the future of wireless ISSUE 183 APRIL 2014

Featuring Telefónica Global CTO Enrique Blanco on the operator's NFV project, Unica

Winners honoured All the winners from the inaugural Telecoms.com Awards

Changing the State of the Network THE MOVE TO NETWORK FUNCTIONS VIRTUALIZATION IS GATHERING MOMENTUM

OFC_MCI183.indd 3 10/04/2014 16:33 Untitled-4 1 07/04/2014 15:39 FRONT

Editorial 02 CONTENTS APRIL14 Analysis 04 A Telecoms.com Intelligence survey of over 100 News and analysis operators carried out in March revealed that 85 for the global cloud per cent of respondents believe market conditions require increasingly agile BSS systems, enabling computing industry operators to provide service diversity and faster and enterprise IT time to market. Meanwhile, European multiplay consolidation continues apace and European professionals Commission plans to create a single EU market come under fi re from small and large operators alike. Business Cloud News helps senior IT professionals and business leaders FEATURE navigate the next frontier of informa- tion technology innovation by providing 08 original news and analysis, commentary Virtualizing the network and in-depth feature content exploring Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is set to cloud, mobile, big data and the Internet become one of the defi ning trends of the era in the of Things. mobile network and Spanish incumbent Telefónica is the fi rst operator to lay out an approach that is both detailed and aggressive. Telefónica’s global CTO, Enrique Blanco, talks to MCI about those plans. www.businesscloudnews.com INTERVIEWS

Ken (Shengqing) Wang, Huawei 14 Huawei is one of Telefónica’s key partners in Project Unica and Ken Wang talks in depth about the project | Global Events 2014 and on the wider subject of Network Functions Virtualization.

LTE World Summit Truphone 16 23-25 June 2014 James Tagg, CTO and Founder of Truphone, talks to Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands MCI about building a next generation global mobile www.lteconference.com/world network and disassociating his company from the MVNO label. The world's leading 4G event - is BACK FOR 2014 and set to be our biggest and best yet! Now in its 10th successive year topics, including signalling, antenna TELECOMS.COM INDUSTRY AWARDS 2014 and taking place on June 23-25 evolution and 5G! LTE World in Amsterdam, the show will be Summit 2014 – Your one chance to The Miramar Restaurant on Montjuic, Barcelona, 18 bringing together over 3,500+ meet all the movers & shakers from played host to the inaugural Telecoms.com Industry attendees, 150+ exhibitors and within the global LTE community Awards. The room was buzzing and the evening 300+ speakers. This year’s also in this one dedicated LTE forum... was a fi ne celebration of the achievements of the show features a host of special Don’t get left behind in this key winners and shortlisted entrants. forums focusing on the hottest year for LTE! Photo gallery 20 Digital Services World Congress Internet of Things World 2-4 June 2014 17-18 June 2014 Winners pages 22 London, UK Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, USA digitalservicescongress.com iotworldevent.com THE INFORMER

Next Generation Service Platforms Connected Cars 10-11 June 2014 24-25 June 2014 Napoleon Dynamite 44 Westin Grand, Munich Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands A leader has to have the people behind him but serviceplatformsevents.com connectedcarsworld.com as Brendan Eich, CEO of Mozilla for 11 days, and Telekom Austria group CFO Hans Tschuden discovered, without support your only option is a dignifi ed, and rapid, exit.

14 | Ken Wang, Huawei

The leading source of news, Subscribe to MCI today! analysis and opinion for the Email: [email protected] global telecoms Industry www.telecoms.com/magazine/ Visit www.telecoms.com

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 01

01_MCI182.indd 1 14/04/2014 12:53 EDITORIALAPRIL14

Virtual Reality

irtualization has become fi rmly estab- Perhaps understandably network operators, HEAD OFFICE Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, lished in the industry discourse; the especially large ones, tend to shy away from London, W1T 3JH frequency with which it peppered con- projects that involve sweeping changes to their Tel: +44 (20) 701 75000 V Fax: +44 (20) 701 75647 versation at this year’s Mobile World Congress core assets but Telefónica is grasping the net- in Barcelona was testament to that. The shifts tle. The briefi ng with Blanco forms part of our EDITORIAL it will bring about for the main players in the main feature on virtualization in this issue, Please send all press releases to [email protected] industry will be fundamental and far-reaching: and is supplemented by viewpoints from two Editorial Director Mike Hibberd unlike some other developments that have been of his key supply partners in the NFV project Email: [email protected] described as such, virtualization deserves to that has been named Unica; Alcatel-Lucent Tel: +44 (20) 701 75201 be recognised as a game changer. and Huawei. Deputy Editor James Middleton Nowhere is its impact likely to be more Virtualization is a delicate subject for in- Email: [email protected] keenly felt than in the network—and Network frastructure suppliers that have historically Tel: +44 (20) 701 75257 Functions Virtualization, the movement that made an awful lot of money selling platforms Assistant Editor will see physical network elements shifted and network elements in which the software is Dawinderpal Sahota Email: [email protected] into the datacentre, is going to be vitally im- fused to bespoke hardware. Blanco’s insistence Tel: +44 (0)20 701 74010

portant for the mobile operator community that Unica was conceived in part to bring an Correspondents: and its suppliers. end to vendor lock-in is an uncomfortable truth The Informer NFV promises much. If its proponents are to for its suppliers and there is a sense in which [email protected] be believed it will reduce networks’ total cost partnering on such a project is, for vendors, to ADVERTISING of operation. It will speed development of, and intensify their own requirement for change. Sales Manager Gary Brown time to market for, new services. It will enable Among the boldest steps that Telefónica has Email: [email protected] unprecented dynamism, scale, fl exibility and taken is to publish a schedule for its virtualiza- Tel: +44 (20) 701 75601 responsiveness. And it will usher in a new, tion plans, one with which it invites the rest Sales Manager more competitive vendor landscape as telecoms of the industry to measure its success. It will Sanil Pillai Email: [email protected] network suppliers face off against IT vendors be a fascinating journey to watch. Tel: +44 (20) 701 76893 skilled in the virtualization arts. DESIGN & PRODUCTION To embrace NFV is to embark on a huge in- Design & Production Manager frastructure project; not unlike switching out an Joanne Lowe entire network, according to Telefónica’s global Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 (20) 701 75604 chief technical offi cer, Enrique Blanco. I met with Blanco as part of a closed door briefi ng to MARKETING / LIST RENTAL Head of Marketing a handful of industry press in the week before Sophie Burdajewicz Mobile World Congress, a meeting he used to Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 (20) 701 75461 set out Telefónica’s plans for Network Func- tions Virtualization in no uncertain terms. He [email protected] Marketing Executive Nicole Ramson is, without overstatement, a man on a mission. www.twitter.com/TelecomsHibberd Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 (0)203 377 3493

PUBLISHER Tim Banham Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 (20) 701 75218

SUBSCRIPTIONS/ CUSTOMER SERVICES c/o Mobile Communications International Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street London, W1T 3JH, UK Email: [email protected] Subscription enquiries should While every care has been taken to FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS Register online at: www.telecoms.com/magazine/ be sent to: ensure that the data in this publication Mobile Communications are accurate, the publisher cannot WEBSITE c/o Mobile Communications accept and hereby disclaims any liability International is a controlled www.telecoms.com International to any party to loss or damage caused circulation quarterly magazine Mobile Communications International is published by available free to selected personnel Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer by errors or omissions resulting from negligence,accident or any other cause. at the publisher’s discretion. If you Street London, W1T 3JH, UK All rights reserved. No part of this wish to apply for regular free copies publication may be reproduced, stored then please register online at: Email: [email protected] in any retrieval system or transmitted www.telecoms.com/magazine/ in any form electronic, mechanical, © 2014. All rights reserved. (ISSN 1352-9226) photocopying or otherwise without the Informa UK Ltd registered offi ce: prior permission of the publisher. Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London, W1T 3JH, England.

02 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

02_MCI182_editiorial.indd 2 10/04/2014 16:27 News, Analysis and Opinion for the global telecoms industry

Telecoms.com is the leading provider of news and analysis, combined with in-depth features, exclusive interviews, industry reports, and much more. Telecoms.com keeps over 80,000 unique monthly users up to date in touch with the latest global technological advancements and market trends, addressing the key business and technology issues facing the industry.

Telecoms.com offers an extensive range of Whether you are looking to reach senior decision commercial solutions through different channels makers within operators or vendors, our highly- such as webinars, TV interviews, newsletters, print targeted media solutions and vast industry database products, list rentals, events and custom-made will ensure that your marketing message reaches opportunities. the right people.

www.telecoms.com For more information please contact Tim Banham on +(0)20 701 75218 or email [email protected]

telecoms.com_house advert.indd 1 28/05/2013 09:52 NEWS ANALYSIS [email protected]

Turning BSS agility into business ability

‘Agility’, a word used to gauge a company’s ability to respond to the market with flexibility, has become the operator watchword of 2014. It highlights the dawn of an era when operators require not only real-time visibility of their customer’s activity but also the ability to react in real-time to succeed.

n March, Telecoms.com Intelligence set out to discover text response, confirmed that network equipment providers how operators feel about their current BSS choices “offer [BSS] at very low price, sometimes almost free with Iand their BSS plans for the future. Over 100 network the network gear,” to add value. operators responded to the survey which, comissioned Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of respondents by BSS specialist Openet, revealed an overwhelming (35 per cent) use BSS from a mixture of network sentiment that the agility of an operator is largely tied equipment providers and specialist companies, while a to the agility of the BSS it relies on. But with the pace of similar amount (29 per cent), get their BSS directly from innovation certain to accelerate for the foreseeable future, their network equipment provider alone. Less than ten operators bear the burden of legacy systems in their BSS per cent buy from specialist providers exclusively. Going environments that apply limitations to their agility. forward, more than 40 per cent of respondents do not In total 86 per cent of respondents either Agree or expect their supplier mix to change within the next five Strongly Agree that current market conditions require years, although 28 per cent say they will actively move increasingly agile BSS that give operators the ability to towards a more specialist approach. Only seven per cent provide service diversity and a faster time to market. expect to move the other way, suggesting a growing Moreover, 91 per cent of respondents believe Strongly appreciation of specialist expertise. or Very Strongly that real time network usage reporting What’s more, there is little appetite among operators and analytics is becoming more important and billing to perform their own integration of BSS software. As systems need to evolve to cater to this need. Meanwhile a result there is significant scope for collaboration 86 per cent believe Strongly or Very Strongly that a BSS between specialise BSS providers and system integrators portfolio needs to be able to handle real time reporting, to provide best of breed solutions, pairing functionally to avoid bill shock, and real time reactivity for data tier rich software with the specialist skill set of the system management. Such functionality will be a key measure of agility Q: Are your BSS solutions (for example billing, charging, and LTE is a significant contributing factor in this policy) currently provided by: trend, with operators expected to invest in solutions for smart upsell offers triggered 30 by real-time, contextual information such as 29.0% network usage, application access or location— 25 usage situations which are all expected to be driven by LTE adoption. 20 It is common for network equipment 18.5% providers to bundle BSS software in with the 15 16.9% 16.1% infrastructure purchase in order to enhance their proposition. This has the effect of 10 10.5% somewhat obscuring the true cost of a BSS 8.9% platform. One of the respondents, in a free 5

0 Entirely Network Primarily NEPs, About half NEPs Primarily specialist Entirely specialist I don’t know Equipment Providers some specialist and specialist BSS vendors, BSS vendors (NEPs) BSS vendors BSS vendors some NEP vendors

Q: To what extent do you agree with the following statement? 2.4% 0.8%

Market conditions require increasingly agile BSS 11.3% 27.4% 58.1% (e.g. ability to provide service diversity and faster time to market)

Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree

04 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

04-05_MCI183.indd 4 10/04/2014 16:35 [email protected] NEWS ANALYSIS

Q: To what extent do you agree with the following comments? water this year and 28 per cent within the next two years. So in total, only 34 per cent of operators currently have no plans to embrace virtualised BSS. However it is likely LTE is driving operators to move towards BSS solutions that are real-time this sentiment will change as the industry becomes more comfortable with the prospects. 13.8% 49.6% 29.3% 4.9%

2.4% Indeed the survey showed a clear understanding of the benefits of virtualization. A total of 73 per Billing systems need to evolve to become real-time (e.g. for data bill shock, data tier management) cent of respondents believe virtualization gives operators the ability to trial new services/business 11.3% 40.3% 45.2% models with minimal disruption. And 61 per cent 2.4% expect Virtualization will allow operators to eradicate

0.8% Real-time network usage reporting and analytics is becoming more important fragmentation in their BSS environment, which bodes well for those seeking to reduce the number of suppliers 43.5% 47.6% they currently buy from. 5.6% 3.2% There is also a strong sense that virtualization will

0.0% create a more competitive environment in the BSS Operators will invest in solutions for smart upsell offers triggered by real-time context information (e.g. network usage, application access, location, etc) market, not just allowing operators to try out new specialist suppliers with little fear of vendor lock-in 10.6% 52.0% 32.5% but also pushing some of the larger, more general 3.3% network vendors to step up to the plate and commit to Analytics is evolving to become real-time 1.6% a virtualization strategy of their own or face market (e.g. to enable real-time context sensitive offers to made to customers) share erosion. Indeed, 70 per cent of respondents either 11.3% 42.7% 41.1% Agree or Strongly Agree that virtualization has made 1.6% 3.2% it easier for new entrants, including BSS vendors to be considered as new vendors because hardware and Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree integration issues are reduced. More to the point, as a previous question revealed, when it comes to BSS virtualization, 72 per cent of operator respondents integrators. Although virtualization goes some way to believe specialist BSS vendors are better equipped to addressing this scenario, by allowing operators to ‘try supply the necessary tools. n out’ alternative suppliers without fear of technology backlash, there is still enthusiasm among carriers for sticking with the one-stop-shop, despite them for openly acknowledging that specialist BSS offerings are more Q: What is the extent of your organisation’s BSS virtualisation to date? attractive and capable. Virtualization is just as important for BSS as for the wider network. Although the concept has been a stalwart of the IT sector for some time now, it’s still spoken about in the We have begun trials of virtualised 22.6% telco industry with a certain amount of caution. No small BSS operations amount of this comes from the larger network equipment suppliers that have built a business on products that feature integrated software and hardware. We have begun commercial 8.9% So the key observation is that while everybody is operation of virtualised BSS talking about virtualization, few have stuck their flag in the ground with regards to a mapped out virtualization strategy. There are some notable examples: Telefónica, We are expecting to deploy virtualised BSS this year 6.5% which recently set out detailed and aggressive Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) plans; and Deutsche Telekom, which last year said it was reengineering its We are expecting to deploy network because: “The biggest pain for us is that there is virtualised BSS in 2015 13.7% so much legacy technology in networks that it is difficult to bring new services to the market. We need to be able We are expecting to deploy to program new services without rearchitecting the 14.5% network.” virtualised BSS in 2016 Although these two carriers are in the minority at present, there are suggestions that more announcements are in the pipeline. According to the survey, nine per cent We have no plans to embrace virtualised BSS 33.9% of respondents have already begun commercial operation of virtualised BSS and 23 per cent of respondents have begun trials of virtualized BSS environments. A further 0510 15 20 25 30 35 seven per cent are expecting to dip their toe into the

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 05

04-05_MCI183.indd 5 10/04/2014 16:36 NEWS ANALYSIS [email protected]

