Contributed Article

High quality, robust products are the key to a sustainable fibre optic network. They will minimise the cost of installation and, with time, significantly reduce the operational expenditure as well as the carbon emissions of the network operator argues Philippe Vanhille, Executive Vice President Telecom Division at Prysmian Group

Quality is key when it comes to fibre optics and fibre optic networks. We should know: Prysmian is Europe’s leading fibre and optic cable manufacturer and the only major optical cable maker in the UK. We have manufactured many of the cables that are integral to the physical, high speed communication network that now connects the globe.

Fibre optic cables use strands of glass to propagate light signals between devices. At the centre of the fibre optic strand is a small inner core that carries the propagated light. To protect the fragile core, it must be surrounded by robust, high performing outer sheath. The quality and compatibility of both elements are fundamental to the performance and longevity of the fibre optic cable. A good quality fibre optic cable, such as those manufactured by Prysmian would be expected to last for 20 to 30 years or even longer.

Fibre optic cables are the passive element in telecoms infrastructure. Given the criticality of the cable to the performance of a telecoms network, it might surprise some investors to know that the cable’s capital cost and that of the connectivity hardware is generally only a fraction of the total cost of the infrastructure investment, often between 10% to 12% of the total. By comparison the cost of installation for the cable could represent as much as 50% or even 60% of the total investment, particularly where the cable is in a congested urban environment. What this means is the longer a cable can remain in place, without the need for replacement, the better value it will provide to investors.

From experience Prysmian know that over its lifetime a cable is likely to be mistreated, often not intentionally but simply because it is often buried in the ground, regularly in the public domain. Underground cables in particular can be mishandled by those working on adjacent utilities. In addition, they need to be able to withstand natural events such as flooding and the stresses of diurnal and seasonal temperature cycling. And, if a cable is connected to an aerial or mast, it may also have to cope with wind forces and snow loading. In the field it is the quality of the cable that what will ensure that it will continue to perform for 20 years or more.

Of course, there are plenty of standard fibre optic cables that have been built in line with a customer’s specification. While the performance of these cables can be demonstrated in a laboratory, customers will have to hope that the quality of these cables will ensure they continue to perform over their expected lifetime, often in far from ideal conditions.

What is the consequence should a cable fail? For the customer it is a disrupted connection and no service. For the company managing the network whose reputation is at stake, the task is first to identify where the problem has occurred, which can be difficult in a big, congested city; then they have to organise for the cable to be repaired or even replaced, which can be even more of a challenge.

Quality is key to longevity. It makes financial sense to choose quality, it makes sense from a reputational perspective, and from a sustainability point of view. Yes, Prysmian can make cables using recycled materials. Yes, Prysmian can make cables smaller, so they use less materials and require less space for installation so buildings can have a smaller footprint. But, if a network operator really wants to be environmentally, economically and socially sustainable, then the most effective thing they can do is to avoid having to replace its fibre optic cable network too soon.

Not only does cable replacement mean additional cost and emissions from manufacture of the replacement, but it also includes emissions from the physical process of digging a new cable trench, along with the impact on nearby businesses and homes.

I admit that this might sound contradictory to Prysmian’s interests as a cable maker. It is not. We need our customers to be economically, socially and environmentally sustainable, so we want them to understand that not all cables are the same when it comes to quality.

A homogenous, robust, reliable network made of quality components and good quality cables can be expected to last for 25 years plus. Whereas a poor-quality network could result in a company having to reinvest more than is necessary in their networks. In the lab and in the field, quality will win out every time. As an experienced cable and fibre optic manufacturer, we have the experience that our products really do last the test of time.

Want to learn more? Philippe Vanhille, Executive Vice President Telecom Division at Prysmian Group, will be talking about the benefits of quality, innovation and miniaturisation in the production of fibre optic cables at Connected Britain 2022  

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The post Quality Above All Else first appeared on Total Telecom.

NEWS

The Qatari telecoms company follows in the footsteps of rival Telenor, which left Myanmar earlier this year after the military coup made continued existence untenable

Ever since a military junta overthrew the civilian government in Myanmar back in February 2021, the country’s telecoms industry has been in turmoil.

With civil unrest rife throughout the nation, the military quickly turned to the nation’s operators to help suppress dissent, pressuring them to impose various curfews and service blackouts, including for the entire month of April. They also asked that the operators install spyware in their networks, allowing the army to access private communication data to quell unrest.

The situation quickly became untenable for Telenor’s Burmese unit, which the Swedish company wrote down in May 2021. The sale of the unit was quickly arranged to Lebanese operator group M1, but the junta intervened, arguing that they did not want to pass critical national infrastructure to another form company.

