Q3
2020 www.mobileeurope.co.uk @mobileeurope
Gamechanger CTO of the Year 2020
Trailblazer CTO of the Year 2020
Catalin Buliga
Micha Berger
Vodafone Romania
Telenet
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5G looks to hit new heights
Full-fibre deployments
The power of towercos
Using satellites for in-fill coverage and specialised vertical applications
They are picking up pace after lockdown but rollout and take-up challenges remain
Europe’s operators look to realise the value of their assets – the devil is in business model detail
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Contents CTO of theYear Awards
2020
22 Insight Report: Converged 14 infrastructure Editor’s choice 05 CTO of the Year 2020 Awards And the winners are…
06 Trailblazer CTO of the Year Interview Micha Berger, CTO at Telenet, explains to Annie Turner how to move from underdog to market leading propositions, twice.
10 Gamechanger CTO of the Year Interview Catalin Buliga, CTO at Vodafone Romania, talks to Nick Booth about a lifetime of ‘firsts’, always being on budget and the power of humans.
14 Trailblazer CTO of the Year Roundtable Nine of Europe’s leading CTOs who were shortlisted for CTO of the Year shared a lively and wide-ranging exchange of diverse views. Annie Turner reports.
22 Satellite: 5G hits new heights for coverage and enterprise Interest in satellite-based 5G services is reaching new heights. Governments are betting that satellite will finally fill in coverage gaps, while verticals are looking for connectivity services that address their specific needs, Nick Wood finds.
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25 A full-fibre cure for Europe? As full-fibre deployments recover from lockdown disruption, FTTH market fundamentals look healthy, but challenges remain for network roll-out and customer take-up says Michelle Donegan.
28 Europe’s operators look to maximise tower power
Nick Wood looks at how operators across Europe are pursuing tower spinoffs and network sharing deals with renewed vigour, as they grapple with the cost of deploying 5G, coverage in-fill and stiff competition.
Full Spectrum 32 Wireless World A round-up of the big stories beyond Europe in what has been another eventful quarter
34 Final say Caroline Gabriel of Rethink Research warns of the risks around the perhaps too rapidly inflating hopes for O-RAN.
Welcome Editor: Annie Turner anniet@mobileeurope.co.uk Contributing Editor: Sarah Wray sarah.wray@mobileeurope.co.uk Sub Editor: Lisa Hughes lisa.hughes@easynet.co.uk Design and Production: Alex Gold Account Director: Fidi Neophytou fidin@mobileeurope.co.uk Acting Marketing Manager: Marcin Piechowski marcinp@sjpbusinessmedia.com Publisher: Wayne Darroch wayned@sjpbusinessmedia.com +44 (0) 20 7933 8999 ISSN: 1350 7362 Free Subscriptions Mobile Europe and European Communications is a controlled circulation quarterly magazine available free to selected personnel at the publisher’s discretion. If you wish to apply for regular free copies please register online at: www.mobileeurope.co.uk/register Paid Subscriptions Readers who fall outside of the strict terms of control may purchase an annual subscription. 1 year UK subscription: £111 one year International subscription: £139 To purchase a subscription please call: +44 (0)1635 879361 Free subscriptions: subscriptions@mobileeurope.co.uk Paid subscriptions: mobileeurope@circdata.com Tel: +44 (0)1635 879 361 Printed By Buxton Press
The views expressed in Mobile Europe & European Communications are not necessarily those of the editor or the publisher. Mobile Europe & European Communications is published by SJP Business Media 2nd Floor, St Mary Abchurch House 123 Cannon Street London, EC4N 5AU
It was a strange summer for most of us, with unusual or scrapped holiday plans and many of us continuing to work from home. Nevertheless, the telecoms industry appears, in the main, to have risen to the challenge of the ‘new normal’, which has now overtaken ‘unprecedented’ as the most overused term. Covid-19 has put telcos of all stripes in perhaps the most positive light ever and underlined the critical, and often unappreciated, contribution telecoms makes to almost every aspect of our daily lives and national economies. Whether this results in more sympathetic regulation regarding burning issues like consolidation and reasonably priced spectrum in all markets remains to be seen. Every year, as Europe’s holiday season ends, this edition of our magazine focuses on the extraordinarily demanding – and evolving – role of the CTO and recognises two people for their outstanding achievement. This year it is an immense pleasure to have highly illuminating interviews with the winner of our Gamechanger CTO of the Year, Catalin Bulgari of Vodafone Romania and our Trailblazer CTO of the Year (page 10), Micha Berger from Belgium’s Telenet (page 6). You will find the very lively and wide-ranging roundtable with the nine shortlisted CTOs a good read on page 14. Not surprisingly, a central theme was how to build on telcos’ great achievements during lockdown, along with digital transformation, and if techco is the future of telco. Nick Wood looks at the rapidly evolving role of satellites for 5G and IoT (page 22) to fill in coverage gaps and for specific vertical solutions. He also looks at the rising power of towercos and the thorny, adjacent topic of network sharing – where the devil most certainly is in the detail and the model you choose (page 28). Michelle Donegan reports on that while fibre build-out paused in most countries during the worst days of the pandemic, it looks to be accelerating with a vengeance now, but some substantial hurdles remain (see page 25) to full fibre. Caroline Gabriel of Rethink Research indeed does give us all something to think about concerning O-RAN and the chances of its success in Final say on page 34, although she is more confident about the ultimate success of open RANs. Annie Turner anniet@mobileeurope.co.uk Editor Mobile Europe & European Communications
CTO of theYear Awards
2020
Catalin Bulgari of Vodafone Romania was chosen as our Gamechanger CTO of the Year, and our Trailblazer CTO of the Year is Micha Berger from Belgium’s Telenet. Our warm congratulations to both and to the nine CTOs and CT(I)Os who were shortlisted.
06 Trailblazer CTO of the Year Interview Micha Berger, CTO at Telenet explains to Annie Turner how to move from underdog to market leading propositions, twice.
10 Gamechanger CTO of the Year Interview
Sponsored by
Catalin Buliga, CTO at Vodafone Romania talks to Nick Booth about a lifetime of ‘firsts’, always being on budget and the power of humans.
14 Trailblazer CTO of the Year Roundtable Nine of Europe’s leading CTOs who were shortlisted for CTO of the Year shared a lively and wide-ranging exchange of diverse views. Annie Turner reports.
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CTO of Telenet:
How to move from underdog to market leader – twice
Micha Berger is our Trailblazer CTO of the Year 2020. He talks to Annie Turner about the vision behind his company’s ground-breaking success, his views of the market and where Telenet is going next.
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t is an immense achievement as the former underdog in Belgium (both in the fixed and mobile sphere) to have built one of the most advanced digital infrastructures in Europe in a few short years. This is especially true because, with the best will in the world, infrastructure cannot be built overnight. Micha Berger’s watch as CTO at Telenet Belgium began in July 2013. He comments, “We are very, very pleased that we invested so much [in fixed infrastructure]. because we are so far ahead of the competition. Our rivals woke up to the fact that they can only offer 100Mbps and are spending a lot of money trying to catch up with fibre networks, but that is impossible in a very short period of time. It will take them maybe another ten years to reach the quality and the capabilities we have.” He dismisses the idea that fibre is inherently superior to cable networks as “marketing” and says that customers should not care what the underpinning network is – whether FTTH, cable, xDSL, fixed wireless access or anything else – only how it performs. Berger has no doubt that investing heavily in Telenet’s DOCSIS hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) network was the right thing to do as the DOCSIS 3.1 infrastructure had a lot of useful life left in it. As Berger says, “We can get it to run at 2.5Gbps relatively easily, both ways, and that will take you a long way in marketing and sales with your customers and keeps our competitive advantage.” Naturally, he is already considering what happens when speeds beyond 2.5Gbps are needed: “That’s when we look at PON [passive optical network] technology and the new xGSPON [the X stands for ten, the G for gigabit and the S for symmetrical] standard. The next question is, ‘When do you need 10Gbps?’, just like I asked myself about 1Gbps six years ago. “What we invested in the past is paying off for us today, clearly. Now we need to see how in ten years’ time we keep our competitive edge.” Part of the answer to that question is to look at what new versions of DOCSIS will make possible, and when, in comparison to full fibre. He says, “If we cannot invest in technology to compete with fibre in some areas, we will also put fibre to the home where it makes sense to us. Our advantage is that we can play with the two media, based on the best return on investment, timing and need.” Success is a double-edged sword Berger states, “We are more innovative, and we have been quicker and very professional about our investments, but it is a double-edged sword as the competition is becoming much more aggressive, because they were slower and bet on the wrong technology.” The regulator has also stepped in after Orange Belgium called for a better deal on wholesale access to Telenet’s network. Berger states, “I’m not a politician so I can tell you what I think about the regulatory approach. We’ve invested money in the network and done what we were supposed to do from a responsible perspective to support Belgium’s future infrastructure. Then the regulator told us we must give access to others, because our competitive advantage is too big as a result of our investment and the quality of our network.” He points out that the data growth in fixed networks is terrific: “Especially during these Covid times, we have between 40 and 60% yearon-year growth downstream and 60 to 70% upstream. We think there is
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CTO of the Year
room to improve the pricing to get a fair return on investment and to be able to provide a proper network for the future of this country, and that’s what I feel is my responsibility.” He adds, “If I don’t have enough money to do it, then there’s a problem with this pricing mechanism –and that’s my personal fear.” We are Liberty Global family Liberty Global owns about 60% of Telenet – how important is it being part of that family? Berger says, “I’m very close to my colleagues in the other countries, such as Jeannie York who is the CTIO of Virgin Media [Liberty Global’s UK subsidiary], and the same with VodafoneZiggo in the Netherlands and other countries. We are very much aligned and share best practices for technologies between us.” Learning from successes within the group works at a larger scale, too. In 2015, Telenet acquired mobile operator BASE, which was a poor third to the mobile networks of Orange and Proximus. Berger explains, “We understood that the acquisition needed investment and a network upgrade,” but he has a firm belief that, “When you get to a certain size or a certain scale it makes sense to own a network, because then you can independently determine the pace of your growth and decide what your cost base will be.” He continues, “As you see, Virgin Mobile’s success with their mobile offerings means the appetite to buy a mobile operator becomes bigger and that’s exactly what happened to Telenet [with BASE], too. As an MVNO, we had over a million customers, running on Orange’s network. We bought BASE, because then the scale made a big difference for us,
and the same happened with Ziggo and Vodafone, which are very successful in the Netherlands.” Berger says, “To migrate our customers from the Orange network, which was high-performing, without causing any dissatisfaction on the service level, we invested around €250 million. There were fewer than 2,800 [base station] sites and we aggressively upgraded the network within 18 months, adding more capacity based on the spectrum licences we held, and, without bragging too much, we immediately started catching up with the competition to become a stronger and more powerful mobile network in Belgium.” He acknowledges, “We don’t have the most sites in Belgium, as it is very expensive to build and maintain sites here, but we added almost 800 and are competitive in the drive-test measurements, with customers able to reach average download speeds of between 70 to 90Mbps – the highest of any operator in Belgium.” Once again, success comes with a price, though, as rivals Orange and Proximus have formed a joint venture to build and share network to cut costs, the better to compete against BASE. Berger comments, “It is painful and, of course, we can compete from a technical perspective, but we also have to stay competitive from a cost point of view.” Until a few weeks ago Berger was also running Virgin’s Mobile ‘MVNO-light’ in the UK, which ran on EE’s network and relied on many of EE’s systems. However, the company was in the process of building its own core network before the Virgin Media and O2UK merger was announced and will migrate to the O2 network once the merger is completed, which is expected to be later this year.
