News

Investor interest in mobile tower infrastructure is not letting up, as operators around the world continue to divest of their nigh invaluable passive assets in exchange for quick cash

Today, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has reportedly submitted an offer to the Kingdom’s largest mobile operator, STC, to purchase a majority stake in the latter’s tower unit.

The PIF is seeking to purchase a 51% stake in unit, called Tawal, for an undisclosed sum.

According to STC, the unit has been valued at around $5.8 billion on a cash- and debt-free basis.

Tawal itself was spun off from STC itself back in 2019 and contains roughly 15,000 towers throughout the country.

The move should come as no real surprise. The PIF has been looking to create the Kingdom’s leading tower infrastructure company for some time now, having formed a consortium earlier this year to purchase roughly 8,000 towers from Zain Saudi Arabia for roughly $807 million.

Combined, the tower assets of Zain and Tawal will total over 23,000, giving the PIF the largest tower portfolio in the Saudi Arabia.

As always, the deal is subject to regulatory approval.

In recent years, mobile towers have become a highly attractive asset for investment funds, who view them as a reliable, long-term assets with high potential for growth. Operators, on the other hand, are hungry for capital to pay for their expensive 5G and fibre rollouts, making the high valuations offered for their tower assets particularly enticing.

In other tower-related news this week, European tower giant Cellnex has announced that it has divested of roughly 1,100 towers in the UK as part of the conditions imposed upon it by the Competition and Markets Authority. The move comes almost two yeas after the company struck a nearly €10 billion deal to purchase CK Hutchison’s European tower assets.

How is the international mobile tower market reshaping itself in 2022? Join the experts in discussion at this year’s live Total Telecom Congress

Also in the news:
The missing 3.2 billion…
New EXA investment serves customers across the Iberian peninsula
Startup stories: Facing up to cybersecurity risks

The post Saudi Public Investment Fund seeks majority stake in STC towerco first appeared on Total Telecom.

Network operator Cityfibre, which is rolling out a new gigabit-capable “full fibre” (FTTP) broadband ISP network to millions of UK premises, has today announced that they’ve chosen civil engineering firm Kelly Group to be their “preferred supplier” for installing customer connections in homes. At present Cityfibre is investing £5bn+ on their programme to cover up […]

Interview

Technology has become an integral part of daily life. That’s why inclusive design and access to tech is key to ensuring that everyone can enjoy the benefits.

Accessible technology means something different to everyone you ask. So, ahead of Total Telecom Congress 2022 next week, we spoke to technology analyst Chris Lewis to find out what the term means to him. Chris and his guide dog Varley are well-known faces at industry events and furthermore Chris is a leading advocate on improving access to tech.

You are well known for your advocacy on accessible technology, what does that phrase mean to you? 

Being blind it has a very specific meaning about rendering all content consumable to me. But, more broadly, it is about making sure everyone has access to the digital world with all of its content, applications and interaction possibilities. Accessibility has a physical meaning, of course, but for our industry it is more about ensuring that devices and communications services give everyone that access to everything.

If there is one main thing telcos can do to improve in this area, what would it be?  

Customer experience is on everyones’ lips. From an accessibility perspective it is essential that all channels of interaction are made accessible and/or interchangeable. What I mean by that is that people are not forced to use channels they find difficult to navigate. At the end of the day, channels should be the ones preferred by the individual and not by the technology choices of the industry. So, personal interaction with a knowledgeable agent has got to remain a key service option, even if this is more expensive than the chatbots in vogue today. In short, turn the customer experience into a personal, human one and don’t expect humans to force-fit themselves into a technology straight jacket.

You will be chairing a panel titled Accessible Technology. Can you tell us about how improving accessibility can present a major opportunity for telcos? 

This is indicative of where accessibility comes from. It was a CSR issue, has moved into ESG and now into EDI (Equality Diversity & Inclusion). It is a mainstream issue with previously excluded groups such as the disabled now being brought into the mainstream markets. And, of course, that comes with new customers, new spend and the opportunity to deliver them a service which enhances their personal and working lives. And, by the way, these formerly excluded groups include the elderly, people unable to afford the service as well as the disabled community. It is a major commercial opportunity if taken together and baked into all product and services going forward. This is one reason why I am increasingly looking at Inclusive Design and the notion that if we design for the peripheral case we get the benefit for free. It is sort of turning perceived wisdom about design on it its head, catering for the peripheral cases such as disability first and then building a much simplified but majorly more inclusive environment for everyone to flourish.

