to add Roshan as the leading operator of Afghanistan to the growing list of Tier 1 operators that have migrated to carrier cloud. It’s a fantastic testament to the strength of our product portfolio and the continuous investment in the carrier cloud. We look forward to working closely with Roshan to support their growth.” In other news, satellite service provider SatADSL and global IP communications provider Talia have extended their partnership to offer a new low-cost satellite broadband service across Afghanistan and Iraq.

“The decision to acquire MENA Cable is a result of our vision to achieve a short-term return from this transaction capitalising on the growing data demand from India.” The company added that the total enterprise value was $90 million but that $40 million was the equity value and the other $50 million was debt. In August, Telecom Egypt signed an agreement with Bharti Airtel for an indefeasible right of use (IRU) on the MENA cable as well as on TE North. Airtel also got large capacities on the SEAME-WE 5 and AAE1 as part of the same agreement. El Beheiry added: “We expect to formalise the partnership with Airtel into an agreement soon, which will enable Telecom Egypt to recover all of its investment in MENA Cable.”

BSO PARTNERS TASE FOR DIRECT CONNECTIVITY TO TEL-AVIV BSO has struck an agreement with the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) to offer direct connectivity to international traders looking to access the growing Israeli market. BSO will offer low latency connectivity between London and Tel-Aviv, meaning international traders and members of the exchange can trade Israeli stocks without investing in their own long-haul infrastructure. Fraser Bell, chief commercial officer at BSO, added: “Being at the heart of connecting the trading community to new and high-growth regions such as Israel is core to BSO’s service-led approach. Our agreement with the Tel Aviv Exchange reinforces our continued commitment to providing the electronic trading community with continuous and stable access to the most prosperous markets.” El Beheiry added: “We expect to formalise the partnership with Airtel into an agreement soon, which will enable Telecom Egypt to recover all of its investment in MENA Cable.”

october/november 2018

Capacity

12 | africa

DJIBOUTI, PAKISTAN LAND DEALS FOR 60TBPS PEACE SUBSEA CABLE

EACE Cable International Network has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and landing party agreement with Djibouti Telecom and Pakistan network service provider Cybernet. “After nearly two months of consultation, the cooperation and negotiation between the PEACE cable and landing partners has been completed,” said Sun Xiaohua, COO of PEACE Cable. “Thanks to all the partners for their support and I hope that PEACE cable will bring added economic value to the region in the near future.” Huawei Marine started survey work at the turn of the year and, at the time, said that the cable will use 200Gbps DWDM technology and will provide up to 60Tbps design capacity. The PEACE system will provide a new information expressway for the interconnection among Asia, Africa and Europe by connecting with the existing land and subsea cables, greatly reducing the route length and latency between China-Africa and China-Europe.” “Djibouti Telecom’s objective is to strengthen its regional hub position, the crossroad of three continents, Asia, Africa and Europe. PEACE and DARE

PEACE Cable Djibouti landing party agreement with Djibouti Telecom

[Djibouti Africa Regional Express] shall collaborate to achieve the digital and economic transformation of Republic Capacity of Djibouti,” added Mohamed Assoweh Bouh, general director of Djibouti Telecom. The PEACE cable will see backbone connectivity in Pakistan, Djibouti, Egypt,

Kenya and France, providing critical interconnection to Asia, Europe, and Africa economic corridors. Danish A. Lakhani, CEO of Cybernet, added: “We are excited about working on the PEACE project and the numerous benefits that the PEACE Cable will bring to Pakistan and its digital economy.”

FACEBOOK IN PLAN TO EXPAND AFRICAN IXPS TO LOCALISE CONTENT

Facebook partnership will help develop Africa’s IXP ecosystem

Facebook is working with the Internet Society to expand exchange points across Africa with the aim of sourcing 80% of content within the continent by 2020. The company and the non-profit society said they wanted to expand the number of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). There are no IXPs in 42% of African countries at the moment, they said.

“The internet community adopted the goal of having at least 80% of the internet traffic consumed in Africa being locally accessible, and only 20% sourced outside the continent by the year 2020,” said Dawit Bekele, Africa regional bureau director for the Internet Society. “We are getting closer to that target thanks to the many activities that promote interconnection and hosting in Africa and to partnerships such as the one we are announcing today with Facebook.” Facebook’s head of connectivity and access for Africa, Kojo Boakye, said: “We admire the Internet Society’s important work to improve connectivity in Africa by supporting IXPs. Our partnership with the Internet Society will help develop Africa’s IXP ecosystem by deploying resources like training and equipment to the areas where they are most urgently needed.” The Internet Society said that, when traffic is exchange outside a country, via satellite or subsea fibre cables, enduser experiences can be poor, and this discourages hosting content locally. “Peering at IXPs helps keep domestic

internet traffic local by offloading traffic from relatively expensive international links onto more affordable local links,” said the society. “As a result, ISPs are able to offer improved internet experiences for end-users and spur interest in hosting content locally.” The Internet Society and Facebook said they will collaborate in promoting IXP infrastructure development, training and community engagement with the objective of increasing the number of IXPs and supporting the expansion of existing IXPs to meet the growing demand in Africa. They quoted figures from the Africa IXP Association (Af-IX) showing there are approximately 44 active IXPs in 32 countries in Africa. “This has resulted in a 275% growth of locally exchanged internet traffic over the last 10 years,” said the Internet Society, noting there were 16 only African IXPs in 2008. “During the same period, traffic exchanged at the African IXPs increased from 0.16Gbps to 412Gbps with over 800 networks now connected at these IXPs.” october/november 2018

africa | 13

BRINGCOM SEALS DATANET ACQUISITION

ringCom has completed a deal to buy privately-owned East African network service provider Datanet for an undisclosed fee. The deal, first announced in May, was completed after BringCom received final approval from the Ugandan regulator Uganda Communications Commission. “Datanet’s acquisition reflects BringCom’s strategy to expand its pan-African Carrier Ethernet network

and global connectivity services,” said Fabrice Langreney, president and CEO of BringCom. “Our team is excited to formally welcome our new colleagues to the BringCom family.” Datanet is a network service provider operating in Uganda and Kenya and offering corporate network connectivity as well as secure and reliable wholesale access services. It was the first company in the region to enrol in the MEF Services

Interconnect programme. It also launched EP-LAN service over its carrier Ethernet network between Uganda and Kenya powering multi-branch interconnectivity/ operations and LAN extensions. The deal means that US-incorporated BringCom can test its next-generation SDN/NFV platform in Uganda ahead of a planned global deployment that will help support its international operators looking for connectivity in Africa.

HELIOS TOWERS INVESTS IN DRC MOBILE BACKBONE NETWORK Helios Towers is upgrading and building backbone sites covering 1,800km in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The company says the investment, which is “in the double-digit millions”, will improve mobile infrastructure and connectivity to an estimated 6 million citizens in the country. The backbone network runs through multiple areas of DRC, including the Equatorial rainforest and Kasaï-Central province to name a few. It provides the infrastructure to connect

major towns and cities in DRC to voice and data technologies, transmitting signals through microwave from tower to tower up to 40km apart. The project is due for completion by December 2018, with the backbone network adding significant capacity to replace the existing satellite connectivity in the area and providing the infrastructure for increased 3G capacity and launch 4G in Kisangani, DRC’s third largest city, and Capacity launch 3G in Northern Kasai. “DRC has one of the lowest mobile

penetration rates in the world, with only around 25% of its 85 million population having a phone today, but it is growing incredibly fast,” said Kash Pandya, CEO of Helios Towers. “Following the upgrade and construction of our backbone towers through some of the most remote areas in the country, last mile communications can eventually be created to connect towns and cities with increased reliability and speed, fit for the growing Congolese economy.”

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14 | africa

MAINONE CEO SAYS ‘NO’ TO IDEA OF SINGLE GATEWAY FOR NIGERIA

Opeke: All operators and carriers in Nigeria are providing feedback to the regulator

ainOne CEO Funke Opeke has criticised a proposal from a number of data companies in Nigeria to create a single international gateway. According to reports from Nigeria, licensed international data access providers want all data traffic into and

out of the country to come through a single pipe. “We are equally shocked,” Opeke told Capacity, “and I think all operators and carriers in Nigeria are providing feedback to the regulator that this is a terrible idea/ proposition. So, the general industry view is negative”. Stern opposition is also coming from mobile operators that are members of the Association of Licensed Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) whose chair, Gbenga Adebayo, told ThisDay newspaper that the idea was not in the national interest as it “would create network congestion, since all network operators would be compelled to route their incoming and outgoing calls through the single channel that would be controlled by few IDA operators”. Opeke told Capacity that the idea does not come from the regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC): “I do not think the regulator is in favour either since the idea did not

Capacity

originate from them, but they have to be the arbiter of this situation.” ThisDay reported that the idea is being driven by individuals who are unhappy with the revenue share between mobile operators and international access companies. Opeke agreed with this analysis, telling Capacity: “The information we have is that this is a proposition of certain interconnect providers who I think have dubious intentions.” It would work against Nigeria’s economic interests and those of the telecoms and ICT industries in the country, she added. The news comes after Orange is set to acquire additional capacity in the West African submarine cable system, MainOne, thereby reinforcing its position in the African telecommunications ecosystem. MainOne has also recently picked TE SubCom to extend its subsea cable to West Africa’s francophone region with additional branches connecting Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire.

CHINA TELECOM GLOBAL PICKS TERACO DATA ENVIRONMENTS FOR INTERCONNECTION HUB China Telecom Africa and Middle East (CTMEA) is establishing an interconnection network and telecoms hub at Teraco Data Environments, Africa’s first vendor-neutral data centre. CTMEA, a subsidiary of China Telecom Global (CTG), has deployed its network nodes in Teraco’s data centres in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg since 2012, providing the hub with global internet resources into Africa. Through the partnership, Teraco will pair is data centre services with CTG’s

ICT solutions, meeting the increasing demands from companies going into Africa, particularly those from Asia-Pacific. Teraco has Tier III+ data centres in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg with facilities for multi-national companies to colocate their servers. “Our customers in China and AsiaPacific region will now find it even more convenient to subscribe to a reliable, trusted and high-quality co-location and connectivity services from Teraco and China Telecom Global,” said Changhai

Liu, managing director of CTMEA. Jan Hnizdo, director at Teraco, said: “Teraco has been investing to expand our data centre facilities with additional capacity and floor space to meet increasing demands from enterprises and from the surge in cloud computing uptake. Our relationship with China Telecom Global opens up African opportunities for Chinese content and applications, which means a growing network and higher communications traffic in the African region to the East.”

CMC NETWORKS DEPLOYS 128T NETWORKING PLATFORM IN SOUTH AFRICA F128 Technology has announced the deployment of its 128T session smart networking platform with CMC Networks in South Africa. Under the terms of the agreement, the platform will be rolled out across 16 countries with the intention of expanding globally in the coming year. “128 Technology’s networking platform transforms our network, allowing us to provide better service quality to our customers, while deploying the most cost-

effective and competitive solution available in the market,” said Geoff Dornan, chief technical officer, CMC Networks. “128T compliments both the MPLS and IP core network, allowing dynamic and instantaneous traffic flow control whilst preserving the end customer SLA requirements.” A common challenge CMC says it faces is network reliability, in particular link outages that can result in inconsistent network access for customers, something

that 128 Technology’s solution addresses. “As the need for SD-WAN based services increases across the African continent our customers can leverage off the nextgeneration SD-WAN capabilities 128T provides, allowing for a smooth transition from legacy networking technologies to the rigorous demands next generation IP networks require. CMC is proud to deploy the first intelligent next generation WAN network of its kind in Africa,” added Dornan.

october/november 2018

Capacity

16 | asia and asia-pacific

GCX ‘WILL TAKE TO YEAR-END’ TO SELECT BUYER FOR SUBSEA BUSINESS

I Bill Barney: GCX is reviewing two bids

SPARKLE STRENGTHENS ASIAN HUB WITH NEW POP IN SINGAPORE Sparkle has strengthened its Asian Hub with a new multi-service point of presence (PoP) in Singapore. The international services arm of TIM Group’s latest PoP is located at Global Switch’s data centre, one of the most important telecommunications and internet ecosystems in Asia. The new PoP consolidates Sparkle’s role as a “leading European doorway for the Asian market” and is strategically located at the subsea cable crossing point between the two continents. It is designed to serve both the local and the global IP markets, providing high performing IP transit, DDoS mitigation and virtual NAP services to operators, OTTs and content providers. “Leveraging on Global Switch’s access to all subsea cable systems landing in Singapore - including SEA-ME-WE 3, SEA-ME-WE-4 and SEA-ME-WE-5, of which Sparkle is a consortium member – the new PoP will provide top quality east and west bound low latency connectivity solutions on the submarine route connecting Asia to Europe,” a company statement. “In particular, access to the new generation SEA-ME-WE 5, which is natively extended to Sparkle Sicily Hub, consolidates Sparkle’s role as leading European doorway for the Asian market.” Fully interconnected with Sparkle’s Tier 1-grade Global IP backbone Seabone, the new PoP adds to Sparkle’s existing PoP at Singapore Equinix, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, confirming Sparkle’s commitment to expanding it IP backbone in Asia.

t will take to the end of 2018 for the future of Reliance Communications’ data centre, enterprise and subsea business to be decided. Meanwhile the group is deciding whether its Eagle subsea project will terminate in Marseille or Sicily on its way to the Middle East, Mumbai and south-east Asia. RCom has completed the sale of its wireless business to the unrelated Reliance Jio, said Bill Barney, CEO of the company and its subsea subsidiary, Global Cloud Xchange (GCX). “Wireless is completely gone,” he said.

