Interview: Telecom Italia CEO Marco Patuano shifts

Transcription

global telecoms
May/June 2015 Number 140 A Euromoney Institutional Investor Publication
www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com
BUSINESS
Plus:
Why Kenya leads the world in mobile money
Who are the 50 women to watch in telecoms?
GTB Innovation Awards results in full
CE
O a In
CE nd C side
SD M p FO :
N p ag Gu
age e 27 ide
s
41
Interview: Telecom Italia
CEO Marco Patuano
shifts attention from debt
to focus on investment
THE NEW WORLD OF
CUSTOMER E PERIENCE
EXCITING / INTELLIGENT / DYNAMIC QoE / ACCELERATE BUSINESS VALUE
In today’s era of rising customer expectations, rapid technology advancements, intensified
competition and service provider consolidation, operators need to deliver a multidimensional
customer experience in order to succeed.
This experience should be exciting, intelligent, shaped by a dynamic quality of experience and underpinned by
a determination to accelerate business value.
With Amdocs, you can differentiate and achieve competitive advantage by:
U
Inspiring your customers with innovative services in the hyper-connected world
U
Personalizing and contextualizing every customer interaction
U
Shaping quality of experience with agile software-powered networks
U
Speeding time to market, optimizing business processes and reducing costs
Learn more at: www.amdocs.com
© 2015 Amdocs. All rights reserved.
Interviews
Telecom Italia CEO shifts focus from
debt to heavy investment
Marco Patuano is building broadband
networks so that it can deliver media for
others
18 Convergence across Europe is new
focus for former CFO
After nine years as CFO of Orange,
Gervais Pellissier is running the group’s
European operations
62 Innovation Awards
20 Free Facebook campaign is a success
for Globe
Social media is the killer app in the
Philippines, says Globe Telecom’s CEO
Ernest Cu
62-78 GTB Innovation Awards results
in full
All the winners of the GTB Innovation
Awards, presented at a black-tie dinner in
London
63 Turkcell 4G roaming with TSIC’s
IPX
Customers with LTE-capable phones can
use 4G when roaming
68 How to beat the cyber attacks
worldwide
Cyber security project wins award for
using big data analytics
71 Award for financial inclusion in Peru
Ericsson Converged Wallet powers mobile
financial services
71 Integrated policy enhances user
experience
Etisalat Egypt uses Ericsson to offer
subscribers more flexible services
75 Fully connected experience based on
vehicle cloud
Ericsson and Volvo Cars enable drivers to
reconnect with the road
96 Innovation changing the world,
GTB conference hears
The world’s telecoms innovators gathered
at the GTB innovation summit to say how
they’re changing the world
6 News
AT&T completes second Mexican buy
Europe unveils digital single market
strategy
Cisco names Chuck Robbins as new
CEO
22 Why Kenya leads the world in
mobile money
Safaricom’s Rita Okuthe explains how
mobile money has transformed lives in
Kenya
24 Diverse market across 17 countries
poses Airtel challenges
Airtel Africa CEO Christian de Faria
discusses the challenges of such a diverse
environment
Features
contents
15 Cover interview
Marco Patuano
Page 15
Gervais Pellissier
Page 18
Ernest Cu
Page 20
Rita Okuthe
Page 22
26 Omni-channel: from buzzword to
business case
Operators need to use every customer
interaction to maximise every engagement
opportunity
52 CTO round-table: rolling out LTE,
roaming and VoLTE
We asked four leading CTOs about the
main issues they are facing
54 Open-source software project aims
to reduce fragmentation
How do you achieve interoperability and
security and reduce development time?
55 No half measures for reliable
VoLTE rollout
Making VoLTE work is not just about
delivering a service: it’s crucial to the future
of service providers
56 Alcatel-Lucent approves takeover by
Nokia
Alcatel-Lucent’s Michel Combes reported
to be joining Altice as merger with Nokia
comes closer
Christian de Faria
Page 24
Cynthia Gordon
Page 32
Dan Pitt
Page 42
Hisham Allam
Page 52
Anne Bouverot
Page 79
Sun Yafang
Page 85
Global Telecoms Business: May/June 2015 3
contents
58 Evolution of rating, charging and
billing in the digital era
An online rating, charging and billing
system would help service providers
through the digital wave
41-51 CEO and CFO Guide
to SDN
60 CFO round table: mobile money
and its financial implications
We asked three leading CFOs about their
attitude to mobile payment services
42 ONF moves to next stage in mission
to switch to open-source software
Standard hardware with open-source
software: that’s the vision that will
transform the industry
27-40 CEO and CFO Guide
to CEM
28 Operators need to bridge reality gap
if they intend to be customer-centric
It’s never been easier for customers to take
their money elsewhere when any aspect of
service disappointr
30 Telecoms operators rate poorly
when compared with other businesses
People expect more than they used to
and service providers are scoring badly in
customer surveys
32 CMO round table: customer
experience
We asked top CMOs how important
customer experience is to them, and how
they use CEM
36 Service providers still have the edge
over OTT players
The onus is on service providers to adopt
a multidimensional approach to customer
experience
38 Faults, missed deadlines and
unhelpful call centres
Ask for comments and anecdotes about
telecoms operators’ service quality, and
you’ll be inundated
40 Millennials need a personalised
experience. So do the rest of us
Customer experience can undeniably be
a true source of sustainable competitive
advantage
44 Operators will be faster and more
agile as SDN promises to transform
Operators will be able to use networks
more efficiently and invest savings in better
infrastructure
46 Rethink the networks: SDN is about
to change the way everything is done
Network design will be the biggest
opportunity and challenge for operators
48 SDN community launches Atrium to
link software for networking
The vision of software-defined networking
has come closer with the release of Atrium
50 Who’s who and what’s what in SDN
There are a baffling number of different
organisations promoting SDN
79-87 Women to watch in
telecoms
79 Changing the status quo
Anne Bouverot, director general of the
GSMA, introduces our report on women
in telecoms
80 The gender roles are shifting,
but slowly, and women remain
under-represented
Women account for less than 40% of the
workforce, and it’s even worse at high
management level
88-95 CFO summit
88 Full report on GTB’s third annual
CFO summit
Challenges of M&As, the expanding role
of the CFO, new accounting rules, and the
importance of the global supply chain
4 Global Telecoms Business: May/June 2015
news
AT&T completes second Mexican buy
AT&T is ready to integrate
Nextel Mexico with Iusacell after
the completion of its second
purchase in the country.