What are you looking forward to at Total Telecom Congress next month? 

Total Telecom Congress is always a great place to meet the people shaping the future of our industry. Taking time out to listen to the diverse perspectives and to have those impromptu side discussions all add to a better understanding of the industry and where it’s going.

Chris will be chairing a panel on “Accessible technology” on 1st November. Head to the Total Telecom Congress website for more details on how to join.

The post Making technology accessible for everyone first appeared on Total Telecom.

London-focused UK gigabit-broadband ISP G.Network, which is currently investing around £1bn to deploy a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the city, has said a recent newspaper report (Sunday Times) that alleged the company had recently warned of the risk it “could go under” are “simply not true“ The provider, which reports to have already covered […]

FROM SMART EDUCATION TO SMART BINS, PROJECTS LED BY BAI COMMUNICATIONS AND SUNDERLAND CITY COUNCIL SHOW HOW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY CAN ENHANCE EVERYDAY LIFE. 

BY BILLY D’ARCY, CEO, BAI COMMUNICATIONS UK

Sunderland City Council, in partnership with communications infrastructure provider BAI Communications (BAI), is developing pioneering new use cases for smart city technology and digital infrastructure, as it works towards its ambition to become the UK’s most advanced smart city and put the North East at the forefront of digital innovation.

The partnership is helping to realise the huge potential of smart city technologies for enhancing public services and boosting the local economy. The first of these being a 5G private network in Sunderland city centre, which will provide the high speed wireless

connectivity needed for new innovations. This will be combined with an ultra-fast public WiFi network to ensure residents and visitors can stay connected as they enter the city. The roll out of transformative digital services across Sunderland will also have benefits for business across a number of key sectors in the local area, including manufacturing, logistics, and social care, boosting economic growth, and creating jobs.

The Council and BAI are working closely with the University of Sunderland, for example, to deploy advanced wireless technologies to support and enhance research, teaching and the student experience. The roll out of an Internet of Things (IoT) network across the University’s campuses will improve operational efficiency for services such as estate management and footfall analytics. Super-fast public Wi-Fi will be made available for students, staff and guests via EduROAM and a 5G test lab will be established, creating a hub for research into the potential uses of 5G and IoT technologies in manufacturing, healthcare and other sectors.

Opportunities for smart technologies to benefit education are not limited to the university, as better connectivity in primary and secondary schools will support online and remote learning and ensure students develop vital digital skills. Deploying this across Sunderland will follow on from a successful test case at Hudson Road Primary School, which now has super-fast 5G Wi-Fi connectivity, breaking down barriers to learning by allowing teachers to stream educational videos for pupils and participate in online training sessions.

An additional innovation being piloted in Sunderland is solar-powered, smart compactor bins, which have been installed across the city this summer. The bins include a solar-powered ram which compacts the waste inside, increasing their capacity so that they can store up five times more waste than standard. The smart compactor bins are contained within ordinary wheelie bins, making them compatible with the council’s existing equipment, and sensors on the bins communicate how much waste is inside so that they can be emptied in a timely and more efficient manner.

Looking forward, BAI and Sunderland City Council will be exploring smart technologies to enhance health and social care services. This will include scaling assistive technology and installing sensors to support vulnerable people to live independently in their own homes. There are also opportunities to improve supply chain agility in local manufacturing, potentially through developing self-driving vehicles, including autonomous heavy goods vehicles, which could transfer parts amongst the North East’s car manufacturing supply chain cluster. It is hoped that the innovations set in Sunderland will not only show that these digital technologies can be highly effective, but highlight that they can have huge beneficial impacts on local communities and economies, improving standards of living and public services and enabling businesses to grow. Having seen Sunderland’s successes, other cities across the UK and the world may follow in adopting the same advanced smart city vision.