The company is still reviewing two bids for GCX and the related businesses, but that is “a little more complicated as we have 30 lenders”, he said. One of the bidders owns HGC Global Communications; the other is a consortium of private equity companies. Both have bid $1.1 billion, according to Capacity’s sources. GCX has not decided where to terminate the European end of Eagle, Barney told Capacity. “A number of parties are trying to get it. We will decide in the next month or so, but it won’t impact the cost of the project.”

EPSILON PICKS JUNIPER FOR NETWORK UPGRADE Epsilon is to deploy Juniper Network’s end-to-end solution as part of a network upgrade aimed at supporting future internet of things application and enterprise services. Epsilon will roll out Juniper’s Metro Fabric solution toCapacity upgrade to its Infiny by Epsilon platform – an on-demand, self-service software defined networking (SDN) solution. The Metro Fabric solution will help Epsilon offer a set of enterprise data and voice connectivity services globally, in order to tackle a growing demand for IoT, cloud, and big data tools.

Epsilon CEO Jerzy Szlosarek said: “We have been evolving our infrastructure gradually over the last decade in anticipation for the massive traffic growth driven by innovations in cloud, big data and IoT. “By upgrading our network to offer 100GbE on-demand around the world, we are helping not only our existing partners but also new customers to benefit from hyper-scalable connectivity that is designed to support services of the future. We are pleased to partner with Juniper to realize our vision for flexible, fluid and intelligent global networking.”

Jerzy Szlosarek: Evolving Epsilon’s infrastructure

october/november 2018

Capacity

18 | executive interview: vincent english

MEGAPORT DEFIES TRADITIONAL CONNECTIVITY VINCENT ENGLISH, CEO, MEGAPORT, SPEAKS TO NATALIE BANNERMAN ABOUT HOW THE COMPANY IS LEADING THE CHARGE IN BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION IN THE CONNECTIVITY SPACE AND ITS PLANS FOR EUROPE

usiness transformation is concerned with more than just how individual businesses are transforming their companies, but how they are influencing transformation as whole through what they do. This is the case for Megaport. The company’s entire existence is centred on changing or transforming the traditional way of interconnecting with the cloud and networking in general. In essence, Megaport is a technology company. It leverages a software-defined network (SDN), built on a physical network which connects approximately 230 locations. Its SDN is integrated into the top seven cloud providers – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google, Oracle, IBM, Salesforce and Alibaba. By combining the software with its existing technology, Megaport effectively virtualises the network in the same way AWS virtualised cloudcomputing servers. In short, Megaport offers safe, direct connectivity into a public cloud environment from a customer’s enterprise infrastructure. Speaking to Vincent English, CEO of Megaport, one of the key value adds the company has to offer is the ad-hoc way in which customers can provision connectivity services with Megaport. He explains: “Customers can seamlessly use pay-as-you-go services to connect and consume the cloud. So that their connectivity usage matches the profile of how they are using and consuming the cloud.” Megaport goes against the traditional way of doing things. Previously carriers would have to purchase long-term contracts to connect into whatever services they needed.

“Now it allows businesses to easily move their data in a safe and secure manner, in a profile of how they want to use the data at their own needs, rather than on a long-term contract,” says English. He adds that Megaport has taken the complications out of its networking and the data can move quickly. What does this do for cloud adoption? Well, English adds that it lowers the barriers creating more ways to connect to the public cloud, but it also gives customers more access to public cloud from multiple regions rather than from where the physical cloud exists today. A key driver of business transformation, particularly for Megaport and its network, is the uptake of multi-cloud connectivity. According to English, over the last 12 Capacity month [ending June 2018] the company has seen a 208% increase in customers that are on the Megaport platform using more than one cloud provider. This speaks to a few things, says English. IT professionals and businesses are becoming a lot more savvy, they’ve got a lot more knowledge and research about how data and applications help their business grow or improve its performance. “So now what they’re doing is cherry-picking the best applications to suit what the business need and that’s not all provided by one cloud provider,” he explains. This is a symptom of education adding that the cloud providers have “done a great job on teaching what the applications have and what they can do for businesses”. Interconnection As interconnection evolves, English ays it needs to happen “further and further away from centralised specific regions” and “compute in general starting to happen further along the edge.” How does he see that happening? “Neutrality, independence and a little bit of an open mind – just seeing what the customer wants I think will allow an increase in that area,” he explains. Earlier this year Megaport announced that it was offering dedicated access to Oracle cloud infrastructure with Oracle FastConnect locations in London. This feeds into a wider roadmap for both firms, the CEO says. “Our network is a global network,

and turning up the FastConnect product directly here in London with Oracle means we’re able to directly service the London market. Having Megaport and the ability to scale up and down your bandwidth connectivity to Oracle as you need to, and being able to do that in a physical cloud on-ramp here in London means it’s a lot more efficient, latency is not an issue and you get all the benefits of the direct FastConnect product. Bringing Oracle to London with FastConnect just gives them access to that London customer.” Europe is the next big market for Megaport and English has big plans for the region explaining that by through this financial year and into 2019, the company hopes to add somewhere in the region of 20-25 new locations in Europe. “There’s been a shift now towards getting Europe up to the next level in anticipation of that wave of activity that’s going to come over the next 12-18 months,” he says. English claims that his biggest challenge around network virtualisation isn’t in the any technical aspects of the network but “making sure as we go from market to market, people understand what this is and the user experience we deliver is the best it can be”. There is no doubt in English’s mind that the future of networking will be in virtualised services, we need only look at consumer behaviour in every other aspect of modern living. “People have already shifted away from physically owning things are very much for ease of use,” he explains. “Why can’t this by easier, why can’t this be simpler? That’s what society is moving towards and that pushes the need for a lot more virtualised services.” As Megaport stays on course for accelerated growth for Europe, English is clear on the roadmap over the coming months. Firstly to be in 300 locations by the end of June 2019 across multiple regions. Continue to build out its capabilities with its ecosystem – with not just global providers but some “smaller regional providers as part of our marketplace” and of course focus on customer experience at the heart of it. Either way, he says “we’re not slowing down.” october/november 2018

Capacity

20 | asia and asia-pacific

INDIGO SUBSEA CABLE LANDS IN PERTH

Campana executives announce $40m network expansion at Capacity’s Myanmar Connect event back in September

CAMPANA RAISES $40M TO FUND NETWORK EXPANSION IN ASEAN REGION

ingapore-based Campana Group has announced a US$40 million Series B equity financing round, co-led by Tokyo based Mitsui & Co, and Myanmar businessman U Thein Htwe. In addition to the Series B financing, Campana is arranging a debt facility of an additional US$40 million, for a total funding of more than US$ 80 million in equity and debt. The funding will be used for the direct express SIGMAR submarine cable (Singapore-Myanmar), a four-fibre pair 2200 km system that will connect from Campana’s Thanlyin (Myanmar) International Gateway (IGW) facility, only 16 km south-east of Yangon city, to Tuas (Singapore). Campana will then offer diverse fibre

backhaul to Yangon and Singapore via open access points of presence (POPs) Capacity creating the largest capacity lowest latency data centre corridor between Singapore and Myanmar. Branching units will be installed for both a future landing in Thailand and for subsea interconnection with cables coming from the West. Myo Ohn, CEO of Campana, said: “The continued need for ultra-broadband access is driving the new projects in the Asia-Pacific region and contributing to the upward trend the submarine cables industry is experiencing. This project is a strong example of this and we are pleased to support and invest in Campana in advancing the digitalization capabilities in the ASEAN market and specifically in Myanmar.”

The first stage of the INDIGO submarine cable system, called INDIGO West, has been completed linking Christmas Island to Perth cable at Floreat Beach in Perth. INDIGO West is the first 2,400km section of the entire 9,200km INDIGO system connecting Singapore, Perth and Sydney, with two additional fibre pairs connecting Singapore and Jakarta via a branching unit. It is soon to be followed by the laying of the second section linking Singapore to Indonesia, started in September and due for completion by the end of December 2018. “The INDIGO submarine cable will usher in a new era of high speed communications between the growing economies of Southeast Asia and Australia,” said Ooi Seng Keat, vice president of carrier services, group enterprise at Singtel. “This new data superhighway will complement our existing global links to Asia, US, Europe, Australia and the Middle East and allow Singtel and Optus to meet the growing demand for bandwidth-intensive applications as well as boost network diversity and resilience. We look forward to Optus landing the INDIGO Central cable in Sydney in a few months’ time which will further reinforce our position as the leading provider of international connectivity and data services in the region.”

FACEBOOK ANNOUNCES $1BN DATA CENTRE IN SINGAPORE Facebook has unveiled plans to build a $1 billion data centre in Singapore, the company’s first facility in Asia the OTT giant said. The new facility, which is expected to open in 2022, will span 170,000sqm and 11-floors. It will be powered 100% by renewable energy, Facebook said, and will support hundreds of jobs in the country. In a post, Facebook said it selected Singapore for a number of reasons, including “robust infrastructure and access to fibre, a talented local workforce, and a great set of community partners, including

the Singapore Economic Development Board and the Jurong Town Corporation,” both of whom are involved in the project. Facebook’s new site is set to use 150MW of power once fully operational, and will be the largest single data centre in Singapore, which is itself a regional hub for subsea cable systems and connectivity. The announcement follows a decision from the Singapore government to promote high rise data centres in order to drive growth in this market. Currently, Singapore has around 87 active data centres, according to a report from 451 Research. october/november 2018

Capacity

22 | executive interview: lisa miller

WOMEN NEED TO GRAB THE OPPORTUNITY LISA MILLER, PRESIDENT OF WHOLESALE, INDIRECT AND ALLIANCES, CENTURYLINK SPEAKS TO NATALIE BANNERMAN ABOUT HOW THE COMPANY IS FOCUSING ON ENTERPRISE AND WHY WOMEN NEED TO ADOPT A FAKE IT, UNTIL YOU MAKE IT ATTITUDE

ike the true fighter she is, laden with a cold and feeling less than 100%, Lisa Miller – CenturyLink’s president, wholesale, indirect and alliances pushes through and ‘fakes it, until she makes it’ finding time in her day to talk to me ahead of Capacity North America in Denver. In preparation for our meeting, I come across a video interview with Telarus in which Miller is quoted as saying the ‘new market focus for the new business is on enterprise, all investment is going in that direction.’ When I question her about this statement, she shares that CenturyLink’s business is 75% based on enterprise and therefore all of its expansions, whether it be network or products and services, all cater to the enterprise customer. “When you think of our wholesale business, at the end is an enterprise customer. That focus and investment helps wholesale as well. That’s where the growth engine is of the industry,” she adds. As someone directly responsible for the wholesale side of CenturyLink’s operations, Miller is well placed to identify the different demands required of the wholesale customer versus the enterprise customer. Automation or a self-sufficient experience is top of the list for the wholesale customer in her view, saying:

“They want to do everything online.” On the enterprise side, Miller says that those customers need to “digitally transform their business to remain competitive in the market”. As a result, CenturyLink needs to be agile and help them through their journey. It has been less than a year since CenturyLink completed its $34 billion acquisition of Level 3 Communications and, judging by its strong Q2 2018 results, the merger has had a positive impact. The Capacity company brought in a net income of $292 million, compared to $69 million for the same quarter of 2017. Despite much of CenturyLink’s business being in enterprise, I was curious to know how the acquisition of Level 3 has affected the wholesale side of things. Miller says it’s been nothing but positive. She explains: “Combined, we are a huge wholesale business. CenturyLink had a local and nationwide footprint and now a global footprint. The two companies together are in 60 countries, 100k buildings, 10% outside of North America and that allows us to build a global network that really resonates with our wholesale customers.” Reaching for the cloud Earlier this year CenturyLink announced that it was becoming an Amazon Web Services (AWS) managed services partner, giving its customers low-latency access to AWS resources. The news joins the likes of Google and Microsoft cloud services that have also been added to the CenturyLink portfolio. “All that cloud connectivity is so important. Enterprise customers need an easy provider who allows them to manage multiple cloud environments and CenturyLink can do that,” says Miller. As for 5G and the internet of things, (IoT) Miller claims that CenturyLink is helping wireless providers with their strategy and network deployment. “5G can require up to five times the connectivity required, for 3G. We can help

wireless providers in our legacy territories and the rest of the country,” she adds. IoT will mean everything needs to be connected, “and that’s who we are,” explains Miller. “A network company becoming a technology company as things become more dynamic. Making sure we have the connections on a global scale.” As the conversation turns to women in telecoms, Miller becomes visibly enthusiastic about the subject. She is an advocate for women in STEM and serves as a mentor, working to develop upcoming female talent in addition to being a member of Women In Channel and Women In Cable. Speaking on what needs to be done to get more young women in tech, her stance is that progress it being made but more can always be done. “What I’m excited about is that we’re starting STEM in grade school and trying to get all kids interested in science and technology.” Earlier this year the CenturyLink Foundation awarded $1.4 million in technology grants fund more than 330 projects for young people across the US. However and whenever we choose to progress the conversation of empowering more women in telecoms, Miller wants to stress that this isn’t just a women’s issue or problem to help solve, adding: “Some of my best mentors were men.” Telecoms is only one of a number of industries where women are notably outnumbered and rarely in senior leadership positions, but Miller’s advice is one that can be applied to all industry verticals. “Never limit yourself,” she concludes. “Often times, women limit themselves. A woman wants to be 100% qualified to do a job before they take a job. I watched my male counterparts accept roles they may not be qualified for, but they took them. There is no job you will be 100% prepared for, so jump in with both feet, fake it until you make it, and take the opportunity.” october/november 2018

Capacity

24 | latin america

GLOBENET OPENS FORTALEZA CENTRAL INTERCONNECTION POINT

G Eduardo Falzoni: Fortaleza IXP is key to resiliency for Brazil

lobeNet has announced its new central interconnection point at the Fortaleza internet exchange point (IXP) is open for business. As a result, network operators and internet service providers (ISPs) throughout Northeastern Brazil will be able to exchange traffic locally, taking advantage of the high-bandwidth, low latency connectivity GlobeNet’s infrastructure offers. The news comes after GlobeNet announced at the start of the year that the cable hub of Fortaleza would become its second IXP in Brazil. “At GlobeNet, we’re excited to be

contributing to Brazil’s expanding digital economy,” says Eduardo Falzoni, CEO of GlobeNet. “The new Fortaleza IXP is key to ensuring the resiliency of the country’s internet infrastructure. For network operators, ISPs and other enterprises, it means increased bandwidth and ultra-low latency connections, all backed by our solid data centre infrastructure and reliable fibre-optic subsea cable system. We are not only answering today’s demand for improved connectivity, but we are also future proofing Brazil’s northern networks for increased internet penetration.”

