News 

The Indian operator is reportedly in discussions with financial services firm BNP Paribas to arrange the loans 

Reliance Jio Infocomm, the telecoms arm of India’s Reliance Industries, is set to raise $2 billion in offshore loans, according to a report from the Economic Times. The capital raised will be used to fund the purchase of 5G network equipment from Ericsson. 

“BNP Paribas will provide $1.9–2 billion over a nine-month period during the course of which Jio will be paying back Ericsson, BNP, and some other banks,” noted an anonymous source. 

As part of the deal, Swedish export credit firm EKN has provided Jio with a cover of $2.2 billion, protecting the deal’s stakeholders from potential risks. 

The report did not mention the specific amounts that Jio will pay back to Ericsson, BNP, and others involved in the loan deal. 

Jio announced they had partnered with Ericsson for 5G RAN equipment in October last year. 

“We are delighted to partner with Ericsson for Jio’s 5G SA rollout. Jio transformed the digital landscape in India with the launch of LTE services in 2016,” said Akash Ambani, Reliance Jio’s Chairman in a press release last year. 

“We are confident that Jio’s 5G network will accelerate India’s digitalization and will serve as the foundation for achieving our nation’s ‘Digital India’ vision.” 

It should be noted, that Jio is also working with two of Ericsson’s rivals, Nokia and Samsung, when it comes to 5G equipment. The company signed a $1.5 billion 5G equipment deal with Nokia earlier this year, which was financed by several global banks, including HSBC, Citigroup, and JP Morgan. More recently, Reliance Industries issued a letter of guarantee to Samsung India worth roughly $932 million, aiming to support Jio in the procurement of 5G equipment.   

Jio’s aim to achieve nationwide standalone 5G coverage by the end of the year, which Ambani claims will be the fastest ever mass 5G rollout anywhere in the world.  

Indeed, the company is already making rapid 5G progress, recently noting it had topped 50 million 5G subscribers just nine months after the service’s commercial launch. 

How is the 5G Standalone market evolving in 2023? Find out at this year’s Total Telecom Congress, live from Amsterdam, 21-22 November 2023  

Also in the news:
Altafiber raises $600m in funding for fibre expansion
CityFibre’s network rollout passes 3 million UK premises
Vodafone to begin UK’s largest Open RAN rollout 

London-focused network builder and UK ISP CommunityFibre, which is rolling out a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the city (currently covering 1.2m premises), has launched a special set of two packages for students that come attached to 3 months of free service. The operator, which is currently aiming to reach 2.2 million premises in […]

Alternative UK network operator and ISP County Broadband, which holds an aspiration to cover 500,000 premises across the East of England with their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network by the end of 2027, has donated £10,000 worth of computers to Digital Essex to tackle digital exclusion. The provider, which has so far raised an estimated […]

The Government has posted an updated State Aid evaluation of the previous ‘Superfast Broadband Programme’ (UK National Broadband Scheme), which specifically examines the final Phase 3 of the project to extend “superfast” (30Mbps+) coverage – run between 2016 and 2022. Suffice to say, it finds various economic and coverage benefits. The SFBB programme – managed […]

Contributed Article

by IFS

If your company is considering adding electric vehicles (EVs) to service fleets, whether to save some green or be more green, you can now do so confidently with the help of disruptive technology.

As large telco operators with thousands of service trucks and vans look to incorporate electric vehicles into their fleets in the coming years, how can they manage all the intricacies of keeping an EV charged and on schedule?

While the benefits of EVs are great, allowing telecom organizations to reduce fuel costs and fulfill sustainability missions, the challenge of managing EVs in time-sensitive, intricate, and SLA-driven daily schedules have prevented companies from making the shift. As any EV car owner knows, you must plan your driving routes to ensure that you have access to charging stations and account for the battery recharging time. Now, multiply those requirements by thousands or tens of thousands of service vans and trucks, and you see the challenge.

This is why software designed using artificial intelligence and machine learning that optimises the planning and scheduling of field technicians is being updated to include EV fleet optimisation. As they are known in the field service management (FSM) software market, these scheduling optimization engines are popular amongst telco operators with large field workforces and service vehicle fleets. The solutions enable operators to efficiently plan and manage daily field engineer and long-range project schedules, ensuring that all consumer appointments are handled on-time and service level agreements with business customers are met. In essence, they can ensure that the right field technician with the right parts and skills is always sent to the right place at the right time.

Because these software solutions are infused with AI and machine learning, they can use powerful algorithms to process complex mathematical equations in a matter of minutes. For example, some of the most powerful optimisation engines can intelligently schedule 500,000 field service activities in under an hour. In other words, far faster than any human dispatcher can and without any error.