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CTO of the Year
IT challenges Aside from the big changes that are afoot for Liberty Global in the UK, Berger has also relinquished his UK responsibilities, “because in my Telenet job I have a lot of challenges in the IT space,” he says. He admits, “It is in my character and I am very much aware of it, that I like big projects. I am driven to get projects out there, to build as fast as we can and finish them on time to meet the business’ needs. With infrastructure, the scope and targets are clear, but IT is a bit of a different story, with a different kind of complexity. There are proprietary solutions all over the place, and all intertwined with the business. You don’t have a lot of standards, which makes it much more complicated.” However, Berger has an IT background from long before he moved into network engineering and he takes the same approach to both. He elaborates, “I am very determined about roll-out and meeting timelines… My fixed and mobile team is fully consolidated. I don’t have fixed engineering and mobile engineering, I have only access engineering. In the IT space I have an application organisation that does all the software development for the company, whether that’s on the network or IT side.” He continues, “It is not easy to do an IT transformation and sometimes you have to decide how far to go regarding quality versus what benefits the business gains, and that can be a very difficult decision. We are very successful regarding how long the transformation took to start, even though we had some delays.” After a few years’ preparation, development, migration and testing, Telenet has launched its new IT platform with Netcracker and migrated all its mobile customers onto the new platform, and they will be followed next year by the operator’s fixed customers. Berger says, “That’s a big part of my focus for at least the next two years – to complete this migration and to have a full new IT stack, ready for the future of this company.”
The future of OSS and BSS Regarding that IT stack, he says, “It is important to keep the different layers separate. The OSS will get closer to the network for activating services and the like. The BSS [will] become like a product catalogue skeleton that runs some business process activities and billing. The clever coding we used to put in the BSS will go up into what we call the CSS or customer support service layer, and above that we will have a digital support layer.” The layers might need to be separate, but in Berger’s opinion, “It is essential there are links between them through very flexible [industry-standard] APIs. This means [that] when you want develop new capabilities on the platform, you don’t have to start untangling code or writing it.” On a similar theme, he says, “The holy grail for us as a service provider is to understand how to link loads of data [that] we get from the network and elsewhere, such as the access network, the network within the home, from devices and about service experience that we get from customers. We want to link it all back onto the top, onto the CSS layer.” One area he believes needs to be developed is customers’ experience of the network within their homes, where many struggle with Wi-Fi. He says, “We need to help the customer manage in-home connectivity and take that data, study it, then translate it into processes that can support our customers in a delightful way.” Making the case for 5G Berger thinks the current crop of 5G use cases is relatively boring and that we need better business cases to justify investment in 5G. He comments, “Much as I love to invest in infrastructure, when I asked for money to invest in 5G our board asked me to justify it with the business
Micha Berger (L) with Telenet’s CEO, John Porter, at the launch of its Gigabit network in September 2019
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CTO of the Year
case. They say, ‘If we use 5G like we 4G, we failed, because we won’t to be able to charge more for it and if you cannot charge more it’s no good business-wise’. I agree; it will boomerang back at us somewhere down the road when we haven’t enough money to invest later on and our customers are dissatisfied.” On the other hand, the fear is that competitors will simply put it out there and give it away for free. “We have to find killer use cases that the customers will benefit from and that will benefit us so we can continue to invest,” Berger notes. He thinks those use cases will be both for consumers and enterprises. He thinks low latency and, to a lesser extent, higher speeds will prove to be the magic ingredient that will bring “a lot of new ideas from smart people who build new products based on that capability that we don’t have today. We take it for granted and don’t appreciate that [mobile] networks are slow. When they become super-fast, new horizons will open up,” Berger predicts.
Berger wants to go further and improve service in the home
The Trailblazer CTO of the Year Award 2020 We define Trailblazer as a CTO or CTIO with bold ideas for future telcos. This is a creative leader, pioneering a completely different technology or strategy. The judges unanimously chose Micha Berger, CTO, Telenet Belgium for having the vision, leadership and dedication to build out what is one the most advanced digital infrastructures – mobile and fixed – in Europe. The operator has delivered gigabit coverage to more than 3 million homes already and in the time of Covid, we have seen how fast, reliable connectivity impacts individuals, companies and the wider economy and public services. excellent Net Promoter Score and staying on budget.
Telenet’s flagship store in Antwerp
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CTO Vodafone Romania: A pioneer with a lifetime of ‘firsts’ – and always on budget
Comms services have transformed businesses and society, and could be our best hope of beating the Covid-19 pandemic, says our Gamechanger CTO of the Year, Catalin Buliga at Vodafone Romania. He talked to Nick Booth.
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n its 23-year history Vodafone Romania has pioneered everything, from GPRS in 2001 to 5G in 2019, taking in call centres, SMS, 3G, 4G and IoT, which is why it is recognised as being at Europe’s leading edge for communications. In the last five years, as the pace of change accelerated furiously, Chief Technical Operator Catalin Buliga has steered Vodafone Romania through the challenges of constant re-invention. The operator has consistently broken new ground, with Buliga leading from the front, with Covid-19 proving a dramatic if unwitting catalyst to change. Constant change is exciting, but challenging and exhausting. Despite this, Buliga says that in his 31-year career in this unpredictable business, he’s never gone over budget. In his opinion, Buliga says that a human will always outshine machines if you “configure them” right. He should know: legend has it he carried out two separate CTO roles in two different countries for two years. People power Warming to his theme, Buliga explains that Vodafone Romania has been one the most advanced telcos in Europe, because of its people. “Business needs to understand the technology area and technology needs to know what the business needs,” he says. “I’m lucky to have understanding business partners who know the technology and its architecture.” He sees being a people manager, rather than just focusing on technology, as the way to bring about the best returns. When Buliga briefs his technology team about a new project, it’s the phrase, “Nobody has done this before” that really motivates them. He stresses that in this situation you have to communicate clear objectives, so that everyone can see the value of the project, and insists invention for its own sake will never work. He says, “If you start without a clear picture you will get a fuzzy outcome.” That initial burst of excitement is not enough to sustain the workforce though: along the journey there will be seemingly insurmountable obstacles, he observes. This is where it’s vital to keeping people believing in the cause. “In some projects we had no alternative; we had to find a solution as the business depended on it,” he says, adding that not all projects are “death or glory” and sometimes it’s enough to be first to discover a new method and enjoy first-mover benefits before the competition catches up. AI and big data surprises Buliga acknowledges that quite often the technology evolves and takes him on an unexpected path. A case in point is Vodafone Romania’s recent developments with AI and big data, which have been part of the operator’s strategy for six years. Experience gained so far will be invaluable as the operator comes to terms with its latest initiative – edge computing. The company has already used AI to fine-tune existing processes with machine learning, speech to text conversion, virtual agent-bots, automatic decisions, fraud prevention technologies, text analytics and natural language processing. AI helps staff to make decisions, and run faster and more accurate root cause analyses and spots incidents earlier than previous approaches. Vodafone Romania’s marketing people work with recommendation engines to help match the right offer to each customer’s needs, so a
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which predicts a series of linear, sequential returns on your investments of time and effort. That doesn’t happen with robots, which confound expectations by being volatile and unpredictable. Like prima donnas, they can produce outstanding results, but patience is needed.” His teams have worked long and hard on specifications and architecture. With a combination of agility and sensitivity, they have patiently fine-tuning the machinery when they can, while being ready to make dramatic moves when the challenges of the journey dictate. Buliga’s second discovery about AI is that it needs to be completely stacked with digital technology from input to output, front-end channels to backend. He found that if you leave all the outdated obsolete equipment in place for too long the operation to remove it can be terribly painful. He notes, “Few patients recover quickly from a drastic legacy removal. Tinkering with the backbone of the network is always fraught with danger and if the IT stack were a human patient few surgeons would relish operating.” AI projects cannot really work unless you get the foundations right from the start. “It is extremely important to have a continuous focus on replacing legacy,” says Buliga. “Yes, there were some surprises. We had to re-think several times until the performance and outcome were good enough to continue.” This is part and parcel of any technological journey he reflects.