European multiplay consolidation continues

Substantial European deals in March and early April highlighted burden of a nationwide mobile network requiring ongoing the continuing enthusiasm among network operators for the maintenance investment. This prospect appealed to incumbent Orange. A creation of bundled multiplay offerings. spokesperson for the firm told MCI that it, “welcomes the recent consolidation projects of French telecom industry players, which are a reaction to the destabilisation of the odafone’s acquisition of Kabel Deutschland in market we’ve been calling attention to for several months. Autumn 2013 was clearly not an isolated incident. Indeed this consolidation brings hope of a more level VThe UK-based international operator made a playing field, particularly the need for all telcos to finance comparable move in the Spanish market in March, winning major investments and therefore adopt more rational cable player Ono after a somewhat protracted pursuit approaches,” the spokesperson said. that saw Ono feign enthusiasm for an IPO in a bid to drive It is Bouygues that will likely feel the impact of its failed Vodafone’s offer upwards. The winning price was €7.2bn. bid most keenly, however. The third-placed player has been Shortly afterwards French media conglomerate Vivendi— “hit especially hard by the debut of Free,” according to an ex-partner of Vodafone’s in fractious shared ownership Peter Boyland, analyst, operator multiplay intelligence at of French number two mobile operator SFR—ended another research firm IHS. “While all three network operators have courtship when it agreed to sell SFR to cable operator lost significant market share to the new entrant, Orange and Numericable. The cableco’s parent, Altice, offered €13.5bn SFR are still much larger.” plus a 20 per cent stake in the merged entity, allowing SFR’s position post merger will be even stronger, Boyland Vivendi to recoup the €7.95bn it paid Vodfaone for its 44 per added. “Orange, SFR, and Bouygues have all leveraged their cent stake in SFR exactly three years previously. mobile capabilities to launch quad-play, and the sector is The deals reflect gathering momentum behind multiplay seeing strong growth as customers seek discounts by taking offerings among fixed, mobile and cable network operators. all their telecoms services from one provider. Numericable At the recent Cable Congress event in Amsterdam, the CEO already operates as an MVNO in France, and the addition of Danish incumbent TDC, Carsten Dilling, spoke of the firm’s of SFR’s network, not to mention its 21 million mobile decision to integrate its cable unit YouSee with its mobile customers, puts the cable operator in a very strong position offering in 2013. “Cable shouldn’t underestimate how fast to push its multiplay offering.” consumers will expect content to move across all devices and The strength of European incumbents like Orange, all screens and that is an argument for integration,” he said. Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica in multiplay is clearly driving Vodafone’s European strategy. The firm’s acquisition of Ono, which offers high speed broadband and pay-TV services in Spain will “accelerate its unified The strength of European incumbents like communications strategy in highly converged European Orange, Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica market,” Vodafone said. It added that Ono’s network reach will complement its own in multiplay is clearly driving Vodafone’s FTTH rollout in Spain. According to Vodafone, Ono has Spain’s European strategy. largest fibre network, with a reach of 7.2 million homes, or 41 per cent of all Spanish homes. However, its customer base currently stands at just 1.9 million homes and Vodafone highlighted the attraction of Ono’s spare capacity. A couple of weeks earlier Dilling had been presenting “Demand for unified communications products and at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where he shared a services has increased significantly over the last few years stage with Tim Boddy, a telecoms M&A specialist at Goldman in Spain, and this transaction—together with our fibre-to- Sachs. Boddy argued that mobile operators will have to sell the-home build programme—will accelerate our ability to fixed and TV services in order to remain competitive and to offer best-in-class propositions in the Spanish market,” said retain high value customers. Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao. The opportunity as Boddy painted it was as much In a recent interview with MCI, Hannes Ametsreiter, CEO about removing competitors from the market as it was of Telekom Austria, which has a well-developed multiplay about driving incremental revenues. Indeed he suggested strategy, suggested that operators without this kind of that new revenue targets at large European players like breadth will struggle as the industry continues to evolve. Vodafone and Telefónica are in the low single digits over “You need to work on your penetration of bundles,” he the next few years. said. “This is the magic ingredient and the development Vivendi’s decision to accept Numericable’s advances we have seen is stunning. It gives us the opportunity to actually thwarted consolidation in the French mobile significantly increase average revenue per line or per user, market, however. Bidding just as hard to win SFR was it significantly reduces churn; it has a very positive effect on French number three Bouygues, upping its offer even as the business.” Vivendi proclaimed its negotiations with Altice as exclusive. He offered a stark warning to mobile-only players: “Life If Bouygues’ offer had been succesful (€13.15bn plus a 21.5 will become more difficult for pure mobile players. You need per cent stake in the merged entity) it would not only have to think about what your proposition for the future will be reduced the number of mobile operators from four to three, and if you don’t have any clear plan then I think you will it would have saddled disruptive fourth player Free with the miss out,” he said. n

06 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

06-07_MCI183.indd 6 14/04/2014 12:48 [email protected] NEWS ANALYSIS

Opposing camps unite in criticism of EC reforms

The EC’s plans to create a single EU market are coming closer to often cite the United States as an example to which the fruition. However, open letters published by operators highlight EU should look when creating a single market. The US was among the first to deploy LTE services, benefitting the challenges involved. from harmonised spectrum assignment in the nation. Furthermore, prices charged to consumers for services are on the whole markedly higher than those charged by he Connected Continent legislative package gained Europe’s operators, meaning US operators are turning the approval of the European Parliament’s Industry substantial profits which they are able to reinvest into Tand Research Committee (ITRE) in March 2014 networks and product and service development. and, with some amendments, has now been approved by But there are serious question marks over Europe’s the full European Parliament. The package must now go ability to replicate a market where more than 90 per cent through just one more round of approvals. of the 360 million plus subscribers (figures from Informa’s European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie WCIS+) are served by just four operators, only two of whom Kroes has claimed that the EU’s caps on roaming charges are able to claim full national coverage. have been universally accepted as good for the operator “My worry is that the large operator groups in Europe community and have resulted in increased revenues for have been able to convince politicians that if they were operators. However, this particular package is more wide- bigger, the market would be healthier like it is in the US,” ranging than previous legislation and not everyone in the said Bengt Nordström, CEO at consultancy Northstream. operator committee supports it in its current form. “The scale argument does not work, though. A large Assertions that EC-led regulation has been only positive operator having network assets in one country has no for Europe’s telco industry were countered by trade bearing on its ability to compete with a local operator in association GSMA in March, which noted that, despite a neighbouring country. For the large operator groups, Europe having the highest regional mobile penetration this package will have been welcomed as great news since in the world, it is the only region in which revenues have it would divert attention from the real cost structure declined; from €162bn in 2010 to €142bn in 2013. problems they have.” Certainly some of the smaller players are unhappy. While the initial text of the package called for the end of retail roaming charges it did not ensure any revisions regarding Proponents of the package often cite the wholesale roaming charges, a point that prompted a United States as an example to which the EU separate band of smaller European mobile operators and MVNOs to issue their own open letter to the EC. should look when creating a single market. This coalition of operators, including Liberty Global (which owns Virgin Media), Hutchison Whampoa, Bite Group, Voiceworks and a number of others that together serve “Europe’s telecoms operators are facing decreasing over 35 million subscribers, was also concerned about an revenues and reduced market values compared with insertion in the text provided by the EC referring to “other operators in the US and Asia, as well as players across the arrangements to address wholesale market problems”. broader mobile ecosystem,” read an open letter penned by “This could be used as a Trojan horse for the European Anne Bouverot, director general at GSMA and endorsed by Commission to accept or promote roaming alliances the heads of ten large European operator groups including between large operators (potentially anti-competitive and Orange, Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica. “This is impairing harmful to smaller players), or to postpone a review of their ability to invest in the infrastructure required to put the level of the wholesale roaming caps which Parliament Europe back on the path to growth and jobs and to restore requires by mid-2015,” the coalition said in a statement. its global competitiveness.” In the latest version of the text to be approved, the Bouverot stressed the need for a regulatory overhaul that European Parliament sought to address these concerns by would enable operators to act unencumbered by “unnecessary adding a clause stating that wholesale roaming charges layers of regulation”, drive greater harmony across the region will be reviewed by June 2015 and that legislation could be and to consolidate to restructure the market. introduced to place a cap on them. She also called for “a level playing field for all”, a However, such extensive price regulation in a market statement that appeared to put internet players in her already ruing the impact that mobile termination rate sights. Internet players like Google and Facebook (with its (MTR) cuts have had on revenues could cause concern for recent WhatsApp acquisition) have long been developing operators. Stefan Zehle, CEO at telecoms management services that compete with operators’ core service offerings consultancy Coleago Consulting, suggested that for but attract none of the regulation that comes with a licence European politicians to exert such a level of control to operate a network. on operator pricing could render competition entirely “Operators must have the commercial freedom to ineffective. develop new business models, innovate at the network “If prices are this heavily regulated, then you can no and service level, and offer customised services in order longer talk about competition at network level; it doesn’t to restore the investment climate and drive innovation and make any sense. The competition commissions are up in competition in the global marketplace,” Bouverot said. arms about in-country operator mergers and with this level Proponents of the package and large operators alike of pricing regulation in place you have to ask why?” n

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 07

06-07_MCI183.indd 7 10/04/2014 16:41 FEATURE NFV

Carta Blanco Enrique Blanco

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is set to become one of the defining trends of the era in the mobile network. Spanish incumbent Telefónica is the first operator to lay out its approach to NFV and its plans are both detailed and aggressive. Mike Hibberd met with Global CTO Enrique Blanco ahead of Telefónica’s NFV announcement, to learn of the changes in store.

By Mike Hibberd

he October 2012 white paper that Those authors, representing 13 fixed, One of the most vigorous operators brought the topic of Network Func- mobile and integrated operators from within the NFV ISG is Spanish incum- Ttions Virtualization (NFV) to the wider across the world, did not downplay the bent Telefónica and, true to the message industry consciousness—and introduced challenges inherent in bringing about of accelerated change that the paper the ETSI NFV Industry Specification Group such seismic technological, structural and sought to communicate, it has not been (ISG) tasked with making NFV happen—was cultural change. Because of the openness sitting idly by. The firm marked the open- noteworthy for a number of reasons. First that NFV is conceived in part to encour- ing of MWC 2014 by setting out aggres- there were the bold claims made about the age, the devlopment of a unified interface sive plans for the virtualization of its ecomonic and operational benefits that NFV between software and hardware was network functions, including detailed might bring. Then there were the fundamental identified as an imperative. The likeli- timelines relating to different network architectural changes that the paper outlined; hood of a negative impact on performance elements. The project has been dubbed the meshing of the telecom and IT functions caused by the use of standard hardware, ‘Unica’ and has as its headline aim the and the move away from bespoke hardware. the migration process from physical to virtualization of 30 per cent of all new Third was the breadth and depth of impact virtualized operation (and the period of infrastructure by 2016. the paper suggested NFV could have on the coexistence), security, network stability Ahead of the announcement, at the telecom equipment vendor landscape, and and the vital importance of automation firm’s sprawling headquarters complex the power shift that this implied. were just some of the obstacles listed. in Madrid, Telefónica’s global CTO En- The last of these was, in fact, the first The paper offered a vision of the future— rique Blanco briefed a small number of point to which the paper drew attention. but suggested limited scope for a long, industry press about the firm’s plans. Its opening line read: “This is a non- comfortable period of adjustment. Virtu- proprietary white paper authored by alization is already happening, its authors he factors converging to create network operators.” A loaded statement wrote, and within a few years transforma- TTelefónica’s need for change will be if ever there was one. tional change will have taken place. familiar to operators in many markets.

08 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

08-13_MCI183_Virtualization.indd 8 10/04/2014 16:53 NFV FEATURE

The traffi c across its network footprint is the performance it can drive from pro- Improvements in growing annually at between 25 and 30 prietary vendor platforms, Blanco says per cent, Blanco says. Customers are call- and the “lever” with which the operator performance, cost and ing for higher performance across fi xed can exert the greatest force for change is and mobile networks, and demand for the virtualization. differentiation on an interconnectedness of the experience is altogether larger scale increasing all the time. While 94 per cent o embrace such a radical architec- of the total traffi c that Telefónica carries Ttural overhaul would be extremely are needed and those is on its fi xed network, more than 80 per challenging for a small, unaffi liated mo- cent of this traffi c is driven by smart- bile operator; for an international carrier requirements call for phones and tablets using wifi connec- like Telefónica, which has more than 323 tions, he says. million customers in 24 countries, it is “radical” transformation Blanco’s team are squeezing 15 per a monumental undertaking. It is hardly in the network cent effi ciency improvements out of its unusual for the sheer size of a project to networks each year, which is good but deter operators from embarking upon it, not good enough. Meanwhile Telefónica’s so where is the impetus coming from in marketing team are demanding a net- this instance? work they can sell as the best in every The fi rm’s prominent role in the NFV market in which the fi rm plays and the ISG—Blanco identifi es US market leaders fi rm’s vendors are being driven hard as AT&T and Verizon as well as German in- part of what Blanco describes as “fren- cumbent Deutsche Telekom as the three zied” network activity. other leading infl uencers in the group— Improvements in performance, cost is clearly important to the momentum and differentiation on an altogether of Telefónica’s own project. The Spanish larger scale are needed, Blanco says— incumbent has 14 patents of its own and those requirements call for “radical” relating to NFV, offering more evidence transformation in the network. “We can’t that this is a technological movement wait,” he says, “because if you wait then being led as much by the operator com- nothing happens.” munity as its suppliers (which is not to Telefónica is “reaching the limits” of downplay the work of the vendors). 

