London-focused broadband ISP CommunityFibre, which is busy building a multi-gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 2.2 million UK premises by the end of 2024, has today announced that they’re doubling the speed of their cheap £12.50 per month social broadband tariff to 20Mbps. The Community Fibre Essential package is unique in that it […]

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today announced a couple of big changes to their top leadership team, which is apparently intended to help them “continue delivering against [our] strategic goals” (e.g. the £15bn rollout of full fibre broadband to 25 million UK premises by December 2026). The biggest change reflects the retirement of the […]

Webinar

Solid digital infrastructure is the foundation for carriers to seize opportunities and achieve business success

Networks are carriers’ core assets and major channels of transmitting data and computing power. It can better boost the digital transformation of thousands of industries and accelerate the development of the global digital economy.

What capabilities do carriers need to address unprecedented opportunities and increasingly complex global challenges? How can they build high-quality networks to deliver superior user experience? How will connectivity technology evolve on the journey to an intelligent world?

This virtual panel discussion will explore the ways of maximizing ICT business value through future-oriented networks.

Our panelists include:
Mohammed Abdulaziz AlNujaidi, CTO Delegate, Zain KSA
Elif Kaya, Deputy CTO, Turkcell
Dr. Mohamed Madkour, VP, Global Carrier Networks Solutions & Marketing, Huawei
Moderator: Dimitris Mavrakis, Senior Research Director, ABI Research

STARTUP STORIES

Californian startup Beamlink brings you a portable cell in a lunch box that anyone can set up – ideal for minimising disruption through post-disaster wireless access. This is their startup story

Tell us about your start up
Beamlink brings Internet to disaster prone communities, providing peace of mind for survivors and first responders and easing the relief and recovery process. Our lunch box sized cell towers, called “Bentocells,” can be set up by anyone with the push of a button, can operate completely off the grid, and function just like normal cell towers – connecting directly to phones via LTE or 5G-NR to provide broadband internet access. They also provide Wi-Fi to allow nearby computers and sensors to get online. Currently in beta, we intend to sell these directly to first responders, community centres, local governments, and telecom carriers interested in providing tailored solutions for disaster resiliency. Our long term goal is to complement the traditional telecom model, enabling those historically underserved to take connectivity into their own hands – literally.

What is your USP, how do you stand out from your competition?
Cellular technology is perfect to provide connectivity in disaster zones, but cell sites are designed to be set up by trained radio engineers who have spent months on site surveys, not fast and dirty by doctors and first responders. Currently, while everyone waits for cell networks to be repaired, they are limited to the use of satellite networks, which isn’t capable of providing the connectivity needed. Beamlink is the only cell tower that can be set up by anyone with the push of a button. While we offer better range, bandwidth, and durability than any other solutions, our main value propostion is ease of use. Using Beamlink BentoCells to provide 4G/5G coverage, survivors and first responders can continue to use their own mobile phones, don’t have to install any apps, and don’t have to coordinate with ISPs or carriers. This provides peace of mind and critical resources to survivors and essential situational awareness to first responders, while freeing up resources for ISPs and carriers to rebuild their networks.

What is your relationship with the telecom sector?
We function both within and alongside the telecom sector. On the one hand, we build cell towers, and they’re regulated like cell towers, so we have to work within the existing regulatory framework. However, our business model is the opposite of traditional carriers – we don’t provide coverage, we provide equipment – which can make it look like we compete against the sector as a whole. The way we see it though, the telecom sector is doing a lot right, and there’s no point changing what works. There is, however, an equity gap in access that no amount of technical innovation can address without also changing the underlying network architectures and business models, something established carriers can’t simply change tomorrow. We seek to complement these carriers by supporting and extending their existing services, filling in gaps that are major pain points for them. You can consider us to the telecom sector as both a vendor and a neighbour, depending on the use case.

How have you got to your current stage of development?
To date, we are entirely grant and self funded. We’re backed by the National Science Foundation through their SBIR program and have received recognition and funding from Cisco, Mozilla, the GSMA, and the University of Southern California. We’re now preparing to raise a seed round of funding and transition over to a VC-backed, growth-oriented startup model to be able to expand our worldwide reach.

Why did you establish the business?
Our team has a varied background in social entrepreneurship, aerospace and network engineering, and disaster response / resiliency. Being partially in the telecom sector but partially outside it, we’ve noticed a disconnect between the traditional telecom business model and the needs of disaster-prone communities and humanitarian aid NGOs. While the telecom sector is constantly innovating, there continues to be a huge need for communications technology that can be operated by communities and NGOs in the field. We built the BentoCell to complement the traditional telecom model and fill in these gaps, keeping disaster prone communities and first responders online and expanding Internet access to those who need it most.

What motivates you?
We were on the ground during Hurricanes María and Harvey and saw first-hand how quickly connectivity went down, how long it took to bring back, and how big of a difference there was between wealthy communities that got it back first versus the communities that still lack connectivity today. Many people in this space are doing amazing work, but cellular technology is not designed with them in mind. Our motivation comes from their passion and drive, and we hope to enable NGOs and community members to get back online as fast as possible, and in the long run, never experience outages due to natural disasters.
Read more on this on the Cisco Blog

What does the future hold for your business?
We are running paid pilots and a closed beta now. We’re also raising a seed round of funding which we plan to close in Q2 2023. Using these as a launchpad, we plan to start large scale production in the summer and begin covering live disasters during storm season in the Fall. We also plan to begin international testing once we’ve completed beta tests in the US.