sale is less aggressive and more consensual – a perhaps surprising but welcome outcome from automation. “Hyper-personalisation has been AI’s best gift so far, as it has values in costs and customer satisfaction,” says Buliga. For him, AI exemplifies the difference between theory and practice; he points out that there is a contrast between the dry, digital world of information and the complex, obsolete environment of real life. He says he has learned two unexpected lessons about AI. Unexpected lessons He explains, “Firstly, don’t expect a text book product lifecycle. In theory any technology should observe the rules of the classic waterfall model,
Catalysts for change The coronavirus pandemic has also proved to be a catalyst for new approaches to technology. “The pandemic made us innovate and do things differently,” says Buliga. “Even though we changed things fast, it worked because the goal was universal, the logic was sound and the benefit was clear.” Can digital transformation create new business processes or is it case of re-coding the old ones? “Where the business processes are the founding principles of the organisation you would be mad to tinker with them,” says Buliga. Hence digitalising old processes that need to stay is an obvious step. His approach is, “Make sure that you remove those incidences where human interaction is a distraction, cut the superfluous costs and give customers a better experience.” Buliga adds, “You can’t change GDPR or compliance, and you can’t mess around with anything that’s regulatory, security or health and safety.” Equally, there are areas where technology isn’t just in the driving seat, it’s the steering column, the chassis and the wheels, and the rest of the body has to fit around it. Cybersecurity is a perfect example in Buliga’s view. “Digital transformation can create processes and stimulate new thinking,” he says, “and it does – a lot.” When his team applied the agile management technique of ‘continuous change’ for IT, business and network deployment it had a tremendous, positive impact. It cut out pointless processes and handovers between business and technology. “That liberated people’s thoughts and actions, and the internal barriers came down,” says Buliga. “We worked faster and more inventively.” Passion for technology How has Buliga’s job changed most drastically over his long career? He thinks technology has evolved much faster in the last couple of years than in previous decades. “You’re always learning about new technologies and re-learning the old ones. You have to if you want to keep competitive,” he says. “That’s been major change in my job
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recently. You can’t cope with this pace of change unless you’re passionate about technology.” Romania certainly has a very competitive telco environment, with one of the best quality mobile and fixed comms networks in Europe. “A new technology goes live as soon as it becomes available and the demand is high. More people are in love with technology, but nobody can know it all.” The other big change is the number of transformations needed to stay competitive. Five years ago one major technology transformation a year – either IT or Network – was considered enough. Now there are several major transformations per year, in IT, networks and business. “Five years ago I would have said this was impossible,” says Buliga. “The only constant is my passion for technology and how it can change people’s lives. That has always been my motivation and my team’s.” Are there any aspects of telecoms evolution that have surprised him? “I wasn’t surprised by the evolution, but the speed of it,” he replies. “The cycle is shorter and this calls for agility, adaptability and speed of execution.” Credit where due Buliga wishes more people recognised the impact the communications industry has had in a time of crisis. He says, “Everyone can now see how crucial the comms industry is to people and countries. The pandemic has shown us how it links communities, and drives business and stimulates our collective economies.” It’s therefore puzzling and frustrating for him and his peers that authorities and regulators don’t treat mobile operators as providers of critical national infrastructure. “Each comms service provider has to invest significantly at its own expense to build a national resource – the country’s physical comms infrastructure with fibre, ducts and physical sites. We could be spending our money more effectively if we could install the latest technologies and create the digital communication services of the future,” Buliga says. Spectrum, a national asset, has also become increasingly expensive for operators. “If we commit all our money to building the physical infrastructure, renting the spectrum and other parts of the existing physical infrastructure, who is going to do the next bit? “Who will invest in the new tech and services that are the real drivers for economic growth and a digital society? When countries build highways and roads the plans should include fibre ducts alongside. It’s not that far into the future [when] everyone will need a data highway to support connected cars and digital transport corridors.” It will be impossible to do this retrospectively, Buliga warns. “I still hope that our industry will get the necessary support and authorities will realise that economic growth won’t come from spectrum fees and infrastructure rent charges, but from technology’s contribution to the digital society.”
The first site in Europe with hydrogen as an alternative power source to diesel generators
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
Sticking to budget pays dividends Buliga’s staying within budget for 31 years might divide opinion among CTOs. Given the nature of his job – constantly moving into new areas and never knowing what to expect – this is an amazing achievement. Some CTOs might wonder how he does it. Others might ask why he does it. “Staying within any CapEx or OpEx budget is a mindset,” he says, “whether you’re a CTO, engineer or any other expert. It takes time to share this mindset with the team, but eventually it becomes habitual and it is well worth the effort.
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Buliga says you are always learning about new technologies and re-learning old ones
Romanian winters don’t stop the field team
“When you already have the funding to cover a job, but the engineers are still trying to save money, then you know the effort has paid off. Similarly, when your team automatically thinks of ways of creating efficiencies to fund a great new idea they’ve had that wasn’t budgeted for, that is very gratifying. This is the spirit that helps us to pioneer unknown territory. “I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to predict costs when nobody has done it before,” he adds. “As the journey of each project unfolds, the costs become increasingly predictable and you get early indications whether the initial cost model was totally impractical. In those cases, you can stop, and redo the business case and associated funding approval.”
Telco to techco Has the job been tough at times? “I would say challenging. The hardest time was when I was CTO for two countries at once. It was not a regional or group role, it was two CTO jobs at the same time. Every task was duplicated, but there were still only 24 hours in the day. I was jumping on the plane early morning to be in one country for nine, then flying back at midnight to be in the other at nine,’ says Buliga. “For almost two years I pushed myself to extreme limits of effort for an operating model experiment which was not the best idea.” What really excites Buliga about telecoms and his role at the moment? “I am excited about the fact that the job is no more just about being a telco – we’re a ‘techco’. At Vodafone we have gone beyond providing connectivity services to technology and digital systems that create new value chains for us and for our customers. We are writing our own software code and adopting technologies way beyond the bounds of connectivity,” he says. “This is a huge and exciting transformation and it changes the way we work and think. It changes our internal culture and spirit, and it is a highly motivating factor. Technology is now in the driving seat for us.”
The Gamechanger CTO of the Year Award 2020 We define Gamechanger as being someone who has the dedication and determination to deliver on time and on budget, and make a big impact on the culture of the company itself, as well customers and partners. The judges chose Catalin Buliga, CTO of Vodafone Romania, for innovative initiatives on so many fronts, from IoT to sustainability, to inclusivity, transformation initiatives and more – and all while maintaining an excellent Net Promoter Score and staying on budget.
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CTO of theYear Awards
2020
CTOs debate Covid, the value of networks and life beyond connectivity In summer, we held a virtual roundtable with the nine CTOs and CTIOs from operators shortlisted for our CTO of the Year Awards 2020. The discussion was lively, illuminating and wide ranging, with participants from very different markets. Annie Turner provides a flavour of the discussion.