A big opportunity

ACCELERATION of transformation towards becoming a Digital Telco

Source: Telefónica

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 09

08-13_MCI183_Virtualization.indd 9 10/04/2014 16:54 FEATURE NFV

Blanco is emphatic in Meanwhile the virtualization work Instead of having one IMS or one HLR already carried out by Telefónica’s IT per country virtualization will enable Tel- his depiction of Unica division, under the leadership of CIO efónica to run single, central instances. Phil Jordan, has broken crucial ground Or, where regulation around data privacy as an evolution that for the operator. By the end of this year and geographical location might create a Jordan’s team will have virtualized some problem, virtualization will allow for sys- will eradicate historical 40 per cent of the group’s IT servers and tems to be replicated on general purpose boundaries within the Blanco is emphatic in his depiction of hardware in near real time. Unica as an evolution that will eradicate Expanding on the example of IMS, Blan- operator historical boundaries within the opera- co says deployment times can be reduced tor. “Today we don’t see a clear differen- from months to days. “Today we have IMS tiation between network and IT,” he says. in all countries and in each case it is single But perhaps the most powerful force vendor technology. Today we mainly use driving Telefónica into such dramatic it for offering VoIP for our FTTH custom- change is the conviction with which ers but in time all the traffic that is going Blanco identifies the benefits that wide- through the large PABXs of our enterprise reaching virtualization will bring. customers will be managed by the IMS. “Think about Telefónica in terms of “But what if we need to bring 1,000 how many countries we are operating new enterprise customers online, or in and how many different infrastruc- increase our FTTH customers by 1.5 mil- tures we are operating,” he says, “and lion? I have to talk to my vendor, I have then think about what virtualization to increase specific hardware, create a means. For us it means that we can new project, test it, deploy it and plan change how we operate, change our it—and this takes four months. If we do governance model, exploit our capa- this using virtualized IMS using resourc- bilities in the datacentre, reduce the es running in our datacentre we can do total cost of operation by up to 30 per the same thing in four days,” he says cent and at the same time upgrade our Virtualization offers greater future- platforms.” proofing in terms of new application

Telefónica's vision: end-to-end virtualization

Aim to get 30% new infrastructures on this framework by 2016

CLEAR ROADMAP Introducing the NEW ARCHITECTURE: UNICA From June 2014

Allowing a SIMPLIFICATION EXERCISE perfectly suited to the needs of a multi-country company as Telefonica through

Obtaining A Hard To Replicate END-TO-END NETWORK That Offers SUPERIOR QUALITY FOR THE CUSTOMER Source: Telefónica

10 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

08-13_MCI183_Virtualization.indd 10 14/04/2014 12:49 NFV FEATURE

development as well as expansion of ex- “This is a very ambitious project isting services, he says. “We don’t know that has been engineered by our own The project, or series of which of the services running on top of R&D team and it will be launched and projects that combine the IMS will be the most successful, we deployed in a massive way in the last don’t know exactly when we will need to quarter of the year.” to form Unica, as be fast and agile. But with Unica we have Work on the virtualization of the Evolved the infrastructure to deploy different Packet Core is also underway as the vEPC, Blanco has it, has been services no matter if it is corporate VoIP along with vIMS, vDNS and vDHCP— underway since 2011. or consumer video. We can create the among others—are all within the first IMS core and the application server on phase of Unica, which concludes at the The stated aim of Unica top of it in a matter of hours.” end of 2014 (see slide). The vEPC should be online in June of this year, Blanco says. is to have 30 per cent he fact that the same underlying in- As the firm progresses into the second of new infrastructure Tfrastructure will be used to provision and third phases the project becomes network functions like the IMS or HLR more complex, he says, picking out the virtualized by the end and SaaS offerings for enterprise cus- Broadband Remote Access Server as a tomers is central to the cost savings that particularly challenging network ele- of 2016, so another Telefónica expects Unica to deliver. ment to move into the datacentre. Slated The project, or the series of projects for achievement by the end of 2016, challenge is clearly going that combine to form Unica, as Blanco Blanco describes virtualization of the to be maintaining a has it, has been underway since 2011. BRAS as “one of our dreams”. He likens the early phase to a large scale He continues: “This is not a network huge portfolio of legacy swap-out programme in the sense that function that is hosted on a standard plat- the energy required to establish momen- form but rather in specific hardware. It is infrastructure. tum behind the project was substantial. very close to the customer premises and it In publishing a clear timeline for the needs a huge capability in terms of fiber project Blanco intends to make sure that and transport. This is a project that will this momentum will not diminish. But take us much deeper into virtualization.” that timeline is fundamental to more Meanwhile Telefónica is currently than just the project, he says:. “Without a working on proof of concept trials for roadmap an operator doesn’t exist.” a virtualized RAN in its home market That roadmap is the first of its kind of Spain. Blanco nods to the pioneering that the industry has seen and the first work of South Korean operators in this milestone relates to the CPE. Telefónica area, which have “true hyperconnected has been running a trial in Brazil for networks,” he says. Success with a vRAN more than a year with “one of the big Jap- is some distance away; it is noticeably anese vendors” that has taken the intel- absent from the roadmap that the opera- ligence traditionally built into CPE such tor published in February. as domestic routers and moved it into the “We are focusing first on control and datacentre. This is “very easy to say and signalling capabilities,” Blanco says, “be- very difficult to do,” Blanco explains, but cause they are similar to IT capabilities he believes it offers significant benefits. and easier to virtualize. Then we will go “All of the software that traditionally to payload and then access. Maybe one manages the network and all the ser- and a half years ago this was just talk vices that the customers can access are but today we are defining it and, from taken out of the customer equipment. So June, we will start to run network as a we are simplifying the hardware in the service in the datacentre.” customer premises, reducing the cost of The stated aim of Unica is to have 30 delivering that hardware to the prem- per cent of new infrastructure virtual- ises and reducing the number of times ized by the end of 2016, so another chal- we need to visit the premises to change lenge is clearly going to be maintaining a things or solve problems. huge portfolio of legacy infrastructure. “But it is not just good for us. All the services are now defined in the network elefónica might be able to virtualize premises and the customer that is mov- Tmany of its network functions but it ing [house or corporate location] can get can’t take quite the same approach to its all of their services switched across in human resources. Change on this scale bulk,” he says. brings great technical challenges but 

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 11

08-13_MCI183_Virtualization.indd 11 11/04/2014 10:57 FEATURE NFV

these are usually matched by cultural “In many cases you can use completely The wider shift of issues. And when a project is focused on standard IT hardware, but not for all,” he which Unica is a part centralisation, as this one is, these issues says. “But there have to be improvements could be quite serious. So how is the human and the NFV ISG is pushing for that. When has been positioned, side of this process being managed? you virtualize you lose some efficiencies in There is widespread conviction among the hardware while you gain in flexibility. not unreasonably, as a the network team, Blanco says, but he con- But we need efficiency as well and opera- threat to the traditional cedes that “it is more difficult to change tional issues, like trouble shooting, are not the culture than the technology.” He as good [in a virtualized environment] as telecoms vendor makes reference to “internal resistence to we are used to in networks,” he says. what we’re proposing” but returns to the Modifications to standard IT products community importance of a clearly visible and well will be necessary, he says, in the hyper- communicated roadmap in persuading the visor and orchestration layers for control wider employee base to embrace change. and signalling and in hardware for There is a vitally important human ele- payload. “The hope is that these specific ment in the customer relationship as well, modifications will be common in the IT he says. Telefónica cannot be seen to treat industry within two years,” he says. data protection issues as anything other than paramount, and SLAs for enterprise t is telling that Blanco talks in terms of customers who might have doubts about Iimprovements in the IT industry. The the performance and reliability of newly wider shift of which Unica is a part has virtualized iterations of services on been positioned, not unreasonably, as a which they have come to depend cannot threat to the traditional telecoms vendor be breached. community. And when Blanco says “we The credibility of NFV is another sig- are doing this to break vendor lock-in” nificant challenge to Unica, Blanco says, it’s not hard to see why. and this comes into play when discussion There are two elements at play here. turns to the hardware that will run all of The first is the coalescence of traditional these virtualized functions. For all the talk telecoms and IT vendors, bringing new of using commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) competitors for everyone, and the second hardware for NFV, the issue is far from is the likely intensification of competition settled. Blanco says that different deci- among those traditional telecoms vendors. sions will be made for different functions. “One of the key things is that Unica

vIMS & UNICA Infra versus Traditional IMS

IMS With UNICA Infra (it doesn’t allow auto scaling)

Certification 10% vIMS “Go to Production” % TIME (it allows auto scaling)

SW Deployment 5% 85% Certification & Configuration “Go to Production”

12% Auto Deployment Physical 15%

Deployment <4 Days 3%

~4 Months Resources allocation

Purchase and receipt of 70% equipment

Source: Telefónica

12 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

08-13_MCI183_Virtualization.indd 12 14/04/2014 12:49 NFV FEATURE

NFV – A vendor's view

Enrique Blanco is quite “I don’t want to be the prisoner of one eco- For Combes the primary benefit of NFV for clear that breaking vendor system—in Apple I cannot move to Android and in service providers is related to the need to enhance lock-in is one of the central Android I cannot move to Apple—and that is where their competitive position in relation to OTT players benefits of a move to NFV. this rebalancing might help.” and internet application developers. This is more So how do the vendors But on the issue of the power struggle between important than improved network TCO, he said, that are enabling this shift network operators and vendors, Combes was more which itself is more important than better supplier view the process? Are they circumspect. He said he had never heard Telefónica management. just making their own lot list breaking vendor lock-in as a “first priority”. But “Service providers need to embrace a brand new more difficult? We put this he acknowledged that competition will intensify as world which is [characterised by] an amazing ac- question to Alcatel-Lucent virtualization takes hold. celeration of new services,” he said. “When you ask CEO and former head of Vodafone Europe, For Combes, however, telecoms expertise does them what they are looking for it is velocity in their Michel Combes. not become devalued in this new network environ- ability to roll out new services, scalability in the new The first point Combes made is that he sees a ment. services they launch and the ability to compete in a shift of power towards the network. “I strongly believe that the most critical skills proper manner with the OTT guys.” “A decade ago the intelligence was in the in Network Functions Virtualization [relate to] Alcatel-Lucent is the global market leader in IMS, network and the devices had no intelligence at all,” network functions and not to virtualization,” he said. Combes said, and number two in packet core. As he said. “But in the past ten years, thanks to the “Virtualization techniques have been in datacen- these are two of the first network elements that [smartphone] operating systems, all of the intel- tres for ages. But network functions are different operators will look to virtualize, he said, the firm is ligence was pushed to the devices. I have a sense because you need to have a clear understanding of well positioned to take advantage of the NFV trend. that we are now at the beginning of the rebalanc- the way the network operates, the specific features A virtualized RAN product should enable the firm to ing of this power from the device to the network. you need, the latency of the applications, the speed continue to “disrupt” in the wireless access space Tomorrow our cloud-based networks will manage of the applications and the different SLAs that while it seeks to exit the market for legacy RAN devices and content and will be agnostic to the oper- different applications need. So we are talking about technology upgrades. ating system, which will allow the same experience carrier grade datacentres rather than regular types “For the first time ever,” he said, “we really have to be delivered on any device,” he said. of datacentre virtualization.” the right portfolio.”

should be a multi-vendor approach,” breaking vendor lock-in, I don’t want to Blanco says. “The traditional vendors pay that money to the hypervisor vendor. don’t like to break this lock-in. But if we “There are some that are more expen- define a multi-vendor reference architec- sive and have more benefits and some that ture and say that we will not have any are less expensive and we’re testing all of network functions that do not respect them,” he says. “But this is nothing new for this, sooner or later they will come to us.” us; this is our life.” If a new IMS can be provisioned and live Blanco talks about NFV with a great Blanco talks about NFV within a few days, after all, an existing deal of energy and projects a real sense IMS can be taken offline just as easily. that this is seen as an operator movement with a great deal of In keeping with this approach, the list with which the vendor community must energy and projects of vendor partners involved in Unica is fall in line. Change is inevitable and only a long one. Telefónica is working with by embracing it can Telefónica hope to a real sense that this Huawei in its Spanish datacentres, Alca- have an influence on its direction, he says. tel Lucent in its Mexican datacentre and “The border between the people of the is seen as an operator NEC in its Miami installation. Blanco network and the people of IT is disap- says he is working “very closely” with pearing,” he says. “This is an absolutely movement with which Broadsoft and namechecks NSN and HP, different way to think. In the next three the vendor community Cisco, Ericsson, Juniper and Intel as years, if you walk around our own data well. Different vendors within this group centres, you will not be able to distin- must fall in line have different stories when it comes to guish whether the server you are looking NFV and it will be interesting to see how at is providing a service to a large enter- each one progresses within Unica. prise customer, a cloud service for our But Blanco is not about to change his own guys or if it is running the HLR, the relationship with legacy vendors for a IMS or the EPC.” similar one with new suppliers. His team Blanco employs an overused phrase are investigating different hypervisor so- when he talks of “changing the paradigm lutions and he insists that cost efficiency of the industry.” For once, though, it is essential: “If I’m saving money by doesn’t sound so hackneyed. n

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 13

08-13_MCI183_Virtualization.indd 13 11/04/2014 10:57 MCI INTERVIEW

MCI EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

Virtualization reality Chinese network vendor Huawei is one of Telefónica’s key partners in Project Unica. MCI spoke to Ken Wang, president of global marketing and solutions for Huawei’s Carrier Network business group about the firm’s involvement in Unica and its wider perspective on NFV.

Q: Why is NFV so important to the been carried out since then, ranging difficulties in terms of performance, mobile operator community? from the network planning to proof security, and interoperability testing of concept tests. At the Mobile World need to be overcome and the trial Network Functions Virtualization is Congress 2014, Telefonica showcased commercial sites are expected to be one of the most important trends for the UNICA Infrastructure which is available in 2015. future networks. It can significantly enabled by Huawei’s technologies improve network flexibility, create a and the two companies signed a MoU Q: Can you elaborate on some of more open and creative environment for Telco cloud cooperation. Huawei those challenges and difficulties? for the industry, and help mobile is proud to have the opportunity to The biggest challenge that NFV pre- operators address the most pressing partner with Telefónica on this im- sents to operators is that they must challenges in their businesses. portant project and we are happy and ensure network performance and The first of these is network flex- encouraged by the progress we have user experience within the new NFV ibility and the adaptability of services. made so far. architecture. Carriers not only need to The mobile internet now offers a vast adopt applications based on versatile range of innovative applications and Q: Unica is possibly the most ad- hardware and cloud OS to provide services but it requires that the under- vanced NFV programme to have carrier-grade network performance lying networks quickly and seamlessly been announced by any operator to and stability; they also need to ensure adapt to the evolving upper-layer date. What other developments are fast end-to-end service deployment services. you seeing in the industry at the and deliver high-quality user experi- At the same time carrier networks moment? ence with an increasingly dynamic are becoming increasingly complex, Besides Telefónica, Huawei is also and flexible network that is vertically with a large number of network partnering with other top-tier tel- and horizontally more open than elements which makes operations ecom operators such as Deutsche ever before. and maintenance more difficult and Telekom to carry out joint innova- NFV presents similar challenges expensive to manage. tion in relation to NFV technologies. for vendors. We need to create a Then there is the crucially impor- Currently, many of our joint projects highly dynamic and open network tant issue of network traffic moneti- are at the proof of concept and lab architecture to enable fast service zation. While the high penetration of test phase. Various challenges and evolvement; however the system smartphones boosts mobile internet traffic, it is becoming increasingly challenging for carriers to grow their career history service revenues from increasing traf- fic consumption alone. Ken (Shengqing) Wang is President of Global NFV will help operators deal with Marketing and Solutions for Huawei’s Carrier Network each of these issues. It will enhance business group. In this capacity, Wang oversees their network efficiency, flexibility and the business group’s global marketing strategy and scalability, helping them to manage directs all marketing and communications efforts their ever-evolving business needs. across Carrier Network business group. It will improve their agility, shorten- ing the innvoation cycle and time to Wang joined Huawei in 1997 and started as Product market for new network services, Director for Huawei’s wireless products in China and helping them to create new business globally. Since then he has held several management opportunities. And it will bring Opex positions within the company, including Vice President and Capex down, reducing total cost of Asia Pacific Region, as well as President of Huawei’s and ensuring more robust financial Key Global Accounts Department. performance.

Q: What is your involvement in Mr. Wang received his Master’s degree from Huazhong Project Unica? University of Science and Technology of China.