The US operator has completed
its $1.87 billion acquisition
of Nextel Mexico from NII
Holdings including spectrum
licences, network assets, retail
stores and subscribers.
The deal follows a $1.7 billion
acquisition of another Mexican
mobile operator, Iusacell, agreed
in late 2014 and completed earlier
in 2015.
Iusacell has a reported 8.6
million customers. In January
2015 AT&T said that Nextel
Mexico has “approximately 3
million subscribers”.
AT&T said will integrate
Iusacell and Nextel into one
company focused on bringing
better service and faster mobile
internet speeds to more locations
throughout Mexico. The
company plans to create the first-
Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO for AT&T Mexico and
Iusacell, will integrate Nextel into the operation
ever North American mobile
service area, which will cover
more than 400 million consumers
and businesses in Mexico and the
US.
Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO for
AT&T Mexico and Iusacell, will
lead the combined company.
AT&T pointed out that Mexico
is the second-largest economy in
Latin America and has a growing
middle class. This economic
strength, combined with Mexico’s
close geographic, economic and
cultural ties to the US, make it
an attractive place for AT&T to
invest.
AT&T’s acquisition of Nextel
Mexico was approved by the
US Bankruptcy Court for the
Southern District of New
York, which is overseeing the
restructuring of NII Holdings.
It was also approved by Mexico’s
telecom regulator, Instituto
Federal de Telecomunicaciones.
The company said that swift
action by IFT, aided by recent
regulatory reform by the Mexican
government, has created a
positive climate for AT&T to
invest significantly in Mexico.
Magazine contacts
Editor
Alan Burkitt-Gray
+44 20 7779 8518
or +1 212 224 3880
[email protected]
International sales manager
Sam Baird
+44 1883 715697
[email protected]
Skype: sambaird
Business development manager
Matteo Nappini
+44 20 7779 8592
[email protected]
Reporter
Agnes Stubbs
+44 20 7779 7211
[email protected]
Graphic design
Eldred Design
+44 7540 972 442
[email protected]
Publisher
Laurence Mackintosh
+44 20 7779 8589
or +1 212 224 3881
[email protected]
Subscriptions
+44 20 7779 8999
fax +44 20 7779 5200
[email protected]
Managing director
Ros Irving
+44 20 7779 7285
[email protected]
Customer Services
+44 20 7779 8610
fax +44 20 7779 8602
[email protected]
Copying without permission of the publisher
is prohibited. This may be applied for
by contacting the publisher. Although
Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC has
made every effort to ensure the accuracy
of this publication, neither it nor any
contributor can accept any legal responsibility
whatsoever for consequences that may arise
from errors or omissions or any opinions
or advice given. This publication is not a
substitute for professional advice on a specific
transaction.
Directors: Richard Ensor (executive
chairman), Christopher Fordham (managing director), Neil Osborn, Colin Jones,
Diane Alfano, Jane Wilkinson, Bashar
Al-Rehany. Non-executive directors:
Viscount Rothermere, Sir Patrick Sergeant, Andrew Ballingall, John Botts,
Tristan Hillgarth, Martin Morgan, David
Pritchard
Digital edition:
www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com/
gtbdigital
Twitter:
@GlobalTelecoms
LinkedIn group:
http://tinyurl.com/GTB-Link
GTB TV:
http://tinyurl.com/GTB-television
iPad edition:
http://tinyurl.com/GTB-iPad
8 Bouverie Street,
London EC4Y 8AX, UK
New subscription hotline
US: +1 212 224 3570
UK: +44 20 7779 8999
©Euromoney Institutional Investor 2015
Global Telecoms Business™
ISSN No: 0969-7500
Printed in the UK by Buxton Press.
Published in the UK, available by annual
subscription.
Global Telecoms Business (USPS No
012-252) is published bi-monthly for
£530/€635/$985 a year by Euromoney
Institutional Investor PLC.
AFRICA’S CARRIERS’ CARRIER
Bud
Bu
ude
d
WIOCC core network
Other WIOCC network
(Inc. TEAMS, SMW3, Seacom
and SAT3/SAFE)
Terrestrial network
As Africa’s award-winning carriers’ carrier, WIOCC has
built its business around simplifying the complexities of
African telecoms markets for its customers.
The pace and scope of change in connectivity supply
and bandwidth demand are rapid, making the costeffective balance of network capacity, diversity and
reach, a challenge.