Sponsored by
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ounir Ladki, Co-founder, President and CTO of MYCOM OSI, which has sponsored the CTO of the Year Awards for five years, set the scene by describing how the pandemic has underlined the crucial role of communications, and most especially the leadership shown by the CTOs and CTIOs. The communications infrastructure they are responsible for certainly met the many challenges thrown up by Covid, supporting individuals, families, communities, businesses, the public sector and national economies during lockdown. Now, as we embrace the new normal, with many of us remaining at home, what will the lasting implications be for telcos, how can they build on their impressive achievements in the crisis and what will the future telco look like? The value of infrastructure For operators who have been so frequently and harshly criticised over the last decade for not being more like over-the-top companies and for sticking with their ‘old-fashioned’ 99.999 mentality, Covid was an extraordinary vindication. Catalin Buliga, CTO at Vodafone Romania, said, “Suddenly consumers were at home relying on our network’s resilience and [the authorities] saw that connection to the home and the quality of broadband is not just nice to have. The government needed connectivity for a new
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hospital – we did it in eight hours. Suddenly we had great collaboration with all the authorities, because they treated us as critical infrastructure.” The theme of being a trusted party in the pandemic was common to all the attendees, as individuals, businesses and government looked to them for support. Thomas van Briel, SVP Architecture & Strategy, Deutsche Telekom, observed, “Openness and the perception of the public is so vital. It was a great opportunity in Germany for us to build the tracing app on the government’s behalf – it was downloaded 6 million times in two days. I think that changed the perception of our role as a company in society.” Van Briel thinks this perception – that operators are vital to society – will help them recruit people with scarce skills, who previously might have been interested in working for digital native employers. Barriers to progress Elmar Grasser, CTIO of Sunrise Communications, pointed out that despite widespread recognition of the vital importance of networks, the variety in the coverage and quality of digital infrastructure across Europe is “quite astonishing”. He acknowledged that there are various reasons for this situation, but added, it is “still not good enough”. He hoped that there will be more political support for building infrastructure and that authorities will incentivise investment. In fact, since the roundtable took place, a number of countries, as well as the European Union, have announced such incentives as part of their recovery plans. For example, at the time of writing, the French gov-
CTO of the Year Roundtable 15
The shortlist for our CTO of the Year Awards 2020 and participants in the roundtable Radoslav Zlatkov, CTO, Vivacom Bulgaria Nathalie Vafiadis, CTO, BT Consumer Alexander Stock, CTO, A1 Austria Fotis Karonis, CTO, BT Enterprise, a former CTO of the Year Elmar Grasser, CTIO, Sunrise Communications, one of last year’s winners Walter Goldenits, CTO, Deutsche Telekom, represented by his colleague, Thomas van Briel, SVP Architecture & Strategy Emmanuel Chautard, CTO, Orange Romania Catalin Buliga, CTO, Vodafone Romania Micha Berger, CTO, Telenet (Belgium) Also taking part were: Annie Turner, Editor, Mobile Europe & European Communications, one of the judges Bengt Nordström, Managing Director at Northstream, part of Accenture and one of the judges Kester Mann, Director, Consumer and Connectivity at CCS Insight and one of the judges Mounir Ladki, Co-founder, President and CTO of MYCOM OSI, sponsor and judge Special mention Caroline Gabriel, Research Director at Rethink Technology Research, could not join us, but was one of the judges ernment had announced it is to spend €240 billion on fibre broadband infrastructure – a quarter of its €100 billion relief budget. Countries like Spain, Romania and Bulgaria, which had regulatory environments that encouraged fibre build-out, are in the top ten European countries for fibre penetration (see graph on page XX), although that takes nothing away from their achievement, nor does it ignore the importance of cable networks in some countries. Radoslav Zlatkov CTO at Vivacom in Bulgaria, said, “We have twothirds of the households passed with fixed broadband, although we have [the] lowest ARPU probably in Europe. We have financial [company] owners that are focused on the efficiency of their investments, and both in fixed and mobile international companies and organisations choose us [because of] our quality of service.” He continued, “We are starting [to deploy] 10Gbps in the fixed network. We are not favoured by the regulators. We have one of the strictest EMF levels – let’s say top five anyway – in Europe and it takes
at least one and a half years to get permission for a site, so a lengthy process. Still we [thrive] in this situation. Why? Because we invested in quality, quality, quality. Let me give you another figure. From a customer entering the shop to having a fixed broadband service it takes 48 hours in 95% of cases.” Radoslav Zlatkov, CTO at Vivacom in Bulgaria, said, “In the last years our focus has been on fixed and mobile broadband. With continued investments we achieved great result. Today we have more than twothirds of the households in the country are passed by fixed broadband. Our focus has always been both on quality and efficiency. We might be the country with one of the lowest ARPUs in Europe, however, we do not make any compromise on the quality. This is why both in fixed and mobile services, international companies and organisations choose us as their preferred partner.” He continued, “We are starting [to deploy] 10Gbps in our fixed network. Bulgaria has one of the strictest EMF levels. I would say we are in the top five in Europe and it takes at least one and a half years to get permission for constructing a site. It is a lengthy process. However, we strive to work and have constant dialogue with the Bulgarian regulatory body [in order] to be able to improve the conditions. Even if those conditions are not always in our favour, we still [thrive] in this situation. Why? Because we invest in quality, quality, quality. Let me give you another figure. From a customer entering the shop to having a fixed broadband service in its home or office it takes 48 hours in 85% of cases.” Quality is certainly rising rapidly up the agenda for everyone. Alexander Stock, CTO of A1 Austria, put it like this: “On the business and the residential side, the perception of quality has changed throughout Covid. Before when people were at home, if the service was interrupted or they saw a few pixels when they were watching Netflix, it was fine. Now people work from home and are bound to video calls. If service is interrupted, they call us. We want to return to people paying for quality.” Better at home As well as guaranteed quality, consumers and enterprise customers alike are wanting additional services from telcos and these include security, especially for home workers. In addition, as Micha Berger, CTO, Telenet, commented, “We always talk about fixed access networks being delivered to a specific location, but it is clear we need to deliver right up to the device in the home… because our service is only as good as the connectivity within the house. As an industry, we have an opportunity to step in and be better at this.” Nathalie Vafiadis, CTO, BT Consumer, highlighted another opportunity: “We have a wealth of data about what is inside people’s homes and pockets, which gives us a real window into people’s hearts and minds. From that data we can build new use cases and new ways to monetize it – use what we know and develop that further. I think people are looking to be led on some of those things.” Businesses need solutions Vodafone Romania’s Buliga commented, “One of the best days of my career was during the pandemic when the CEO of a big company sent us an email that I will keep forever – we circulated it round our company. He thanked us for helping him move his entire business to work remotely in a few days, which he never thought possible… He needed a solution and software as a service, because everything was bare metal in his company.”
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
16 CTO of the Year Roundtable
Vodafone Romania had many of the elements already, because it was providing them to other business customers, but, he explained, “Some of them we tweaked or invented in that week.” He takes issue with operators referring to themselves as telcos. In his view, “We are more and more technology companies. We need to accept this and transmit the message. “We have provided solutions on top of connectivity for some time: digital is here and we play a big role in it. This is our strategy and what we do daily. We treat ourselves that way and everything we do is as a technology company. We in-source development, write software, bear the cost of development and design solutions – everything is on top of connectivity… We differentiate ourselves through what we put on top – the platform services we entered it into.” Berger of Telenet, said, “It’s not [that] we lack faith in getting growth out of our networks. Otherwise we would not invest in them or believe in the new features. The question is the proportion between the investment and growth. Let’s not forget that the investments are not only in the network, but transformation costs a lot of money and in this next wave we’re going to see heavier investment in digitisation. To digitalise properly, to act and be agile and deliver quickly at front end, you need a very, very structured system at the backend, which is where we all carry a lot of legacy, which is hindering us.” Not everyone supports this analysis, though. A1 Austria’s Stock said, “I agree that regulation hinders us a lot in many aspects, but I do not agree with the argument of the legacy. I think what hinders us there is our continuous efforts to connect new features with old: if I leave the old [system] where it is and build new features with state-of-the-art technology, then those investments are nothing like they were in the past when we typically needed a three-digit million euro sum for a business transformation.” He continued, “We have made one major mistake in the last few decades and that is on the technological side – we have too much focus on transformation. Those projects typically take five to seven years – so in seven years’ time maybe you’ll get what you need today. We all know about Kubernetes, or real-time deployments and so on, but you don’t need them in your backend – you need to be quick at the front end and for the customer. This is where [digitalisation] needs to be applied and it’s the same when it comes to cloud.” Transformation and differentiation There were also considerable differences in approach on how to address differentiation. Zlatkov of Vivacom, said, “We should use the situation with the Covid to show how we could help them [but] the bottleneck is that to be successful we must be successful in all the different domains… We need several successful cases in different verticals to be showcases.” Emmanuel Chautard, CTO at Orange Romania, agreed that the enterprise market is work in progress: “Technology is here to help consumers improve their day to day experiences, but also help businesses develop enhanced features for their products and higher efficiency for their work and processes. To bring extra value to the business customers we are always searching for new ways. When it comes to 5G or the Internet of Things, we are finding out how best to do it, for instance, with external parties or directly with customers or with vendors. We are using all possible means to find the right approach and help our customers be at the fore-front of innovation,
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
Nathalie Vafiadis, CTO, BT Consumer
Alexander Stock, CTO, A1 Austria
Micha Berger, CTO, Telenet (Belgium)
Walter Goldenits, CTO, Deutsche Telekom
CTO of the Year Roundtable 17
create competitive edge and take the full benefits from the potential of the best telecommunications technologies.” “The important component is to treat it as a two-sided business model with a developer community on board and where we [operators] gain reach beyond our own footprints, so we grow together,” said van Briel of Deutsche Telekom, adding, “Finding common ground in the industry on this issue is a big challenge. I think it’s crucial to make sure we get a significant share of wallet.” He adds, “Just taking the edge, which is only part of the opportunity, we don’t know yet how big the business is, but we have some indication from first cases. For example, in the US we have wholesale messaging services that, for instance, can be used by Uber with a guaranteed latency SMS services which the company requires to let customers know exactly when and where the car has arrived and that kind of thing.” This control of the network could be leveraged in many ways. Van Briel continued, “We can maybe differentiate ourselves with customers’ experience of cloud game services compared to an OTT gaming company… For us it’s really not just about the location and the network, but the ability to control connectivity and manage latency; to control things that can go wrong on the move for the mobile applications.” The power of the network Fotis Karonis, CTO of BT Enterprise, also commented, “We haven’t tapped into every power of our network… From the technology angle in
the network, we need repeatable capabilities that serve many industries – that’s the most efficient approach. “We can enter into new territories of digital transformation, because as the 5G ecosystem and standards evolve, yes, we can get network slicing, but also our device ecosystem has evolved into different areas in IoT, in wearables, etc. We should orchestrate these types of services to gain territory from system integrators and people like the over-the-top players that want to take our market. We should not think that our industry is unmovable. It is a dynamic industry. We need to grow in territory, we need to grow in services.” A1 Austria’s Stock said, “This is where we are going to differentiate ourselves. Some of us going one direction, some the other… Some industries will want to do it themselves, others will want to outsource, and there’s potential for us where it’s right for us. We need to be careful not to diversify too much, because I think we cannot come up as experts in all brackets, but we could play a major role in selective ones.” Vafiadis of BT Consumer added, “It’s a combination of the things that [we have] mentioned. If you don’t digitalise, if you don’t become agile, if you don’t invest in networks, if you don’t think about how you can use the different networks that are available or converge, you’re going to get left behind. We have to move on and these are our only options – it’s a multi-pronged, multi-faceted kind of strategy that is all encompassing, to be successful.”