Telefonica and Huawei’s collaboration on Unica started in August of 2012 and a variety of joint activities have

14 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

14-15_MCI_ExecutiveInterview.indd 14 14/04/2014 15:57 MCI INTERVIEW

MCI EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

A vision of the future

Huawei’s SoftCOM programme combines cloud software upgrades. In addition, the network next thirty years. Enterprises will need computing, Network Functions Virtualization can deliver better user experience and ICT infrastructure to support their cloud (NFV), Software Defined Networking (SDN) higher utilization through centralised routing services in this transformation. and internet-based operations to provide a and traffic control, laying the foundation for reconfigured network paradigm for the next service quality-based traffic monetisation. 4. Operation reconstruction: Transforming decade. It stands on four key pillars: the business model from internal control Network devices will no longer depend on a into one serving users through an "all 1. Architecture reconstruction: Establishing specific piece of hardware so network elements online", on-demand automation and a DC-centered ICT architecture (NEs) can share a unified hardware platform. intelligence, and internet-based operation. In the information age service provisioning, A resource pool can then be set up to allow Telcos should adopt internet-based data exchange, and business activities resource sharing between various NEs and operations to allow users to obtain services will all become digitized, datacenters will software defined functions, quick development on demand and should go all online to support be responsible for service processing and provisioning of new services, automatic and on-demand services for users. But they and business transactions in addition scalable networks that are responsive to traffic should not stop here, as user-oriented online to information storage, processing, and volume, and fault isolation and self-recovery operation should drive the re-engineering exchange. They will become "the telephone based on autonomous systems. This will greatly of internal business processes to realize switchboard in the digital era" and the core of boost the utilisation, deployment, and O&M an intelligent, automated, and connected ICT infrastructure as future network planning of network resources and shorten service business operation. Big data analytics and construction will be based on datacenters provisioning time. enables precise marketing by allowing in order to adapt to service development and operators to delve into customer demands, traffic scheduling. 3. Service reconstruction: Taking advantage increasing productivity by dozens of times of the transformation brought by the cloud and structurally reducing OPEX. 2. Network reconstruction: Realising As a new business model and concept, flexible and intelligent network/product cloud services have presented the telecom architecture through SDN and NFV industry with a tremendous strategic By separating the control and forwarding opportunity and a new channel for revenue planes and virtualizing network resources worth trillions of dollars. With the increase in through SDN/NFV, the network can be bandwidth of global networks and maturity managed in a more unified and global of cloud computing technologies, companies manner to ensure better network resource will gradually replace their data centers scheduling, higher efficiency, and simpler with ICT cloud services from telcos in the

performance cannot be compromised help the company break their vendor new players and the fall of some by the increased level of versatility lock-in. How do you see this playing existing ones. This presents both and flexibility. out—and will a move to NFV see opportunities and challenges to all In addition, an NFV network envi- more control over the technological of us. But the legacy telecommunica- ronment typically involves a greater road map shifting from vendor to tion vendors still have the advantage diversity of network devices, so the operator? because of the need to guarantee standardization of interfaces, thorough We believe NFV will truly bring very high performance, security and interconnection tests and full integra- value to our customers and the en- scalability in the network. We think tion of capabilities are critical for the tire industry is working collectively that NFV offers more potential than deployment and operation of any NFV on its advancement. But we agree risk for us. networks. We believe that the custom- that the network will be more open We understand that this is not just ers will be willing to invest in real NFV and there will be greater choice for about cutting costs. More important deployment when performance can be operators. NFV blurs the boundary for operators is the opportunity NFV guaranteed. between the traditional CT (commu- affords them to drive new revenues nications technology) domain and in the face of declining value in tra- Q: There is another challenge for the traditional IT domain, which ditional voice and data services. It’s vendors in the shape of increased will drive more competition between about a move to more of an internet competition. Telefónica CTO Enrique CT and IT vendors. operational model, more agility and Blanco is quite clear that NFV will Inevitably we will see the rise of more on-demand services. n

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 15

14-15_MCI_ExecutiveInterview.indd 15 14/04/2014 16:06 MCI INTERVIEW

MCI EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

A network without borders James Tagg, CTO and Founder of Truphone, talks to MCI about building a next generation global mobile network and disassociating his company from the MVNO label.

Q: What are the challenges in cre- kind of culture would delay the project ating a “network without country and make it unaffordable. borders”? For nine months, a cross functional Usually when you build a big infra- team reviewed and updated the plan structure project you copy the outline every single day at 8am, we worked of a project plan that someone else has about 60 per cent of weekends too—to done before. The lessons on previous iron out the problems that emerged projects reduce the complexity and on the previous day. It really was a risk, which it makes good sense to remarkable team effort. It’s fair to learn from. When we started build- say it was an emotional rollercoaster. ing the Truphone second generation global network in 2012, the only people Q: What is it you do that other who had any experience even vaguely MVNOs haven’t achieved? similar, already worked inside the Traditional mobile phone networks company—there was no expert ‘out are extremely efficient and reliable for there’ we could ask for help. Many of the provision of service in domestic the core network elements and compo- markets. But when subscribers roam nents in the Truphone Global Mobile abroad, these operators are unable to Network were invented or developed accurately control the user experience, in-house from scratch. James Tagg, Truphone Chief Technical Officer, and Founder or provide comprehensive customer In a software development world, service this type of rapid innovation is quite A key difference with the Truphone normal. However when these unknow- training, ultimately handing over to network is that it has major points able elements need to be seamlessly the operational maintenance team. of presence in four continents. This connected with the heavy telecoms In this way, we have specialists who shortens the distance that the voice, infrastructure world, everything can rapidly invent network elements text and data information has to changes. Operationally this presents and turn them into business as usual travel; thereby reducing latency and an enormous number of challenges— processes. Managing this kind of increasing quality. we had to accept that even the best rapid development and innovation is Truphone has a series of MVNO laid plan would be at least partially what keeps the business fresh, and relationships with tier-one carrier wrong. This would be hard enough to always looking to how we can meet partners in the Truphone Zone. Each of manage if all the team were Truphone the challenges of tomorrow. these countries is physically connected employees, however many of the team The other key dimension to the to our central core network by a dedi- worked for key suppliers of equipment, challenge is to recognise that Tru- cated MPLS or SS7 interconnection; and so were held to very different ob- phone works in deep collaboration this gives us the ability to have com- jectives, and different ways of working. with a network of top-tier partners. plete control over the user experience We operate a systems approach anywhere inside the Truphone Zone. Q: How did you overcome those whereby we build the things that This model enables people ‘roaming’ challenges? nobody else has, internally, and in Truphone countries to get the ben- We have an extremely talented team outsource everything else. efit of local data speeds—in the same of telecoms engineers inside the Managing the kind of uncertainty way as they would do with a domestic business. We run three development I’ve just outlined with top-tier sup- carrier. What’s more, as each MVNO is clusters, one in our Headquarters pliers requires a new way of working, signed with a tier-one carrier partner, in London, one attached to the New with well-integrated cross functional Truphone is able to provide a best in Jersey Institute of Technology, and one teams from across a wide number class service in each marketplace. adjacent to the Technology institute in of interdependent organisations This compares with a standard mo- Lisbon, Portugal. collaborating effectively. That’s not bile network configuration; where you These teams are orchestrated to how these suppliers normally like to visit a foreign network and all your manage the production cycle from operate —they much prefer detailed traffic is home routed. If you want to needs analysis, through proof of con- specifications up front, with any access the internet, for instance, your cept development, commercial produc- minor amendment subject to change data is sent all the way back home tion, testing, process development and requests (and escalating budgets). to the country, and then is sent back documentation and organisational With a project of this nature, that across to wherever in the world you

16 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

16-17_MCI183.indd 16 14/04/2014 15:58 MCI INTERVIEW

MCI EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

happen to be. This has a significant to match – you’re doing the same things approach has evolved to be highly fo- impact on data speeds and latency. that a ‘traditional’ operator does. cused on a specific market segment— For example, in a traditional roaming In fact, you’re proving to the mobile those businesses with a significant scenario, maximum download speed operator community that there are still portion of their operations inside the is 6 Mbps, with Truphone its 42Mbps. network level technologies, which can Truphone Zone. sustainably differentiate you in a telco From a brand advertising point of Q: What is an MVNO? environment where the wider world view, it is very hard for a relatively When you look at global market trends would have us believe that Over The small company such as Truphone to in telecoms, it’s apparent that all op- Top providers are the only arena for cut through the noise—it’s a saturated erators are increasingly viewing the innovation left in the marketplace. marketplace where billions of dollars radio access network as a commodity One other implication in the MVNOs are spent on advertising globally. product. category, is that they provide service However we know with a high Across the world we see operators of a lesser quality than traditional degree of accuracy which potential selling their radio towers back to network operators. I’m not sure that’s customers are likely to be most in- the equipment manufacturers, and true, but I do know that Truphone’s terested in Truphone—we have a agreeing deals to lease back capac- unique mobile network infrastructure thoroughgoing analysis of businesses ity. These deals have detailed service delivers higher quality voice and data in each operational country which are level agreements, available bandwidth, across intercontinental borders than most likely to take our service. We use maximum downtime and other per- any of the major operators can—we this insight to target customers much formance KPIs. have demonstrated real working data more accurately, using direct means, Many of these networks are now speeds of up to 19MB when ‘roaming’ digital media and more immersive sharing not just the passive, but also inside the Truphone Zone. The last time experiential approaches. the active elements of their RAN I checked, that’s 3x the speed that even To us, our primary objective it to networks. 4G roaming has achieved. make sure this clearly defined market Where they add value to their sub- Additionally, I think I’m right in segment knows we exist, and what scribers is in the core of their mobile saying that MVNOs sell only to the makes us special. networks—that’s how they differ- consumer market, but Truphone now entiate themselves from a technical have five of the top eight banks in the Q: How do you deal with different perspective. world as customers. We may save peo- user experiences in different coun- This is, in fact, the exact same ple a bunch of money, but this is not tries and manage expectations? model as Truphone operates, we rent a low-cost play. What we find is that We manage and hide all the complex- bandwidth under strict KPIs from customers use a significant amount ity from the user. All they ever have to world leading network providers. We of data with Truphone. One analysis I do is ‘press call’ or use their device own and run a highly differentiated, saw this past week from Caterham F1, as normal. It’s our aim to deliver the globally distributed mobile core. This showed that their usage had quadru- same user experience everywhere. In a is where we add value and provide pled since they joined Truphone, but globalised economy, why should there service from. We lease the last mile of their bill had virtually halved. be a difference between the way a connectivity in the countries where we Whether we can be called an MVNO mobile handset operates in America or operate—the Radio Access Networks. is a debate that could be had, but we Australia? In our view, there shouldn’t. The reason we don’t like to be pi- certainly don’t feel that we sit com- The way we have constructed our geon holed into the MVNO bucket—is fortably in that pigeon hole. Maybe system is that the network and the the associations the term immediately we need a new category name, “A next SIM card work in harmony to deliver conjures in the mind of the market- generation global mobile network?” a local experience—so within the Tru- place as a technology-free company. phone Zone, there is no difference in We have a great deal of technology. Q: And how are you changing the way the service that a user receives. There Critics might define an MVNO in which you are perceived? is one number for customer services— as a pure branding and marketing It is important to us that the market- you just dial 707, or 505 for voicemail machine that sells services to cus- place hears our message from trusted regardless of your locale. We use smart tomers that it would be uneconomic sources, namely our customers, key dialling, as well as smart caller ID, to for a license holder to address. They industry analysts and informed com- ensure that all calls are routed where add limited value themselves from a mentators such as MCI. We of course they are supposed to be and that a user technical perspective, purely admin- want the operator community to doesn’t need to know or understand istering configuration and tariffing recognise what we do—it’s important international dialling codes—they just changes. that we maintain and grow relation- press call as per normal. But once you start owning and run- ships as an active contributor to this Outside the Zone, we deliver high ning your own core network, creating community, especially as we look to quality connections and high quality value added services that even the further develop our global footprint. data in just the same way as every provider of your bandwidth is unable From a customer point of view, our other mobile operator. n

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 17

16-17_MCI183.indd 17 14/04/2014 16:07 Introduction Telecoms.com Awards 2014

Industry achievements recognised at inaugural Telecoms.com Awards

t can often be a little daunting to do There was a brief reprise of the fi rst night • Professor Simon Saunders, CEO of Real something for the fi rst time, to take a step nerves as we prepared for the evening celebra- Wireless Iinto the unknown. So when we decided to tion at the Miramar Restaurant on Montjuïc, • Bengt Nordström, CEO of NorthStream launch the Telecoms.com Awards we were a with its fabulous panoramic views over Bar- • Mark Newman, Chief Research Offi cer at little unsure as to what to expect. celona. In this busiest of weeks, would people Informa Telecoms & Media There was clearly no absence of achieve- fi nd time to attend? We needn’t have worried; • Jeremy Green, Principal Consultant at ment to celebrate but we had no reliable gauge the room was buzzing and the evening was Ovum of the appetite within the industry for a new a fi ne celebration of the achievements of the awards programme. On the Monday before winners and shortlisted entrants. Finally I would just like to add my congrat- our Friday deadline for submitting entries it Separating the winners from the shortlist ulations once again to the winners of the 2014 didn’t look too substantial—the only upside turned out to be as challenging a process Telecoms.com Awards and wish everyone luck to the paucity of entries being that it looked as awards hosts are traditionally bound to with their entries for the 2015 competition. as if the judging process was going to be observe and everyone at Telecoms.com would extremely easy. like to thank our judging panel for the hours But the absence of submissions derived, as they spent on this process. Very few people in it turned out, not from a lack of interest but the industry have spare time in the approach instead from the vast number of deadlines to Mobile World Congress so their generosity that people within this industry tend to be is deeply appreciated. juggling in January and early February. As My judging colleaguges for the 2014 our own approached we were inundated with Telecoms.com Awards were: requests for more time and, by the end of the • Professor William Webb, CEO of Webb Mike Hibberd, Editorial Director, following week, we had hundreds of entries. Search and President Elect of the IET Telecoms.com

PANEL OF JUDGES

Professor William Webb Professor Simon Saunders Bengt Nordström Mark Newman Jeremy Green

18 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

18_MCI183_Intro.indd 18 14/04/2014 12:54 Informa_Network.indd 1 04/04/2014 10:15 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Gallery

20 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

20-21_MCI183.indd 20 14/04/2014 12:54 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Gallery

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 21

20-21_MCI183.indd 21 14/04/2014 12:55 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner

his award recognises a com- through the use of Information mercial, enterprise cloud & Communications Technology Toffering that shows evidence in education. This program aims of innovation in terms of service to transform Malaysian schools offering, functionality, fl exibility, from the conventional teaching targeting, collaboration and up- approach to an anytime, anywhere take and usage. learning environment that can Malaysian carrier YTL Com- be personalized to the individual munications is using its 4G net- student’s needs. work to help bring about an To support the rapid deploy- internet-driven economy. Under ment of 1BestariNet, YTL extended the1BestariNet program led by the its nationwide 4G network to all Malaysian Ministry of Education, government schools. And since YTL became the fi rst internet ser- communities are built around vice provider to connect all 10,101 schools, this programme has also government schools nationwide helped Malaysia further close the with internet connectivity along digital divide by enabling high with a cloud-based Frog Virtual quality 4G mobile broadband to Learning Environment (Frog VLE) be accessible by all communities ytl communications to transform the education expe- throughout the country. rience, bridge the digital divide between urban and rural students CATEGORY: and establish Malaysia as a model BEST ENTERPRISE CLOUD OFFERING of educational excellence. The 1BestariNet program is PRODUCT: in line with the aspirations of the Government of Malaysia’s 1BESTARINET PROGRAM objectives in transforming society