CYRUSONE PARTNERS WITH ODATA AMID LATAM EXPANSION PLANS CyrusOne is making a $12 million investment in exchange for a 10% equity interest in ODATA Brasil S.A. and ODATA Colombia S.A.S. (ODATA). ODATA, which is majority-owned by Patria Infrastructure Fund III, presently has over 12MW of capacity with plans to develop over 100MW in Brazil, and is set to launch construction in Colombia. Brazil is the largest and fastest-growing data centre market in Latin America and ODATA is well positioned to capture much of this growth and serving the needs of hyperscale cloud companies.

“We are excited to partner with Patria and the ODATA team as they scale their business throughout Latin America,” said Gary Wojtaszek, president and chief executive officer of CyrusOne. “To date, Brazil and other LATAM markets have largely been served by a limited number ofCapacity providers, leading to few options and high costs for our customers. The combination of our collective resources will form the basis of a powerful platform from which we can better serve these customers’ increasingly global needs.”

EQUINIX EXPANDS IX REACH TO BOGOTÁ

DIGITAL REALTY TO ACQUIRE BRAZIL’S ASCENTY FOR $1.8BN

Equinix has expanded its Internet Exchange (IX) into the Bogotá metro, a key location in the broader Latam region. Bogotá, Colombia, is an important access route to nearby markets including Panamá, Perú and Costa Rica, says Equinix. Equinix IX allows drivers of internet traffic to easily and effectively peer, or exchange IP traffic, and expand operations globally. Equinix serves more than 1,350 ASNs, carrying 9.1Tbps global peak traffic, in the most locations (34 metros globally across the Americas, EMEA and AP). “Equinix IX allows our customers to interconnect with their partners throughout the digital supply chain. Customers also benefit from new business opportunities and create additional value in a neutral data centre, which makes our business in the country more competitive and makes Colombia a more attractive base for global companies,” said Steve Sasse, Equinix director of strategy for Latam & the Caribbean.

Digital Realty subsidiary Stellar Participações has agreed to buy Brazilian data centre provider Ascenty from private equity firm Great Hill Partners in a $1.8 billion deal. The acquisition will add Ascenty’s eight data centres, located in key Brazilian metro areas of São Paulo, Campinas, Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza, to Digital Realty’s global footprint. It also includes a 4,500km proprietary fibre network linking those regions. In addition, the two companies have identified significant cost efficiencies in supply chain management. The experienced Ascenty management team will remain in place, according to Digital Realty, overseeing day-to-day operations in a region that offers significant growth opportunities. Digital Realty also entered a separate agreement with Brookfield Infrastructure, part of Brookfield Asset Management,

Gary Wojtaszek: Powerful platform

which will see Brookfield commit to fund half of the required initial equity investment for the deal – around $613 million – in exchange for 49% of the total equity of Ascenty. “We are pleased to expand our global footprint into Latin America and to partner with the Ascenty management team and Brookfield, said Bill Stein, CEO, Digital Realty. “We expect this acquisition will further accelerate our growth while enhancing our ability to support our customers’ digital transformation across the globe. “This transformative transaction represents consistent execution against the new market strategy we articulated at our Investor Day last December, and immediately establishes us as a market leader within an historically under-served region poised for rapid growth,” he added. The transaction is expected to close in Q4 2018, subject to closing conditions.

october/november 2018

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26 | north america

GTT SNAPS UP ACCESS POINT IN $40M DEAL

Calder: We expect a rapid integration with Access Point

SAEX PARTNERS SPARKLE TO EXPAND ITS REACH FROM SOUTH AFRICA TO THE US SAEx International has announced a partnership with TIM’s Sparkle to expand the reach of its system to the East Coast of the US. Its 25,000km, six-fibre-pair, 72Tbps subsea cable will connect Africa and Asia to the Americas using a new diverse and seismically calm route, evading the serious risks of the Pacific. The first phase of the SAEx project will cross the Atlantic Ocean by linking the South Atlantic section of the cable from Cape Town to Brazil, before reaching the US East Coast with a landing in New Jersey. Under the terms of the agreement, Sparkle will provide connectivity from Brazil to the US on an operational fibre system. In addition, Sparkle will also provide interconnection facilities in Brazil as well as technical and sales support in Brazil and North America. The news aligns itself with SAEx’s commitment to grow both west and east from South Africa says SAEx, creating a truly global system spanning two oceans and four continents. While at the same time reinforcing Sparkle’s role in the leading position in its ability to provide low latency connectivity solutions and end-to-end support.

TT Communications has added another company to its growing list of purchases, buying US communications services provider Access Point for $40 million ($35 million in cash and the rest made up of shares). North Carolina-based Access Point, which launched in 1996, will boost GTT’s US enterprise client base and deepen the carrier’s presence in verticals such as retail, manufacturing and energy. GTT said it made the acquisition as Access Point offers “complementary managed broadband, internet and voice capabilities” as well as strengthening GTT’s channel partner presence. Rick Calder, CEO of GTT, said: “Access Point’s strong client relationships in key vertical markets make it a compelling strategic fit for GTT. We expect a rapid integration as we work with our new

clients to deliver on our purpose of connecting people across organisations, around the world and to every application in the cloud.” It is the latest acquisition for the Virginian-based company, which has a long history of growing through mergers and acquisitions. Earlier this year, it agreed a deal to buy Interoute for $2.3 billion, adding 15 data centres, 17 virtual data centres, and 51 new colocation facilities to its footprint. Other significant acquisitions over the last few years have included a $590 million deal to buy Hibernia Networks and the $100 million deal to buy Global Capacity, both sealed last year. Overall, GTT has bought more than 30 companies over the last decade, during Calder’s reign as CEO of the company.

SATELLITE OPERATORS IN ALLIANCE TO SELL US SPECTRUM TO 5G OPERATORS Capacity

The CBA was approved by Daniel Goldberg, Telesat; Steve Collar, SES; Stephen Spengler, Intelsat; and Rodolphe Belmer, Eutelsat (L-R)

Telesat, SES, Intelsat and Eutelsat have formed the new C-Band Alliance (CBA) to help sell some of their spectrum to mobile operators for 5G services. The move is in response to an initiative from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is discussing opening up some of their frequencies for 5G services. They want to set up a trading system for the spectrum. The alliance states: “The CBA will engage in secondary market-based transactions to expand use of C-band”, which includes the frequencies 3,700 to 4,200MHz for satellite downlinks. The CBA said it is “designed to act as a facilitator” for the FCC’s proposal to clear part of the spectrum so it can be shared with mobile operators. The four

companies, normally rivals, said: “The formation of the CBA is a significant achievement and demonstrates the industry alignment necessary to make this mid-band spectrum available quickly, thus supporting the US objective of winning the race to introduce terrestrial 5G services.” Mobile operators will also have to contend with the US Navy, which also uses part of the 3,700 to 4,200MHz spectrum for some of its missile-detecting radar systems. The FCC wants to set up “a commercial and technical framework that would enable terrestrial mobile operators to quickly access spectrum in a portion of the 3,700 to 4,200 MHz frequency band in the US, speeding the deployment of nextgeneration 5G services,” said the CBA. october/november 2018

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28 | north america analysis

NORTH AMERICA IS BUILDING TO SCALE

hree hundred-fifty telecoms executives gathered in Denver for the 2018 Capacity North America conference to discuss key topics such as collaboration and virtualisation. Closer collaboration was the big message shared by many - whether it be the relationship between carriers and service providers, or the increasingly relevant topic of interoperability. Speaking on the importance of collaboration to virtualisation and Epsilon’s place in that space, Carl Roberts, CCO of Epsilon, said: “Ultimately nobody can do everything and one of the things that we as a much smaller company does is actually stitch together capability.” As far as virtualisation within interoperability, he said that “softwaredefined networks (SDNs) allows us, if we work together as an industry, through seamless APIs to do it all end-to-end. Where we can help each other to actually service the needs of a new internet of things (IoT) and even bring 5G and mobile networks onto a fixed network fabric.” On the topic of virtualisation and security, Ron Winward, security evangelist at Radware, commented: “If we’re able to, as a service provider, put security closer to my customers, closer to the edge and have them be big beefy boxes that can handle the large tasks, that’s what our customers want. Before without a multi-tenancy solution that wasn’t even an option, now thanks to SDN paired with various multitenancy options, we can now provide that for our individual customers on an individual basis.” Sharing his thoughts on what’s ahead for 2019, Dawane Young, division VP – voice, wireless and platforms at Verizon, said: “We’ve worked on the collaboration and interoperability piece in 2018, by 2019

we hope to see collaboration not just in standards bodies but also the partnerships amongst us develop and grow.” A new term that was doing the rounds was this idea of hybrid multi-cloud, a concept that - according to panellists of the cloud-centric networking discussion - is the next big thing in the cloud computing space Capacity and is another step toward removing the barriers of cloud consumption. The key take away from the conversation was that in order for enterprises to be cloud-centric a couple of requirements need to be meet and that is the simplification of infrastructure and quality customer experience. But that cloud connectivity must of course be underpinned by adequate fibre infrastructure, according to a Deloittepublished 2017 report titled “The need for deep fiber,” there will be a fourfold increase in mobile data traffic in the US between 2016 and 2021. Indicating that an investment of $130 to $150 billion is needed over the next five to seven years to adequately support broadband competition, rural coverage, and wireless densification. As with all things in the telecoms space security is and was always a big talking point and that is especially true in and across hybrid clouds. Businesses are increasingly looking for a solution that can offer the security and visibility needed across its various cloud environments. In addition, cost control from a networking perspective was highlighted as a potential challenge in the space because of the need to move data between different environments and handle various workloads. Visibility and the performance element in the cloud is great, but it is important to understand the different requirements

needed for different workloads. Granularity of control and being able to service around that is key, otherwise, enterprises are beholden to their cloud provider to rectify any of their issues. How does the edge fit into this cloudcentric network? Digital Realty’s Chris Sharp thinks that in the future it will become necessary to have a strong foothold in this area, but for now it their isn’t a strong enough requirement for it. “It’s a burgeoning market; we’ve constantly looked at it and we will flex into it when the workload meets that specific requirement. But for now I would say the majority of networks, especially those with new wireless capabilities and the like are solving the majority of the use cases today.” New voices in the telecoms space Ever the champion of new of emerging, it was the speakers on the future faces of telecoms panel that had some of the most interesting insights of the conference. At one point the panellists eluded to the fact that networks aren’t preparing or doing enough for next-generation services, saying “they’re not moving fast enough”. When discussing the challenges around penetrating North American markets, Amber Hartley, chief corporate development officer, BurstIQ, predicted that blockchain would put entire companies out of businesses. “Blockchain will be so ubiquitous you won’t even know that it’s there. It’s going to be this integral part of every data relationship globally and how we manage data. The challenge with that is that because of the way data blockchain works, because it creates these attested, trusted data sets, it is going to put entire businesses out of business.” North America is the real home of hyperscale architecture due to its rapidly growing markets and increasing need for scale. There has been a significant increase over the last five years in what that edge footprint looks like. In the infrastructure space, tower and small cells was identified as the biggest opportunity in the North American market because of its ability to solve the increasing problem of urban densification. According to The Small Cell Forum, total deployments of small cells in North America to reach 849,000 by 2025, or 10% of global deployments. New submarine cable projects are also being explored in the region with branches into Asia as a particularly big opportunity for increased growth. october/november 2018

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30 | north america

TELIA CARRIER PARTNERS TIERPOINT TO OFFER CLOUD CONNECT SERVICES

Göjeryd: Excited to expand TierPoint relationship, bringing enhanced connectivity to many new locations

elia Carrier and TierPoint have entered into a partnership that will see Telia Carrier offer its Cloud Connect service across 25 TierPoint facilities in the US. By combining TierPoint’s edge data centre, cloud and managed services portfolio, with Telia Carrier’s Cloud

Connect service, the two say that they are creating opportunities for thousands of US enterprises, in their digital transformation. “As enterprises continue to entrust their critical business processes to the cloud, direct and secure connectivity which bypasses the public internet becomes vital,” said Staffan Göjeryd, CEO, Telia Carrier. “In partnering with TierPoint, we’re able to bring enhanced global connectivity and our award-winning customer care to many additional new locations, providing the quality of service and performance that enterprise customers expect. We’re really excited about expanding this relationship and in particular, the tangible benefits it will bring to TierPoint’s customers.” In addition, Telia Carrier services will now be available in TierPoint sites across 14 US metro areas, including Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Connecticut,

Dallas, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Nashville, New York, Omaha, Philadelphia, Raleigh, St. Louis, and Seattle. “This new partnership with Telia Carrier is yet another key step in the process of expanding the connectivity options for clients using our data centers and cloud pods,” said TierPoint chief technology officer, Terry Morrison. “It further enhances our market-leading, edge-infrastructure solutions.” Overall Telia Carrier’s Cloud Connect solution simplifies the transition to cloud-based workflows with various, geographically diverse connections to the world’s largest cloud providers, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google and IBM/ Customers in TierPoint’s facilities will also benefit from access to Telia Carrier’s MEF 2.0 certified data centre-to-data centre Ethernet service, which connects to more than 150 points-of-presence (PoPs) worldwide.