Radoslav Zlatkov, CTO, Vivacom Bulgaria
Fotis Karonis, CTO, BT Enterprise
Emmanuel Chautard, CTO, Orange Romania
Elmar Grasser, CTIO, Sunrise Communications
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
18 Sponsored Interview: MYCOM OSI
5 reasons why the Assurance Cloud is critical to monetizing the 5G experience Andrew Baldock, Marketing Director, MYCOM OSI
E
nhanced, differentiated Quality of Service (QoS) is not simply an advantage of 5G over predecessor access technologies; It is key to unlocking significant new revenue streams for CSPs as they transform into Digital Service Providers (DSPs). According to TM Forum, 72% of 5G revenue growth will be dependent on CSPs’ OSS/BSS transformation, with CSPs’ migration into new business models (driven by new use cases such as connected cars, VR/ AR and SD-WAN) requiring on-demand, dynamic, zero-touch service on-boarding and operation. This includes assurance for carrier-grade service quality.
1. Removing barriers to business agility Legacy assurance systems take weeks or even months of time and effort to on-board new services. This is a major barrier to achieving business agility. So, CSPs need to not only reimagine the services they deliver, they also need to re-architect how they assure these services if they are to have a chance of monetizing 5G. Compared to traditional assurance systems, cloud-native systems reduce deployment time and effort by 75%, through automation and infrastructure independence. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) service assurance completely removes the need to manage infrastructure and platforms, and can be deployed, ready to ingest data, in under one hour. Aside from these clear deployment benefits, SaaS service assurance offers four operational advantages. 2. Operate at digital speed From zero-touch assurance of new services to closed loop automation of hybrid network management and NFV/SDN telco cloud
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
waterfall to continuous deployment. Continuous innovation for service assurance is critical to assuring new features, content and solutions, and zero-touch on-boarding, and is native to the SaaS model. 5. Unlock edge use cases Public cloud is essential for AI at scale and massive big data analytics, while private edge cloud delivers on Ultra-Low Latency use cases such as driverless cars. Service assurance must be cloud native and micro-services based so it can run in the public cloud, and be deployed on-demand, automatically, at the edge for latency-critical use-cases.
assurance, the key to delivering differentiated services and monetizing 5G lies in AI-driven automation and predictive operations. It not only saves on otherwise spiralling IT costs, it also unlocks agility and innovation. With automated service assurance, DSPs can bring new services to market and monetize them quicker, operating at digital speed. 3. Embrace open ecosystems Embracing open ecosystems enables rapid innovation with reduced costs through collaborative open source, open APIs and open standards. Myriad open source Initiatives such as the TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA) program are fundamental to the transformation from CSP to DSP. 4. Continuously innovate To enable DSPs to compete and win against web-scale competitors, service assurance must keep pace with agile innovation, moving from
The Assurance Cloud™ keeps the CSP in control SaaS service assurance, if packaged correctly, delivers these advantages alongside predictable, lower TCO compared to traditional on-premise deployments. Efficiencies of scale are passed on to the customer, within a commercial framework that allows for seamless scaling, ensuring that CSPs only pay for what they need. MYCOM OSI, the Assurance Cloud Company™ and leading independent provider of Assurance, Automation and Analytics solutions to the world’s largest Communications Service Providers (CSPs), is playing a key role in enabling the transformation of Tier-1 CSPs globally. These include Three UK (the world’s first carrier-grade telco cloud), Globe Telecom, Vodafone, Verizon, Telefonica, STC and Deutsche Telecom. www.mycom-osi.com
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Converging Infrastructure
Insight report
22
Satellite: 5G hits new heights for coverage and enterprise Interest in satellite-based 5G services is reaching new heights. Governments are betting that satellite will finally fill in coverage gaps, while verticals are looking for connectivity services that address their specific needs, Nick Wood finds.
25
A full-fibre cure for Europe? As full-fibre deployments recover from lockdown disruption, FTTH market fundamentals look healthy, but challenges remain for network roll-out and customer take-up says Michelle Donegan.
28
Europe’s operators look to maximise tower power Nick Wood looks at how operators across Europe are pursuing tower spinoffs and network sharing deals with renewed vigour, as they grapple with the cost of deploying 5G, coverage in-fill and stiff competition.
22 Insight ???????Report: Converging Infrastructure
Satellite: 5G hits new heights for coverage and enterprise Interest in satellite-based 5G services is reaching new heights. Governments are betting that satellite will finally fill in coverage gaps, while verticals are looking for connectivity services that address their specific needs, writes Nick Wood.
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
Insight Report: Converging Infrastructure 23
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eanwhile on the supply side, new non-terrestrial network (NTN) technology, converging standards, and the falling cost of constructing and deploying satellites have given the industry a renewed sense of optimism about the future. “In 5G we see many opportunities coming together, as long as we’re targeting the right use cases and the right customer groups,” said Nick Appleyard, Head of Space Solutions at the European Space Agency (ESA), at an online press conference in July. During this virtual event, ESA issued a call for proposals for satellite 5G services aimed at the transport and logistics sectors. Launched in partnership with the UK government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the UK Space Agency, the programme has pledged to fund up to 50% of successful applicants’ total project costs. The deadline for applications is 15 December. Top priority Space and 5G convergence is a “top priority” for ESA between 2020 and 2022, said Magali Vaissiere, ESA’s Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications. With that in mind, ESA has stated there is no upper limit for the funding. The partnership is looking for more than just fancy ideas though. To be in with a chance of being funded, applicants need to have implemented at least one pilot project. They also need to have secured commitments from user communities, and to have partnered with a service provider and infrastructure providers – both satellite and terrestrial. Vaissiere stressed that ESA and its partners are on the lookout for “commercially-sustainable applications and services”. This announcement came at a time when the satellite industry expects to see $487 billion worth of cumulative satellite orders and launches over the next 10 years, according to Northern Sky Research (NSR). Government and the military will account for the bulk of the revenue over the next decade – worth some $387 billion – but the analyst firm sees overall demand expanding due to innovation and technology development. Indeed, it expects the high-altitude platforms (HAPs) segment, which includes atmos-
pheric satellites like Googles innovative Loon technology, to generate $4 billion in cumulative revenue by 2029, driven by telcos’ desire to cost-effectively eradicate notspots and reach unserved consumers. NSR also expects satellite IoT/M2M to become an $11.6 billion market over the coming decade. Standard bearer One particular spark that lit the blue touchpaper under the satellite 5G rocket was 3GPP’s inclusion of non-terrestrial networks for 5G services in Release 17 (Rel-17). Multiple strands of NTN work are underway at the standards body, each at various stages of completion. And while the Covid-19 pandemic
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We’re excited about 5G, because it brings our industries so much closer. It allows us to build our ecosystem and develop uses cases for 5G over satellite together with the mobile network operators
has forced 3GPP to delay the freeze of Rel-17 by three months, moving it back to September 2021, it hasn’t stopped the satellite industry from pushing on with plans to capitalise on this new opportunity. “We’re inside the tent now,” says Gerry Collins, director of networks product management at Intelsat. For too long the satellite and cellular worlds have been running on parallel tracks, with very little crossover, he explains, but that will change as Rel-17 expands the role that companies like Intelsat can play in 5G. “We’re excited about 5G, because it brings our industries so much closer. It allows us to build our ecosystem and develop uses cases for 5G over satellite together with the mobile
network operators,” Collins says. “It’s an incredible opportunity,” agrees Jaume Sanpera, CEO of Sateliot, a Spanish start-up that plans to offer global NB-IoT connectivity directly to terminals via a fleet of low-Earth orbit (LEO) 5G satellites. Sateliot is due to put its first satellite into orbit in November and aims to have 16 to 20 up and running by 2022. “We have already signed our first operator partners,” says Sanpera, without disclosing any names. “We have had a couple of very large signings covering more than 50 countries.” Acting globally Thanks to 3GPP, the gates to 5G are well and truly open for satellite players. To pass through, they need a sales channel and this is where terrestrial mobile operators stand to benefit. “LEO constellations have a huge advantage, which is global coverage, but at the same time it could be a nightmare, because global coverage means global sales and opening in a new country from scratch always costs much more than you ever think,” says Sateliot’s Sanpera. Instead the company is going down the wholesale roaming route, partnering with mobile operators that have already done the heavy lifting that comes with setting up a global enterprise sales organisation. Sateliot is developing its own 5G core network for its NB-IoT satellite constellation, enabling it to provide roaming services to mobile operators. “We are working with and through the mobile operators. They will be our distributors,” Sanpera says. Sateliot isn’t the only newcomer going down the partnership route. “We don’t have the retail capability and we don’t plan to have it. We will get to market through our partners,” says Abel Avellan, CEO of AST & Science. The US-based company has developed a LEO satellite that can provide 4G and 5G broadband connectivity direct to unmodified smartphones. Its first satellite is already in orbit and it has already disclosed an impressive range of partners, including Vodafone, Samsung, American Tower and Japanese e-commerce giant turned mobile operator Rakuten. Avellan envisions a customer who, when they lose coverage, receives a text from their mobile operator offering to reconnect them – for a fee, of course – through AST & Science’s satellite network, which will carry the retail brand SpaceMobile. Alternatively, customers could be given the option to add SpaceMobile as a bolt-on
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24 Insight Report: Converging Infrastructure