Q&A : WING LEE, CEO

Ministry of Education to provide high- We have been enjoying a steady growth Cloud computing is among the most speed Internet connectivity for all 10,101 in subscriber base and will continue to exciting internet megatrends globally. national schools. Connecting a school expand it, boost our ARPU and branding For those who understand the value of was as straightforward as placing Yes this year through creative marketing cloud computing, this is an once-in- fi xed Internet gateway devices called campaigns and offers. We have also a-lifetime opportunity for operators Zoom in areas such as computer labs, been expanding our network coverage to fi nally be in sync with the innova- staffrooms and administration offi ces. to East Malaysia, thus connecting the tion curve of the Internet. But cloud Additionally, we provided cloud-based entire nation with the same high quality computing is only as effective as the Frog Virtual Learning Environment Internet and ultimately, creating a level availability of consistent high speed, (VLE) that has been integrated with playing fi eld for everyone. low latency connections. It therefore cloud storage and education apps by underscores the key attributes of 4G— Google. Good quality teaching materials Q: What do you see as the greatest mobility, high speed and low latency. Q: Tell us a bit about the problem your and practices by educators can be easily challenge in the industry for 2014? You can get the latter two attributes solution is addressing? shared via Frog VLE, thus ensuring Building and running a 4G network can of high speed and low latency from Providing affordable and high quality a healthy marketplace of ideas that only be the start of something much fi bre connections, but when cloud is Internet connectivity to all schools in everyone can tap into, while enhancing more exciting. We see the twinning of 4G ubiquitous, so should the connection Malaysia can be diffi cult as tradition- teaching, learning and streamlining network and cloud technology as one of be. For these reasons, we feel the ally, the majority of fi xed Internet con- administrative procedures. the most exciting fusion opportunities. ubiquitous 4G network we have built nectivity is delivered through physical In fact, we have been hard at work to is perfect for cloud computing. wires. This method of wired Internet is Q: How does your solution help your create a cloud-based learning platform prone to experiencing downtime due customers? together with some of the world’s best Q: What does winning a Telecoms.com to vandalism or other acts of tamper- With Frog VLE, education need not be industry players and are deploying it, Award mean to your company? ing and requires constant wiring and confi ned to a traditional classroom. With along with our 4G service, to all 10,101 We are thrilled to be recognized for our installation to keep it well-function- our ubiquitous 4G network, learning Malaysian schools. This is an exciting industry leadership with a Telecoms. ing, resulting in costly maintenance will be interactive, collaborative and opportunity and we will do our best to com Award. This recognition further and scalability issues. Furthermore, can be done anytime, anywhere. Frog show the world how cloud computing validates that cloud computing is not all schools have the privilege of VLE allows teachers and students the and 4G technology can come together clearly the future for the education having Internet access for teaching advantage to easily look up educational to create a platform that will help a landscape as well as for business and learning purposes, especially for videos, images, learning and teaching nation. The exciting thing is that this enterprises. Our vision in building a na- those in rural areas. resources and apps, all-accessible within is only the beginning! Embracing cloud tionwide mobile internet infrastructure Another issue was the consistency a safe, fi ltered environment. services requires a new mindset from as well as our hard work to elegantly and quality of the teaching materials traditional telco business model. I think leverage our Yes ID architecture for provided in schools. While the syllabus Q: How will 2014 play out for your therein lies one of the biggest challenges the purpose of layering on top of the and examinations are standardized, company? Plans, roadmap etc. for the industry. Frog VLE, complete with high quality educational methods vary based on We will introduce more consumer-centric content and collaboration services the experience and resources that products and plans to cater to the grow- Q: What for you is the most interesting have once again caught the world’s are made available to the educators. ing Internet usage requirements and opportunity across the whole commu- attention as we further drive the Hence we worked with the Malaysian increase uptake on mobile broadband. nications industry? existence of a digital economy.

22 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

22_winnerspage_YTL.indd 22 11/04/2014 10:11 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner BEST MOBILE FINANCIAL SERVICE

Indosat

CATEGORY: BEST MOBILE FINANCIAL SERVICE PRODUCT: DOMPETKU MOBILE WALLET AND MOBILE MONEY SERVICE

his award is for an operator that money from Indonesia’s large ATM network transfer licences making it easier for custom- launched a commercial, consumer-tar- and make purchases in partner retail stores, ers to cash e-money. In addition, there has Tgeted mobile payment solution de- both online and physically. Other services been a signifi cant upward trend in e-money livering evidence of innovation in terms of offered are P2P transfer (domestic), airtime transactions since 2009 which, according to functionality, usability, reach and uptake. top up and merchant payment. Through fi gures from Bank Indonesia, reached IDR 3.9 Dompetku Mobile Wallet and Mobile Money Indosat’s partnership with QNB Kesawan billion ($340,000) in 2012. Service in partnership with QNB Kesawan is customers are able to use their mobile at This service has a rapid deployment model, Indosat’s mobile money service, available on more than 200 local organisations, including which has seen an increase in the registered smart, featurephones and basic handsets. The banks and retail chains. Indosat is planning subscriber base to 800,000 and more than service targets Indonesia’s unbanked demo- to expand the programme in the near future 5,000 active outlets within three months of graphic, which amounts to approximately 60 to offer insurance, microfi nance, virtual credit its 2012 launch. per cent of the population, providing these cards, companion plastic cards, ecommerce With a population of over 250 million customers with access to a comprehensive and mobile payment processing. people and mobile phone penetration of over suite of mobile fi nancial services. The Dompetku service was introduced 100 per cent, but banking penetration of only Dompetku gives customers the opportunity to market at a crucial time. Bank Indonesia 40 per cent, Indonesia is one of the world’s to remit money, make bill payments, withdraw recently relaxed regulations around fund most attractive countries for mobile fi nance.

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 23

00_46_telecoms.com_Awards_winners.indd 23 10/04/2014 20:27 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner

ruphone pitches its propo- carrier partners and each of these sition as a “mobile network countries is physically connected Twithout country borders, to the central core network by delivering a superior internation- a dedicated IP interconnection; al mobile experience.” and also connects directly to the Within a group of countries internet locally. called the Truphone Zone, the This model enables people company offers bundles of voice, ‘roaming’ in Truphone countries text and high speed data across to get the benefi t of local data Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, speeds—in the same way as they the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, would do with a domestic MVNO. USA and the UK. Outside of the To enable the service, Truphone Zone, Truphone serves people in has developed the Truphone SIM over 200 countries, with regional which uses multiple international bundles that provide predictable identities that are automatically costs and higher quality network managed and confi gured over the performance in key business areas air. When a subscriber arrives in including, Asia Pacifi c, Europe and any Truphone country, the local North America. Truphone network automatically truphone A key difference the Truphone recognises the SIM card as being network claims is that it has major ‘local’, and manages the voice, points of presence in three conti- text and data traffi c locally. CATEGORY: nents, shortening the distance that BEST MVNO the voice, text and data information has to travel; thereby reducing latency and increasing quality. The company also has a series of MVNO relationships with tier one

Q&A : MANJU KESANI, GLOBAL CCO

the world. Based on advanced technology and in your home country that’s exactly cliché that mobile phone operators offer and patented innovations, our pioneering how it operates. But if you have a mobile sub-standard customer care, a problem network can transform how our customers number in the UK, and your contacts live that is exacerbated internationally. communicate with all their contacts, both in the US or Australia, you’re making it In 2014, where according to the UN 1bn home and away. hard for them to reach you. We know that people travel internationally each year, and In fact, we recently looked at the usage having a local number for other countries people expect to stay connected when they of 2,500 of our customers before and after increases the number of inbound calls you do so—having a network which is unable to they joined Truphone. Our analysis shows receive from those locations by about control quality of service internationally it is that after joining Truphone their voice and three times. a massive oversight. This is a problem that data usage grew by over 100%, while their Additionally, all of your contacts in the Truphone resolves, and which the industry average bills reduced by 66%. Truphone Zone are a local call away, no is trying to untangle. Customers achieve these results be- matter where you are in the Truphone Zone Q: Tell us a bit about the problem your cause our unique global network is built —and the call quality is the same whether Q: What for you is the most inter- solution is addressing? with international businesses in mind, you are calling from London to Liverpool, esting opportunity across the whole The business world no longer ends at delivering a consistent mobile experience or Brisbane to Barcelona. communications industry? country borders, if it ever did. Many modern with excellent call quality and signifi cantly Beyond the Zone, our network of over Obviously we believe that international businesses are hyper-mobile, with diverse faster data performance, internationally. 200 countries offers a better international communications is ripe for innovation. networks of suppliers and customers which In an area we call the Truphone Zone, experience, too. This is because calls and There has been very little innovation in this span international borders. We recently users can talk, text and download just like data are routed to the nearest country in space which address both quality and tariffs, asked an independent telecoms research a local, at local rates. The Zone currently the Truphone Zone giving you clearer calls due to the limitations of legacy mobile net- fi rm, CCMI, to look into the market for us, includes the UK, US, Germany, Spain, and faster Internet access for less. works. Delivering communications for the and their fi ndings show that businesses Poland, Australia, Hong Kong and the And, because we use advanced technol- international marketplace that is both high across all sectors and of all sizes are Netherlands. They just choose from a ogy to monitor our network 24/7, we aim to quality and affordable is something we’re suffering. They suffer because traditional range of voice, data and text bundles that address problems even before they occur. passionate about at Truphone. mobile network providers do not supply the work across teams in multiple countries. So, users benefi t from high-quality support performance, support or pricing to enable We believe that in a globalised economy, wherever they are. Q: What does winning a Telecoms.com them to stay productive internationally. business abroad should be business Award mean to your company? According to CCMI, 55% of enterprises as usual Q: What do you see as the greatest Truphone is thrilled to receive the Telecoms. sacrifi ce productivity and 20% have actu- A unique element of the Truphone challenge in the industry for 2014? com award. We have worked tremendously ally lost business as a result of international service is that users get multiple interna- From Truphone’s perspective, we see that hard to build the world’s fi rst mobile net- mobile communication challenges. tional numbers on a single SIM card. These there is a major blind-spot in the way that work that works seamlessly across country numbers are always available, wherever mobile networks were constructed. They borders. Truphone now enables businesses Q: How does your solution help your the user travels. This means that contacts were built for the world of 1992, with an to stay connected and productive interna- customers? in the Zone can call Truphone users on a integrated radio network and core network tionally in a way which no other network At Truphone, we’ve built a global mobile number that’s local to them. in each one country, this structure makes can. This recognition of our progress by network without consideration for coun- Roaming rates get a lot of press, but it impossible for operators to have control our industry is hugely rewarding, and is try borders. That means we can offer international mobile communications has over user experience internationally. testament to the great teamwork the team international businesses an outstanding lots of barriers that go unreported. We There are long standing problems that at Truphone, our industry partners and our and consistent mobile experience around believe that mobile devices should enable the industry still hasn’t really got to grips loyal customers have put in to making this spontaneous two way communications, with. For instance, it’s almost become a big idea come to life.

24 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

24_winnerspage_Truphone.indd 24 10/04/2014 17:22 Untitled-1 1 09/04/2014 10:24 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner

n order to provide a more In March 2013, Telefonica consistent service experience kicked off its mobile workforce Ifor its customers, Telefónica management project using TOA launched an initiative to stand- Technologies’ cloud-based ETA- ardise its global fi eld operations direct mobile workforce man- by deploying a standard solution agement solution. Supporting for mobile workforce manage- Telefónica’s goal of delivering an ment across its footprint—driv- enhanced customer experience, ing operational effi ciencies, cost ETAdirect provides a single view savings and ultimately a better into all of the company’s global experience for its customers. fi eld operations, from fi eld service With operations in 24 countries managers to the mobile workforce, across Europe and Latin America both employees and contractors. and over 315 million customers Using TOA’s ETAdirect, Telefónica worldwide, Telefónica is one of can offer customers shorter ap- the world’s largest telecommuni- paointment wait windows, and en- cations providers and recognised sure that the right fi eld technician the unique opportunity its mobile arrives at the right appointment, fi eld service employees provide with the equipment needed to to positively impact customer complete the job. TELEFóNICA & TOA relationships. And so it began Telefónica is rolling out the rethinking its fi eld operations solution by country, and has TECHNOLOGIES strategy. already deployed in Brazil. CATEGORY: BEST USE OF CLOUD SERVICE PRODUCT: ETADIRECT

Q&A : SIMON OROSZ, VP OF SALES, EMEA, TOA TECHNOLOGIES

our genetic algorithm assigns which Q: What do you see as the greatest fi rst-class infrastructures to support jobs go to which technician, it factors challenge in the industry for 2014 connected devices and services, and in a myriad of variables, including each The telecoms industry continues to have a plan in place to respond to technician’s unique work fi ngerprint experience major changes in terms of fi eld requests originating from these based on time-based data collected new players and technologies. Some networked assets. in the fi eld. For example, how long it of these technologies—such as “Over By providing a “future-ready” solution takes a technician to complete certain the top (OTT)” capabilities—represent that can easily be confi gured to quickly types of jobs and travel time based on a threat to a telecom’s core revenue add new products and services, TOA historical data, not map distance. It’s stream as the call time and charges are can help telecoms grow revenues and a true self-learning system, offering increasingly bypassed through the Inter- also reduce churn with market-driven phenomenal accuracy of when things net. And as telecoms start to introduce offerings. This fi ts well with our telecoms Q: Tell us a bit about the problem your will happen in the fi eld and how long new products and services to compete partners and we look forward to working solution is addressing? they will take. The reality is that it’s with emerging service providers, they with the industry to drive new service It’s really simple, but also complicated! hard to run an effective fi eld service are faced with end-to-end integration led business models. Basically, TOA Technologies helps our operation in guesswork! challenges in trying to incorporate them customers solve the age-old paradigm into legacy order-to-cash infrastructures, Q: What does winning a Telecoms.com (which has naturally-opposing dynamics) Q: How will 2014 play out for your which are time-proven but often rigid Award mean to your company? of increasing the effi ciency of their fi eld company? and costly to change. Winning the “Best Use of Cloud Services workforce, while reducing operating We’re expanding our reach in EMEA by a Telco” award with our partner, costs. At the same time, our cloud-based to support the continued success of Q: What for you is the most interest- Telefónica, demonstrates that we’re ETAdirect solution helps customers im- the business and growing demand for ing opportunity across the whole not only a catalyst in changing the way prove the customer service they provide advanced fi eld service solutions. This communications industry? telecoms manage their fi eld operations, and meet service level commitments is paralleled with a major focus on Despite new challenges, there are op- but we’re also helping them gain a bet- (customer and asset)—to many this is strategic alliances as we continue to portunities for new sources of revenue ter understanding of cloud technology a pipe dream. build out capabilities and infrastructure —founded on emerging partnerships. and then leverage it to improve their to support our growing partner network. The connected home, the connected business and experience they provide Q: How does your solution help your On the product side, we’re continuing to vehicle, connected healthcare and the to their customers. customers? change the game with the next major connected city are good examples. We’re not a company that only pro- Most scheduling and workforce automa- release of ETAdirect—which is highly In facing these challenges, telecoms vides software; we truly partner with tion solutions essentially work the same focused around technician collaboration have the chance partner with core our customers to help them succeed way, except for TOA’s ETAdirect. This and empowerment. Watch this space—it’s infrastructure and service providers. because we care about their business. is why I joined TOA—it’s fundamentally exciting stuff! Preparing for this maturing trend We’re honoured to be recognised different and breaks the industry mold. over the next 2-3 years will require by Telecoms.com for our work with Everything TOA does is time based— telecoms to both fi rm up the pro- Telefónica, and the way it is impacting what do I mean by that? Well, when cesses for installing and maintaining the industry.

