Press Release

Orange is announcing the signature of a memorandum of agreement with Reservoir Sun, a leading player in self-supply solar electricity systems for companies and local government, to set up a photovoltaic power station in Bercenay-en-Othe (Aube)

The station is due to go online in 2025. The project’s first major milestone is the environmental impact analysis.

To fulfill its environmental commitments, Orange is increasingly turning to renewable sources of energy and wishes to accelerate this transition by making the most of solar energy on its tertiary and technical sites. The Group will therefore deploy its first solar farm in France and in Europe[1] on the strategic satellite communications site at Bercenay-en-Othe. The farm will cover a surface area of 50,000 m2, or the equivalent of seven football pitches.  With an installed capacity of 5 MW (1MW for self-consumption and 4MW for reinjection), the power station will supply 20% of the site’s energy needs and surplus electricity can be fed back to the grid. This locally generated, low-carbon electricity corresponds to the annual energy consumption of 1,700 homes and will save over 100 tons of CO2 every year.

The first milestone, starting today, is the environmental impact analysis required to carry out the project, in agreement with the DREAL (Regional Directorate for the Environment, Planning and Housing). This study will be carried out over a period of up to 12 months, or four seasons, to determine the potential impact of the project on living species on the site. The study of the natural environment aims to minimize the impact of the facilities and to recreate, if required, species’ habitats.

Michaël Trabbia, interim CEO for Orange Wholesale and International Networks, declared: “We are happy and proud to launch an ambitious local solar farm project at our Bercenay-en-Othe site. This solar farm reflects our additionality approach and is fully in line with our strategy to develop the use of low-carbon energies, in order to contribute to our environmental commitments. This project thus contributes to securing our energy supply while decarbonizing our activities. »

Mathieu Cambet, Managing Director of Reservoir Sun: “Reservoir Sun is very proud to have been chosen by Orange as a trusted partner for its first solar power project on one of its own sites. We hope that this shared project will mark the start of a strong collaboration to take on the challenges of decarbonization and local energy production.”

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News

Bullitt Satellite Connect will reportedly ensure that customers are connected “wherever you have a clear view of the sky”

This week, at the CES show in Las Vegas, UK-based rugged phone manufacturer has shed light on its much-anticipated Bullitt Satellite Connect service, a two-way satellite messaging service.

Using proprietary software and service components, Bullitt Satellite Connect will provide text messaging services via an app, Bullitt Satellite Messenger. Messages will be relayed via satellite, allowing customers assurance that they will never be without signal so long as they are outside.

The service will first attempt to connect to Wi-Fi or a cellular network, but when these are unavailable it will connect via satellite. Messages sent from Bullitt Satellite Messenger can be received as a simple SMS on smartphones without the app; the receiving party will, however, need to download the app in order to reply.

In addition to messaging, the service will also offer more typical satellite services, such as location tracking and SOS assistance.

Subscriptions for the service will begin at $4.99 a month, with the SOS assistance free for the first year.

“Bullitt Satellite Connect solves a real connectivity problem. American’s send 6 billion SMS text messages each day* but, due to the sheer scale and topography of the country, no single carrier covers more than 70% of the US land mass and around 60 million Americans lose coverage for up to 25% of each day**,” said Richard Wharton, Co-Founder at Bullitt Group.

“That means hundreds of millions of instances where people who want to communicate via their phone cannot. Coverage blackspots persist to a greater and lesser extent the world over. We have a truly international solution. Bullitt Satellite Messenger provides total reassurance that you will have a connection wherever you have a clear view of the sky.”

These capabilities have reportedly been developed over the past two years working alongside partners including chip giant MediaTek, satellite partner Skylo, critical event response specialist FocusPoint International, and others.

The first smartphone to support this new messaging service will be the next device in Motorola’s Defy range, the full details of which have yet to be announced. Bullitt and Motorola first struck a strategic alliance back in January 2021.

Bullitt says the new service is set for commercial launch later this quarter.

*Source: CTIA

**Source: https://www.opensignal.com/2019/09/24/mobile-experience-in-rural-usa-an-operator-comparison

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Cox Mobile services are now available in all 18 states in which the operator has fixed line and cable TV offerings

This week, Cox Communications have announced the long-awaited launch of their mobile services, facilitated by a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deal with Verizon.

Cox says their 4G and 5G mobile services will now be available throughout the 18 states in which they already offer fixed line services, building on the service’s soft launch in three locations last year.

The new mobile packages will only be available to customers who are already customers of their fixed line services, with Cox viewing the move to converged services as a key factor in customer retention.

“The convergence of wired and mobile communications has never been more important. Customers recognize Cox as a reliable provider of connectivity, so introducing a mobile phone offering was a natural extension of our services,” explained Mark Greatrex, president of Cox Communications.

Cox’s major fixed line rivals, Comcast and Charter Communications, both also have MVNO deals with Verizon and are operating their mobile services on a similar business model.

Cox’s MVNO launch has been a long time coming. Back in 2021, the company had already agreed to partner with Verizon to use the latter’s mobile network, planning to launch in three markets that October. However, T-Mobile rapidly drew Cox into a legal battle, saying that Cox was obligated to partner with them for their mobile network needs due to their previous relationship with Sprint.