Company CV

Headquarters: Los Angeles, California, USA
Number of Employees: 7
Last funding round: 2023 Pre-Seed ($150k secured) alongside NSF SBIR Grant ($250k)
Website: https://beamlink.io
Founders and key employees:

Mateo Abascal — Cofounder and CEO
Arpad Kovesdy — Cofounder and CTO
Daniel Starosta — Community and Strategy

Beamlink are one of the startups you can meet at Connected America on 28-29 March 2023 at the Irving Convention Center, Dallas. Register to meet them here or to bring your startup along to the event, message Katie Dudney

Openreach UK has issued a progress update on their £180m investment to deploy a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) ISP network across Wales, which reveals that their network now covers more than 600,000 homes and businesses in the country (roughly, that’s over 35% of premises). Engineers are currently known to be actively working in areas such as […]

VIEWPOINT

Following two years buffeted by supply chain disruption, energy price surges and economic pressures, 2023 is likely to continue to be defined by change. While there’s no way to predict what will unfold, for telcos, there are a few trends we expect to see.

The rise of data mesh architecture.
Data-driven decisions can help telcos reduce operational costs, reinvent customer experiences and drive innovation. Companies such as T-Mobile and Telia are already leveraging data and artificial intelligence (AI) to elevate their customer experience and automate campaigns; however, the industry has a lot of untapped potential.

Although telcos have vast amount of data, much of it is scattered and siloed. A solution to this is the implementation of data mesh architecture data. This would enable each domain-driven data set to be treated as a product and owned by the teams that intimately know the data. Data is then shared to a centralised catalogue where it can be used for business transformation.

A data mesh also ensures that departments have the right tools for the job. For example, it enables non-data scientists to build, train, and deploy machine learning (ML) models, increasing ML adoption across the organisation, which can accelerate innovation.

Partnerships will grow the 5G ecosystem as networks mature.
This year will mark the beginning of a tipping point for monetising 5G networks. According to GSMA, 34 out of 50 European countries have deployed 5G, and devices are catching up as more smartphones come with 5G support.

The last hurdle is the 5G ecosystem. More cross-industry and cross-functional partnerships are needed to create new services and reduce barriers to build and manage the networks. In 2023, we expect more telcos to forge partnerships to increase adoption, like the way Verizon and Vodafone have partnered to accelerate edge computing.

Energy costs and sustainability drive business decision making.
According to GSMA Intelligence, energy consumption accounted for 15-40% of telcos operating expenditure in 2021. Reports from McKinsey and Ericsson estimate that 60-75% of energy consumption for mobile network operators is from radio access networks (RAN). Data-traffic loads are intermittent, meaning different parts of RAN can be put briefly into sleep mode. By using data and AI/ML applications, telcos can use intelligent services to monitor and automate this process.

Results show that companies in Europe can reduce their energy use by almost 80% by moving their compute workloads out of on-premises data centres to AWS. Companies could potentially further reduce carbon emissions from an average workload—by up to 96%—once AWS meets its goal to be powered by 100% renewable energy, a target the company is on a path to achieve by 2025.

The accelerated evolution of telcos to “tech-cos”.
The relationship telcos have with their customers and the ways in which they operate are also set to shift this year. This change is two-pronged.

First, telcos will have to move away from being connectivity providers to becoming digital service providers. An example is Swisscom, a company that is evolving its offerings by training technical and commercial employees to also advise their customers on their own cloud journey. Second, more telcos will experiment with running their network as a platform, providing a new way to monetise their network build-outs and spin up a new MVNO within a couple of days.

Successfully implementing these four trends won’t be easy. This will require upskilling and reskilling, and more importantly, internal buy-in and commitment from leadership. However, 2023 will be a year of massive change and these shifts will help unlock new growth and opportunity to innovate

This article was written and contributed by Adolfo Hernandez is Vice President, Global Telco Business Unit at Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Press Release

Infinera announced today that Infinera’s ICE6 800G coherent optical solution has been deployed to modernize and increase capacity on the transpacific Unity Submarine Cable System, which spans 9,620 kilometers and provides operators with a direct cable route linking Japan and the U.S. By upgrading to Infinera’s ICE6 solution, the cable system will double capacity and provide operators with the highest capacity services at the lowest cost per bit.

The Unity Submarine Cable System is a subsea consortium representing Bharti Airtel Limited, Global Transit Limited (a wholly-owned subsidiary of TIME), Google, KDDI Corp., Telstra and Singtel. By upgrading the network to ICE6, the consortium will be able to increase the life span of the cable by nearly 25% and deliver up to 7.4 Tb/s per fiber pair. This modernization with Infinera’s ICE6-powered GX Series solution also enables operators to get the most out of the subsea cable by minimizing cost per bit while maximizing the spectral efficiency and fiber capacity. This level of performance is achieved by leveraging Infinera’s unique and innovative solution features that include Nyquist subcarriers, forward error correction gain sharing, and photonic integrated circuit-based technology.