This is why WIOCC operates a one-stop shop, managed
end-to-end service, taking care of all aspects of
procurement, commissioning and operational
management – from complex commercial negotiations
to management of solutions encompassing
multiple networks.
If you are looking to optimise your service offering
in Africa contact WIOCC.
Your partner in Africa
Contact us at [email protected]
news
Vodafone in talks with cable giant Liberty as operators race to quad-play
Vodafone has confirmed that it
is in discussion with US-owned
cable group Liberty Global — but
the UK-based mobile company
has denied that it is looking at a
full merger of the two.
The move is part of an
increasingly widespread trend
across Europe and elsewhere
for mobile operators to launch
or buy fixed broadband or cable
networks and fixed operators to
offer mobile. The aim is for all of
them to try to lock in customers
by providing as many services
as possible, out of a selection of
mobile, fixed telephony, home
broadband and television —
so-called quad-play packages.
Illustrating the point,
only days after the Liberty
announcement, Vodafone
announced that it is launching
fixed voice and broadband in the
UK, in competition with BT,
Sky, TalkTalk, Virgin Media
and others.
In a brief statement, Vodafone
said that “it is in the early stages
of discussions with Liberty Global
regarding a possible exchange of
selected assets between the two
companies”.
The announcement
immediately led to speculation
that the two companies may be
contemplating a global exchange
of assets to create two new
companies, both of which would
have fixed and mobile interests in
different territories.
The assets likely to be on the
agenda include some of Liberty
Global’s operations across Europe
and South America, including
Telenet in Belgium, UPC in
Austria, Hungary, Ireland and
Poland, Ziggo in the Netherlands
Jeroen Hoencamp: Vodafone UK offering fixed as
well as mobile services
and Virgin Media in the UK,
and Vodafone’s recently acquired
European cable operations,
including Spain’s Ono and
Germany’s Kabel Deutschland.
In April 2015 Liberty’s Telenet
announced that it is to buy
Belgian mobile operator Base
from Netherlands incumbent
KPN — a business it may be able
to contribute to any deal with
Vodafone. Liberty Global has not
yet issued a statement about the
Vodafone talks.
The Vodafone announcement
said: “Vodafone is not in
discussions with Liberty Global
concerning a combination of the
two companies.”
The company warned: “There is
no certainty that any transaction
will be agreed, nor is there
certainty with respect to which
assets will ultimately be involved.”
Vodafone UK’s move into the
UK fixed broadband and home
phone market will include packages
of up to 76 megabits a second.
The service means Vodafone
is the first UK operator to
offer fixed and mobile services,
in advance of BT’s expected
takeover of mobile operator EE,
which is unlikely to be completed
before March 2016.
Cindy Rose, consumer director
at Vodafone UK said: “As the
only operator in the UK which
owns both a fixed and mobile
network, we’re in a great
position to create innovative
products and services that give
our existing customers reasons to
stay with us and new customers
reasons to switch.”
But the current package, called
Vodafone Connect, appears to
use BT Openreach’s local access
network, though Vodafone will
also use its “nationwide, fibre
optic, business-grade network
[which] already reaches exchanges
which pass nearly 20 million
premises across the UK: with that
figure increasing to around 22
million later in the summer”.
Vodafone acquired that network
when it bought Cable & Wireless
Worldwide for £1 billion in 2012.
C&W had earlier made at least
one unsuccessful attempt — using
the Bulldog brand — to launch
a home broadband network in
the UK. C&W sold Bulldog
in 2006 and the customer base
was subsequently acquired by
TalkTalk.
Jeroen Hoencamp, CEO of
Vodafone UK, said: “We’re
looking forward to bringing our
consumer customers the benefits
of our experience in providing
fixed and mobile services, both
here in the UK and elsewhere
around the world.”
Vodafone will initially offer
Vodafone Connect to existing
mobile customers in parts of
the UK, but will roll it out to
the whole country over the next
few months, and will then start
selling the service through its
retail stores.
Late news: Hannes Ametsreiter leaves Telekom Austria
Hannes Ametsreiter has resigned
from Telekom Austria and will
leave the company — where he
is CEO of the group and of its
national operation, A1 Telekom
Austria — at the end of July 2015.
He had been with the group for
19 years and was CEO for six.
No reason has been given for
his departure but a statement
from the supervisory board says
that he asked “for a mutually
agreed premature termination of
his contract”.
Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer,
chairman of the supervisory
board, said: “On behalf of the
Supervisory Board I would
like to express our thanks to
Hannes Ametsreiter for running
the business through quite
challenging times, also in the
transition phase of Telekom
Austria Group becoming an
affiliate of América Movíl.”
The Mexican group, controlled
by Carlos Slim, owns around
60% of the Austrian group, which
owns fixed and mobile networks
across eastern Europe.
gtb
GLOBAL
TELECOMS
BUSINESS
POWER100
Who will be the
Global Telecoms Business
Power 100 for 2015?
The deadline for this year’s Global
Telecoms Business Power100, our
annual list of the 100 most powerful
a
people in the telecoms industry
p
worldwide, is on Monday 3 August.
w
W asking readers for nominations
We
now.
n
W published the first list at the end
We
of September 2008, to mark the
o
100th print issue of Global Telecoms
Business, so this is the eighth time
we’ve produced our list of the
top 100 people in telecoms. The
list features senior executives from
operators and vendors, regulators,
international organisations and
investors, from all parts of the world.
2015?
Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of
Google, was number one in the first
list. He was followed in 2009 by the
late Rob Conway, then CEO of the
GSM Association. The following year
AT&T’s Randall Stephenson led the
Power100.
Number one in 2011 was Hamadoun
Touré, then secretary general of the
International Telecommunication
Union, and in 2012 it was Dan Mead,
CEO of Verizon Wireless, the world’s
biggest LTE operator. In 2013 AT&T’s
Stephenson led again.
In 2014 the judges went back to
social media world, and picked
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
So who will feature in this year’s
Global Telecoms Business Power100?
And who will be number one this
time?
GTB will be publishing the Power100
for 2015 at the end of September, in
print and online.
Deadline:
Monday 3 August 2015
It’s up to you. Send in those nominations now, please.
By Monday 3 August
Go to www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com
and follow the link to GTB Power100
news
Verizon to acquire AOL in a $4.4bn mobile-first video deal
Verizon has agreed to acquire
AOL in a $4.4 billion deal in a
push to advance its ambitions in
mobile video advertising. The
all-cash acquisition, which values
AOL at $50 a share, will help
Verizon build its digital and video
platforms.
As the US mobile industry
becomes increasingly competitive,
AOL’s mobile video streaming
service will be a revenue source
for Verizon.
The company said the deal will
strengthen its mobile and OTT
video strategies. “This acquisition
supports our strategy to provide
a cross-screen connection
for consumers, creators and
advertisers to deliver that
premium customer experience,”
said Lowell McAdam, chairman
and CEO of Verizon.
It will gain AOL’s key assets
which include its subscription
business; global content brands,
such as the Huffington Post,
TechCrunch, Engadget, Makers
and AOL.com, as well as its overthe-top original video content,
and its programmatic advertising
platforms.
The combined entity will create
a scaled, mobile-first platform
offering targeted at a nearly $600
billion global advertising industry,
said Verizon.
McAdam added: “At Verizon,
we’ve been strategically investing
in emerging technology,
including Verizon Digital Media
Services and OTT, that taps
into the market shift to digital
content and advertising. AOL’s
advertising model aligns with this
approach, and the advertising
platform provides a key tool for
us to develop future revenue
streams.”
Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam: AOL acquisition supports strategy to provide cross-screen connection for
consumers, creators and advertisers
AOL’S CEO Tim Armstrong
will continue to lead AOL’s
operations upon completion of
the deal.
“The visions of Verizon and
AOL are shared; the companies
have existing successful
partnerships, and we are excited
to work with the team at
Verizon to create the
next generation of media
through mobile and video,”
Armstrong said.
The acquisition comes before
the launch of Verizon’s video
streaming service later this year.
In January 2014, the company
purchased Intel’s OnCue
internet video service, an asset
which is expected to serve as
the underpinning for its video
streaming service.
With the US mobile
industry becoming increasingly
competitive and saturated, mobile
video streaming service will be a
revenue source and differentiator
for Verizon as it seeks to compete
with rivals such as T-Mobile.
The transaction will take the
form of a tender offer followed
by a merger, with AOL becoming
a wholly-owned subsidiary
of Verizon when the deal is
completed.
Pending customary regulatory
approvals and closing conditions,
the deal is expected to be
completed by the end of the
summer.
Vodafone and Wind to build fibre network in Italy
Vodafone and VimpelCom’s
Wind have signed a letter of intent
with shareholders of broadband
firm Metroweb to build a fibre
optic network in Italy.
The project is open to other
operators and investors that
aim to pursue the goals set by the
Italian government to roll out
a broadband network across
the country.
In March 2015 the Italian
government approved a €6
billion plan to boost high-speed
networks in the country.
Telecom Italia was said to be in
talks with the government in May
2015 to buy partly state-owned
Metroweb. However its proposal
was turned down by its owners
who favoured opening up the
company’s capital to all operators.
Under the three-year
investment programme, Telecom
Italia will spend about €10 billion
in Italy and over €4 billion in
Brazil on faster broadband.
news
Europe’s Altice buys US cable operator for $9bn
French telecoms holding
group Altice has agreed to
acquire a majority stake in a
US cable company, Suddenlink
Communications, in a deal valued
at $9.1 billion.
Altice, controlled by French
billionaire Patrick Drahi, said
it would acquire 70% of the
share capital in Suddenlink
from existing shareholders BC
Partners, a London-based private
equity group, Canada Pension
Plan Investment Board and
Suddenlink management. BC
Partners and CPP Investment
Board will retain the remaining
30% stake in Suddenlink.
The US purchase adds to
Altice’s spate of investments
in recent months, including
Portugal Telecom and France’s
mobile operator SFR. Altice’s
acquisition of Portugal Telecom
from Brazilian operator Oi has
now been complete.
Oi agreed to sell the Portuguese
assets of Portugal Telecom to
Altice for about €7.4 billion in
December 2014.
Altice Portugal paid €5.789
billion for the acquisition of PT
Portugal, of which €4.92 billion
was paid in cash to Oi and €869
million was allocated to paying
off PT Portugal’s debts.
“The final purchase price
is subject to post-closing
adjustments to be calculated
within the next months as a
result of changes in the cash,
indebtedness and working capital
positions on the closing date,”
said Oi.
Oi had planned to merge with
Suddenlink is the seventh largest US cable operator with 1.5 million residential and 90,000 business
customers
Portugal Telecom in 2014 but the
tie-up met with stumbling blocks
such as financial irregularities
over the Portuguese operator’s
dealings with its largest bank
investor, Banco Espírito Santo.