The benefits include reduced technician travel time by as much as 50% and higher first-time fix rates, all of which translates into lower labor costs, lower fuel costs, lower carbon emissions, and improved customer experiences. So, why not extend the intelligence of these workforce optimisation solutions to include fleets of electric service vehicles? That’s exactly what software vendors like IFS are doing.

Now, in addition to data inputs like customer service level agreements, daily appointment schedules, required drive time between locations, and even field engineer work breaks and time off, this planning software can consider everything needed to keep an EV on the road, including location of charge points, type, capacity, speed of charge and range. The software automatically plans EV charging requirements along with daily technician schedules, and it is nuanced enough to only use EVs in urban areas with more charging stations or for certain journeys that are shorter distances. The next wave of innovation will be supporting IoT-connected EVs that will have real-time battery usage tracking.

If your company is considering switching service fleets over to include EVs, you now can do so confidently. You can even prepare for that future with IFS’ embedded predictive planning tool that allows you to test how your business could cope with a wide range of scenarios including adding EVs into your fleet. It lets you easily visualize your simulated impact on resources, KPIs, and work demand.

IFS is proud to be pioneering innovation in electric vehicle fleet optimization, helping telco operators reduce operational costs, meet corporate sustainability goals, simplify ESG compliance and reporting, and drive efficiencies towards net zero carbon emissions.

Want to learn more about EV fleet and workforce scheduling optimisation from IFS? Meet the team in the IFS Café outside the Keynote Theatre at Connected Britain 2023.

Also in the news:
Altafiber raises $600m in funding for fibre expansion
CityFibre’s network rollout passes 3 million UK premises
Vodafone to begin UK’s largest Open RAN rollout 

The first cohort of at least 90 apprentice full fibre (FTTP) engineers have just begun their training for future telecoms jobs, which forms part of the UK Government’s £108m investment under their Project Gigabit broadband rollout contract with ISP Fibrus – alongside network build partner Viberoptix – in rural Cumbria. In case anybody has forgotten. […]

CityFibre has confirmed to ISPreview that they’ve recently taken the decision to exit a number of UK full fibre (FTTP) broadband contracts with build partners for a variety of reasons. One of those is known to be the Kier Group, which held various contracts for places such as Weston-Super-Mare, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Bath and Worcester etc. […]

More bad news for any broadband ISPs that were planning to launch faster packages based off Openreach’s forthcoming Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) tiers, which push top download speeds to 1.2Gbps and 1.8Gbps (both offer 120Mbps upstream). The current service pilot has just been extended for yet another 3 months. The original pilot started in December 2022 (here) […]

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has written to the Office of the Telecoms Adjudicator (OTA) as part of efforts to encourage the adoption of changes to improve phone number porting between providers, ideally in time for the revised launch of the One Touch Switch (OTS) migration system for broadband ISPs. At present the OTS system, […]

News

The trial was undertaken at the AZ centre in Bangkok 

Chinese firm ZTE has partnered with Advanced Info Service (AIS), Thailand’s leading mobile operator, to launch the world’s first dynamic RIS (Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface) trial in a mmWave network. 

RIS is a multi-antenna technology that uses electromagnetic metamaterials to extend base station coverage by intelligently reflecting or transmitting wireless signals. This results in improved coverage with both low costs and low carbon emissions.  

By incorporating dynamic functionality, ZTE’s dynamic RIS technology achieves beam sweeping and user tracking. 

In the trial, ZTE used the RIS product in the AIS mmWave network with 400MHz of bandwidth. 

According to ZTE, users in the trial were able to maintain a consistent downlink rate of over 1.6Gbps, and an uplink peak rate of over 260Mbps, in an office room larger than 400 square metres. 

mmWave frequencies can provide 5G networks with high speeds and capacities, but they also present challenges, such as a shorter range and poorer signal propagation. Dynamic RIS technology could be a potential solution to these issues, allowing mmWave to be considerable expanded without the need for as many additional base stations. 

“Our collaboration with ZTE has provided us with the opportunity to explore the application of RIS technology in mmWave communications, leading to groundbreaking achievements. We believe that this technology will accelerate the arrival of the 5G-A era and deliver unprecedented communication experiences to users,” said Wasit Wattanasap, Head of Nationwide Operations and Support at AIS. 

ZTE claims that the trial represents an important milestone in the mmWave communication field, which has the potential to revolutionise the global communications industry for the future of areas such as smart cities and Internet of Things (IoT). 

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Also in the news: 
Ericsson and TDC NET launch Denmark’s first 5G Standalone network
Vodafone to begin UK’s largest Open RAN rollout
Vodacom and Eskom sign virtual power wheeling deal