26 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

26_winnerspage_TOA.indd 26 11/04/2014 11:45 Untitled-1 1 10/04/2014 09:32 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner BEST USE OF WIFI

devicescape

CATEGORY: BEST USE OF WIFI PRODUCT: DEVICESCAPE SERVICE PLATFORM

alifornian wifi specialist Devicescape than 285 million hotspots worldwide. by delivering a branded experience for carrier has developed a three-part proposition The fi rm’s cloud- and machine learn- wifi venues and a sponsored premium Popwifi Ccomprising access, engagement and ing-based curation technology can dynami- service for larger retailers. data insight services for operators, as well as cally select the best network experience for The data insights element of the offering premises owners. The proposition has at its end users, based on operator policies and end is enabled by the Curator Client, installed on heart what the company claims is the world’s user preferences. The access element of the users’ smartphones, which allows operators largest wifi network. offering delivers carrier-class performance to collect analytics for their customers’ wifi The Devicescape Service Platform (DSP) by automatically and seamlessly connecting usage. These include monthly aggregate usage combines an intelligent smartphone client, subscribers to the best hotpspots available. reporting, detailed subscriber wifi CDRs and a cloud server in a closed-loop and a curated In doing so enables operators to ensure their analytics feeds for marketing and network network of more than 20 million existing customers are “always best connected”. benchmarking purposes. amenity wifi hotspots. Amenity wifi , a com- Engagement services are built around the re- There have been more than ten commercial de- plimentary service offered by venue owners to cently developed Popwifi Neighbourhood Social ployments of the DSP, with customers including their customers, is a fast-growing mega-trend Network. This delivers marketing capabilities to Microsoft (deployed by Verizon), Intel, MetroPCS and the Devicescape curated virtual network the venue owner, including customer interaction, (acquired by T-Mobile), Leap Wireless (acquired (CVN) is on track to reach 100 million hotspots feedback and wifi QoE scores measured against by AT&T), Bouygues Telecom, U.S. Cellular, by 2017. In total Devicescape monitors more industry averages. The operator can add value C-Spire, Republic Wireless and Virgin Media.

28 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

00_46_telecoms.com_Awards_winners.indd 28 10/04/2014 21:03 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner CONNECTING THE UNCONNECTED

Ericsson

CATEGORY: CONNECTING THE UNCONNECTED PRODUCT: MILLENNIUM VILLAGES PROJECT

he Millennium Villages Project (MVP) is Ericsson provides mobile broadband con- In the Connect To Learn initiative (CTL), a community-led initiative addressing nectivity to enable 3G voice and data acess, Ericsson combines mobility, broadband Tthe Millennium Development Goals while working to integrate mobile technology and cloud services to promote access to (MDGs) in Africa. By providing affordable, into all project activities. Ericsson has brought and quality of secondary-school education science-based solutions and technologies internet access to schools and health centres and also provides scholarships especially the project helps people lift themselves out and, together with operators, has helped to for girls. In three years, 15,000 students of extreme poverty. establish toll-free emergency numbers. have received access to quality educational Ericsson is a leading technology partner in Mobility has had a particularly high impact resources enabled by the cloud based ICT the MVP together with the Earth Institute at on health care, leading to improved response solution deployed in their 16 schools. Er- Columbia University, Millennium Promise and times in emergency situations, reduced iso- icsson also contributes technical expertise NDP. Since Ericsson became part of the initi- lation and better training and equipment for and solutions. ative in 2007, more than 500,000 people in 14 health care workers. By distributing mobile IN 2011 the fi rst ICT projects were countries in sub-Saharan Africa have benefi tted phones to the villages’ community health launched in Chana, Tanania, Uganda and from mobile connectivity, which has resulted in care providers, children under fi ve, pregnant Kenya. Since then additional projects have improved access to health care and education women and newborns can now be monitored been initiated in Rwanda, Senegal, Ethiopia and as helped boost people’s livelihoods. and patient records generated. and Malawi.

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 29

00_46_telecoms.com_Awards_winners.indd 29 10/04/2014 20:36 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner

elefónica UK’s Trusted Net- and marketing return reduction work Programme aims to of 15per cent. Tbuild brand loyalty and The SpatialBuzz platform is customer satisfaction by be- completely cloud based and is ing transparent with custom- deployed using Amazon cloud ers about network capability services, dynamically scaling and status. Specialist vendor to the usage needs of both the SpatialBuzz provides Telefónica internal and external systems with a self-help and analytics provided to Telefónica UK. With CEM systems to deliver this some three million customer vision. It ensures that the oper- checks per year, 8,000 customer ator knows, in real-time, exactly service agents and 200+ engi- where customers are experienc- neering and service management ing problems and can focus its users the solution claims to be efforts to improve the customer’s secure, reliable and scalable. experience of the network. By implementing the Spatial- Since its inception the Telefóni- Buzz self-help software, custom- ca UK Trusted Network Pro- ers have access to near real-time gramme has achieved: call centre status and performance infor- TelefÓnica UK & call reduction of 40 per cent; call mation displayed geographically resolution time improvement of on the web and via a handset 20 per cent; call escalation re- application, negating the need SpatialBuzz duction of 15 per cent; and sales to phone a call centre.

CATEGORY: CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT PRODUCT: TRUSTED NETWORK PROGRAMME

Q&A : ANDREW BLAKE, CTO, SPATIALBUZZ

network topology and hierarchy; coverage ical markets, including North and South effect can be disastrous for customer levels for multiple technology layers; hot- America, Eastern Europe and APAC. As satisfaction. Pro-actively communicating spot and store locations; and past, current a cloud-hosted solution, our footprint can with customers to let them know of possi- and future (planned) service outages. It be global. We believe the operators who ble service disruption and monitoring the uses this data to provide state-of-the-art will embrace our solution are the ones experience of customers in real time can information services to customers, keeping who have the most forward-thinking, help greatly to avoid user frustration, and them up to date on the network coverage even disruptive, approach to the market: can assist the operator in planning the and service status so they can easily fi nd in the past mobile product offerings have works in the least invasive manner. out the reason for a problem or can plan mainly been centred on hardware, and their activities knowing the service they controlled from a Network Operations Q: What for you is the most interesting can expect. The same data is available via Centre (NOC), but in the future we see opportunity across the whole commu- multiple touchpoints—website, phone app them becoming more customer-centric nications industry? Q: Tell us a bit about the problem your and conventional call centre. and the NOC evolving into a Service From an operator’s point of view the rise solution is addressing? SpatialBuzz closes the loop by analysing Operations Centre. Solutions such as in data traffi c is not being matched by a Mobile network operators need to im- the activity of the users to derive powerful SpatialBuzz will become an integral part rise in revenue but—as well as burdening prove communication with their customers, crowd-sourced insights to the operator on of this new operations scenario. the network—the growth in the number of making it easier for customers to obtain how the users perceive network perfor- smartphones also provides a new channel real-time information about network cover- mance and where they are experiencing Q: What do you see as the greatest for the operators to interact with their age and service status without the need to problems. This information is used by challenge in the industry for 2014? customers, as does the growth in social phone a call centre. Furthermore, custom- customer service and network operations The mobile market is becoming increas- networking. Operators have a greater ers would like to be pro-actively informed by to identify and address service-impacting ingly commoditised, and customers opportunity than ever to engage with their the operator when maintenance or outages issues, as well as improve the information are seeing it as a utility, like water or customers and to treat them as individuals. on the network might affect their service. provided to customers through the Spatial- electricity. In this challenging market Buzz system. It also allows the operator to environment, operators need to fi nd a Q: What does winning a Telecoms.com Q: How does your solution help your rank service problems according to the level way to differentiate themselves. Some, Award mean to your company? customers? of user impact, and to prioritise corrective for example, are offering premium apps Industry recognition is both a great en- SpatialBuzz focuses on the needs of two actions accordingly. bundles like Spotify with their package dorsement of our product and a valida- sets of stakeholders, the mobile network but this is easy for competitors to match. tion for our customers that by choosing operators and their customers. The product Q: How will 2014 play out for your An excellent way of differentiating and SpatialBuzz they are doing the right thing allows SpatialBuzz’s customer—the opera- company? securing loyalty is by offering exemplary for their own customers. Telefónica UK in tor—to communicate better with their own Up until now we have mainly focused our customer service, and this is where particular has been very positive about customers, giving them information and efforts on the European market, where SpatialBuzz can help. what we have helped them achieve, as they feedback in a timely manner, and helping we have validated our solution and have The roll-out of 4G infrastructure and have described in the video Case Study on to build trust, brand loyalty and customer achieved recognition both from cus- the consolidation of the networks are both http://www.spatialbuzz.com/case-studies, satisfaction. tomers and from the industry, the latter causing disruption to the mobile service, and the award also recognises their fore- SpatialBuzz takes a wide range of data endorsed by our recent award success. and if this happens to coincide with regular sight in using our solution to build trust about the operator’s network, including: 2014 will see us grow into new geograph- maintenance nearby, then the combined with their customers.

30 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

Telefonica&SpatialBuzz_winnerspage.indd 30 10/04/2014 21:38

Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner BEST CONSUMER CLOUD OFFERING

AT&T

CATEGORY: BEST CONSUMER CLOUD OFFERING PRODUCT: AT&T SPEECH API

s technology becomes a more integral accents, background environments, platform allows customers to use their smartphone part of consumers’ everyday lives, variations and spoken languages. AT&T has as a voice-powered remote control. U-verse AAT&T is working to make users’ inter- more than 600 patents relating to Watson. Easy Remote has a large and dynamic vo- actions with devices as natural, convenient By placing more of AT&T Watson’s speech cabulary of tens of thousands of programme and seamless as possible. In July 2012, AT&T capabilities in the cloud, AT&T is designing titles, actor names and channel names. The released its carrier-independent Speech API the Speech API to have multiple use cases that app is able not only to recognise voice input via the AT&T cloud-hosted API Platform with expand the possibilities for what developers but also lto learn and adapt to individual seven different contexts for developers: Web can create on top of the company’s intelligent speaking tendencies. search, business search, voicemail to text, network. For example, with the introduction This enables consumers to use voice-op- SMS, question and answer, TV speech to text of voice biometrics, devleopers can add an erative commands to scroll through and and generic speech to text. extra layer of personalisation to their apps fi nd channels or to fast forward, rewind, The Speech API is powered by the AT&T and services. replay, pause, play and record certain shows. Watson speech engine, a multimodal un- Using its U-verse IPT platform in conjunc- It also allows for speech-enabled search of derstanding engine that adapts to users’ tion with the Speech API, AT&T has posi- programmes by title, channel association or personal needs, speaking styles, local dialects, tioned U-verse as the fi rst TV provider that cast member.

32 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

00_46_telecoms.com_Awards_winners.indd 32 10/04/2014 20:45 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner GREEN TECHNOLOGY

Greentouch Consortium

CATEGORY: GREEN TECHNOLOGY PRODUCT: GREEN METER STUDY

reenTouch is a global research consor- prehensive research portfolio addressing the access and core networks while supporting the tium dedicated to improving the energy energy challenges in all parts of the communi- predicted exponential traffi c growth. Geffi ciency of telecommunications and cations network, including wireline and fi xed The study takes an end-to-end network per- data networks, bringing together scientists, access, mobile communications, switching spective and covers the full range of technolo- engineers and researchers from more than 50 and routing, IP and optical networking, and gies. As a result the research provides valuable leading organisations from industry, academia content distribution and datacenter networks. insights into the overall impact as well as the and research institutes. Of the projects under development, the Large relative impact of these technologies being Improvements in network technology are Scale Antenna System (LSAS) and the Bit In- considered. It also explicitly includes the traffi c struggling to keep pace with exponential terleaved Passive Optical Networks (Bi-PON) growth into the calculations of future network growth in data traffi c, applications and servic- technology have recently been showcased in energy effi ciencies and energy consumption. es driven primarily by mobile video and cloud public demonstrations. While the Green Meter research study presents based services. Coupled with the increased GreenTouch has conducted an in-depth study a signifi cant advance into our understanding cost of energy, this trend leads to signifi cant to assess the overall impact of the technologies, of future energy effi cient communication net- increases in the energy consumption and the architectures and techniques being investigated. works and describes portfolio of promising associated operational expenses of operators This “Green Meter” study found that it could be technologies, more research work remains and and service providers world-wide which will possible to reduce the net energy consumption more opportunities for additional gains present not be environmentally sustainable and eco- in communication networks by up to 90 per themselves. GreenTouch continues on its mission nomically viable over the next decade. cent by 2020 through dramatic improvements towards improving the energy effi ciency of GreenTouch members have built a com- in energy effi ciency in mobile access, wireline communication networks.

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 33

00_46_telecoms.com_Awards_winners.indd 33 10/04/2014 21:04 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner

he emerging dominance of a door through which operators data demands innovative fear to pass. T pricing for operators to Real time Self Service (RTSS) be able to get a decent ROI on capabilities from AsiaInfo Linkage their network investments and gives users up to the minute real real-time charging systems need time billing information that lets to play a key role in allowing them see exactly what services operators to do this. they are using and at what cost: Research from consultants at how much money they spent on Northstream has shown that Facebook compared to Twitter for real time charging systems are example. On the other hand, oper- evolving to allow operators to ators are able to design more data differentiate between different centric price plans where a plan types of data and hence price is a bundle of app usage and each them differently, and to put real element in the plan can come with a time control into the hands of specifi c data speed, which can be al- consumers, enabling operators tered temporarily during the plan so to generate billions of dollars in users have a great data experience, incremental revenue. yet not incurring costs way beyond Consumers typically like all you their regular subscription price. AsiaInfo Link age can eat data tariffs; unlimited text bundles, unlimited voice minutes; CATEGORY: or simple top ups in easy units of money. But an unlimited text, un- MOBILE PRICING INNOVATION limited voice, and unlimited data bundle all for one fi xed monthly PRODUCT: fee comes at a price that is way REAL-TIME SELF SERVICE (RTSS) SOLUTION beyond the scope of most consum- ers and – in any case – is opening

Q&A ANDY TILLER, VP CORPORATE MARKETING, ASIAINFO LINKAGE

turbo boosts and convenience charges for music tracks, audio-book downloads, where to start. Our mission is to help transferring and transforming resources, etc. Each element in the plan can come them succeed. RTSS creates a win-win for the operator with specifi c QoS (data speed, latency…), and the end customer. and if the customer wants, he/she can Q: What for you is the most interesting alter these data speeds temporarily to opportunity across the whole commu- Q: How does your solution help your give an improved data experience for a nications industry? customers? small fee as and when required. RTSS The continued evolution of the data The Asian and North American markets creates a win-win for everyone. driven ‘digital economy’ is possibly have shown how real-time charging the largest opportunity presented to systems, coupled with advanced policy Q: How will 2014 play out for your the entire communications industry. control and a simple user interface for company? It is redefi ning the roles played by the Q: Tell us a bit about the problem your end customers, not only give both oper- During 2014 we will continue our strate- traditional players; it is opening doors solution is addressing? ators and consumers improved control, gy of international expansion: delivering to new business models; and most Real-time Self Service (RTSS) gives end they also drive paid-for data usage. our fi rst large scale European BSS trans- importantly it is helping service pro- customers a high degree of personali- RTSS takes this to the next level, giving formation project for Telenor Group; viders to understand their customers zation and control over their mobile consumers vastly improved visibility engaging with additional operators in better so they can deliver what each data experience, while at the same time and control of their mobile spend, and the region who are seeking innovation; individual customer actually wants providing operators with new ways to providing operators with monetization and strengthening our brand in the and values. monetize data. opportunities. global arena. For example, RTSS allows customers Operators in two Asian countries Q: What does winning a Telecoms.com to transfer resources (eg ‘Skype min- utes’, ‘YouTube megabytes’…) to their have the Real-time Self Service (RTSS) Q: What do you see as the greatest Award mean to your company? family and friends; transform resources capabilities from AsiaInfo-Linkage. RTSS challenge in the industry for 2014? AsiaInfo-Linkage began its global ex- from one type to another; control their gives users up-to-the-minute real-time Data monetisation will continue to pansion with the conviction that the family members’ spend per month or per billing information that lets them see be a key challenge for the industry in innovation which made us successful device; turbo boost specifi c applications; exactly what services they are using 2014. There is much agreement on the in Asia for the past two decades is and defi ne their own postpaid plans and at what cost—how much money elements of the strategy—including highly relevant in the wider international and bolt-on packages without creating they spent on Facebook compared innovating data pricing, partnering market, too. Winning the Telecoms.com complexity in the operator’s IT systems. to Twitter for example. Operators with the OTTs, etc. However, when it award, judged by a panel of eminent Operators can also monetize the en- are able to design data-centric price comes to implementing these strat- international experts, is a validation of hanced customer experience provided plans, where a plan is a bundle of chat egies, not many operators are well this conviction, and we are very proud by RTSS. For example, with fees for messages, VoIP minutes, video plays, equipped, and some don’t yet know recipients.