Courts initially ruled in T-Mobile’s favour, but later overturned the decision following appeals, leaving Cox free to proceed with Verizon.

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According to the government, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is aiming to launch a commercial 5G network in 2024

This week, India’s Minister for Railways, Communication and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, has indicated that state-run telco BSNL will be ready to launch 5G services in 2024.

Speaking to reporters at an event in the Indian state of Odisha earlier this week, Vaishnaw noted that BSNL’s 4G network was set to launch later this month and would aim to have nationwide coverage with by the end of the year.

The company’s 4G network will initially prioritise 45,180 villages across the country that are not already covered by any other 4G network.

Moreover, Vaishnaw also emphasised that the greenfield nature of BSNL’s mobile network would allow them to upgrade sites to 5G quickly, without having to overcome the challenge of legacy equipment.

“The complete roll out of 4G service by BSNL across the country is expected by the end of this year. Since BSNL does not have legacy network, the 4G towers can be upgraded to 5G very fast. There will be no issues in faster roll out of 5G service by BSNL in India,” explained Vaishnaw.

Interestingly, BSNL will use homegrown mobile networking equipment provided by a consortium of local companies, including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT).

However, it is worth noting that even if BSNL begins launching 5G services next year, just one year after its greenfield 4G network launch, it will still be playing catchup with its local rivals. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are already in the process of rolling out their 5G network across the country, with Jio already serving almost 50 cities.

In addition, Airtel and Jio may not be the only company’s BSNL has to face in the 5G arena, with Adani Group recently purchasing 400MHz of spectrum in the 26GHz band at the latest spectrum auction. However, it seems that the newcomer has little interest in offering 5G services directly to consumers but will rather use the spectrum to craft private 5G network offerings for enterprise customers.

BSNL’s journey as a burgeoning mobile operator is sure to be a difficult one, with the company set to lean heavily on government support for the foreseeable future. As a fixed line operator, the company had been losing ground to Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio for years, being overtaken by Jio as the country’s largest fixed broadband provider for the first time at the start of 2022.

As a result, last summer, the Indian government green lit a $20.5 billion relief package for BSNL, aiming to give the struggling telco a much-needed boost as it continues to lose market share to Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio. At the time, Vaishnaw told BSNL employees to “perform or perish”, saying that major improvements were needed, or else jobs would be at risk.

Around the same time, it was also announced that BSNL will be merged with Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL), the special purpose vehicle created to operate the planned nationwide mobile network BharatNet.

BharatNet had repeatedly failed to meet implementation targets, with the government hoping that the merger will serve to improve project coordination, contain costs, and accelerate outcomes.

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VIEWPOINT

CSPs seeking to generate more value beyond connectivity increasingly see anonymized customer data as a high-value asset to be monetized, providing significant benefits to its enterprise customers and partners

Since 2006, when the mathematician declared that “Data is the new oil”, companies started caring more about the data they collected and generated. Telcos have been no exception, but due to a higher focus on the consumer segment, Telcos are not yet using data in B2B as they are in B2C.

Nevertheless, the investments made in B2C digital transformation can drive opportunities to sell that experience to B2B clients. Further to that, data collected from the network and business and operation systems creates the potential for new business models and revenue generation with data monetization.

Compared to Internet companies such as Meta with 1.8 billion users, and Google at 1 billion users, CSPs worldwide have aggregate access to 5-8x of user data information with their service subscribers. Not only every smartphone runs on a CSP network, but also a significant part of IoT devices, making CSPs an important source of data, complementary to or for some localized use cases better than such high-scale competitors.

CSP’s first-party data, enriched with open data, can provide ready value for enterprise customers on personalized marketing, credit scoring use cases and help with insights into population, economics, consumption patterns, and mobility flows.

Evolving from the current 50m location accuracy of 4G, it is expected that 5G shall be capable of enabling a mobile positioning accuracy down to below 10 meters, when leveraging dense deployments in urban areas. For specific use cases such as factory automation, 5G developments target an accuracy of below 30cm. As per BCG’s survey , location data is considered of high importance by most companies in financial services, retail and e-commerce, logistics and delivery, real estate, and travel and tourism. Nevertheless, the value of location-based insights Telcos can produce and provide can bring benefits to almost any industry.

Examples of anonymized, aggregated geo-located insights Telcos can already provide to business customers:

Geographical origin of people passing by a store area, based on correlated data through cell-towers
Average time spent by people in an area, based on mobile up-time in those areas
Social and digital profile of people in the area, based on devices and usage of connectivity services, open data, and Telco’s information about customers
Enriched use cases about users’ digital behaviour by layering information extracted from mobile devices when Telcos’ self-care apps or Telcos’ partners’ apps are used.

Beyond direct monetization, data can become a new feature or module of existing CSPs’ products, increasing their value. For example, a unified communications service platform managed by the CSP could report to an enterprise customer not only on their key performance indicators, such as average call handling times, but also on how their company compares to others.

Above all, data represents a real opportunity in a growing digital ecosystem. CSPs need to seize the opportunity to unleash the value of data, further leveraging location intelligence over the mobile network, which will ultimately provide significant benefits to their partners and customers.

This viewpint was written by Miguel Raposo of Celfocus. Celfocus are a sponsor of the Total Telecom Congress that tis year will take place in Amsterdam on the 21-22 November 2023