To learn more about our project with Sunderland City Council, watch our video.

The post How smart city technology is transforming Sunderland first appeared on Total Telecom.

A team of researchers from the University of Texas Austin (UTA) have examined the downlink signal structure of Starlink’s (SpaceX) mega constellation of ultrafast broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and shown that, with a few software tweaks, the company could perhaps turn it into a useful GPS-style backup. SpaceX’s Starlink constellation currently has […]

NEWS

The deployments will help add capacity to the network at these typically busy locations, relieving the pressure on existing macro-site infrastructure

This week, Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) have announced their latest collaboration with infrastructure-as-a-service provider Freshwave, seeking to deploy 5G-ready small cells in bus shelters in parts of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

These small cells can be integrated directly within the shelters themselves, providing the surrounding area with increased mobile capacity and thereby helping customers to connect and access mobile services, even at peak times.

For now, these sites will provide 4G connectivity, but in future will be capable of delivering 5G service to customers. Backhaul for the small cells will take place over VMO2’s fibre network.

The bus shelters in question are managed by Clear Channel UK, an advertising firm that owns and operates around 40,000 advertising sites in the UK, including from bus shelters to digital posters in supermarkets.

Deployment is set to take place in over the coming months. The exact number of bus shelters set to receive a small cell has not been announced.

“Smart cities and towns need new approaches to digital connectivity. And the more existing street assets that can be used to bring this to our towns, the better it is for both the mobile network operators and the customers and communities they serve. This is why we’re already working on a multi-operator, multi-technology design for bus shelter use too,” said Simon Frumkin, CEO at Freshwave.

This announcement builds on an announcement from the two companies earlier this summer, when VMO2 and Freshwave revealed they had deployed over 1,300 live 4G and 5G small cells across London. Part of this deployment included a trial involving 5G-capable small cells within bus shelters, which it seems is now being expanded across Tower Hamlets.

As demand for mobile connectivity continues to increase, small cell deployment will become increasingly important in delivering quality services in urban areas. Though of vital importance, densification will be a costly process for the operators, particularly with regards to securing wayleaves to deploy these small cells on buildings.

As such, it makes sense that these initial small cell deployments will take advantage of existing street furniture, such as bus shelters and lamp posts, allowing the operator to bolster network capacity at high footfall locations for a cheaper price.

How will the rise of small cells impact the UK mobile market? Find out from the experts at the upcoming Connected North conference in Manchester

Also in the news:
The missing 3.2 billion…
New EXA investment serves customers across the Iberian peninsula
Startup stories: Facing up to cybersecurity risks

The post VMO2 and Freshwave installing 5G-ready small cells in London bus shelters first appeared on Total Telecom.

Contributed article

by Damian Lewis, Market Development Manager (Enterprise) at Inmarsat

Since the invention of the copper wire telephone network in 1876 – otherwise known as the public switch telephone network (PSTN) – the way in which we communicate has changed drastically.

Over time, our expectations around the speed and quality of communications have continued to increase. Today, limiting connectivity to locations where physical wiring is present is no longer adequate.

The increase in demand for Internet Protocol-enabled (IP) services and the improvement in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is also making PSTN less and less relevant, while the concept of supporting two sets of infrastructure – IP and PSTN – is simply commercially unviable.

The great PSTN switch-off

In the UK, the telecoms industry has already recognised that PSTN is becoming obsolete and has set a deadline, backed by the UK government, to switch off the old copper network at the end of 2025. The same ‘switch off’ is occurring around the world more broadly, although the specified end date varies across countries.

Ultimately, everyone using PSTN-based services – businesses and public services alike – will need to switch network at some point in the not-too-distant future to maintain operational capability.

Put simply, PSTN will soon be unable to meet our basic needs, so it is more important than ever that we start to embrace the future of connectivity.

Post-PSTN reality – a hybrid future?

Research conducted by Zen Internet reveals that 72% of businesses are reliant on traditional telephony, especially larger enterprises.