34 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

34_Awardswinner_AsiaInfoLinkage.indd 34 10/04/2014 21:39 Untitled-4 1 12/03/2014 16:19 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner

martNet is a free suite of mo- phonebook search bar. bile applications, with deep • Headlines—news aggregator Scarrier integration, designed • Real time load wallet dis- to give Smart subscribers a rich play—service that tracks credit and cost-effective internet expe- balance. rience. While mobile devices are • Free use of Yahoo search typically designed for consumers • SmartNet Rewards—ac- in developed countries where mo- tion-driven points system that bile internet is relatively afforda- offers additional benefi ts in- ble, Smart developed SmartNet to cluding retail discounts. let Filipinos enjoy web-based and • Safe Zone—disables non-Smart- web-dependent services for free Net applications from accessing or at minimum cost. the internet, preventing unex- pected data charges. Services include: There are 1.5 million registered • Social Feeds—free to use Twit- SmartNet users, 84 per cent of ter, Facebook and SmartNet.ph which are prepaid. Despite the news feed aggregator service being free, 70 per cent of • SmartNet-to-SmartNet messag- users access sites and services smart ing (aka Chat)—similar to online outside of SmartNet and are three messaging but free on-net. times more likely to pay for data • Babble—real time mobile mes- usage than the average Smart communications saging app for Android devices. subscriber. • FX-Messaging—free video CATEGORY: messaging feature which lets BEST OPERATOR OTT SERVICE LAUNCH users send pre-loaded video clips to other SmartNet users. PRODUCT: • Global Directory—Allows users to search for other SmartNet SMARTNET users by typing names into

Q&A : ORLANDO B. VEA, CHIEF WIRELESS ADVISOR OF SMART COMMUNICATIONS, INC.

be downloaded for free as an app, and that allow subscribers to pay only for the is also our most interesting opportunity. is also available via mobile and PC web. data required to access specifi c internet Some telcos have reacted to this by SmartNet features social feeds, a chat services. Combined with SmartNet and banning or limiting subscriber access to service, a news aggregator, and Yahoo! our data bundles, offerings like PowerApp OTT services. Others have opened up free services, which can all be accessed will contribute signifi cantly to our goal OTT services with negative impact on without incurring data charges. It also of making mobile Internet accessible to their service quality. But Smart is taking features a widget called Safe Zone, which more Filipinos. a different tack. We have been forging serves as an anti-“bill shock” solution. Anticipating usage growth, we are strategic partnerships with OTT players When the widget is on Internet Off mode, making investments to further enhance while innovating for our market. apps outside of SmartNet are prevented our ability to deliver data services There’s also the opportunity to integrate from accessing the Internet. This makes reliably. We are increasing 3G and LTE mobile in intersecting industries. Smart is Q: Tell us about the problem your the service data effi cient and enables us coverage this year. Our group is also taking the lead in turning Filipinos’ phones solution is addressing. to offer it at no cost. boosting its fi ber footprint to 90,000 into a marketplace for digital content. For While growth in mobile internet usage at If users want to access Internet ser- kilometers, the country’s largest. example, we struck a deal with the world’s Smart has been accelerating, only 15 per vices outside of SmartNet, they can just And following GSMA’s recognition biggest music companies and launched the cent of our customers own a smartphone switch SafeZone to Internet On mode. that SmartNet is a key enabler to its Spinnr service which allows subscribers to and of this segment, only 25 per cent use Only then will regular browsing charges vision of getting the next billion people stream and download up to three million mobile data services. Market studies show apply. Our “freemium” approach builds online, we are opening the platform to songs, and pay for their transactions via that this is because many customers habitual mobile internet use and thus other operators. prepaid load or postpaid credits. This is fear unexpected charges. Remember, encourages mobile internet uptake. signifi cant because a lot of Filipinos have per capita income in the Philippines is Q: What is the greatest challenge in no credit cards or traditional bank accounts. not at par with that in more developed Q: How will 2014 play out for your the industry for 2014? nations. Our customers are mindful of company? With more customers shifting to smart- Q: What does winning a Telecoms.com expenses. With SmartNet, we aimed to Smart’s market is largely prepaid, so we are phones, operators have to contend with Award mean to your company? address that fear. focusing on unlocking broadband potential growing competition from OTT players. It’s a great honor to be recognized in at the prepaid level. We have products and Operators face the challenge of staying the awards program’s inaugural year. We Q: How does your solution help your services in the pipeline, some developed relevant in the digital age, of not being are happy to know that industry experts customers? in-house and others in partnership with relegated to the dumb pipe role. consider SmartNet the best service of its Smart and our subsidiary Voyager Inno- over-the-top players, which will encourage kind in the world. This award inspires us vations developed SmartNet, a platform subscribers to leave their data “always on” Q: What is the most interesting to continue coming up with innovations for operator-managed services that al- without fear of overspending. opportunity across the communica- that will put the internet in the hands of lows our customers to access select apps An example is PowerApp, a mobile tions industry? more people, in a way that is sustainable at no additional data cost. SmartNet can app offering affordable data sachets The challenge we face from OTT players for our business.

36 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

36_winnerspage_smart.indd 36 10/04/2014 21:25 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner

qualcomm CATEGORY: INNOVATION IN DEVICES PRODUCT: RF360 FRONT END SOLUTION

Q&A : PETER CARSON, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF MARKETING, QUALCOMM

as it enables one truly global 4G LTE include progressing on Qualcomm RF360 Q: What for you is the most inter- design that uses less power for longer and LTE Advanced, continued innovation esting opportunity across the whole battery life, reduces development time in connectivity, and enabling compelling communications industry? and costs, all while improving radio user experiences in new smart devices, I think the opportunities in the emerg- performance. The defi ning device TVs, cars, and homes. ing regions are incredibly interesting. challenge for LTE in 2013 and 2014 will Advancements in the industry have continue to be radio system complexity, Q: What do you see as the greatest enabled people across the globe to as the demand for Carrier Aggregation challenge in the industry for 2014? gain access to mobile communications is taking the RF band fragmentation One of the great challenges we have and the Internet at a rate inconceivable challenge to the next level. The Qual- continued to see is the explosion in just a few years ago. As a result, people Q: Tell us a bit about the problem your comm RF360 Front End solution, in mobile data traffi c. Globally, wireless from around the world – especially in solution is addressing? conjunction with multimode QTI RF carriers are facing immense strain on emerging markets – are experiencing The Qualcomm RF360 Front End Solu- transceivers, enables OEMs to address their networks driven by more and their fi rst connectivity to the Internet tion is a comprehensive, system-level this problem and take advantage of the better features on fl agship devices, through mobile devices rather than solution that is designed to solve the immense opportunity for LTE global and increasing consumer demand for fi xed computers. With nearly 80% of the largest problem in LTE device design— roaming and Carrier Aggregation. The bandwidth-intensive content such as world’s population in emerging markets, band fragmentation. The solution com- solution also radically simplifi es the music streaming and video. Smartphone it’s not diffi cult to see how mobile can prises a family of chips designed from radio frequency front end – the portion users are using more data based on new truly change lives. the ground up as a system to mitigate of a mobile device that encompasses features like bigger and better cameras, this problem of band fragmentation band-specifi c components, such as or faster app browsing – so what’s inside Q: What does winning a Telecoms.com while improving radio frequency per- power amplifi ers, antenna switches, powering these devices is more impor- Award mean to your company? formance and helping OEMs to easily duplexers and fi lters. tant than ever before. Qualcomm calls We are immensely proud of what we have develop multiband, multimode mobile this the “1000x Data Challenge,” and achieved with the Qualcomm RF360 devices that support all major cellular Q: How will 2014 play out for your through increasing the effi ciency of ex- Front End Solution as it represents a technologies. company? Plans, roadmap etc. isting assets, employing more resources major breakthrough in radio technology. Looking ahead, Qualcomm continues to in the form of small cells and spectrum, For the solution and the company to be Q: How does your solution help your redefi ne mobile computing by introducing and adopting radically different ways recognised by Telecoms.com is an honour. customers? chipsets and technologies that improve of acquiring, deploying, operating, and The Qualcomm RF360 Front End the way we live, work and play. Key areas managing these resources, it is possible Solution benefi ts Qualcomm customers of focus throughout 2014 and beyond to combat this challenge.

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 37

37_winnerspage_Qualcomm.indd 37 11/04/2014 10:26 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner PROGRESS IN THE INTERNET OF THINGS

Jasper Wireless

CATEGORY: PROGRESS IN THE INTERNET OF THINGS PRODUCT: JASPER IOT PLATFORM

asper Wireless provies a cloud-based IoT Securitas, Starbucks, Verifone and Garmin. Jasper’s cloud model enables mobile oper- platform and connected consumer elec- For enterprises the platform provides the ators to tap into an ecosystem of IoT applica- Jtronics. It works with more automotive following core capabilities: tion partners and accelerate time to market for companies than any other ceonnected vehicle new services. Operators can benefi t without platform provider, including fi ve of the top six • Intelligence: enabling users to analyse capital investment, network upgrades or high global vehicle manufacturers, powers Amazon and control how devices work in the fi eld upfront operating expense. Kindles and the Sony Playstation Vita and is so enterprises can respond in real-time to The Jasper Wireless Control Centre plat- behind many smart metering projects. market conditions and customers. form integrates with the mobile operator’s Businesses operating in a global market • Automation: allowing users to set custom network and offers advanced automation require a single, global platform that will actions to trigger when critical events to drive effi ciencies and give enterprises enable them to connect devices all over the occur so the business can scale operations control over every aspect of the connected world. Jasper uses cloud computing to create effectively. device initiative. The cloud platform provides a common standard across disparate opera- • Empowerment: allowing users to manage a central location to view communication tors worldwide, enabling M2M services for the business directly, with robust, self-ser- status, control service costs and manage enterprises including Coca Cola, Heineken, vice applications. SIM activity.

38 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

00_46_telecoms.com_Awards_winners.indd 38 10/04/2014 21:08 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner PUSHING THE LIMITSFIXED COMMUNICATIONS

Alcatel-Lucent

CATEGORY: PUSHING THE LIMITSFIXED COMMUNICATIONS PRODUCT: VECTORING FOR G.FAST FIXED ULTRABROADBAND

.fast is the latest technology driving the talk between lines severely hinders speeds. introduced, creating cross-talk. But when capabilities of copper for broadband Meanwhile G.fast has a signifi cantly higher Alcatel-Lucent’s vectoring for G.fast was Gaccess. It allows operators to bring frequency range than VDSL2 (going up to enabled, removing the cross-talk the speed ultra-broadband internet access to millions 212MHz, compared to VDSL2’s 32MHz) making returned to 500Mbps. of people where fi ber-to-the-home is not an the cross-talk a lot more complex. Theoretically, G.fast holds great promise option physically, fi nancially, or aesthetically. Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs has developed for providing ultra-broadband access where Operators want to fi nd the most effective new vectoring technology to work specifi cally fi ber-to-the-home is not an option. However, evolution path for ultra-broadband access with G.fast, taking into account the need to the high speeds achieved in labs count for and G.fast promises to deliver. It uses a measure, calculate, and correct many more nothing if G.fast can’t be deployed in the real wider frequency band than current VDSL2 instances of cross-talk. world in a cost-effective way. technologies, enabling faster speeds over In the world’s fi rst and only trial of vec- Without vectoring, G.fast achieves speeds shorter distances—typically up to 500Mbps toring for G.fast, conducted with Telekom little higher than VDSL2, making the added over 100 meters. Austria and announced publicly in July costs of deployment diffi cult to justify. How- However, where two or more copper lines 2013, Alcatel-Lucent found that G.fast speed ever, with vectoring, the speed —and hence are in close proximity—which is the majority fell from 500Mbps over 100m on a single the value—of G.fast are unlocked, and the of real-world deployment scenarios—cross- line to 60Mbps when a second line was potential deployment possibilities multiplied.