Dexter Goei, CEO of Altice,
said of the US cable deal: “Our
investment in Suddenlink, our
first in the cable sector in the US,
opens an attractive industrial and
strategic avenue for Altice in the
US, one of the largest and fastest
growing communications markets
in the world.”
He added: “We are looking
forward to our partnership with
BC Partners and CPP Investment
Board and believe Suddenlink is a
best-in-class business that should
be able to deliver profitability
and cash flow levels in line with
best-in-class European cable
businesses.”
Suddenlink is said to be the
seventh largest US cable operator
with 1.5 million residential and
90,000 business customers. With
operations primarily focused in
Texas, West Virginia, Louisiana,
Arkansas and Arizona, the
company is present in attractive
growth markets for both
residential and business services,
said Altice.
Suddenlink generated $2.3
billion in revenue and over
$900 million in EBITDA with a
balanced revenue mix between
residential video, broadband,
telephony and business services
in 2014.
In 2014, Altice’s French cable
company, Numericable, acquired
mobile operator SFR for €17
billion.
South Africa’s Telkom to lose 40% of staff
South African operator Telkom
is set to fire more than 40% of its
19,000 employees. Local reports
say the company is to cut 7,800
jobs — on top of 1,170 employees
whose positions have already been
outsourced.
The company is trying to cut
costs by 5 billion rand ($400
million), according to South
African media.
Telkom hopes that 4,000
will go through voluntary
packages, but the other 3,400
in the plan will face compulsory
redundancy, though the
company hopes to have an
enterprise development plan that
may help them.
“The enterprise development
option is where Telkom will seek
to assist existing employees to
develop their own new businesses.
These businesses would then be
able to contract their services
back to Telkom, along with other
service providers,” Telkom’s
Jacqui O’Sullivan told South
African publication Business Day.
Telkom CEO Sipho Maseko
said a few days before the
announcement that the company
wants to bring staff costs down to
25% of sales revenue. “Much like
most telecoms operators globally,
Telkom must move towards
a leaner and more productive
workforce,” Maseko was quoted
as saying.
news
Deutsche Telekom ‘may look at BT takeover’ say UK reports
Deutsche Telekom is said to
be eyeing a takeover of BT,
following reports that it is close to
selling its stake in T-Mobile US.
The German operator is
reportedly in advanced talks
over the sale of its 67% stake
in the US unit to satellite payTV company Dish Networks.
According to UK news reports, it
may use proceeds from the sale to
acquire BT.
Selling T-Mobile US to Dish
could pave the way for Deutsche
Telekom to exit the US market
and focus on its European
markets.
“Deutsche Telekom is clearly
selling out of the US and clearly
they don’t want to give the
money back to shareholders, they
want to use it in Europe. They
want to buy BT,” an industry
source told reporters.
Deutsche Telekom is
already set to become a major
shareholder in BT — with a
12% stake in the company —
Deutsche Telekom may use cash from selling T-Mobile US to buy BT, say reports
following the completion of
its £12.5 billion acquisition of
mobile operator EE, expected
to close in early 2016. EE —
formerly Everything Everywhere
— is 50-50 owned by Deutsche
Telekom and France’s Orange,
which will retain a smaller stake
in BT following the deal.
Deutsche Telekom is known
to considered expansion into the
UK in the last decade, looking at
both BT and Cable & Wireless as
potential acquisitions.
In March 2015 the company
announced the launch of its
European network which
connects Croatia, Hungary and
Slovakia — the first three of ten
countries it aims to link up.
“With our European
network and the cross-border
infrastructure, we will be able to
set the tone and not just dance
to the beat of drummers from
the US and Asia,” said Deutsche
Telekom CEO Timotheus
Höttges.
Level 3 in interconnection deals with AT&T, Comcast and Verizon
Level 3 has announced a
series of long-term, bilateral
interconnection agreements
related to their public IP
networks with three major US
operators.
The company’s partners in the
three separate deals, announced
separately, are AT&T, Comcast
and Verizon.
In a statement, Level 3 and
Verizon said: “The agreement
contains provisions to add capacity
and establish new interconnection
locations between the two
networks to stay ahead of growing
traffic demands. The agreement
also includes new connections for
Verizon Digital Media Services’
content delivery network to
connect to Level 3’s network
globally, further improving quality
for Verizon’s CDN customers.
This approach offers flexibility
for each network while improving
performance and reliability for the
customers of both.”
Anthony Christie, chief
marketing officer for Level 3,
said about the AT&T deal: “This
Anthony Christie, Level 3: With customer needs at
the forefront, you enable a growing, secure and
resilient interconnection environment
agreement will benefit Level 3’s
and AT&T’s customers for years
to come. With customer needs
at the forefront, you enable a
growing, secure and resilient
interconnection environment.”
Roman Pacewicz, senior vice
president of marketing & global
strategy for AT&T Business
Solutions, said: “We are dedicated
to continuing to ensure customers
have the best network experience.
By adding capacity with Level
3, customers will continue to
experience high performance
speeds to meet their needs.”
Comcast and Level 3 also said
they will enhance their existing
network capacity while extending
their mutual interconnection
agreements to ensure that they
maintain ample capacity to
exchange internet traffic between
their networks. The arrangement
expands on the agreements
already in place between the two
companies, said Comcast.
The agreement comes five years
after both operators were in a
peering dispute over the amount
of traffic from Netflix that Level 3
was sending to Comcast’s network.