The sale was ultimately approved in March 2022 after M1 partnered with the Burmese conglomerate Shwe Byain Phyu.

Ooredoo Myanmar, by contrast, had initially sought to continue its operations in the country, but this effort was short-lived, with the company quickly haemorrhaging millions of subscribers.

Rumours that Ooredoo would look to sell the unit began circulating back in July, with anonymous sources saying that the company had received interest from three companies: Burmese conglomerate Young Investment Group, Singapore’s Campana Group, and local pay-TV operator SkyNet.

Now, the divestment is finally set to take place, with Ooredoo announcing that it has reached an agreement with Singapore’s Nine Communications to sell the unit for $576 million.

“The difficult decision to divest from our Myanmar business is a direct result of this review to reshape our portfolio as a leading telecommunications company,” said Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, chief executive of Ooredoo Group, in a news release. “We will ensure a smooth transition with the least possible disruption adhering to all local requirements.”

The sale will need approval from the military government and it remains to be seen whether Ooredoo will also be forced to onboard a Burmese partner for the takeover to get the green light.

 

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Also in the news:
UK telcos to face stricter cybersecurity obligations under new govt rules
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VMO2 activates first open RAN sites in live network

The post Ooredoo bails out of Myanmar in $576m unit sale first appeared on Total Telecom.

Press Release

Lumen Technologies has today announced Kate Johnson’s appointment as President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of the company’s Board of Directors, with the transition date expected to be November 7, 2022

Johnson succeeds Jeff Storey, who has announced his retirement after a distinguished 40-year career within the telecommunication and technology industries, including Lumen and its predecessors. Storey will remain with the company through December 31, 2022, to ensure a smooth transition.

Johnson is a technology executive with an extraordinary track record of success. She specializes in leading digital and business transformations to drive growth, having held key leadership roles across a variety of Fortune 100 companies including Oracle, General Electric and Microsoft. Most recently, Johnson led Microsoft U.S., the company’s largest business with a remit for all of the company’s sales, services, marketing and operations. During her four-year tenure in this role, she led the division through a substantive cultural transformation while nearly doubling enterprise revenues.

“Kate’s appointment and the strategic transition announced today are the culmination of a succession plan that Jeff and the board have been engaged in for the past several years,” said T. Michael Glenn, Chairman of Lumen’s Board of Directors. “We are confident she is the right leader to take the reins at this important moment in Lumen’s history. Kate is an inspiring and motivational leader who is known for identifying and creating growth. She is the ideal CEO for Lumen.”

Johnson stated, “I am proud to take on the CEO role and eager to advance the strategy Jeff and the team have created. Lumen has made significant progress strengthening its balance sheet, expanding its fiber footprint and enhancing its portfolio of digital capabilities. I’m looking forward to leading this great company through its next chapter and helping customers leverage the Lumen platform to power amazing digital world experiences.”

Glenn continued, “On behalf of the board, I thank Jeff for his leadership and commitment to Lumen during his time with the company. Thanks to his contributions, Lumen is leveraging the areas of our business that we believe are best poised for growth. The imprint Jeff leaves on Lumen is noteworthy – giving our customers better, faster and more secure connectivity. He led with care and empathy during challenging times including the pandemic, ensuring employees stayed safe and customers connected. He leaves Lumen with a strong foundation in place.”

“It has been a privilege to serve as Lumen’s CEO,” said Storey. “Throughout my time with the company, I have been incredibly impressed by our team’s commitment to Lumen and to our core purpose of furthering human progress through technology. I am proud of all that we have achieved together as we have driven forward on Lumen’s transformation journey. However, when I took this amazing job, I always spoke openly with the board about my future timeline for retirement. I am confident that the organization has the strategy in place to deliver on its priority of achieving profitable revenue growth. I am very excited to welcome Kate to Lumen. I believe her experience, leadership and enthusiasm are exactly what we need as we drive the company forward.”

 

How is the US telecoms industry evolving to meet the ever-growing needs of their customers? Find out from the experts at the upcoming Connected America conference 

Also in the news:
UK telcos to face stricter cybersecurity obligations under new govt rules
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The post Lumen CEO retires, replaced by Microsoft veteran Kate Johnson first appeared on Total Telecom.