to their mobile subscription. Either way, the job of pitching SpaceMobile to the end user will be down to the mobile operator. Remote opportunity There is nothing new about using satellites to extend terrestrial coverage to unserved locations, but changing economics means the barriers to satellite 5G adoption are coming down. New, cheaper satellites are lighter and equipped with some of the same components commonly found in terrestrial network infrastructure. In addition, the likes of SpaceX, with its reusable rockets, has brought launch costs down and increased competition in the launch market. All of this adds up to broaden satellite’s appeal and help it reach new customers. For a ‘traditional’ player like Intelsat, which has a fleet of more than 50 geosynchronous satellites and attendant teleports, plus a newer, high-throughput satellite (HTS) network, called Epic, its primary role in mobile has been to provide backhaul to remote base stations. That role will continue in 5G, where its satellites can support some of the less demanding applications. The company also sees opportunities to go after higher-value IoT customers. “Monitoring of remote, critical infrastructure, like the electric grid, water grid, oil pipelines – we see these as big opportunities,” says Collins. River of pennies “IoT is the river of pennies,” Collins continues. “But... we can come up the value chain because the infrastructure we’ll be monitoring is valued in the tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s where we think we can play.” Following its unsuccessful attempt to merge with the now-struggling LEO operator OneWeb, Intelsat is looking at other ways of getting closer to Earth and into new areas of the market. “We’re particularly interested in HAPs as a solution that has potential synergies with what we do,” says Collins. “Put it this way: if somebody is going to get it right, we want to be that person.” For Sateliot and its upcoming NB-IoT constellation, that aforementioned river of pennies is ideal. “It’s not our objective to have real-time connectivity,” says Sanpera. “Logistics will be the first sector, then maritime... then agriculture,” he predicts. “Connected car is not in our reach. We are not going for smart cities or smart homes.” Meanwhile, AST & Science is set on helping
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
mobile operators deliver broadband connectivity to remote and unserved locations. “We see two core opportunities. One is the billions of phones worldwide that move in and out of connectivity every day. Every time you move out of terrestrial coverage, or if the connectivity is poor or very slow, you can transition to our system,” says Avellan. “On the road, camping, on a boat, a plane – any place where your
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IoT is the river of pennies... we can come up the value chain because the infrastructure we’ll be monitoring is valued in the tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s where we think we can play
phone gets out of reach is a user case for us.” The other core opportunity is connecting the unconnected. “Three billion people live or work in places where there is no broadband connectivity to their phones and one billion
people have absolutely nothing,” Avellan says. “This use case has a lot of social impact and can potentially lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.” Crowded cosmos The renewed interest in satellite-based connectivity has fired the starting gun on a new space race. As well as the aforementioned players, there is also SpaceX’s LEO constellation, Starlink, which aims to provide global broadband coverage. Other new players include Lynk, which has tested what it calls a cell tower in space: an LEO satellite that can send text messages directly to unmodified handsets. Europe-focused Eutelsat is in the process of rolling out an LEO constellation so it can offer narrowband IoT connectivity. It counts IoT pioneer Sigfox among its partners. This flurry of activity raises the question of whether the market is big enough to support multiple providers of global satellite coverage. “I do not see more than five to sevven LEO IoT constellations. More than this is completely crazy,” predicts Sanpera. “We are in the first movers, but this doesn’t mean we are going to take the whole market. There will always be the large geosynchronous providers in the game as well.” AST & Science’s Avellan also sees the importance of getting in early with a new innovation. “[Satellite] broadband connectivity using antennas and terminals is a competitive, crowded space. The space we’re in – offering a cellular broadband connection direct to smartphones – is different,” Avellan says. “We’re not naïve enough to think no one else will do it, but we’re not aware of anyone else anywhere that’s doing exactly what we’re doing.”
Insight Report: Converging Infrastructure 25
A full-fibre cure for Europe? As full-fibre deployments recover from lockdown disruption, FTTH market fundamentals look healthy, but challenges remain for network rollout and customer take-up, writes Michelle Donegan.
T
he Covid-19 pandemic has clearly shown that highspeed broadband connectivity is vital for the economy, society and our day-to-day lives. In Europe, despite some deployment delays, fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) rollouts are starting to recover from the disruption of the pandemic and the com-
mitment to full fibre remains strong. Between February and May this year, at the height of lockdowns in Europe, FTTH deployments were largely disrupted as operators prioritised the safety of their workers, connectivity for healthcare workers, and critical maintenance to keep networks and services up and running. The impact varied – anywhere from a 20% reduction in deployment
activity to a nearly full stop in some countries, according to Roland Montagne, Principal Analyst, IDATE, who is assessing the effect of the pandemic on the market. “The recovery is now taking place in terms of deployment, but because of all the caution needed for cleaning and [social] distancing, it’s taking more time to deploy FTTH, especially when the technicians are working in the same
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26 Insight Report: Converging Infrastructure
Accelerating to meet targets Openreach is now accelerating the full fibre rollout with the aim of exceeding 500,000 homes passed in the third quarter of 2020, which would be a run rate of about 42,000 homes passed per week. Tappenden says the operator is on target to meet its full fibre goal of 4.5 million homes passed by the end of March 2021 and, longer term, 20 million homes passed by the mid to late 2020s. DT’s fibre network expansion continues “under difficult conditions” and the operator remains committed to its target of passing 2 million homes per year from 2021, according to a company spokesperson. Vincent Garnier, Director General, FTTH Council Europe, says it is too soon to know the precise impact of the pandemic on FTTH plans.
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Given where we were at the start of the quarter and the kind of scenarios we were looking at, we were really quite pleased with that outcome
European ranking of FTTH as of September 2019 Source: IDATE on behalf of the FTTH Council Europe
square metres,” says Montagne. Depending on the country, he says he expects deployments in the region to return to normal in the first or second quarter of 2021. Full fibre recovery Some operators show no signs of slowing down. In July Telefónica unveiled a Digital Deal initiative to “better rebuild our societies and economies,” and committed to 100% FTTH coverage by 2025, taking centre stage in Spain’s recovery. For Deutsche Telekom (DT) and BT’s Openreach, any slowdown during lockdowns hasn’t deterred them from hitting FTTH coverage targets. James Tappenden, Director of Openreach’s Fibre First programme, explains that some fibre build projects were affected more than others. For example, full fibre deployments to new sites were hardest hit because new home
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
construction was stopped for two months. Another example is multi-dwelling units (MDU), where Openreach decided not to work on fibre builds that involved going into customers’ premises for safety reasons. “But then we adapted,” says Tappenden. “The resources that became available from not doing those things were freed up to do other programmes of work that we were able to speed up.” As a result, the operator emerged from the lockdown period with only a slightly lower FTTH run rate. Openreach passed 420,000 homes in the quarter ending March 2020 and passed 405,000 homes in in the quarter ending June 2020, down just 3.5%. “Given where we were at the start of the quarter and the kind of scenarios we were looking at, we were really quite pleased with that outcome,” says Tappenden.
So far the group has had, “No indication that operators are reconsidering downwards their fibre deployment plans.” Indeed, there are good reasons to believe that deployments are more like to accelerate, he adds. FTTH state of play According to the latest market figures prepared by IDATE for the FTTH Council Europe (as of September 2019), FTTH/fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) coverage is nearly 50% across 39 European countries with 172 million homes passed, which is up from 160 million in 2018. Fibre subscriptions grew 15% in the year to September 2019. The top-ranked countries (see graph) in terms of penetration rates are Iceland (65.9%),
Insight Report: Converging Infrastructure 27
Belarus (62.8%), Sweden (56.8%), Spain (54.3%) and Latvia (53.9%). Among the lowest ranked countries, with single-digit penetration rates, are some major European markets, including Germany, Italy, Austria and the UK. The fastest growing countries in terms of FTTH/B penetration growth rates are Belgium (307%), Ireland (70.4%), Switzerland (69.1%), UK (50.8%) and Germany (33.5%). Garnier notes that telecom and FTTH markets are not immune to the challenges linked to Covid-19, but, longer term, he says there are many reasons to be optimistic. “We see the European Framework moving in the right direction, we see investors believing in the market,” he notes. “We see a combination of incumbents, which are ready to move and invest more than before, and challengers that are still eager to develop the network.” Other important drivers for the market are wholesale business models, such as Deutsche Glasfaser in Germany or CityFibre in the UK, which is recruiting 10,000 employees to support its £4 billion FTTH rollout to 8 million premises. “Very large investors are looking at telecom infrastructure as interesting, long-term investments with a 20 to 30-year return on investment,” says Garnier. The surge in fibre investments has triggered a reaction from incumbent operators. Back in 2011, alternative ISPs dominated the market and accounted for 71% of FTTH deployments, while incumbents’ share was just 21%, according to IDATE. In 2019, while altnets still deployed the majority of FTTH (55%), incumbent activity dramatically increased to 41% of deployments. Two examples are the aggressive deployment plans of DT and BT’s Openreach. DT’s multi-pronged approach Germany languishes near the bottom of the FTTH Council Europe’s ranking with a 3.3% FTTH penetration rate. The country’s laggard fibre status is partly due to the dominance of xDSL (G.fast) and cable broadband (DOCSIS 3.1). After years of investing in copper-based broadband upgrades, DT is now ramping up FTTH rollouts. In terms of gigabit speed offerings, the operator has fallen behind rival Vodafone, which has already deployed DOCSIS 3.1 to 21 million homes and can offer up to 1Gbps broadband.