“We are delighted to
strengthen our relationship with
Level 3. Today’s announcement
reflects the important ways in
which network participants
exchange value in an innovative
marketplace,” said John
Schanz, chief network officer at
Comcast Cable.
“We place great value on
our relationships with network
partners like Level 3 and are
continually seeking mutually
beneficial, market-driven
agreements that enhance value
throughout the network.”
Europe
European Commission promises to ‘tear down regulatory walls and finally move from
28 national markets to a single one’
Europe unveils digital
single market strategy
European Commission vice president
Andrus Ansip: Target areas where the
EU can make a real difference. They
prepare Europe to reap the benefits
of a digital future
The European Commission has announced that consumers and businesses will gain better access to digital
content and goods as it unveiled its “digital single
market” strategy for the region.
The Commission said it will seek to clamp down on socalled geo-blocking, in which businesses restrict access to
content based on the user’s geographical location.
“These unjustified practices should be expressly prohibited so that EU customers and businesses can take
full advantage of the single market in terms of choice
and lower prices,” said the Commission, which is the
administrative body for the 28-nation European Union.
Andrus Ansip, vice president of the European Commission said: “Our strategy is an ambitious and necessary programme of initiatives that target areas where
the EU can make a real difference. They prepare
Europe to reap the benefits of a digital future.”
Telekom Austria CEO Hannes Ametsreiter welcomed the proposals: “A digital single market is necessary to strengthen companies and to give them flexibility
for investment and growth. this refers also to the telecom framework regulation, which is outdated,” he said.
“Europe can only succeed by being more innovative
than other parts of the world; a level playing field is just
a short-term measure to reduce existing imbalances.”
He pointed out that the US has five operators, China
has three, but “we have more than 150 in Europe”.
Huawei also welcomed the announcement. “We
look forward to the ambitious overhaul of EU telecoms rules that was announced, as we believe it is
vital to adapt the regulatory framework to a rapidly
changing digital environment,” the Chinese company
said in a statement.
“As the move towards digitisation is transforming
any business into a digital business, Huawei is working with its European partners to achieve a smooth
transition towards this digital age.”
Colt’s director of regulation, Barney Lane, called
for more incentives for investment in high-speed
broadband, “but this is best delivered by a truly competitive European market — not by offering sweeteners to existing monopolies to grab an even bigger slice
of the market”.
Lane added: “The European Commission needs to
ensure that rules designed to allow the efficient deployment of fibre networks — particularly surrounding
access to civil infrastructure — are consistently applied
across the EU. This will spur innovation and investment in high speed networks, and bring both European
businesses as well as consumers the affordable, highquality and high-speed connectivity they deserve.”
In its proposal, which includes 16 initiatives, the
Commission said it will also seek to create a level
playing field for digital networks and services and
maximise the growth potential of the digital economy.
“The aim of the digital single market is to tear
down regulatory walls and finally move from 28
national markets to a single one. A fully functional
digital single market could contribute €415 billion
per year to our economy and create hundreds of
thousands of new jobs,” said the body.
In addition the Commission said it will conduct a
comprehensive assessment of online platforms such
as Google, Facebook and Amazon to decide if they
should be further regulated. “Some platforms can
control access to online markets and can exercise
significant influence over how various players are
remunerated,” said the Commission.
Ansip said that the proposals “will give people and
companies the online freedoms to profit fully from
Europe’s huge internal market. The initiatives are
inter-linked and reinforce each other. They must be
delivered quickly to better help to create jobs and
growth. The strategy is our starting point, not the
finishing line.”
Ametsreiter added: “What we have at the moment is
a lot of competition with too many players in the market and an intense regulatory framework with reduced
incentives to invest. What we need is a single market
economy to set up a proper framework with common
licences, frequencies and one regulator only.” Q
Global Telecoms Business May/June 2015 13
news: people
Cisco names Chuck Robbins as new CEO to succeed John Chambers
Cisco has announced that
Chuck Robbins will succeed
John Chambers as CEO from
26 July 2015.
Robbins “has helped drive many
of Cisco’s investment and strategy
decisions”, Cisco said.
But even before his official
takeover day the new CEO has
announced his new management
team, which sees the departure
of Padmasree Warrior, the
company’s CTO and strategy
officer, and Edzard Overbeek,
SVP of services.
They were expected to move
into strategic advisor roles
effectively immediately and stay
through the transition.
Wim Elfrink, EVP for industry
solutions and chief globalisation
officer, will retire the day before
Robbins takes over.
Earlier departures included
president of development and sales
Rob Lloyd and COO Gary Moore.
Robbins said: “The opportunity
Cisco has to lead our customers
into the digital age is incredible.
The momentum we have in
our business is undeniable. Our
strategy is working, and with the
leadership team I’m announcing
today, I’m extremely confident we
will move even faster, innovate
like never before, and pull away
from the competition.”
“We’ve selected a very
strong leader at a time
when Cisco is in a very
strong position”
John Chambers
The group of 10 on Cisco’s
revamped leadership team are
Pankaj Patel, chief development
officer; Kelly Kramer, CFO;
Rebecca Jacoby, senior VP of
operations; Francine Katsoudas,
chief people officer; Hilton
Romanski, chief technology and
strategy officer; Karen Walker,
chief marketing officer; Chris
Dedicoat, SVP of worldwide sales;
Joe Cozzolino, SVP of services;
Mark Chandler, general counsel;
and Ruba Borno, VP of growth
initiatives and chief of staff.