The Hampshire County Council in England has notified suppliers that their Top-Up funding for the UK Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) has run out. The vouchers help hard-to-reach rural homes and businesses get a gigabit-capable internet connection installed. The GBVS scheme – as managed by the Building Digital UK (BDUK) programme – normally offers […]

Press Release

Deutsche Telekom and Mavenir have announced the successful delivery and deployment of cloud-native 5G Core to Deutsche Telekom in Germany

Deutsche Telekom selected Mavenir as the supplier for software applications to run on its defined hardware and the existing Kubernetes-based platform of its German business, ensuring an open architecture approach. As part of the deployment process, the Converged Packet Core was integrated with Telekom’s existing multi-vendor access network and other system components.

The new Converged Packet Core supports data, voice, and messaging services and network slicing. The initial network slicing use case is focused on live video broadcasting. The deployment has been successfully certified against devices from the major terminal vendors.

The Mavenir solution is based on automated software delivery and network upgrades. This will allow new Converged Packet Core services with all the required network functions to be deployed in minutes by using the automation framework of Deutsche Telekom. It is largely self-updating for the entire lifecycle of each application. The platform can automatically synchronize production environment resources and configuration with changes expressed in code. It is therefore less prone to the human errors that come with manual testing and deployment.

Dr. Abdurazak Mudesir, Group CTO Deutsche Telekom, said: “The deployment of a cloud-native Standalone (SA) core marks a key milestone in the evolution of our 5G architecture. This sets us on a path towards a fully automated network with the reliability, massive scale and flexibility required to deliver innovative 5G SA services to our consumer and enterprise customers.”

Pardeep Kohli, Mavenir’s President and CEO, said, “The Mavenir solution deployed with Deutsche Telekom in Germany, creates the foundation for the future introduction of 5G standalone enabling new applications and services to take advantage of 5G features such as low latency and network slicing.”

Key attributes of Mavenir’s solution include:

Open Architecture: uses Telekom-defined hardware, a Kubernetes-based platform, and the automation framework of Deutsche Telekom.
Network slicing support: with dedicated control and user plane network functions for meeting strict service level agreements.
Cloud-native design: a fully containerized solution based on stateless microservice architecture that allows better resiliency and faster recovery in the event of network failures. It also enables the easy onboarding of users on Telekom’s Containers-as-a-Service (CaaS) that can be run on any public, private or hybrid cloud environment.
Third-party vendor network function (NF) integration: integrated with multiple third-party vendors, including 4G and 5G access network and subscriber management functions.
Converged architecture: Supports 4G, 5G non-standalone (NSA), and 5G standalone (SA) modes and enables all access technologies to run on a common cloud-native platform by Deutsche Telekom.

Mavenir’s Converged Packet Core solution is part of its cloud-native MAVcore portfolio built on an open architecture which offers easy scaling of applications and services, hardware decoupling, agility, portability and resilience.

 

Want to learn more about the development of 5G in Germany? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s live Connected Germany conference 

Also in the news:
UK telcos to face stricter cybersecurity obligations under new govt rules
Jio prepares to plough $25bn into 5G
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The post Deutsche Telekom and Mavenir deploy new cloud-native 5G core first appeared on Total Telecom.

Network builder and UK ISP Brsk has today secured a huge funding boost of “up to” £178m to help fuel the ongoing rollout of their new open access and gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, which has so far focused upon parts of Greater Manchester, Lancashire, West Yorkshire and the West Midlands. Brsk first began their […]

Cloud gaming ISP ZYBRE has signed a deal with popular online real estate website Zoopla, which will enable them to add more details of home broadband availability to all of their property listings across the United Kingdom. Some of Zoopla’s rivals (e.g. RightMove) already have similar features. The announcement follows neatly after last month’s report […]

News

The ISP says the move stems from “material growth in both areas” as well as the desire to better integrate their newly acquired subsidiary Virtual1

Today, UK ISP TalkTalk has announced the creation of two new wholesale divisions, one focussing on business-to-business wholesale services and the other on the consumer market segment.

The new Business Wholesale Services division will offer premium and high bandwidth services to resellers, aggregators, and system integrators, with TalkTalk aiming to be the “fastest growing provider of Software Defined High Bandwidth services in the Wholesale Business market”.

The new unit will be headed up by Tom O’Hagan, the CEO and founder of Virtual1, the Ethernet provider that TalkTalk acquired for an undisclosed sum back in April.

TalkTalk says that it will continue to sell to customers under both the TalkTalk Wholesale Services and Virtual1 brands.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Wholesale Services business will continue to serve the company’s roughly one million residential customers. This unit will be led by TalkTalk’s current MD of Wholesale, Nick Gunga.