“Infinera’s innovative ICE6 technology was selected to upgrade our system because it enables us to extend the life of the Unity Submarine Cable System while providing the highest level of quality for our customers,” said the Unity consortium. “The Unity Submarine Cable System is a critical connection between two continents with the fastest growing bandwidth needs. We needed an industry-leading solution that would enable us to be competitive now and in the future.”

“The Unity Submarine Cable System is one of the highest capacity underwater fiber optic cables ever built between Asia and North America, and Infinera is proud to power it with our latest optical engine technology,” said Nick Walden, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Infinera. “The increased capacity will help operators in Asia and the U.S. meet the increasing bandwidth demands on both sides of the Pacific.”

Want to learn more about Infinera and the world of submarine networks? Join Infinera and the wider telecoms industry in discussion at this year’s Submarine Networks EMEA event

Also in the news:
Tech Mahindra and Microsoft team up for 5G core cloudification offering
London staff to take the brunt of Vodafone job cuts
Virgin Mobile begins migrating customers to O2 packages

Interview

At Connected Britain 2022, we caught up with PhD student Daisy Curtis to discuss her experience of working alongside 5G Rural Dorset, as well as the importance of digital skills in addressing the gender imbalance in the telecoms sector

As part of her PhD programme, Daisy spent six months working with 5G Rural Dorset, a 5G testbed funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. In the interview below, she shares her first-hand experiences from the project and offers advice to those seeking to craft an effective digital skills programme.

In particular, she spoke against the traditional ‘top-down’ approach to digital skills projects, instead praising a more targeted and integrated approach, with programmes tailored for the learner’s individual needs.

“This collaborative approach is important because it means, for the people seeking skills development, the course is interesting and relevant, and it is also helpful for those running the sessions,” she explained. “People are more likely to pursue further digital skills activities if they found that first activity interesting.”

Daisy also shares her thought on gender inequality in the telecoms industry, championing a holistic approach involving the entire industry, aiming to get women involved at every level of their organisation.

“Representation is important. Seeing women in a variety of roles and having them present in a variety of space – whether that’s conferences, meetings, or hiring panels – is crucial to create a sense of belonging.”

You can watch our full interview with Daisy from the link above.

Is your company doing enough to support the next generation of telecoms professionals and tackle inequality? Join the UK telecoms sector in discussion around this and other important issues at the upcoming Connected North conference

Also in the news:
Tech Mahindra and Microsoft team up for 5G core cloudification offering
London staff to take the brunt of Vodafone job cuts
Virgin Mobile begins migrating customers to O2 packages

The Government has today confirmed that UK ISP Sky Broadband has officially become the first “national provider” to adopt a new system from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which allows them to verify – with a customers’ permission – that they are in receipt of key state benefits and therefore eligible for the […]

News 

Reports suggest the company won a tender to sell spyware to state-run telecoms operator Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) just one month before the military overthrew the Burmese government

Israeli software firm Cognyte is coming under scrutiny this week following media reports that the company’s surveillance technology may have been used to commit human rights abuses in Myanmar.

Documents shared by activist group Justice for Myanmar show a January 2021 letter from MPT to the Burmese regulator referencing Cognyte as the winning vendor for an intercept technology tender.

The documents show that the purchase order was issued “by 30th Dec 2020” – a little over a month before a military junta overthrew Myanmar’s civilian government.

Eitay Mack, an Israeli human rights lawyer, has reportedly sent a letter to the Israeli Attorney General calling for a criminal investigation into Cognyte and the nation’s defence and foreign ministries, accusing them of aiding the Burmese military to commit crimes against humanity.

The letter claims that Cognyte “should have known” they were providing technology that would be used to commit crimes against humanity, noting that the Burmese military had already openly rejected the results of the November 2020 democratic election when the contract was signed.

But beyond the moral implications of selling surveillance technology to repressive regimes, there is also a legal element at play here.

Back in 2016, the Myanmar military became infamous for their genocidal oppression of the Muslim Rohingya people, killing thousands and forcing hundreds of thousands more to flee to neighbouring countries. In response, various nations placed sanctions on Myanmar, with the US and the EU both ceasing to supply the Myanmar government with military equipment.

Israel, however, continued to export weapons and equipment to the Burmese government until 2018, only stopping when media pressure grew too intense.

As such, Mack argues that any 2020 deal between Cognyte to sell this equipment to MPT was illegal, with intercept spyware tech classified as defence equipment under Israeli law.

It is currently unclear whether the spyware technology has been actively deployed by MPT, though anonymous sources speaking to Reuters confirmed that the technology was tested by the operator. Other sources also confirmed that some form of intercept spyware was used by the operator, though Cognyte was not referenced specifically.

Cognyte and MPT have refused to comment on the matter.

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Also in the news:
Tech Mahindra and Microsoft team up for 5G core cloudification offering
London staff to take the brunt of Vodafone job cuts
Virgin Mobile begins migrating customers to O2 packages