With PSTN shutting down, companies are increasingly moving across to IP networks, however, there are concerns that terrestrial solutions alone may struggle to deliver the high level of service required by businesses. For instance, in July 2022, a quarter of Canada was cut off from the Internet, as well as landline and cellular services, for nearly a day because one of Canada’s major telecoms providers – Rogers – suffered an outage.

Complete reliance on terrestrial IP networks, such as IP over fibre or Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks, present a more significant risk to users whose infrastructure spans remote regions of the globe. Such solutions risk connectivity gaps along the grid, damage from extreme weather conditions and, ultimately, do not offer the same level of reliability as PSTN at present.

That said, even with PSTN itself boasting an overall availability of 99.999% – a rate unmatched by any other terrestrial network meaning the system should experience no more than five minutes of downtime per year – there is always a risk when relying on a single network for your connectivity needs.

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in the southern Pacific Ocean last December is a prime example of how reliance upon on a single network can be risky.

Despite the dependability of PSTN under normal circumstances, the eruption triggered a tsunami which resulted in the destruction of 80km of phone and internet cables in the Polynesian country of Tonga, making the island’s 105,000 residents almost entirely unreachable until the cable was restored more than five weeks later.

It is no surprise then that mission critical industries currently utilising PSTN are exploring a mix of alternative solutions to provide universal availability, high reliability and low operating costs post-switch-off. This is where satellite connectivity comes in.

The role of satellite connectivity

Satellite connectivity comes in many shapes and sizes from operators with varying experience and capability, so it is important to choose the right one to meet your needs.  Considering size, weight and power requirements are significant factors in selecting an appropriate terminal, while reliability, weather resilience and network coverage are key in choosing the right satellite network.

Secure, dependable satellite connectivity is particularly essential to the effective running of remote operations, powering Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to help businesses optimise the uptime of critical infrastructure, increase operational transparency, monitor real-time operations, and ensure the safety of employees, to name but a few of its benefits.

This is where businesses such as Inmarsat, the world leader in global, mobile satellite communications, come in to provide high-level connectivity in the remotest of locations and through the most adverse weather conditions. Many companies are already reaping these rewards, with Inmarsat’s ELERA network offering ultra-secure, highly reliable and cost-efficient satellite connectivity to companies across the globe.

For instance, Inmarsat partnered with OnixSat in 2017 to provide the Brazilian utilities giant, Cemig with improved connectivity to manage operations across its electric grid in the state of Minas Gerais. By deploying Inmarsat’s BGAN terminal technology powered by the ELERA network, Cemig was able to enhance its remote recloser monitoring and control capabilities, helping to restore power supply more quickly than before and, ultimately, improving the service it provides customers.

Inmarsat has gone on to provide similar services for numerous energy and utilities companies around the world, including across the UK, Europe, USA, Canada and Australia.

Life after PSTN

As we move closer to the great PSTN switch-off, a combination of satellite connectivity paired with terrestrial solutions will likely provide the optimal solution for business’ connectivity needs. With each of these networks sitting within the broader family of IP solutions, it is likely that there will be a high level of compatibility between them, providing a straight-forward, combined solution for companies.

By leveraging a mix of these networks, mission critical businesses around the world will be able to maintain extremely high levels of reliability, providing a seamless changeover for them in addition to opening up a whole new world of IoT-powered opportunities in a post-PSTN world.

How is the rise of satellite communications disrupting the mobile ecosystem? Join the experts in discussion at this year’s live Total Telecom Congress event

Also in the news:
The missing 3.2 billion…
New EXA investment serves customers across the Iberian peninsula
Startup stories: Facing up to cybersecurity risks

The post Satellite networks hold the key to reliable post-PSTN connectivity first appeared on Total Telecom.

The UK Government’s former Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has today formally been appointed as the country’s next Prime Minister and the third to enter 10 Downing Street since the summer, after the roller coaster rides of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. We take a quick look at what this might mean for broadband, mobile and internet […]

Network builder FullFibre Limited has announced that their new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based gigabit broadband ISP network has finally gone live in the towns of Alfreton (Derbyshire), Evesham (Worcestershire) and Cheadle (Greater Manchester) – including some surrounding areas. In Cheadle, more than 50% of the town (over 5,000 properties) can now take service and the rest […]