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PACKETFABRIC EXPANDS INTO INTERCONNECT MIAMI DATA CENTERS PacketFabric, a connectivity-as-a-service platform, has expanded its offering into Interconnect Miami Data Centers (IMDC), a data centre and colocation provider in South Florida. The platform is now available to all IMDC customers and allows public, private and internet-based network solutions to be designed, provisioned and managed through a single web interface. “We’ve always offered our customers great colocation and connectivity options with access to all the key metro, long haul and subsea networks in South Florida, including IMDC’s own fiber ring throughout

downtown Miami,” said Jason Cohen, CEO at Interconnect Miami Data Centers. “Now, we’re also able to offer PacketFabric’s dynamic network capabilities, providing our customers instant access to a vast ecosystem of cloud, network and service solutions —a cross connect away from any one of the IMDC facilities.” By connecting to the PacketFabric platform from an IMDC facility customers can quickly provision direct, secure terabit-scale connectivity between any two or more locations on the PacketFabric network. Using PacketFabric’s any-to-any SDN-powered

network enables connectivity to its ecosystem of cloud service providers, carriers and partners. To date PacketFabric has a US footprint that includes 150 points of presence (PoP) in 18 metro markets. “Interconnect Miami’s focus on providing greater choice, access, visibility and control to their customers is in line with our own mission to make network services easier to procure, consume and manage,” added Chad Milam, president and COO at PacketFabric. “PacketFabric is excited to offer scalable connectivity on demand to IMDC’s customers throughout South Florida.”

WINDSTREAM WHOLESALE TO EXPAND ITS CORE NETWORK TO SUPPORT INTERNATIONAL TRAFFIC Windstream Wholesale says that it will expand its core network into NJFX’s international landing station in Wall Township, NJ. The expansion will add capacity to Ashburn, Virginia, Newark, New York City as well as other major data centre markets. “This buildout with its connections to Wall Township, NJ, will provide enterprises, international carriers and

content providers fast access from our coast-to-coast network to major subsea cable systems,” said Joe Scattareggia, executive vice president of wholesale at Windstream Enterprise and Wholesale. “Our network expansion strategy also includes easy access to other international networks through our links in Texas and South Florida and to Asia-Pacific cable systems on the West Coast.” The expanded core network will use

Infinera’s DTN-X to create express routes to these locations resulting in better latency and network scalability. This in turn results in improved performance and savings for Windstream Wholesale customers. Build out of these expanded core networks is due to begin in Q4 2018. Infinera recently closed its acquisition of Coriant, making it one of the larges vertically integrated optical network equipment providers in the world.

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MEF to tackle enterprise needs in partnership with WAN Summit Capacity

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EF has outlined enterprises as a key focus of its upcoming MEF18 conference by announcing the launch of its first WAN Exchange at the event. MEF18 will be held 29 October â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2 November 2018 at the JW Marriott LA LIVE in Los Angeles, California, will welcome executives from a number of international carriers including the likes of AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, PCCW Global, Verizon, Orange, and CenturyLink. Speakers will discuss the industry transition to cloud-centric network services that deliver the dynamic performance and security required to thrive in the digital economy, according to MEF (formerly Metro Ethernet Forum). The event will also see MEF host its first WAN Exchange, in partnership with The WAN Summit, a series of events that unite the buyers and suppliers of

enterprise networking services. The WAN Exchange series was first launched at ITW last year, and serves as a microcosm of other WAN Summit events, which are held in a number of locations including London and New York. The WAN Exchange at MEF18 will

include several sessions, including a look at Experiences with WAN Adoption, which looks at the journey enterprises take, from proof of concept to pilot and rollout of SD-WAN. Other topics on the agenda at the MEF18 WAN Exchange include what carriers should expect in the era of endto-end automation, and how to seek peak performance for application aware networks. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Enterprises are looking for agility, simplicity, and assurance, and there is a sense of urgency that service providers must respond by delivering automated network services that empower customers with unprecedented control and visibility,â&#x20AC;? said Nan Chen, president of MEF. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are pleased to work with the WAN Summit to assemble a community of experts dedicated to tackling tough networking issues and unleashing the full potential of industry innovation.â&#x20AC;? october/november 2018

mef18 | 33

WAN Summit is run by Capacity Media and TeleGeography. The series of events is attended by carriers, vendors, service providers and a number of international enterprises. Past enterprise attendees and speakers have included the likes of Adidas, Airbus, UBS and Citibank. Confirmed enterprise speakers for the WAN Exchange at MEF18 include representatives from McKinsey & Company, Intuit, and Refinitiv (the former Finance and Risk business unit of Thomson Reuters). Chris Thompson, global account manager for WAN Summit, said the WAN Exchange offers a new opportunity for both enterprises and carriers attending MEF18. He said: “The WAN Exchange gives carriers attending this year’s MEF18 the

chance to deep dive into the needs and requirements of enterprises as they tackle issues around procurement, deployment and testing during the adopting of SDWANs. With topics such as SLAs and quality of experience,; the journey of SD-WAN deployment; and end-to-end service automation, it really is a mustattend for carriers and telco’s looking to capture a slice of the growing enterprise market. “For us, it is an opportunity to showcase the amazing content that can be found globally at the WAN Summit series, and to introduce connect enterprises and services providers in a new space. We’d like to thank MEF for partnering with us to launch the WAN Exchange at MEF18 this year and look forward to seeing attendees in LA.”

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At MEF17 – last year’s equivalent event, that was held in Orlando – MEF unveiled its new global services framework, which is aimed at defining, delivering and certifying orchestrated services across automated networks. Proof of Concept The MEF 3.0 Transformational Global Services Framework aims to help telcos to deliver the dynamic performance and security required as demand for increased bandwidth and more agile services grows. MEF 3.0, the follow-up to Carrier Ethernet 2.0 (CE 20) sees the global standards body move beyond carrier Ethernet to look at automated and virtualised services by providing a suite of LSO (lifecycle service orchestration) APIs that offer an on-demand, cloud-centric service, MEF said. The fifth annual proof of concept (PoC) Showcase aims to highlight how service providers can implement different aspects of MEF 3.0 services. This includes demonstration of MEF 3.0 concepts related to emerging standardized, orchestrated services and LSO APIs that enable orchestration across multiple providers and over multiple network technology domains (e.g., Optical Transport, CE, IP, 5G, etc). MEF18 will see a number of MEF members carry out proof of concept demonstrations featuring more than 50 service and technology solution providers. Topics to be covered at the event, according to MEF, include automated commercial interaction, automated service fulfilment and activation; proactive service assurance; applicationaware networking. Intent-based networks and services; and secure SD-WAN. The Showcase includes two types of PoC demonstrations: those proposed specifically for MEF18 highlighting collaborative and highly differentiated commercial solutions as in past years and, for the first time, demonstrations of MEF 3.0 Implementation projects driven by MEF members. “MEF18 is the must-attend networking event for executives and other senior professionals focused on accelerating worldwide adoption of assured services across automated networks,” said Kevin Vachon, COO of MEF. “We are absolutely delighted by the extraordinary support for this year’s show. Educational sessions, keynotes, Proof of Concept demonstrations, and more will showcase industry progress in defining, delivering, and certifying emerging MEF 3.0 services that provide unprecedented user- and application-directed control over network resources and service capabilities.”

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executive interview: roberto kung | 73

5G ‘WILL DRIVE ALL OF ORANGE’ TO TRANSFORM Transformation has started at Orange, one of the backers of the ONAP open networking approach. But it’s 5G that is driving progress, Roberto Kung tells Alan Burkitt-Gray

Orange is preparing for the advent of a 5G-driven transformation in all its 30 territories across Europe, Africa and the Middle East – and Orange International Carrier and Orange Business Services “are twin sisters” in this process, says Roberto Kung. “They’re focusing on virtualisation,” he says. “Even before 5G they are working hard on this, with features such as network on demand.” Orange is rolling out its Easy Go Network, which allows enterprises to instantly provision virtual network functions (VNFs) via a user-friendly portal. “Enterprises and carriers can set up their own virtual private networks (VPNs) with more flexibility,” says Kung. “This is operational in more than 60 countries.” Orange provides it to enterprise customers, “an automatic way to set up features such as firewalls and bandwidth and cloud”, he says. We are talking in a hotel outside Munich, where Huawei is running its Operations Transformation Forum, an annual event that gathers together industry executives from across the world. Elsewhere in the hotel there are speakers from BT, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Hong Kong Telecom, TIM and others addressing the conference and meeting colleagues. Kung trained at two of France’s top universities, École Télécom ParisTech and École Polytechnique, and he has been in Orange for much of the time since, including six years until 2010 as head of the company’s core network research and development centre. Now he is senior vice president for quality operations, and he has a demanding timetable ahead of him. “There is only 18 months to get ready for 5G,” he warns. Each of Orange’s operations has its own CTO, and many of them are keen to be among the first in 5G. “Some countries capacitymedia.com

are advanced, and they are pushing to be leading in 5G – operations in Europe and some Middle Eastern countries,” he says. “We want to get prepared culturally for 5G, to prepare for virtualisation,” Kung tells me. The term he uses is “CICD” – meaning continuous integration and continuous delivery. “If you want to be Capacity listening and responding to customers, you will need to integrate on the fly.” Speed will be of the essence in developing new services. “Two years is way too long,” he says. “The idea is to be able to do corrections [to existing services] in a week or a day, and develop new services in a month,” he says. The second thing on Kung’s agenda is “working with virtualisation”, he adds: “That will allow us to automate and install applications quickly.” The operator’s network platform will allow that, he notes. But there’s a further consequence of all this new technology. “It pushes us to transform ourselves,” he says. The effect will work right across different parts of the organisation that currently work in silos, such as marketing, engineering and operations. “You need to work transversally,” he notes. At the same time Orange is urging its national operators to be “leaner on capex”, he warns, even though the transformation means the “architecture is different”, but “operators are used to that and we’re not afraid of that”. When will we start to see the first new services that emerge from 5G? In the slightly longer term, 2021-22, he says. There will be network slicing in order to achieve reliability for industrial internet of things (IoT) services. “There will be massive IoT for agriculture,” he says. “We’ve got to learn IoT with 3G and 4G. There is LoRa [IoT technology] in France and we are waiting for the LTE solution,

LTE-M. We see there will be an impact in the way we operate.” Orange is already planning for virtualisation with 4G, ready for 5G, he notes. “We are testing virtual RANs [radio access networks] in several countries and with several vendors – the three big ones,” a reference to Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia, as well as “maybe a newcomer such as Altiostar”, a virtual RAN company. “The great industry challenge for 5G is that we need to be more flexible,” says Kung. “We have a spaghetti of IT applications in all our countries. We need to change everything.” Orange needs to decide what needs to be harmonised with the Open Networking Automation Platform (ONAP), says Kung. “Almost all operators have endorsed ONAP, and within Orange we will transform ourselves with ONAP. We think ONAP is a good way. This should be done with ONAP. Vodafone is a big supporter of ONAP. Deutsche Telekom just joined.” ONAP, supported by the Linux Foundation, was born in February 2017 with the merger of two earlier open-source approaches, one backed by AT&T and the other by China Mobile, Huawei and ZTE – a fascinating combination of companies. Founding members of ONAP back then included the operators AT&T, Bell Canada, China Mobile, China Telecom and Orange, plus hardware and software vendors such as Amdocs, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Nokia, VMware and ZTE. Moving to ONAP will mean a change for Orange’s Easy Go Network, which Kung describes as “pre-ONAP”. He notes: “It’s good to standardise,” implying that Easy Go will be converted to conform with ONAP. “There’s a worldwide consensus on virtualisation,” he adds. “Let’s have the same way of working, the same design studio.”