John Chambers: This is the perfect time for Chuck
Robbins to become Cisco’s next chief executive
officer
Chuck Robbins: The opportunity Cisco has
to lead our customers into the digital age is
incredible
Robbins said: “This is a
remarkable team, with a diverse
set of experiences, expertise and
backgrounds to accelerate our
innovation and execution, simplify
how we do business, drive
operational rigor in all we do, and
inspire our amazing employees to
be the best that they can be.”
Robbins, who joined Cisco in
1997, had been the company’s
SVP of worldwide operations,
leading its global sales and
partner team which the company
said was responsible for $47
billion in business. Cisco said
Robbins has helped drive
many of its investment and
strategy decisions, such as its
diversification into computersecurity products.
“This is the perfect time for
Chuck Robbins to become
Cisco’s next chief executive
officer. We’ve selected a very
strong leader at a time when
Cisco is in a very strong
position,” said Chambers, who
had led Cisco since 1995.
For four years before that
Chambers was SVP of worldwide
sales and operations — more or
less the job Robbins has been
doing until his promotion to CEO.
“Chuck is unique in his ability
to translate vision and strategy
into world-class execution,
bringing together teams and
ecosystems to drive results.
Chuck knows every Cisco
segment, technology area, and
geography, and will move the
company forward with the speed
required to capitalise on the
opportunities in front of us,”
Chambers added.
Chambers will become
executive chairman, where he
will support Robbins and take a
leading role in helping countries
digitise their operations. The
succession has been long expected
since Chambers announced in
2012 that he would retire in two
to four years.
Chambers said of Robbins: “He
is a champion of the Cisco culture
and has an incredible ability to
inspire, energise, and connect with
employees, partners, customers
and global leaders. Chuck’s vision,
“With the leadership team
I’m announcing today,
I’m extremely confident
we will move even faster,
innovate like never before,
and pull away from the
competition.”
Chuck Robbins
strategy and execution track record
is exactly what Cisco needs as
we enter our next chapter, which I
am confident will be even
more impactful and exciting than
our last.”
According to Cisco, Chambers
has grown the company from
$1.2 billion in annual revenue to
its current run rate of $48 billion.
Cover interview: Marco Patuano of Telecom Italia
Telecom Italia’s CEO Marco Patuano is building broadband networks, not so it can become a
media company, but so that it can deliver media for others, he tells Alan Burkitt-Gray
Telecom Italia CEO shifts focus from debt to heavy
investment in fixed and mobile broadband networks
“It worked well because advertising was concentrated in two baskets so both groups had the resources.
It was a virtuous circle for getting good resources.”
But the model has changed. “The advertising market has found different channels for their budgets,”
says Patuano. He doesn’t mean TV channels: the
advertising industry worldwide is moving away from
its old sureties in television, and is trying new outlets,
including the internet.
“Now most companies no longer use TV advertising,” says Patuano. “It has become a vicious circle. So
there is less content, less audience, less advertising —
and the industry has entered a negative spiral.”
If this had happened — as in did in the UK — 20
years ago, conventional cable and satellite would have
been the route to get pay TV to millions of Italian
households. Coming late to the pay-TV world, Italy
can leap into broadband internet technology. And
that gives Telecom Italia a chance.
Unique opportunity
Marco Patuano: We decided not
to buy content or buy any content
aggregator. Italy is quite exceptional
in Europe because the penetration of
pay TV is low
Telecom Italia is becoming a media provider in Italy
— but not, as BT is in the UK, by creating its own
TV operation. Instead, says CEO Marco Patuano, the
company is becoming a distributor, delivering packages of content through its new broadband networks
on behalf of existing media companies, including
cable and satellite operators such as Sky Italia.
“We decided to have a different approach with
TV,” he says. “We decided not to buy content or buy
any content aggregator.” Instead, the company will
start offering all content through agreements with
TV operators.
Sky is one partner, and services with Telecom Italia
broadband access — instead of satellite — will be sold
through the normal retail outlets.
And “we are in talks” with Mediaset Premium,
a digital terrestrial television service provided by
Mediaset, the group founded by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and still controlled by his family
company, Fininvest. “And we are talking with other
content providers,” says Patuano.
This is a huge opportunity for Telecom Italia, he
explains. “Italy is quite exceptional in Europe because
the penetration of pay TV is low,” says Patuano. “Germany, France and the UK have 50-60% penetration.
In Italy it is 25%, which means there is a meaningful
possibility of uptake in real terms for paid content.”
Why has it been so low? “Because free-to-air TV
throughout the 1990s was in the hands of a duopoly,”
he says. They were both funded by advertising.
There was state-owned RAI, which politically was
on the centre left, “and Berlusconi on the centre right,
and neither of the two had a strong incentive to change
the structure of the free-to-air model”, says Patuano.
“That means that today there is a unique opportunity
to grow in Italy — a move to subscriber-based TV,”
says Patuano.
In the UK, BT is also moving into pay TV, though
it has taken a radically different line. It has bought
sports and movie rights and is offering them as a
package to its broadband customers in competition
with Sky and the UK’s dominant cable operator, Liberty Global’s Virgin Media.
In Italy, Patuano wants to be different. “We want to
be an open platform,” he says. “We don’t want to be
part of a single aggregator.”
Why? “An open platform would allow us to plug in
a new content provider in a few months. There is no
exclusivity — the remote controller is in the hands of
the customer.”