In its full fibre push, DT increasingly relies on cooperation models -- wholesale and partnering -- in addition to its own buildout. DT and utility company EWE launched a joint venture in January this year, called Glasfaser Nordwest, that will build FTTH to 1.5 million households and businesses in the northwest part of the country. Together, the companies will invest up to €2 billion over ten years. The operator is also working with 174 municipalities through a cooperation agreement with Gigabit Region Stuttgart. The goal is to expand FTTH to 90% to all businesses (of which there are about 140,000) by 2025 and
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In 2019, while altnets still deployed the majority of FTTH (55%), incumbent activity dramatically increased to 41% of deployments
90% of households (about 1.4 million) by 2030. The agreement also calls for 99% LTE coverage by 2025 across the region. More barriers to break down Most governments and policymakers have ambitious ‘gigabit’ targets. Covid-19 amplified the need for such goals and the criticality of full fibre infrastructure to achieve them. But there is more work to be done to facilitate deployments. From a policy perspective, the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association (ETNO) would like to see efforts to reduce the cost of deployments (that is, easing access to facilities or streamlining permit processes). It also wants to see more open mindedness about business models, and more exploration of digitisation initiatives or targets for the demand side of
FTTH, says Maarit Palovirta, Director of Regulatory Affairs, ETNO. “We need to think about who will be using these networks,” she says. “The Covid crisis showed that not all European users, smaller medium enterprises or citizens who are in a public sector like healthcare and education, were prepared to use digital and high-speed solutions.” For IDATE’s Montagne, the key issues are facilitating copper switch-off as fibre replaces copper access lines, making it easier to obtain rights of way, and supporting more open access networks for rural deployments. In Germany, DT’s FTTH challenges include “strict, complex and inconsistent building regulations; long and complex approval procedures; difficulties to use empty [ducts] and in general the level of urbanisation in Germany,” according to a DT spokesperson. There are also construction requirements and reluctance to allow alternative installation methods. “We need incentives for cooperation models; faster, simpler and standardised licensing procedures; and state investments in regions where an economic expansion is not possible. It is also important to find a solution for an open network access to FTTH networks of all network operators,” says the spokesperson. “To accelerate the expansion, we would very much like to use the ‘trenching’ technique for cable laying much more often and to build more above ground.” Will the pandemic boost demand? Rolling out fibre to homes and buildings is one thing, but getting people to subscribe to new services is another. Might the Covid-19 lockdown experience make consumers more willing to pay a premium for full fibre services? “The networks held up pretty well during lockdown, but everybody has been experiencing far from perfect quality of videoconferencing,” says FTTH Council Europe’s Garnier. “Maybe subscribers will be more sensitive to full fibre offerings, which is probably a bit more expensive than the standard broadband. And that could help develop further the investment in favour of high-capacity, fibre networks.” If we’re going to be working and learning from home more in future, full fibre broadband won’t be a cure-all, but it many ways it will make the ordeal more bearable.
Issue Q1 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
28 Insight Report: Converging Infrastructure
Europe’s operators look to maximise tower power Nick Wood looks at how operators across Europe are pursuing tower spinoffs and network sharing deals with renewed vigour, as they grapple with the cost of deploying 5G, coverage in-fill and stiff competition.
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
Insight Report: Converging Infrastructure 29
A
s appealing as it may be to monetise and rationalise infrastructure in this fashion, when it comes to network-sharing in particular, no two deals are the same and negotiating each one is easier said than done. “Negotiations typically take around two years, and we have also had cases where we discuss and discuss, but in the end there was no deal,” says Yves Bellego, Vice President of Network Strategy at Orange. Network sharing has been a strand of the French incumbent’s group strategy since 2011. Globally, 51% of its mobile sites are shared. That rises to 74% in Europe, excluding France. The message to go forth and share might come straight from the top, but the practicalities of identifying and contacting partners, and negotiating the fine print, are for the most part handled at country level. “It is locally-specific,” explains Bellego. “When it comes to implementation of the details and with whom to discuss, how to discuss, what type of joint venture we might form and things like that, all that is discussed locally with some support from group.” Strategic alignment Strategic alignment is one of the most important considerations for Orange when looking for a network-sharing partner. “The deals that work are the ones where we have shared objectives,” says Bellego, citing Spain, where Orange and its network-sharing partner Vodafone were both challengers in the market with a need to quickly and cost-effectively deploy new networks. The relationship with Vodafone Spain has been sufficiently fruitful that last year the two companies added a further 14,800 sites covering mid-sized locations to their shared network and agreed that, going forward, they will also share 5G infrastructure. “We always liken it to a marriage,” says Chris Buist, Director of telco consultancy Coleago Consulting. He heads up his company’s network-sharing advisory service, sometimes acting as a broker between two negotiating operators. “You can overcome all the technical issues and financial issues. Where you typically fall down is where there are cultural differences or just differences in objectives,” he says. “Sometimes one party is the incumbent or dominant player,
or has been forced into sharing their network. In the earlier days, sometimes you would encounter a CTO who questioned why a competitor should get the benefit of all their hard work. “Sometimes, an operator wants to make sure the benefits are equal,” he continues. “Then we have to explain that that is difficult to measure. We have seen deals fall apart because they have come at it with that approach.” Share – or else What if a sharing deal is struck as a last resort to avoid retribution from a frustrated government and telco regulator? To an extent that has been the case in the UK, where BT-owned EE, O2 (which is part of Telefónica, but in the throes of a merger with Virgin Media – part of Liberty Global), Vodafone and Three have agreed a four-way deal to share infrastructure in rural areas in a bid to eliminate notspots and extend 4G coverage to 95% of the landmass by 2025. The legally binding deal will cost the oper-
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The value of being number one in the market is so high that there is less interest for us to share, because we don’t want to lose that position
ators a combined £532 million. In return, the government will provide another £500 million or so in funding and, as a sweetener, regulator Ofcom has removed coverage obligations from spectrum licences in the upcoming 5G auction. In addition, the government is taking measures to ease planning rules, to make it cheaper and easier to roll out new sites, and upgrade existing ones. As well as dangling these carrots in front of the operators, the government wielded a big stick: the operators were told if they could not work out between themselves how to close rural coverage gaps, then the
government would impose national roaming in these areas instead. None of them were in favour of that. National roaming saga The issue of national roaming in the UK “pops its head up every couple of years, usually whenever an MP has poor mobile coverage on their holiday,” explains Matt Howett, Principal Analyst and Founder of Assembly Research. “Historically the operators have been pretty confident that the government wouldn’t introduce it, but we live now in more uncertain times, and the government is probably as unpredictable as it has ever been, so the chances of them trying to do something around national roaming is maybe more of a worry to the operators. They would much rather see the SRN [segment release notice –the agreement struck by the four operators] work than risk a foray into national roaming.” Press reports during the course of the SRN negotiation claimed that BT – which due to EE has the biggest mobile network in the country – wanted to ensure it was sufficiently compensated for giving rivals access to its towers. Apparently, this did not go down well with the other three mobile operators. Fear of over-sharing “Operators all love the RootMetrics [mobile network performance] scores,” says Howett. “EE in particular, because it always scores highly and it’s keen to lay claim to the superior network.” According to Howett, EE may have been concerned about losing a point of differentiation if it ended up oversharing its infrastructure. It is a concern that is echoed on the other side of the English Channel. “In France, we have the lowest rate of network sharing compared to the rest of our footprint,” says Orange’s Bellego. Indeed, Orange only shares 33% of its mobile sites in France. “That is due to the position of Orange in France: we are number one and the value of being number one in the market is so high that there is less interest for us to share, because we don’t want to lose that position,” he says. Despite the reluctance of incumbents to cede any ground in the race for the best network, Howett is confident that the UK’s SRN plan has a good chance of success, not least because the government “finally recognised
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
30 Insight Report: Converging Infrastructure
Vivek Badrinath, CEO at Vodafone’s Vantage Towers
that the operators know what they’re doing, and included them in its plans from the beginning, rather than starting with a blank sheet of paper.” Devilish detail Then there are the practicalities of actually designing a shared network. “Operators need to model various ‘what if?’ scenarios to understand the best way of implementing a shared network,” says Nishita Hathi, Product Director, RAN solutions, at network planning specialist Teoco. Teoco offers planning tools that, when fed a selection of potential shared sites, can provide detailed information on coverage and possible interference, as well as capacity based on predicted demand. This can help telcos identify which sites to share, which ones to decommission and which ones to leave be. This has to be done without each operator revealing too much information to the other. After all, even though they are sharing networks, they are still competitors. Furthermore, operator A will typically only want a limited group of individuals at operator B to have access to certain pieces of information, and vice versa. “It’s important to make sure that the aspects of a network that are proprietary remain isolated,” Hathi explains. This includes things like sites that operators have no intention of including in a shared network. “From a planning perspective, that’s one of the biggest challenges.”