74 | feature: transformation

Transform to survive the data and onslaught MOVE SERVICES TO THE CLOUD, BE FASTER AND BE SIMPLER: THAT WAS THE MESSAGE Ç§ HEARD FROM INDUSTRY LEADERS AT A MUNICH CONFERENCE ON OPERATIONAL TRANSFORMATION

Capacity

aan TerzioÄ&#x;lu, the CEO of Turkcell, had what he calls â&#x20AC;&#x153;a moment of truthâ&#x20AC;? about the reality of digital transformation on only his fifth day in his new top job, back in 2015. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I got the first WhatsApp call of my life,â&#x20AC;? he says. It was, therefore, a phone call that brought no revenue whatever to Turkcell: WhatsApp calls run on the data bundled into a mobile subscription. That made TerzioÄ&#x;lu, a former vice president of Cisco for central and eastern Europe, to drive Turkcellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s transformation strategy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not to find ways to block WhatsApp, but to ensure the telco can provide digital services to compete with it. TerzioÄ&#x;lu was speaking in September at a digital transformation forum in Munich, alongside senior executives from companies such as BT, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Hong Kong Telecom and Orange (see interview, page 69). Huawei organised the Munich event and its chairman, Hua Liang, told the telecoms executives that it was taking its own medicine and was running an aggressive digital transformation programme of its own. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Everything should be on a common digital platform,â&#x20AC;? said Hua. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Now it is time to go digital. When you are digital you achieve revenue growth.â&#x20AC;? The key question was about cloud computing: â&#x20AC;&#x153;How does this technology impact our business?â&#x20AC;? Hua ran through a list of benefits.

Huawei has â&#x20AC;&#x153;eliminated 250 million customer waiting hoursâ&#x20AC;?, he said, and has achieved a â&#x20AC;&#x153;40-60% opex savingâ&#x20AC;?, including replacing â&#x20AC;&#x153;15 siloed ordering systemsâ&#x20AC;?. Digital services â&#x20AC;&#x153;could be seen as optionalâ&#x20AC;? in the 4G mobile era, he said; but not in the 5G era. The promise, he added, is that â&#x20AC;&#x153;in 2025 digital services will be 20% of the revenue of the telecoms industryâ&#x20AC;?. Laxmi Akkaraju, the chief strategy officer at the GSMA, warned the industry of the need to transform. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Revenues are plateauingâ&#x20AC;? for mobile operators, she said, but 5G will create new data demands â&#x20AC;&#x201C; she estimated 250 exabytes a month by 2021. The industry will need new tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI) to help handle the new load. â&#x20AC;&#x153;AI and 5G will transform the current landscape,â&#x20AC;? Akkaraju warned, but â&#x20AC;&#x153;operators will need to optimise their infrastructureâ&#x20AC;?. There is growth in the entertainment industry, â&#x20AC;&#x153;but almost all growth is in new mediaâ&#x20AC;?, she added. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Subscribers are switching from linear TV to digital services.â&#x20AC;? The industry needs, she said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;a cultural transformationâ&#x20AC;?. How has Turkcell transformed since TerzioÄ&#x;lu was startled to receive that WhatsApp voice call in 2015? Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s changing from â&#x20AC;&#x153;being an infrastructure player to being a real digital operatorâ&#x20AC;?, he said.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are changing from playing with the hardware to providing real digital services. We are changing from complaining about demand growth to using that demand growth.â&#x20AC;? Today the average customer of Turkcell still has 32 minutes of voice calls a day, but listens to 24 minutes of music and watches 57 minutes of TV on the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s platform, and reads material on the internet for 31 minutes. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Two out of three customers have a multiplay relationship with us and 70% of our revenues are created by these customers,â&#x20AC;? said TerzioÄ&#x;lu. Turkcell has its own login for customers so theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not tempted to connect with Facebook, and the company has developed a national search engine, Yaani. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Today 20% of our customers are on our own e-commerce platform.â&#x20AC;? Meanwhile Turkcell is now â&#x20AC;&#x153;a single operating company, not based on single asset classes like mobile or fixedâ&#x20AC;?, he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be afraid of data growth â&#x20AC;&#x201C; thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where the revenue is.â&#x20AC;? In the Netherlands KPN has introduced the biggest social network in the world, the Chinese service WeChat, to its network. More than just an Asian WhatsApp, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also used for payments and buying tickets. The Netherlands welcomes 100,000 Chinese visitors a year and in May 2017 Tencent, the owner of WeChat, wanted to october/november 2018

feature: transformation | 75

allow its customers to use the app on their travels. “We brought the service live in weeks,” said KPN’s Bouke Hoving in Munich. “Users can buy tickets for museums and railways; they can book hotels and pay restaurant bills.” KPN was able to introduce WeChat payment and booking so fast because “we started digital transformation in 2013”, said Hoving, who is executive vice president for network and IT. Before 2013 KPN “wasn’t going in the right direction”, he said. “We were in a critical moment in the history of KPN.” The company started transformation “by digitising our business. We consolidated backend systems and unified the digital layer. We started at the front end and worked with cloud technology and opensource software.” What is Hoving’s motto after what he called “a journey of almost four years”? It is: “Simplify. Complexity remains the enemy.” Four years ago Telefónica’s O2 Germany bought a rival mobile operator, E-Plus, from KPN. Combining the networks added an extra level of complexity: “You will find problems, call flows and use cases you never dreamed about,” Michael Häberle, Telefónica’s director of network operations and quality in Germany, told the Munich conference. A sympathetic audience heard about one high-value capacitymedia.com

customer who drove from the Netherlands to Munich every Monday, making conference calls the whole way. “In six hours he got four call drops. That’s not what the customer expects,” said Häberle, adding with a smile: “He might have said the network did well with only four.” Now Telefónica has put in systems to analyse “the call flow and why calls could not be performed”, he said. “We can see data from the customer before they have to call the hotline.” Telefónica created a service operations centre “covering sales, marketing and everything”, that works closely with the network operations centre. “Now we can see all the data. We can see events before they happen.” Telefónica has a worldwide programme of transformation, called Unica, that will effectively put all of its operations in Capacity the cloud. Separately from the Munich conference, I talked to Arturo Aguilera, head of international services for carriers at Telefónica International Wholesale Services. “Transformation means we can sell faster and with new functionality,” he told me. “And it means quicker income and with better margins.” With Unica, Telefónica is able to offer added-value services to its wholesale customers. The group has been working on this for four or five years, he said. “The first years we were working on the hardware solution with Intel. We have a permanent lab to test the new kind of infrastructure.” Telefónica is running Unica in Germany, Argentina, Colombia and Peru, he said, and it will be expanded to seven more countries. There are seven hubs used to deploy the new services to wholesale customers around the world, in places such as Mexico City, Miami and Hong Kong. Back in Munich the gathering heard from Jean-Claude Geha, who is senior vice president of international technology and services delivery at Deutsche Telekom, and also chairs its Pan-Net unit that is designed to transform its national operations outside Germany. “Speed is key, especially when we’re competing not only with the traditional provider but also with webscale providers that started with a clean sheet.” The Pan-Net project is international, headquartered in Bratislava with technology skills distributed across central and eastern Europe. “We’re testing applications and services and we’re also

testing processes. We’ve implemented artificial intelligence without having to increase headcount,” said Geha. Services to be transformed “started with easiest, such as messaging and voice over Wifi”, and on the business-to-business side it started with secure cloud services before moving on to cloud-based customer premises equipment. “We now have 160 million unique users. The numbers are growing and we are now planning more sophisticated services. There’s a great opportunity cloudify television. We’re working with Huawei to cloudify the TV backend,” he said. It will be offered across the company’s footprint, he added. He addressed some of the challenges for management. “Technology people tend not to want to let go when it comes to cloudification,” said Geha – a polite way of saying that people don’t want the products they work on to be transferred to a cloud-based alternative. The answer? “If you start with new products and services then cloudification is easier.” He took a gentle swipe at the top management. “It’s not trivial to assume that the executives, the people who provide the funding, understand the implications of cloudification.” The results of moving to the cloud are that you spend more opex but less capex. “You need fewer and fewer network engineers and more software developers.” But Deutsche Telekom finds itself completing with the webscale companies for software people, he noted. The possible savings are huge, he said, putting them at “30%, 35%, 40%”. Geha added: “If something saves 5-10%, you’re doing the wrong thing.” That’s not enough, he implied. After his presentation I asked him which vendors the Pan-Net project is working with. “We’re looking at vendors that are cloud-ready to see how they work in the international environment [on areas such as] the signalling platform, wholesale voice and roaming. It’s a matter of having vendors with true cloudification capability.” How do you choose what to cloudify? “What we’ve learned is that we cloudify where it makes sense in terms of customer experience, time to market and efficiency. It’s important to understand the technology well, to put you in a better position to figure out what makes sense now and what in three to five years.” It has to be “doable and integratable, and not one-offs”, said Geha. Don’t customise, either. “We want a lean and agile position. If you customise you’re stuck. We must work together and have a case that’s not just technology-driven, not used just because the technology sounds good.”

76 | SPONSORED STATEMENT

CREATING A ONE-STOP SHOP FOR EURASIAN MARKETS VEON WHOLESALE SERVICES IS MOVING TO CENTRALISE ITS OPERATIONS IN A BID TO ADD ÇĄ Ç¤ Ç§ CUSTOMERSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; CHANGING NEEDS AND THE DRAW OF ITS UNIQUE EURASIAN FOOTPRINT.

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The wholesale market has found itself at something of a crossroads in the past few years. With the fall in voice revenues that carriers have faced across the globe and the rise of over-thetop (OTT) players as competition, they have needed to adopt new approaches. Juniper Research has estimated, for example, that global mobile operator-billed revenues from voice and data services will fall by more than $50 billion over the next five years, from $837 billion last year to $785 billion by 2022. At the same time, there are big opportunities for wholesale carriers to grow revenues on their international backbone services to compensate for the decline in voice. But to do this alongside the changes in the industry, carriers have also needed to adapt more quickly, something they have not always found easy to do. The rise of OTT players such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Skype to meet todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s digital demands have added to this. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Everybodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s under pressure on traditional services,â&#x20AC;? says Karsten Lereuth, General Manager of VEON Wholesale Services (VWS). â&#x20AC;&#x153;We also see that OTT players are trying to gain more and more market share, and this puts our margin line under pressure.â&#x20AC;? Eurasian countries outside the traditional strongholds of Western

Europe and the US are facing similar dynamics too. There are, however, significant variations in competitive and regulatory environments across the different countries in that region, as well as often language barriers. These can pose a big and complex challenge for wholesale customers that want to have good access to these markets or a bridge from Europe to Asia. This means a wholesale carrier that is able to provide a strong footprint across these geographies and offer the experience and expertise to facilitate access could provide a valuable service for such players. VWS believes it is such a carrier, offering customers a unique combination of coverage in these markets and the depth of expertise to help them fully capitalise in this region. Promising geographies With several routes stretching all the way from access points in Frankfurt and Amsterdam across Eurasia as far as Vladivostok, Hong Kong and Singapore in the Far East, VWS provides partners the attraction of a network with access to some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most challenging geographies. Lereuth acknowledges that these are often behind traditional European markets, but that this means countries such as Ukraine and Pakistan are ripe for growth. In Ukraine, for example, october/november 2018

operators only started launching the country’s 4G services early this network, allowing easier identification of net senders and receivers year, while smartphone penetration is below 50%. of traffic in different territories, and thus aiding in finding the best “If you see our region, you’ve still got huge pockets for growth deals for both the group’s operating companies and its customers. – and we are a very big player in the region. What we will see in Overall, he says, we can “have state-of-the-art systems, increase the future is a much bigger growth rate than we’ve ever seen in the bargaining power for customers and select the quality partners that past,” says Lereuth. we want”. “We operate in very interesting and challenging markets,” he adds. “For us, it’s maybe a little bit different than for many other Start-up mentality players, because the geographical region we operate in has a One of the keys to VWS’s success with its strategy so far is that different level of complexity. But I think we at VEON Wholesale the company has recruited an expert team of “top-notch industry Services can play a really important role in unlocking the region for specialists” from all over the world, says Lereuth. It has assembled players who have difficulties to get into these markets.” a key account management team that is encouraged to work To help make this much easier and more streamlined, VWS across product lines and has in-depth knowledge of regulation has started moving to centralise the group’s wholesale activities in and various conditions in different markets to help customers Amsterdam. This means that, through a single point of contact, Capacity and partners overcome any hurdles. The team also consists of customers will gain the benefit of having a “one-stop-shop” for people representing more than 20 nationalities, helping bridge any all the services they require rather than needing to deal with language or cultural barriers. fragmented wholesale operations in individual countries. Products In addition, the team is prepared to adapt fast to change, taking will also be harmonised across the group. an open-minded and agile approach to make sure it is able to deal VWS has already successfully centralised its roaming services in a with a fast-changing environment. Indeed, this type of “start-up process that began several years ago, so can take valuable learnings mentality” has become part of the team’s DNA, says Lereuth. from this for the other services it now plans to centralise in its “Usually telcos don’t work like this, but things are moving faster new transformation. “To be honest, I think we’ve now got one of than five or 10 years ago. We are always asking ourselves is this the most efficient roaming teams and set-ups in the world,” says the right model? Is this the right decision? We have to change and Lereuth. adapt.” In addition, VWS has a big customer base that it can help This approach includes the need to develop much closer already, with more than 800 networks from 230+ countries and cooperation with internal and external customers, as well as OTTs, territories, and over 500 deals for its roaming, international voice to make sure their needs are fully understood. Part of this has and data operations. involved VWS becoming a member of international organisations such as the Ngena Alliance and the IoT World Alliance to help in Multi-pronged change developing new businesses in collaboration with other carriers on a There are several prongs to the new phase of transformation. One global scale. involves the centralisation of voice, which began in February. In In addition, the company is coordinating between the retail and parallel, the company is also centralising data services and new wholesale side of the business to make sure it can offer good deals products, with these processes all “full steam ahead”, says Lereuth. to the market that help stimulate traffic – leveraging the VEON These new services are in areas such as messaging, M2M, SDgroup’s subscriber base of 210 million in 10 countries. WAN, peering and transit, plus others. VWS also spent a long time planning its strategy to make sure This is therefore a big project involving multiple areas and it works effectively, rather than jumping in too quickly before is expected to have big benefits for both VWS’s own operating everything was ready. “Moving such huge volumes into a new companies and external customers in aiding ease of business commercial company and at the same time adding value internally and quality of service – and ultimately in costs and margins. and for external partners is not a walk in the park,” says Lereuth. This requires a lot of migration and renegotiation of deals into a He reiterates that this is a big project. “We have many balls in centralised form, but Lereuth says VWS is coping well and, in fact, the air, while needing to still make sure we are delivering what even better than planned. customers expect from us on a daily basis,” says Lereuth. But, he “What we see here is a much more agile environment,” he says. adds, “if I optimise infrastructure and opex and bring in state-ofThis allows customers to access services in a centralised way not the art systems and then the best experts, and deal with all the voice only across geographies, but also across different products. “You can traffic going in and out, this will deliver substantial value”. talk with my team about roaming, you can talk about voice, you He emphasises that doing this begins with a working climate that can talk about data, and we are also prepared to make a deal across stimulates creativity. “It is important that we create an environment these product lines.” where it’s fun for the team to work in,” explains Lereuth. “That This also helps to give a fuller view of traffic across the whole helps us in putting together something that’s quite amazing.” capacitymedia.com