“The pace of innovation in both the B2B and Consumer wholesale telecoms has accelerated, and businesses and consumers across the UK are requiring more and more usage and great bandwidth connectivity,” said TalkTalk CEO, Tristia Harrison. “That is why we are delighted to be announcing these two important wholesale growth divisions as well as a competitive tender for our B2B Ethernet supply. We are also delighted to welcome Tom O’Hagan and the wider Virtual 1 team to the group and very excited about the future growth projections for the business.”

 

TalkTalk’s CEO Tristia Harrison is speaking on the opening keynote panel on Day One of Connected Britain. Check out the agenda here and book your place at the UK’s leading digital economy event

Also in the news:
UK telcos to face stricter cybersecurity obligations under new govt rules
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VMO2 activates first open RAN sites in live network

The post TalkTalk draws up new Business and Consumer wholesale arms first appeared on Total Telecom.

News

As communications satellites begin to fill up the night sky, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to introduce new rules to combat the resulting space debris

In 2022, the prospect of large low Earth orbit (LEO) communication satellite constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink

Currently, around 4,800 satellites are in orbit around the Earth and this number is growing rapidly. Estimates suggest that there will be roughly 18,000 new satellites in orbit by 2025, with SpaceX alone already having permission to launch around 12,000 satellites.

In fact, this is just the beginning. Elon Musk has sought permission from the FCC to launch a further 30,000 satellites, while other major LEO constellations like Amazon’s nascent Project Kuiper still have yet to add to the orbital melange.

But while the potential of satellite communications direct to your mobile device is no doubt exciting – just look at the hubbub generated from SpaceX’s partnership with T-Mobile earlier this month – it also presents a challenge of global significance: space debris.

As of January 2021, the US Space Surveillance Network reported 21,901 artificial objects, including active satellites, in orbit above the Earth – and these are only the objects large enough to be tracked by terrestrial observation, with many more millions of smaller debris pieces estimated to be circling the globe.

Contact with even the smallest piece of this orbital debris can represent disaster for space flight, particularly for sensitive instrumentation like telescopes and solar panels that are easily damaged by these collisions.

However, the risk of more largescale collisions is also increasing, with experts suggesting that this could lead to the onset of Kessler syndrome, a theoretical scenario in which the level of space pollution is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade of further crashes, potentially making satellite spaceflight entirely unfeasible in certain orbits.

Now, with the telecommunications space race underway and the amount of space debris set to increase dramatically, it is the FCC that is stepping in propose a long-overdue regulatory update.

Under the FCC’s new proposal, satellites would be required to deorbit no later than five years after end-of-life – far sooner than the existing regulations outlined by NASA in the 1990s, which require deorbiting after no more than 25 years.

“Currently, it is recommended that operators with objects in LEO ensure that their spacecraft are either removed from orbit immediately post-mission or left in an orbit that will decay and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere within no more than 25 years to mitigate the creation of more orbital debris. However, we believe it is no longer sustainable to leave satellites in LEO to deorbit over decades,” read the proposal.

The regulations outlined in the proposal would not come into effect for two years, giving satellite operators time to plan accordingly for their new launches.

Satellites already in launched before the implementation of the new rules would be exempt.

Waivers would also be available on a case-by-case basis, with some satellites, like NASA’s CubeSat, already identified as potentially exempt.

“Our space economy is moving fast.  For it to continue to grow, we need to do more to clean up after ourselves so space innovation can continue to expand,” said FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel.

Thankfully, these requirements should not be too burdensome for most LEO constellation operators, since the satellites’ low orbit making them well suited to deorbiting shortly after they cease to perform their intended function. SpaceX has said, for example, that even “worst-case assumptions” would see the devices deorbit long before the five-year deadline was up.

While it is perhaps strange to see the FCC taking the initiative here with the regards to space regulation, it certainly makes sense. Space is rapidly becoming the next telecoms frontier and, as such, will need proactive regulation before its too late.

 

How is the growth of satellite communications impacting the global telecoms industry? Join the experts in discussion at this year’s live Total Telecom Congress

Also in the news:
UK telcos to face stricter cybersecurity obligations under new govt rules
Jio prepares to plough $25bn into 5G
VMO2 activates first open RAN sites in live network

The post FCC proposes ‘five-year rule’ to clean up dead satellites first appeared on Total Telecom.

Broadband ISP and UK network builder Lit Fibre, which is working to deploy a new gigabit-speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover 500,000 homes by 2026, has today added 5 new towns across parts of the West Midlands, Essex and Hertfordshire in England to their ongoing rollout plan. The provider, which started building last year and […]