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 39

00_46_telecoms.com_Awards_winners.indd 39 10/04/2014 21:30 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner

perators are constant- rate while sustaining link quality ly looking for ways to and range. Oimprove network perfor- Tarana’s Concentrating Mul- mance in urban hotspots and tipoint (CMP) topology supports Tarana Wireless claims to have concurrent links at full capacity shattered misconceptions about in a single channel, enabling met- non-line-of-sight (NLoS) wireless ro-scalability and spectral effi cien- backhaul with fi eld tests conduct- cy of 30bps/Hz (600Mbps across 8 ed in lower Manhattan. links in 20MHz spectrum). Over 30 locations were tested Tarana’s AbsoluteAir univer- where the wireless signal was sal wireless transport provides entirely blocked by scores of sky- deterministic performance at scrapers and Tarana found that full capacity across NLoS, nLoS, 100 per cent of the links within and LoS operation. It combines 1km closed in under fi ve minutes deterministic performance, un- at full link capacity and without precedented spectral effi ciency, any antenna alignment. zero-touch provisioning and op- Tarana’s AbsoluteAir universal eration, and the lowest total cost wireless transport provides de- of ownership. tar ana wireless terministic performance at full capacity across NLoS, nLoS, and LoS operation, the company said. CATEGORY: Additional tests focused on URBAN IMPROVEMENTS measuring the performance of multiple concurrent links operat- PRODUCT: ing in a single channel, simulat- ing an urban area with small cells CONCENTRATING MULTIPOINT CMP TOPOLOGY deployed close together. With Tarana’s Universal Frequency Reuse, the links performed at full

Q&A: STEVE SIFFERMAN

urban/suburban areas where there are AbsoluteAir is well proven, having Q: What for you is the most interesting many temporary and permanent physical crushed NLOS competitors in multiple opportunity across the whole commu- obstructions—buildings, freeways, mobile fi eld tests. In one example, a test of 33 nications industry? vehicles, and more. NLOS links in lower Manhattan recently conducted with a tier-1 operator, Tarana We’re excited about the range of potential Q: How does your solution help your achieved full-rate connectivity at 100% applications for our breakthrough tech- customers? of the sites within a 1km range and very nologies. We are focusing on establishing Tarana’s AbsoluteAir Gigabit Non-Line- solid performance at the others. Abso- commercial footing for fi ber-extension and of-Sight (NLOS) transport is an enabler luteAir established links autonomously small-cell backhaul, however, we foresee of hetnets as backhaul for indoor and upon arrival at each test location, despite other interesting opportunities. For ex- outdoor small cells, providing operators all links obstructed by multiple obstacles. ample, our advances in wireless could with the fl exibility to deploy small cells Other products failed to achieve any substantially reduce economics of the Q: Tell us a bit about the problem your anywhere. AbsoluteAir delivers deter- connectivity at all in many sites, and se- last mile in residential networks, helping solution is addressing? ministic high performance in NLOS and verely degraded performance elsewhere. bridge the broadband divide in developing As 4G mobile broadband operators roll out LOS operation; metro scalability and high markets and accelerate existing broad- their networks, they are discovering that spectral effi ciency; zero-touch operation; Q: How will 2014 play out for your band in mature ones. Our experience in the incremental capacity being deployed and low total cost of ownership. company? Plans, roadmap etc. autonomous, real-time network adaptation is quickly being consumed by the fast in- Tarana alone has solved two signifi cant We expect 2014 to be an exciting year of could play a role as SDN and NFV concepts creasing number of mobile devices, users, challenges associated with wireless small growth as small cell rollouts accelerate and mature. And the gains we’ve achieved in and bandwidth-intensive applications. All cell backhaul—high performance NLOS and Tarana is well poised to emerge as a signif- co-channel re-use and spectral effi ciency industry forecasts indicate this trend is spectral effi ciency. Only Tarana offers: icant provider of NLOS wireless transport. could contribute towards helping operators likely to continue over the next few years reach the 1,000x goal for 5G. and possibly even accelerate. Operators • Deterministic 250 Mbps dedicated Milestones in 2014 are challenged with how to maximize NLOS links—even when wireless links • Shipment of AbsoluteAir 2 Q: What does winning a Telecoms.com return on 4G network infrastructure invest- are fully blocked by multiple solid • Customer and carrier trial Award mean to your company? ments and economically add additional obstructions and at ranges up to 3 announcements This prestigious award is further recogni- coverage and capacity (primarily in areas kilometers. With small cells deployed tion of our ground-breaking technologi- with dense user access demands). Most at street level where clear LOS is Q: What do you see as the greatest cal achievements that have pushed the operators are embracing small cells as limited or non-existent, this ability is challenge in the industry for 2014? boundaries of what was believed possible the best solution to augment their 4G in a Non-line-of-Sight wireless transport critical. Operators are increasingly being chal- networks. Small cells and associated solution. We have successfully demonstrat- lenged with meeting demand for capac- backhaul needs to be deployed close to • Highest Spectral Effi ciency—with ed our technical abilities through operator ity and coverage driven by the sheer mobile users to offer the best performance multiple concurrent wireless links customer engagements and have shared number of mobile devices plus the and coverage. A key unmet challenge for operating at full capacity in a single the phenomenal results. We appreciate the blossoming number of applications; use successful small cell deployments in the 25 MHz channel enabling limitless recognition of the Telecoms.com award in of video; trend towards cloud computing. past has been a high-performance wireless deployment of small cells in an area selecting Tarana above the other contend-

backhaul solution capable of operating in while optimizing spectrum utilization. ers in the Urban Improvement category.

40 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

40_winnerspage_Tarana.indd 40 11/04/2014 10:33 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner PUSHING THE LIMITS IN MOBILE

Ericsson and Telstr a

CATEGORY: PUSHING THE LIMITS IN MOBILE PRODUCT: LTE BROADCAST

his was our most popular category opportunities through network effi ciencies. of online video streaming of the games was and resulted in two winning entries. LTE Broadcast is an enhancement to delivered to mobile devices. TEquipment vendor Ericsson and Aus- existing LTE networks, enabling MNOs to By enabling LTE Broadcast, MNOs can tralian carrier Telstra conducted the world’s broadcast content or services to a virtually more effi ciently manage network assets fi rst LTE Broadcast session on a commercial unlimited number of devices within a given by allowing multicast for popular content LTE network in late 2013. The trial was a coverage area. It provides maximum benefi ts demanded by multiple subscribers, such very important step in showcasing how LTE when content is delivered to large audiences. as live sport and concert events. MNOs can Broadcast combines network effi ciency with Mobile broadband users increasingly de- also utilise off peak capacity to deliver new the ability to bring content to customers with mand spontaneous access to video content, service offerings, such as rich media cach- a superior user experience. irrespective of what device they are using, ing or bulk software updates for operating The companies explained that LTE Broad- with a higher-quality experience and a greater systems and device fi rmware. Broadcast cast allows operators to send the same content expectation of convergence. Ericsson and Tel- capabilities also enable opportunities for simultaneously to a very large number of stra cited research that found that during the more effective monetisation of network devices in a target area, achieving effi ciencies London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, capacity through new business models, not possible before. End-users benefi t from around 50 per cent of search requests in the such as auctioning of ‘airtime’ for broad- optimum content delivery while operators UK were from mobile devices. US broadcaster cast content distribution of third party enjoy new revenue-generation and cost-saving NBC also reported that more than 45 per cent content providers.

Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 41

23-41_telecoms.com_Awards_winners.indd 41 14/04/2014 11:42 Telecoms.com Awards 2014 Winner

he joint winning project Small cells will play a crucial of this category is based role in global LTE-A deployments Ton Radisys’ TOTALeNodeB and will underpin the key features small cell solution, which was of the technology such as carrier enhanced to include key LTE-A aggregation, Coordinated Multi- features using Airspan’s AirSyn- point (CoMP) and HetNet topology. ergy 4G compact outdoor pico Airspan’s AirSynergy, based on base station. Radisys TOTALeNodeB, includes a As subscribers continue to unique wireless backhauling solu- demand more bandwidth and tion, providing non-line-of-sight coverage, operators are looking at backhaul in sub 6GHz spectrum. LTE-Advanced as an answer for This enables a lightly planned increased aggregate throughput, small cell deployment, with some enhanced cell edge performance, nodes acting as backhaul bases, and better interference mitigation being either connected to fi bre or and spectrum reuse. to a point-point microwave link; Radisys and Airspan worked and others acting as terminals in partnership to develop what which connect wirelessly to the they claim to be the world’s fi rst bases. This solves the challenge of r adiSys & airspan commercial LTE-Advanced small wireless backhaul and is embed- cell solution. ded into the base station. CATEGORY: PUSHING THE LIMITS IN MOBILE PRODUCT: LTEA SOLUTION FOR SMALL CELLS

Q&A : RENUKA BHALERAO, SENIOR PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER, RADISYS

the industry accelerate LTE-Advanced LTE solutions enable mobile opera- Q: What for you is the most interesting deployments. tors to deploy their next-generation opportunity across the whole commu- networks. Our Trillium TOTALeNodeB nications industry? Q: How does your solution help your solution delivers an integrated LTE At Radisys, we see the evolution of customers? small cell software implementation LTE and virtualized telecom cloud This joint solution allows operators to that is deployable off-the-shelf, deliv- deployments as an opportunity for the accelerate their LTE-Advanced deploy- ering cost-saving effi ciency. This year, communications industry to realize the ments and solve the real-world challeng- we will continue to see demand for our cloud benefi ts of cost-effectiveness, es resulting from inter cell interference Media Resource Function solutions scalability and lower CapEx and OpEx. or cell coordination. Radisys’ Trillium to meet operators’ intensive media On the small cell side of the network, TOTALeNodeB small cell software in- processing requirements. Our MPX- we see the cloud concept coming to the cludes the key features of LTE-Advanced 12000 with the MPH6 multicore DSP RAN, wherein the RF and PHY/base- Q: Tell us a bit about the problem your such as eICIC; it provides the necessary card delivers the industry’s highest band are decoupled, providing more solution is addressing? Radio Resource Management (RRM), capacity media processing platform fl exibility and effi ciency in managing Mobile subscribers are demanding Self-Organizing Network (SON) and for VoLTE and mobile video, while our baseband functionality. Operators are more and more bandwidth to sup- Operations and Maintenance (O&M) Software MRF integrates VMware’s exploring this Cloud RAN architecture port their data and mobile video functionality required for rapid market vSphere® 5.5 to deliver virtualized, development as a means to enable bet- demands, along with uninterrupted deployments. Radisys and Airspan’s high-performance media processing. ter coordination among base stations coverage indoors and while on the solution is in trial deployments with a On the platform side, Radisys’ T-Series and bring processing advantages to go. To meet this demand, operators tier-one mobile operator. platform provides the pre-confi gura- LTE-Advanced deployments. Radisys’ need increased aggregate throughput, tion, load balancing, high-performance small cell software enables the Cloud enhanced cell edge performance, and Q: How will 2014 play out for LTE and SDN/NFV suitability needed for RAN evolution. better interference mitigation and network evolution? a successful, phased transition to spectrum reuse. In short, they need Mobile operators are rolling out their the cloud. Q: What does winning a Telecoms.com to deploy an LTE-Advanced network LTE networks and deploying LTE-Ad- Award mean to your company? to deliver true 4G speeds. Radisys vanced features to meet the bandwidth Q: What do you see as the greatest Winning this award signifi es that the and Airspan developed the world’s demands of their subscribers. Small cells challenge in the industry for 2014? industry recognizes that Radisys’ solu- fi rst commercial LTE-Advanced small (indoor and outdoor versions) are a big Mobile operators must solve the chal- tions are solving real-world technology cell solution. Based on Radisys’ TO- part of this new network topology, the lenge of meeting subscribers’ exploding challenges and that our commercial TALeNodeB small cell software that HetNet. In addition, the software-centric bandwidth demands. The deployment of solutions are viable in the fi eld. The integrates key LTE-Advanced features network of the future includes NFV, strategically-placed small cells, working exposure from this win raises awareness to support the deployment of a Het- the telecom cloud and SDN as its core in conjunction with Wi-Fi offl oading, that Radisys’ small cell solutions offer erogeneous Network (HetNet), Air- components, making it increasingly takes the pressure off the macro a proven answer to the most signif- span’s AirSynergy 4G is an all-in-one important for mobile operators to begin network by providing traffi c offl oad, icant challenges facing the telecom compact outdoor pico base station, acquiring the benefi ts of cloud technol- coverage and capacity gains. Radisys’ industry today. supporting LTE-Advanced. Together, ogy realized in the enterprise space. small cell solutions help operators to this partnership is ultimately helping Radisys’ end-to-end and virtualized bridge the gap.

42 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

42_winnerspage_Radysis.indd 42 11/04/2014 11:56 Untitled-1 1 04/04/2014 09:46 THE INFORMER

Napoleon Dynamite A leader has to have the people behind him.

The only way to lead people is to show them a future: a leader is a dealer in “hope.” So said Napoleon Bonaparte, who himself trod a fine line as a man of the people but was canny enough to know that the people he led were either with him or against him. So perhaps it came only as a small surprise in April, when just eleven days into his role as CEO, Brendan Eich waved goodbye to the company he co-founded 15 years ago. Eich, best known for developing the Javascript programming language, resigned from his post as CEO of Mozilla Corporation, as well as leaving the board of the non-profit organisation which owns Mozilla Corp, over an equality row. Upon his appointment Eich received a considerable roasting, both internally at Mozilla and from external commentators, after it emerged he made a donation in 2008 in support of a Californian anti-gay marriage law proposition. The media jumped all over the revelation and one of the biggest blows came from popular dating website OKCupid, which greeted members using the Mozilla web browser with a message suggesting they switch to a has been gradually increasing its ownership of In August last year, Facebook launched the browser developed by companies that support Telekom Austria of late and it’s expected that Internet.org initiative with vendors Ericsson, equal rights for gay couples. Carlos Slim is planning to make a bid for the MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Mozilla executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker company. As a result, it would be better if Slim Samsung and has now announced plans to issued an apology on behalf of the company and had his own man in place and it’s widely known deliver internet services to remote areas in said: “We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla that Tschuden is no one’s man but his own. emerging nations using various technologies to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage Back on this side of the pond German operator including satellite, free space optics and high- with people once the controversy started. We’re E-Plus, in the process of being acquired by altitude drones. sorry. We must do better.” Now the search for a America Movil rival Telefónica, is looking at a Facebook has recruited the five-person new leader begins. reduction in its spectrum holdings. Telecoms team from UK-based Ascenta, which has A similar situation was unfolding at Telekom regulator the Bundesnetzagentur has warned expertise in designing and building high- Austria, where the operator parted ways with the Spanish operator that its acquisition of altitude long-endurance (HALE) aircraft. In group chief financial officer Hans Tschuden. His exit KPN’s German subsidiary could result in the firm addition, the firm said it has recruited staff appeared to be part of a conflict with the operator’s relinquishing some spectrum. from NASA and the National Optical Astronomy Works Council, an organisation representing According to the Bundesnetzagentur, the Observatory. The idea is to beam signals from Telekom Austria’s workers, concerning Latin company formed by a Telefónica and E-Plus merger low Earth orbit (LEO) and geosynchronous American operator America Movil, which recently would own 28.8 per cent of the spectrum available Earth orbit (GEO) satellites to drones operating increased its shareholding in the firm. in the 900MHz band and 63.8 per cent of spectrum at 65,000ft that can broadcast a powerful The supervisory board and Tschuden agreed in the 1800MHz band; more than twice as much as signal that covers a city-sized area of medium to “prematurely dissolve” the CFO’s contract Deutsche Telekom owns in the 1800MHz band and population density. Solar powered drones three years before its natural expiration. He will more than eight times more than Vodafone’s 7.7 can remain in the air for months or years, the remain at the firm until May 31, 2014. per cent of spectrum holding in the band. That’s organisation claims. A source at the operator told the Informer obviously going to get some backs up. There are also rumours circulating about that Tschuden’s departure was fuelled by a Getting backs up at the operator fraternity Google, which is thought to be in the process of conflict with board members representing the with their own network ideas are the web guys as taking its Google Fiber model and moving into Works Council and mentioned that a key topic usual and how are they going to do it this time? mobile. Vague reports have surfaced about a of discontent was America Movil. The LatAm With drones! The Facebook-backed Internet.org plan that revolves around a combination of a city operator, through its holding company Carso initiative has revealed that it is building its first wide wifi network and an MVNO agreement with Telecom, increased its stake in the firm to just high altitude drone as part of a plan to provide a national carrier. over 25 per cent in January. America Movil connectivity to unconnected communities. If true, that’s sure to make things go boom. n

44 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business

44_MCI183.indd 44 11/04/2014 10:39 Untitled-5 1 04/04/2014 15:07 Untitled-1 1 11/04/2014 09:15