78 | SPONSORED STATEMENT

AUTONOMOUS NETWORK AND SERVICE 2.0 ÍŽÇ¤ÍŹ ÇĄ ÇĄ Ç§ ÇĄ Ç§ ÇĄ

Capacity

Bill Tang, president of Huawei Global Technical Services, speaking to delegates at the Operations Transformation Forum in Munich

For many years, the telecoms industry has been promoting digital transformation across various fields. However, from the perspective of the telecoms industry, although we are running the most advanced network in the world, a large number of operations and maintenance methods are still in a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;manual phaseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; that we might think belongs to the eighteenth century, leading to structured problems. First, in terms of financial results, OPEX investment is generally three to four times higher than that of CAPEX. In addition, network construction optimization makes it difficult to enable operators to improve their financial status on a large scale. Second, the complexity caused by the overlay of multi-generation networks poses great challenges in manual operations for operation personnel. Numerous problems with sites, pipelines, and equipment rooms form physical breakpoints that hinder automation. The complexity of core systems made manual operations difficult and led to 70% of network-level accidents. Third, the structural shock of the internet not only poses threats to cloud services, but also to networks. The impact of this is seen from DC backbone networks to cloud-network-synergy enterprises networks. It is affecting the cloud-network-synergy market

with large scale, wide coverage, high utilisation, and deep data integration. In terms of OPEX distribution, we can further review the challenges facing the telecoms industry from four aspects: operation (maintenance and employees), energy (power, water, electricity, and heating), resource utilisation (circuit NE leasing, depreciation, and website interconnection), and experience (sales expense and product costs). First, from the perspective of operation efficiency, one major characteristic is heavy routine workloads. Taking an operator as an example, the annual number of office data records exceeds 17 billion pieces, those of NE parameters stands around 10 million, those of transmission risk elimination is nearly 1 million, and those of maintenance for home broadband communities is tens of thousands. Physical facilities are of great importance. According to the work order survey in a region, 26% of work orders are related to feeder or optical fibre problems, 26% to restoration operations such as restarting non-master equipment software, 24% to automatic recovery after mains supply interruptions, 11% to automatic alarm clearing, and just 10% to faults on device october/november 2018

hardware. The second characteristic is that the network cutovers and upgrades must be performed more than 100,000 times each year, and the emergency assurances nearly 400,000 times. Therefore, a large amount of manpower is required to ensure these upgrades and major events. Second, site energy consumption (including outdoor sites and telecoms equipment rooms) affects 60% to 80% of energy efficiency issues, while data centres affect around 20%. Energy consumption will continue to rise in the cloud-enabled data centres. From the perspective of operation statistics, traffic distribution is unbalanced in time and space. The busiest top 10% of sites of a network generate 50% of the traffic, while the idlest 50% sites generate only 5% traffic. However, the basic energy consumption of these sites is the same. That is, sites generating little or low traffic still consume a large amount of energy. Third, from the perspective of resource utilisation, the root cause of low resource utilisation is an unbalanced distribution of service traffic in time and space. In addition, resources are limited by physically distributed design and operation, and do not adopt the global centralised design and dynamic scheduling with time and space. For example, the backbone network usage of operators is about 30%. Traditional traffic optimisation and optimisation

strategies (such as optimisation triggering threshold and migration traffic selection) do not support dynamic adjustment based on the application and network traffic status. Therefore, continuous load balancing is not possible, lagging far behind internet companies with around 90% network utilisation. Finally, from the perspective of customer experience, there are still many manual operation activities such as traditional drive tests and neighboring cell parameter optimisation. The sampling test cannot comprehensively and objectively reflect the customer experience, and the multi-source dynamic data of terminals, applications, and time and space is not introduced, which cannot fully drive automatic network adjustment. Use architecture innovations to resolve issues Architecture innovations solve the structured problems for the telecom industry. The combinations of innovations in products, business models, and systems enable automatic, self-healing, self-optimized, autonomous networks, as well as digital service operations. This makes breakthroughs in operation, energy, resource utilization, and service experience. Based on the service process of operators, analyse the activity distribution, cost distribution, and manpower distribution in

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Figure: Architecture Innovation capacitymedia.com

80 | SPONSORED STATEMENT

terms of planning, design, deployment, provisioning, operation, entire service process: In terms of service scenarios, we need to and optimisation, and innovate the architecture to achieve the find specific scenarios, such as automatic fibre check, service automatic goal. In the case of high failure rate of passive devices provisioning, network optimisation, fault location, and automatic such as cables, power supply, and environment, the objective of resource scheduling, and determine the breakthrough points to “active devices manage passive devices” is put forward. That is, aligning with the need of “zero wait time, contact-free operation, active devices can be used to predict and manage passive devices. and zero negative feedback”. To solve the problem that the network has power consumption The training platform provides the data and artificial intelligence with no traffic, the “bits drive watts” objective is put forward. algorithms that best suit the telecoms field, including optical Only when there is bit flow, there is watt consumption. The timemodule data, lab fibre bending, loose, grey, and live-network space multiplexing objective is proposed to maximise the reuse fault data. Algorithms include basic data cleaning, information of network capacity in the case of unbalanced traffic in time and integration, machine learning modeling, and in-depth learning. space. According to the characteristics of rich terminal applications The optical fibre fault model and filter model are jointly trained. and full-process experience, the goal of “application-driven The management and control platform is combined with the live experience improvement” is proposed to introduce more terminal network to implement quick provisioning, simplified operation, application elements and drive automatic network adjustment and intelligent operation. The basis of this is to add data collection based on experience results. The breakthroughs are extracted and parsing capabilities at the network device layer, including the from use cases, forming a series of value points. We can combine capability of collecting fibre data, optical signal data, and routing the value points into solutions to facilitate business scenario data. In addition, the equipment must have reliable inference improvement. execution capabilities. On the training platform, Huawei focuses on building an AI training platform oriented to the telecom field. The training Objectives: improved operations, efficient energy, platform is deployed in public cloud + stack mode. The stack mode high resource utilisation, and optimal service can be extended to operator’s network deployment, so that the experience training can be completed without data transmission. The training Operation level has three phases. The first phase is run-to-failure platform provides the AI tool chain and common model services in (R2F), where operation personnel must go and handle faults in the telecom domain. A telecoms data lake is composed of the basic networks as quickly as possible. The second phase is preventive data, lab test data, field data, and marking data generated during maintenance (PvM), where all devices are checked to prevent service operation of network products, as well as the running data faults, leading to inefficient services. The third phase is predictable of typical sample network devices that are desensitised. The data maintenance (PdM), where the fault probability is predicted, and lake is used for continuous training. Service 2.0 in the network maintenance is done based on the status. field aims to provide online digital smart services and AI-basedCapacityIn Autonomous Network and Service 2.0, devices are used to online services. This type of services is under continuous iteration implement site management through network simplification. and operate in “model as a service” mode by following industry This reduces faults in passive devices such as power supplies, practices. The services are always in the beta phase and constantly connectors, and cables. In addition, active management is updating and improving. The telecom model is continuously adopted to manage passive devices, such as cables, connectors, released to the model market for iterative update and optimisation. and power environments. For example, route, fibre, and signal At the network and device level, the goal is to build an agile visualisation are enabled to allow optical fibres to predict and and intelligent network. Three capabilities are introduced to locate problems, such as fibre aging, excessive bending, loose the bottom-layer devices and cloud infrastructure, middle-layer connectors, and long routes, based on status. Intelligent fault network management and control, and upper-layer entire process prediction and network design enable shared network loads, and system to achieve network autonomy. The first capability is device transforms repair and inspection into predictive maintenance digitalisation. On the basis of large capacity, low latency, and based on status. Then, manual open loop becomes device-based high availability, we can enhance the data collection and parsing closed loop, which achieves automatic recovery for non-physical capability of a dynamic awareness environment, including the faults and improving operation efficiency. awareness of the surrounding environment and passive devices. In terms of energy efficiency, we adopt the “bits drive watts” Typical scenarios include the perception of the antenna status in strategy, where network traffic determines power consumption. the wireless field, the perception of optical fibers, signals, and routes Power consumption is reduced when there is no traffic, and AI in the network field, the dynamic and on-demand processing of can predict traffic and adjust the energy efficiency of operator sites large-scale distributed streaming data in the IP domain, and the and data centers in real time to save energy. Site auxiliary facilities real-time and dynamic restoration of the network topology. The are incorporated into equipment cabinets to maximize site energy perception and digitalisation capabilities of these networks and efficiency. Service traffic is accurately predicted and devices are devices are the basis of network automation and intelligence. The quickly put into deep sleep mode, realising the “bits drive watts” second capability is inference execution based on the AI model. strategy and ensuring energy consumption management with The network and devices can perform inference execution based optimal customer experience. on the AI model, including data preprocessing and AI model In data centres, equipment rooms, and sites, each system has management. The process of inference execution must ensure dozens of parameters. Through AI training, Autonomous Network network security and robustness, and the deployment can be and Service 2.0 generates heat dissipation, environment, and service divided into embedded deployment, network management and load models to achieve optimal energy efficiency for auxiliary control integration, independent deployment, or public cloud facilities. These include diesel generators, solar energy, and batteries service deployment. The third capability is the service process that operate with the proper amount of sunlight and under proper orchestration capability. The telecom domain model works with temperatures. In addition, it finds optimal modes for dozens of the local business process of operators. Digital technologies such pieces of water cooling equipment. as model-driven, process orchestration, data analysis, and AI are At the equipment layer, dynamic energy distribution can be used to implement automatic service provisioning and automatic performed according to service workloads. When there is no service/network operation, helping achieve the real time, on traffic, power consumption is reduced through timeslot shutdown, demand, all online, DIY, social (ROADS) experience. RF deep sleep, and carrier shutdown. In addition, dynamic energy-saving management of data center objects (such as server For the optical networks, we can learn how AI promotes the october/november 2018

components) is implemented. At the network system layer, an accurate service load prediction model is constructed for optimal traffic scheduling on networks, improving energy consumption efficiency. Autonomous Network and Service 2.0 can accurately predict long-period traffic rules, ensuring the optimal utilisation of sites, pipelines, and equipment rooms. The air interface spectrum is maximised based on the distribution of users, terminals, and services. Balanced elastic traffic during peak and off-peak hours improves the utilisation of the backbone networks to full-load operations. Based on the identification of service and traffic features (proximity, periodicity, trends, and events), trend prediction, and path performance prediction, traffic is dynamically allocated and balanced during peak and off-peak hours, greatly improving network utilisation. Traffic paths can be adjusted, almost in real time, to achieve optimisation without compromising QoS or SLA. With automatic closed loop networks, Autonomous Network and Service 2.0 introduces user data to terminals and applications, achieving optimal user experience. Corporate users can construct cloud-and-network synergy in minutes, coordinate global networks across multiple regions, and implement automatic forwarding and learning on networks. This allows them to achieve user-transparent scheduling and routing. Cloud synergy is deployed at the home user end to improve the home broadband quality, user experience, and problem handling efficiency of home networks.