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
Yves Bellego, Vice President of Network Strategy at Orange
Operators on the whole are perfectly happy to tackle these hurdles, though, because, “Traffic is going through the roof, revenues are flat and so they’ve got to find ways of cutting costs,” says Coleago’s Buist. “Sharing is one of the best ways of doing that,” he adds, explaining that Coleago’s rule of thumb is that an operator can expect to achieve a 20 to 40% reduction in total cost of ownership by sharing its network. However, “You only get to the higher end of that range if there are still a lot of greenfield sites to deploy or if you’re rolling out a new technology. When you’ve got a lot of legacy infrastructure, there’s a lot of cost involved with rationalising,” he notes. Tower of power In Europe, which has “led the world on network sharing,” according to Buist, some telcos have gone a step further by either selling their towers and leasing them back or spinning them off into wholly owned subsidiaries. These captive towercos can generate returns through leasing agreements with other operators, by floating on an exchange or by their parent selling a stake. It is what Telefónica and Telecom Italia did with Telxius and INWIT respectively, and last year Vodafone got in on the act, announcing plans to spin off its towers. It has also merged its towers in Itay with those of INWIT and it recently agreed a similar deal in Greece with Wind Hellas. Vodafone officially launched its newly separated towerco, called Vantage Towers,
this July and announced its first CEO, former high-ranking Orange exec Vivek Badrinath. Vantage Towers also shared some impressive pro forma financial results for fiscal 2020, including revenue of €950 million and adjusted EBITDA of €523 million. “We’re talking about 68,000 macro sites across nine different countries,” said Badrinath, during Voda’s most recent results presentation. “We’re talking about a number one or number two position in almost all markets when you compare to other tower companies. And we have also…[the] potential to include the UK, where, as regards [network sharing joint venture] Cornerstone, we’re in ongoing discussions with our partner Telefónica.” Vodafone’s new venture also plans to float on the Frankfurt stock exchange early next year. Join the club These early movers could soon be joined by another major European multinational. Orange, which presented its latest strategic plan, Engage 2025, in December last year, says it will consider separating out its tower assets and may follow Vodafone in creating a pan-European towerco. It might also sell a stake in said towerco. Buist says this represents the next logical step for an operator that has already done a lot of network sharing deals. “By doing the towerco deal – whether it’s a captive one or a complete sell off and lease back – they’re taking the final cream from it all.”
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32 In the Back
The Wireless World The latest news and innovation from around the globe
Silicon sales ban extended In August the Trump administration closed a loophole in its May restrictions on Chinese techcos’ access to silicon, extending the ban to include the sale of chips made using American equipment or software. This could be a fatal blow to the Chinese giant, Huawei, which is currently the world’s biggest maker of telecoms equipment. It remains to be seen how severe the repercussions will be for the many companies, American and otherwise, set to lose direct or indirect sales, and for the global supply chain. ZTE and Huawei stockpiled chip supplies while they could. Now the scramble to de-Americanise their supply chain begins.
Canada Five Eyes Canada is the only member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network not to have formally blocked Huawei from 5G networks, but Reuters said that by delaying the decision Canada has nonetheless forced telecom companies to exclude the Chinese equipment maker. Presumably the rationale is to avoid upsetting China or the US. The Five Eyes nations are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US, which has put pressure on the other four to ban Chinese equipment from 5G networks on the grounds of national security.
US Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
Cable to bypass Hong Kong GU Holdings (Google) and Edge Cable Holdings (Facebook) have submitted a new application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a licence to construct, land and operate a submarine cable system, the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN). The plan is to connect Los Angeles (US) with Toucheng (Taiwan) and Baler (the Philippines), but the so-called Hong Kong Path and Pacific Light Data Communications (PLDC) is excluded from the revised application due to US security concerns as China tightens its grip on the former British colony.
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
The FCC concluded Auction 105 – its sale of (3550MHz-3650MHz) 3.5GHz spectrum which is suitable for 5G – after 76 rounds of bidding and has raised $4.586 billion (€3.878 billion). The FCC said this was the highest number of spectrum licences it had ever auctioned in one go. Seven priority access licences were up for grabs in licence areas that were delineated by counties. They will last ten years and are for unpaired 10MHz channels. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile US were among the winners, alongside fixed line operators, regional telcos and some utilities.
Colombia Partners The newbie operator Partners is complaining that established operators Claro and Tigo are refusing to sign interconnection agreements; Movistar is the only national operator to agree terms so far. Apparently, meetings with the Communications Regulatory Commission designed to find a solution have come to nothing. Partners reportedly upset its rivals by using its 700MHz spectrum to boost the infrastructure of its recently acquired mobile subsidiary, Avantel. Partners says it has now ceased that practice, pending investigation by the National Spectrum Agency.
In the Back 33
Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
Philippines Globe Telecom Globe Telecom’s prepaid customers now have access to 5G, which it launched in February. It says this is in response to demand. Coco Domingo, Globe VP for Strategic Platforms and Partnerships, stated, ‘As the Philippines is largely a pre-paid market, we are thrilled to be the first telco to expand the 5G service to them… And, with the goal of making high speed internet accessible to as many Filipinos as possible, we will continue to broaden our 5G coverage and make 5G-enabled devices more accessible.’
Japan’s government announced new measures to increase competition in the mobile market, making it easier for users to switch operator and keep their phone number. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications aims to cut the charge to switch at shops from JPY3,000 (€23.88) to JPY1,000 and to make it free for online applications. It wants the changes in place by the end of the year. Established players NTT DOCOMO, KDDI and Softbank also have the looming threat of Rakuten Mobile.
Australia Optus Optus claims to have made the world’s first 2300MHz + 3500MHz 5G Non-Standalone Carrier Aggregation call. It took place in Sydney in collaboration with Ericsson, using a Samsung Galaxy S20 5G handset. The aim was to show the benefits of combining the two spectrum frequencies simultaneously, such as higher 5G peak speeds. Optus plans to launch its 5G Dual Band network in Sydney and Melbourne later this year.
Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
34 Final Say
There are high hurdles to leap before operators get a truly open RAN Caroline Gabriel, Research Director, Rethink Research, warns that enthusiasm at the prospect of escaping vendor lock-ins to build truly open network ecosystems is veering dangerously close to hype. ecosystem will become progressively more open over the coming decade, there are question marks over whether it will be O-RAN itself that enables this new world.
T
he positive thinking is understandable, but as we know from experience, hype tends to lead to unrealistic expectations and eventual disillusionment. This is particularly true when it comes to O-RAN, the most prominent of the open platforms under development. It has become the focus of many possibly conflicting vendors’ and operators’ agendas as the way of throwing open the gates for mobile networks. In fact, while it seems likely that the RAN
Issue Issue Q3 2020 • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
Big profile In the minds of many, it is synonymous with open RAN, which has raised its profile and proponents’ confidence. This is not necessarily the case: it is possible that in ten years’ time, the industry will have achieved an open, interoperable network, but without any trace of O-RAN. This is not a foregone conclusion, and there is considerable investment and rapid development going into the platform. However, there are substantial risks too. Some are painfully familiar from the industry’s earlier attempts to diversify the supply chain and achieve multivendor interoperability – and the associated pricing benefits. O-RAN could become dominated by one vendor. Already, Nokia has contributed the bulk of the code for the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) and other key elements, for instance. For large 5G networks, operators will be tempted to fall back on the trusted rollout capabilities and decades of R&D which the large suppliers offer in sharp contrast to O-RAN start-ups. If large suppliers tick the O-RAN boxes while directing the agenda, the opportunity for new players will be squeezed. Piling on pressure Vodafone, Telefónica and others are keen to pressurise their major equipment vendors by introducing more price competition into the market, At the moment it is unclear how far this is a threat designed to gain better deals from existing suppliers – a pattern
set by the European mobile operators in the WiMAX era. Fears that O-RAN is already falling into the grip of large, incumbent vendors, rather than an innovative crowd of independents, were highlighted recently with the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) launching its [software-defined] SD-RAN project, which could steal much of O-RAN’s thunder. The ONF was explicit that a reason for its action was that operators are complaining about O-RAN’s slow progress, and of the process being hijacked by vendors. It will develop its own RIC and other key specifications based on O-RAN, but there is a definite intent to wrest control of the steering wheel. Other bodies The ONF, like other bodies developing open RAN interfaces – such as the Small Cell Forum’s (SCF) network functional API (nFAPI) – has longer and deeper experience of such projects than O-RAN. In the end, smart operators may prioritise their resources for groups like Telecom Infra Project (TIP), and indeed SCF, whose activities are heavily focused on practical deployment and integration roadmaps, with the flexibility to support different standards and specifications. Or, in the worst case, they may become frustrated by the confusion and fear of fragmentation, and look elsewhere altogether. A final risk is that the political factors that have helped boost O-RAN’s profile and support, especially in the US, may backfire. The attempt to use O-RAN for a strategy of America-first – and to a lesser extent Japan-first – is not helpful for European mobile operators and their key suppliers. A fully open RAN platform needs to support innovators from all regions equally and on merit. The RAN needs to be opened up and take on a dynamic more akin to that around Wi-Fi. It seems likely that 5G, with its diverse use cases and deployers, will be a catalyst, driving established mobile operators to seek dramatically reduced costs, and enabling disruptive new operators and suppliers. We should avoid getting carried away by the hype around a single initiative, which is carrying the weight of so many potentially conflicting agendas on its shoulders. A more inclusive process will be the only way to build confidence in open RAN, based on broad cooperation between many interested groups.
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