unit control tasks according to the AI model or rules. For example, the data center can automatically adjust the parameters of the water-cooled equipment unit based on training models. In this way, energy efficiency can be improved and PUE can be reduced. However, dynamic prediction and adjustment are limited in a certain unit. Level 3 is conditional autonomous network that can implement complete closed-loop automation at the subsystem level. Taking the wireless domain as an example, this solution can be used to evaluate and predict user traffic, perform resource scheduling and parameter adjustment over the air interface, and assess the network adjustment effect. Automation can be achieved from perception, decision-making, execution, and after-event evaluation. Level 4 is a highly autonomous network. The system can automate the entire life cycle of a single service across domains, such as cloud VPN service design, deployment and provisioning, dynamic scheduling, and automatic fault self-healing. Level 5 is a fully autonomous network. The system can perform complete dynamic tasks in all network environments and handle exceptions properly. Network autonomy is a step-to-step process, from providing an alternative to repetitive execution actions, to performing perception and monitoring of network environment and network device status, making decisions based on multiple factors and policies, and providing effective perception of end user experience. The system capability also starts from some service scenarios and covers all service scenarios. Implementation path of Autonomous Network and The network autonomy and service 2.0 model has a long way Service 2.0 to go. Huawei launches SoftCOM AI, relying on Huaweiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s longThe automatic running of the network must be a long-term term and resolute strategic investment in All Intelligence, digital process. We must have a clear long-term goal as a guide and bear and intelligent network and device investment, and continuous in mind that the automation cannot be achieved overnight. We Capacity investment in digital practices in the service field and in platform need to start with the end in mind, forging ahead with small construction. Huawei is determined to build an autonomous steps, and make achievements along the way. We can divide network solution, upgrade the service mode, and release a series of network autonomy into five levels. Level 0 is manual operation solutions. Network autonomy is like automatic driving. It requires and maintenance. Level 1 is auxiliary operation. The system can a rich ecosystem of partners to inject operation and maintenance continuously control a subtask, such as board switchover and experience into the system and work together to achieve automatic, automatic rerouting. Level 2 is a partial autonomous network. self-healing, self-optimization, autonomous networks, and digital Under the applicable design scope, the system can perform some operation of services. Level

Name

DeďŹ nition

Execution

Perception

Decisionmaking

Experience

System Capability

Manual operation

Even with auxiliary tools, O & M personnel perform all dynamic tasks.

Person

N/A

Auxiliary operation

Under the applicable design scope, the system can execute a sub-task repeatedly based on rules.

Person and system

Person

Some service scenarios

Partial autonomous network

Under the applicable design scope, the system continuously completes the control task of a unit based on the model

System

Person

Some service scenarios

Conditional autonomous network

Under the applicable design scope, the system can implement complete closed-loop automation of single-domain scenarios. Users can respond to the requests in a timely manner when the system fails.

System

Person

Some service scenarios

Highly autonomous network

Under the applicable design scope, the system can automatically analyze and execute cross-domain and service closeloop automation.

System

Person

Some service scenarios

Fully autonomous network

The system can perform complete dynamic tasks and exception handling in all network environments. Operation personnel do not need to intervene.

System

All service scenarios

Table: Five levels for network automation capacitymedia.com

82 | sd-wan

SD-WAN will drive digital transformation in the enterprise space ATTENDEES OF THE WAN SUMMIT IN SINGAPORE HEARD HOW ADVANCED AND FLEXIBLE NETWORKS ARE HELPING ENTERPRISES ALONG THEIR TRANSFORMATION JOURNEYS

n the digital era, business transformation is key not just to telecoms but also to the enterprise sector. According to the Advance2000 survey, 85% of enterprise decision makers believe they have just two years to integrate digital initiatives before they risk falling behind their competitors. 55% think they have even less time – just one year, in fact. Software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN) could play a key role in helping enterprises continue their transformation journeys, the WAN Summit conference in Singapore heard from several speakers. The event, which took place in the Asian city-state in September, looked at the rapidly growing software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) market in the Asia and Asia Pacific region. The keynote presentation, given by Orange Business Services, looked at how businesses were adopting SD-WAN either as a managed or as a hybrid. Laurent Perrin, director of application driven network at OBS, said: “SD-WAN is the right way to help businesses through their transformation because it brings flexibility. “Our customers point to agility, to the ability to adjust the network, with many driven by business transformation. We are moving from a fully managed model to a more flexible model with more visibility. Why visibility? Because the network is carrying more and more traffic, with some of it no longer managed directly by IT or network managers but by specific business divisions directly. So we need to move to a more enduser focussed structure.” He gave an example case study of an international enterprise OBS had worked with to transform its network: German manufacturer Siemens. Siemens, he explained, was looking for a more flexible infrastructure to cover its 1,500 sites which span more than 94 countries. So Orange looked at virtualisation. He added: “Siemens – an example of a customer sourcing all of their services from one provider. We have been contracted to transfer their network from a full MPLS

Capacity

to SD-WAN, They want different types of access, to reinforce security.” He was joined on stage by his colleague James Soo, who reminded the packed hall that SD-WAN is itself just “a concept, not a standard”. This means enterprises have many different vendors and options and each “have a different kind of flavour”. So how does OBS tackle this? Soo explained: “The first is trying to understand your data: how you use it, what your data is, and where you expect to see it in the next six months. So do your due diligence, and then look at doing a proof of concept to help you understand how SD-WAN can actually work in a real-time environment. “Then begins the transformation – do you want to do this across your sites, or only at a limited number? This means piloting different profiles and a close engagement with partner.s Find milestones and set expectations. The beauty of SD-WAN is that using policies we can tweak and adapt your network as new applications come on board.” Another topic of discussion was zero touch provisioning of networks, which, according to one panel, is “not quite there yet”. The panel, which featured representatives from Tata Communications, Nuage Networks, and Cato Networks, as well as enterprises in the form of Cargill and Fugro, was the keynote panel at the Singapore event.

According to Gavin Yeoh, of Indian telecoms giant Tata Comm, the right SDWAN strategy for service providers is about getting to know your partners. He explained: “It is about understanding each enterprise – what are your use cases, what are the priorities? And understanding the traffic flow to make sure you understand the internet infrastructure but so you’re not losing performance issues.” Ton phung, of Nuage Networks, explained: “When we talk to our enterprise and SP customers, the main drivers are definitely cost, but customers also want flexibility, so SD-WAN has to be able to work over any access infrastructure. So the customer can choose any of the infrastructure, but they also need a management portal so they can login themselves. They want flexibility but also the ability to pick and choose their partners and network solutions.” But on the topic of zero touch provisioning – where automated networks make routing decisions without input from the network manager – the enterprise network has some way to go, even if it is an SD-WAN, according to Cargill’s Daryl Yeo. He said: “Zero Touch provisioning isn’t really a reality at the moment, but you can keep a light touch. It is not properly there yet because you still need to integrate and operate.” october/november 2018

Capacity

84 | market data: fraud

TAKING LEADERSHIP ON FRAUD The Global Leaders’ Forum (GLF), in partnership with the i3Forum, launched its fraud code of conduct earlier this year. This exclusive snapshot of a GLF survey looks at changes in fraud volume and impact trends over the last 12 months. The status of fraudulent traffic and its use-cases Fraudulent traffic is a significant issue facing the international wholesale carrier industry. Analysis by CFCA sizes the impact of fraudulent activity as $77b of revenue for telecom as whole that will never leave carriers’ accounts receivable. KƵƚ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ ˜ΨϮϵ ŽĨ dĞůĞĐŽŵ ƌĞǀĞŶƵĞ ůŽƐƚ ƚŽ ĨƌĂƵĚ͕ ˜Ψϭϳ ůŽƐƚ ŝŶ ŝŶƚĞƌŶĂƟŽŶĂů ĨƌĂƵĚƵůĞŶƚ ƚƌĂĸĐ

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Trends impacting fraudulent traffic Overview: Changes in Prevalence and Types of Fraud Through engagement in producing this report, authored with Delta Partners, at an industry level two primary macro trends were identified: technology enabling a greater frequency of attack attempts has contributed to a larger number of attacks, whilst the average value loss of each attack has declined. Technology is a two-edged sword; it provides the enablement of better data creation, collection, consumption, and speed of response. But also opens new fraud types, and gives fraudsters greater accessibility, scale, and sophistication. ,Žǁ ŚĂƐ ƚŚĞ ǀŽůƵŵĞ ĂŶĚ ŝŵƉĂĐƚ ŽĨ &ƌĂƵĚƵůĞŶƚ ƚƌĂĸĐ ŚŝƫŶŐ ǇŽƵƌ ŽƌŐĂŶŝƐĂƟŽŶ ĐŚĂŶŐĞĚ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ƉĂƐƚ ϭϮ ŵŽŶƚŚƐ͍ ^ŝŐŶŝĮĐĂŶƚůǇ ZĞĚƵĐŝŶŐ

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Carriers identified two types of investments as the investments that provided the greatest ROI namely the active management of customers by dropping known bad customers and reallocating the coverage of FTEs by scheduling employees to ensure 24/7 operation. october/november 2018

market data: fraud| 85

Approaches to measurement While many respondents reported tracking volume, the number of respondents who report fraud management metrics to head-ofbusiness or higher management was lower; further, very few respondents reported giving a regular report to management either as a stand-alone brief or as a part of a larger network brief. Degree of prioritization was observed to correlate with the proportion of survey respondents who included fraud metrics in regular reporting. However, even within the respondents who stated top prioritization of fraud management, 33% reported they did not include fraudulent traffic metrics in management reports. This inconsistency in reporting fraud management metrics is certainly an issue when carriers then make commercial decisions and either bring in fraud management figures or leave out fraud risk considerations entirely. Neither of these are good options especially when exacerbated by a lack of standard metrics that fraud is reported through. tŚĞƌĞ ǁŽƵůĚ ǇŽƵ ƌĂŶŬ ƚŚĞ ŝŵƉŽƌƚĂŶĐĞ ŽĨ ĨƌĂƵĚƵůĞŶƚ ƚƌĂĸĐ ĂƐ Ă ƚŽƉŝĐ ŝŶ ǇŽƵƌ ŽƌŐĂŶŝƐĂƟŽŶ͍

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;й ƌĞƐƉŽŶƐĞƐͿ

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67%

67% zĞƐ

Capacity

EŽ

Intent and Impact of the Code of Conduct GLF Code of Conduct – a first step towards industry leadership Addressing fraud is challenging in the international carrier context as instances or contributors of fraudulent traffic cannot be irrefutably verified, with anti-trust implications from carriers making false accusations. As such, for fraud to be addressed, its symptoms, i.e. irregular traffic patterns, should be an initial focus, which due to its cross-network impact requires collaboration between carriers. The GLF developed a code of conduct for international carriers to demonstrate their commitment to reducing fraudulent traffic and work only with parties who can demonstrate their active commitment to preventing fraudulent traffic. Respondents note that the Code of Conduct is public statement without an accountability mechanism, but all are hopeful that this will be developed as more parties’ sign. As one respondent noted “Right now, it is just paper, need to see action and share knowledge. We signed it, but I hope it goes further than that.”

EXPECTED VALUE OF CODE OF CONDUCT

ŽŵƉĂƌŝƐŽŶ ŽĨ ǀĂůƵĞ ƉůĂĐĞĚ ŽŶ ƌĞǀĞŶƵĞ ůŽƐƐ ƚŽ ĨƌĂƵĚ ǀƐ͘ &K ŝŵƉĂĐƚ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ ĐŽĚĞ ŽĨ ĐŽŶĚƵĐƚ ;й ŽĨ ƌĞǀĞŶƵĞ͕ ƐŝǌĞ ŽĨ ďƵďďůĞ ŝŶĚŝĐĂƚĞƐ ŶƵŵďĞƌ ŽĨ ƌĞƐƉŽŶĚĞŶƚƐͿ

ф ϭй

1–3%

3–5%

1–3% >ĞƐƐ ƚŚĂŶ ϭй /ŵƉĂĐƚ ŝŵƉŽƐƐŝďůĞ ƚŽ ŵĞĂƐƵƌĞ

VALUE PLACED ON ALL FRAUD

capacitymedia.com

3–5%

86 |

CAPACITY MEDIA HAS UNVEILED ITS NEW CODE OF CONDUCT FOR OUR EVENTS WORLDWIDE. TAKE AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK AT SOME OF THE KEY TOUCHPOINTS IN THE NEW CODE HERE

Code of conduct noun:

A set of rules about how to behave and do business with other people

apacity Media takes great pride in the fact that our events have a wide and diverse geographic span and equally attract attendees from all over the world, with different backgrounds, cultures, experiences and beliefs. For us, a Code of Conduct for our events is nothing new – we are a company driven by our principles, our beliefs and our values. In addition, we expect everyone who works in and/ or participates in our events to conform to our ethical standards. However, we realise that our expectations of what is appropriate for our events may not be viewed in the same way as all of our participants. We think it is important to periodically highlight our policy as it removes any semblance of doubt about our expectations and ensures that we are all on the same page. We are committed to our events being safe and ethical places to conduct meetings and promote an environment to create, develop and nurture business relationships. For whom is the Code of Conduct? Everyone who participate at our events – all our employees, attendees, speakers, sponsors, suppliers and volunteers at our events are required to comply with the Code of Conduct. What are the main highlights of the Code of Conduct? The underlying current of our Code of Conduct is about treating everyone equally, fairly and with dignity and respect.

The following are some of our core rules: • Act with integrity, honesty and respect in interactions with all event participants Capacity • Keep communication, verbal or otherwise, appropriate for a professional audience • Harassment, insults, bullying or discrimination are not tolerated • Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any part of our events • Sexist, racist, derogatory or exclusionary jokes are highly inappropriate for our events What would happen if a participant were a victim of negative behaviour at one of our events? Unfortunately these incidents, although small in number and frequency, do sometimes occur. Despite of this, we have a process in place to deal with these situations. If a participant is a victim of negative behaviour or notices someone else is being victimised, we ask that they contact a member of the event staff immediately or any of the security on site. Our staff are identifiable, as they will be wearing event branded clothing and/or badges. Our Employees, Volunteers and Security are all fully trained on our Code of Conduct and how to handle negative incidents at our events. We value the safety of all of our participants, hence we will be happy to help participants through whichever means necessary- whether it is assistance to contact local police, provide escorts, or

anything else to help them feel safe for the duration of the event. Are there consequences for breaking the Code of Conduct? We take our Code of Conduct very seriously and respond to every report appropriately. Depending on the incident reported, a number or all of the following could occur to the offending individual: 1. A formal request to stop any negative behaviour with immediate effect 2. Expulsion from the event without a refund 3. Reports made to the Senior Management of the individual’s company 4. In extreme cases – a black mark on the Company 5. And a life time ban on attendance to future Capacity Media events We will go to this extent because of how seriously we value our events being a safe and respectful environment for all. Codes of conduct do not necessarily stop all negative behaviour. However, we hope that the stance we have adopted will make all participants aware of their behaviours and trust that we will respond appropriately and do all we can to preserve the integrity of our Events and protect all the participants who attend them. If you need more information on our Policy, please contact The CEO and divisional director, Ros Irving. To get access to the full Code of Conduct, you will find a link on the home pages of our websites. october/november 2018

WHICH EVENTS WILL YOU BE ATTENDING? REGIONAL EVENTS

MESSAGING

ASIA 2018

INDIA & SAARC 2019

5 & 6 December 2018, Hong Kong

12 & 13 February 2019 New Delhi

CARIBBEAN 2019

MIDDLE EAST 2019

LATAM 2019

12 & 13 February 2019, San Juan

5 - 7 March 2019, Dubai

12 & 13 March 2019, São Paulo

RUSSIA & CIS 2019

EUROPE EAST 2019

AFRICA 2019

2 & 3 April 2019, Moscow

Dates TBC, 2019

NORTH AMERICA 2019

EURASIA 2019

CENTRAL AMERICA & ANDEAN 2019

& SMS WORLD

27 & 28 November 2018, London

Dates TBC, 2019

September 2019, Denver

Co-located with

Dates TBC, 2019

EUROPE 2019 29 – 31 October 2019, London

SUBSEA EVENTS SUBSEA AMERICAS

3&4 December 2018 Fort Lauderdale

Capacity SUBSEA MIDDLE EAST

4 March 2019 Dubai

SUBSEA EMEA

July 2019 Marseille

(part of Capacity Middle East)

SUBSEA ASIA

Dates TBC, 2019 Indonesia

CONNECT EVENTS METRO CONNECT USA

MEXICO CONNECT

29 - 31 January 2019 Miami

METRO CONNECT EUROPE

April 2019

MYANMAR CONNECT

September 2019 Yangon

10 & 11 September 2019 Mexico City

WAN SUMMITS

GLOBAL EVENTS International Telecoms Week 23 - 26 June 2019, Atlanta, GA

8 & 9 April 2019, New York

May 2019, Frankfurt

30 October 2019 London Awards 2018

September 2019, Singapore

www.capacitymedia.com

October 2019, London

@CapacityMedia

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90 | appointments

Charles Meyers Equinix Charles Meyers has been appointed to the position of president, chief executive officer and its board of directors, effective immediately. Meyers brings 25-year’s experience in the tech industry including a number of executive positions at leading telecoms and IT companies. He joined Equinix in 2010 as president of Americas, during which time he lead the company’s largest operating region through a period of significant growth and strong operating performance. In 2013, he was appointed chief operating officer at Equinix, where he headed up the company’s drive for global consistency, leading the global sales, marketing, operations and customer success teams. For the past 12 months, he has served as president of strategy, services and innovation (SSI).

Keri Gilder Colt Ciena’s vice president and general manager for EMEA, Keri Gilder, has joined Colt Technology Services as its new chief commercial officer. In her new position, Gilder will head Colt’s global sales and marketing, including in the US where Colt recently launched its services. Speaking exclusively to Capacity Gilder said: Colt has invested heavily in its network and services and I will be helping to expand the operation.” An engineer trained in management information systems, Gilder has been with equipment vendor Ciena for 16 years – making Colt will be the first carrier she’s worked for. “Ciena has been a great company to work for and they will be a strategic partner for me in my new role.,” said Gilder. “I will still be able to engage with them – just on the other side of the equation.”

Edward Diver Digital Realty Digital Realty has named Edward Diver as its new chief information officer reporting directly to CFO Andy Power. Diver will be responsible for managing Digital Realty’s global IT operations, including both internal functions as well as customer-facing applications. He has more than 30 years experience leading global teams of technology professionals. In that time he has overseen IT transformations at a number of Fortune 500 companies where he managed its international divisions of up to 700 employees and budgets in excess of $300 million across a number of verticals. Prior to joining Digital Realty, Diver served as vice president of application services and Interim CIO at Blue Shield of California. For them he was responsible for ts architecture, applications, infrastructure, security, and operations organisations.

Bill Betz DataGryd DataGryd, a New York-based data centre provider, has named Bill Betz as its new vice president of sales. Betz will be responsible for the sales execution of DataGryd’s 60,000 sqft facility located at 60 Hudson Street. Working closely with the company’s president and CEO, Betz will also help develop sales strategies and go-to-market plans while building a pipeline for new business and managing customer relationships and communications. Betzrings more than 30 years of success driving large global sales and marketing teams to increased revenue and market share. He recently served as VP of sales at Sky Technology Partners, where he gained knowledge and insight into various cutting edge technologies and services, including SD-WAN, hyperscale data centre facilities, and software-, platform-, infrastructure-asa-service solutions.

Capacity

Todd Baron VueTel Todd Baron has been named as the chief operating officer of its US operating company, VueTel USA. Baron, who has over 20 years’ experience in the telecoms industry and has an extensive background in leading carrier and wholesale sales teams, joins VueTel USA from IDT Corporation where he had most recently been vice president of international wholesale carrier sales since November 2012. Baron will lead VueTel USA’s offering, including international internet transit services (IP transit), International dedicated lines (IPLC), devoted Ethernet circuits (EthLink) and IP VPN as well as international voice transit services.

David Bennett AIRX Technologies AIRX Technologies has named former BT Global Services architect David Bennett as its new head of technical consult and operations. The news follows the appointment of former BT account director Gary Millward as head of global sales and business development in August. Bennett will be tasked with tackling product strategy, solutions design, implementation, pre-sales, and operations. His primary focus will be on building technical and operations relationships with AIRX’s telecoms and enterprise partners in order to deliver its portfolio of internet connectivity, internet of things solutions and managed services.

Michel Paulin OVH Cloud services firm OVH has named former SFR chief Michel Paulin as its new chief executive officer. Paulin will be tasked with leading cloud hosting company OVH as it executes its Smart Cloud, which aims to consolidate its position as an alternative leader in cloud to the larger operators, such as AWS, Microsoft and Google. He replaces founder Octave Klaba, who stepped back in as CEO in 2017 in order to drive the company’s growth strategy. Klaba will remain as chairman at the company he founded in 1999, along with three of his family members. Paulin spent almost a year and a half as CEO at Altice-owned French telecoms firm SFR, having joined from Morocco’s Meditel in April 2016.

Cliff Gasior NJFX Cliff Gasior has been promoted from director of engineering to vice president of engineering and operations. Having joined NJFX over a year ago, he previously worked as a mechanical systems engineer for CSI Engineers for over four years. In addition, Gasior has also served as engineering project manager for Bala Consulting Engineers, Gasior in his new role is responsible for implementing infrastructure designs on a holistic level to ensure efficiencies and the ability to scale, NJFX said. He will focus on the life cycle of equipment and systems from a day-to-day standpoint. “NJFX is proud to have such seasoned and well-respected veterans on its team,” NJFX said.

Tell us your move

Capacity is keen to hear from readers about new roles and appointments in the industry. Send details to james.pearce@capacitymedia.com, with a high-resolution picture

october/november 2018

Capacity

92 | innovation report: shared spectrum

SHARE AND ENJOY: HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR 5G SPECTRUM AS SPECTRUM DEMANDS INCREASE, SOME REGULATORS ARE LOOKING FOR WAYS TO SHARE IT OUT. SOME NEWCOMERS TO THE MOBILE INDUSTRY, INCLUDING WHOLESALERS, LOOK LIKELY TO WIN ACCESS TO SPECTRUM TOO

e’re seeing the beginnings of a radical change in the way the industry and regulators think of spectrum. All across the globe, operators wanting to improve their mobile data coverage have their eyes on bits of spectrum that are now used by other agencies. And regulators are starting to mutter “use it or lose it” to telcos about the spectrum they license. It used to be the case that, once you’d got your hands on a chunk of spectrum, it was yours for the life of your licence – 20 years or more. Many operators that were granted free licences for 900MHz after a beauty contest in the 1980s are still sitting on that spectrum, having refarmed it to 2G, 3G and now 4G. But demand for mobile data, and especially mobile video, continues to grow at a ridiculous rate. The supply of spectrum hasn’t increased – though engineers are finding ways to get commercial use out of frequencies that once were just used for lab tricks. Back in my university days in Leeds I played with microwaves going through copper waveguides into prisms made of, what was it, polyethylene? Today, that would cause serious interference to most students’ mobile phones. And in the hills south of Bologna the curators of the Marconi museum demonstrate 100-yearold spark transmitters that would look really interesting on a spectrum analyser. We’ve seen the mobile industry move up and down the spectrum from its original 900MHz or so like a hungry grizzly bear preparing for hibernation. It’s kicked the TV channels out of the top of the UHF bands and is looking further down, to 600MHz and lower. It long ago moved up to 1,800MHz, 1,900MHz and beyond. Now the grizzly can sniff available spectrum at 3,500MHz and way beyond, up to the millimetre wave area of 26GHz or 28GHz.

In the US, the Navy uses a good chunk of the 3,500MHz band (that’s 3.5GHz, if you prefer) for radar to spot incoming missiles. Quite reasonably, the US Navy doesn’t see why it should give up spectrum that works extremely well at it what it wants it to do. If you remember any engineering or physics, the wavelength of 3,500MHz is about 8.5cm: missiles reflect those waves very well. But the industry’s lobbyists point out that the Navy operates off the coasts of the US and further out to sea, not inland. There’s a lot ofCapacity the US that’s a long way from the sea. And these days we have instantly accessible databases. The Navy knows where its ships are, even when they move, and it could populate a database to show, at any time, what frequencies are available for commercial users and what aren’t. Mobile phone masts don’t move and they could use only permitted frequencies – and shift to new frequencies when the USS Ronald Reagan appears on the horizon. The industry has set up a lobbying and negotiating group called the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) Alliance. Unfortunate name, I know: it brings to mind large hairy truckers moving slowly along the freeway saying “ten-four” to one another. The group has picked up 105 members, including all the US mobile operators, plus vendors such as Cisco, Ericsson and Nokia, and tower and infrastructure companies. Everyone seems to be in favour of the idea and the CBRS Alliance expects next year’s mobile phone generation will have chips that work with this shared spectrum. Millimetre ranges Now let’s come to those millimetre wave bands – literally, as the wavelength of 26/28GHz radio waves is about 11mm. They’re ideal for shared spectrum, because they don’t travel very far. Tony Lavender, Plum Consulting partner and CEO, puts the range at 100m or so, 200-300m in exceptional circumstances. That means you

could have a small cell transmitting on a particular frequency in the 26 or 28GHz band, with another along the road on exactly the same frequency, and they would not interfere. Just as with the 3,500MHz band, a database would help the industry to keep interference at bay, by identifying who’s using what and where. There are already licensed users of millimetre wave spectrum for fixed links, and they’d be on the database too. The traditional role of the regulator was to license spectrum and then collect the fees – while the licence owners would use their spectrum or leave it empty. That’s not acceptable any more, regulators are starting to say. The days of buying spectrum and sitting on it are over. At Capacity Media’s Metro Connect conference in Amsterdam in September, the European Commission’s Kamila Kloc said shared spectrum is in the EU’s plans. At another event in Munich the week before, Matthias Kurth, the former head of the German regulator, said Germany wants to reserve 100MHz of spectrum in the 3,500MHz band to share among industrial companies. Other regulators have told operators they will lose licensed spectrum if they don’t use it. Some are thinking of not charging for millimetre wave spectrum – allowing it to be shared by all – until the bands start to fill up. Wholesale spectrum Kloc – deputy head of cabinet for EU vice-president Andrus Ansip, who runs the digital single market programme – hinted that she and her colleagues are even thinking of making provisions for wholesale carriers: licensing spectrum that could be offered to a wide variety of users. Spectrum licensing has been much of what regulators have done for a living for decades – but they’re recognising that allowing more use of spectrum, by more users, will benefit the industry and all of us. october/november 2018

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Capacity Magazine October / November 2018

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