That implies that the Telecom Italia broadband
customer can subscribe to a number of services,
including Sky, Mediaset or whatever else is on offer,
via the same connection.
“The battle now is moving to the set-top box, which
is interesting,” says Patuano. But, he notes, “Sky
wants to keep its set-top box” as an exit barrier for the
customer. Customers will be able to get Sky Italia via
Telecom Italia’s broadband but, it seems, will have to
use the standard Sky set-top box.
Patuano has spent his career in the company and its
state-controlled predecessor SIP, having joined the
group in 1990 — four years before the name change
to Telecom Italia. An economist, he studied corporate finance, and he began in the financial operations
of the company.
He joined just before mobile telephony began, and
in 1996 he helped create Telecom Italia Mobile. He X
“So generally the ARPU for 4G users is €3-€4 higher
than for a 3G customer with the same profile.”
Marco Patuano: Most important
change was to move the attention of
the company and the investors from
the financial position of the company
to the industrial strategy
Fibre investment
later went to the company’s Brazilian mobile operation, TIM Brasil, where he was CFO.
Patuano returned to Italy to become group CFO in
2008, just after Franco Bernabè became CEO.
Right strategy
But in October 2013 Bernabè, by then also chairman
of Telecom Italian and chairman of the GSM Association, stepped down. The company had a debt of €29
billion and — according to reports at the time — he
had failed to persuade the board that he had the right
strategy to bring it down.
He had told an Italian parliamentary hearing that
Telecom Italia had only two options to avoid a downgrade: launch a large capital increase or sell the company’s Brazilian assets. Independent board members
expressed strong reluctance over a sale of the Latin
American assets, as that could impoverish the group
given the difficult state of the Italian market.
Patuano was appointed in Bernabè’s place in the Telecom Italia board. Today, says Patuano, “debt will remain
a priority. Financial discipline will remain a priority.”
But he has changed the emphasis. “The most important change, which was introduced more than a year
ago, was to move the attention of the company and
the investors from the financial position of the company to the industrial strategy,” he says. “It’s all about
investment.” We’ll come back to the debt, but Patuano wants to talk about the investment programme.
“We are kicking off a new wave of heavy investment
that will allow us to develop in Italy and Brazil,” he says.
“In Italy we are an integrated player, which is helpful.”
The company has pursued an investment programme in its LTE network, now reaching about
80% of the Italian population, “quite fast”, he says.
“We are boosting sales of LTE services. In November 2014 there were about 2.5 million LTE users
out of 11 million mobile broadband users. And 4G
penetration is increasing constantly.”
The company will be “pushing hard in the summer”
to drive up penetration still further, he says.
The company charges no premium for 4G service.
“The premium is implicit in the entry package,” he says.
Telecom Italia’s 3G users consume one gigabyte of data
a month, but 4G users consume 1.5 gigabytes, he notes.
16 Global Telecoms Business May/June 2015
At the same time there’s heavy investment in fibre. In
one year, the company aims to read one third of the
Italian population, and by 2017 75% of the population”.
The company is using a range of technologies, including fibre to the cabinet, to the building and to the home.
Telecom Italia has started rolling out fibre to the
home, with an aim to reach 40 cities. “And we have
already covered eight,” he says.
There’s another item on Patuano’s agenda for
growth of Telecom Italia’s business: data centres
and cloud services for enterprise, and “this is already
booking a growth rate of 40% year-on-year”, he says.
“The amount starts to be material.”
He estimates that the market is worth in the order
of €100 million for cloud services “just for small and
medium enterprises”, and notes that it is “a couple of
hundred for infrastructure as a service for example,
for remote storage”.
Telecom Italia is “cooperating with all the major players in the world,” he adds. “We have strategic alliances
with Microsoft, EMC, HP, Cisco, Oracle and others.”
But “the most profitable area is medium and mediumsmall business”, he says. “Large companies have their
own CIOs and tend to use us as a hybrid solution. We
are integrating their proprietary solutions.”
But there is business to be done with the large
enterprises, particularly with outsourced data centres.
He cites the insurance group Generali. “We run their
data centres 100%,” says Patuano.
We inevitably turn to the financial questions. “At
the end of 2013, the board approved extraordinary
transactions to strengthen the financial position of
the company to support the 2014-16 three-year
industrial plan which will contribute approximately
€4 billion in total,” he says.
“These actions included issuing a mandatory convertible €1.3 billion bond,” he adds. And Telecom Italia
sold its stake in Telecom Argentina in late 2013 for $960
million to the Fintech Group, a New York-based fund.
Also on the agenda were plans to dispose of its
Italian and Brazilian tower business and its TI Media
digital terrestrial TV multiplexes — bundles of channel capacity.
Debt renegotiation
A year and a half later, “we are using the very good
financial conditions that exist now to renegotiate a good
part of our debt”, says Patuano. “We are extremely
active in liability management and the programme is
not over — we see the markets still positive to do more.
We are planning to be active in the second part of the
year to benefit from the positive financial market conditions to further reduce the cost of our debt.”
In November 2014 Telecom Italia, which owns
66.5% of TIM Brasil, sold the mobile phone towers
of the Brazilian unit to American Tower for over
€900 million.
The interview was conducted a couple of weeks before
the sale of the Italian tower business, but the plans were
already in preparation. Telecom Italia had already filed
a request to make an initial public offer of its tower unit,
Infrastrutture Wireless Italiane — or Inwit — with Italian market regulator Consob in March 2015.
“It’s an important strategic move to spin off the
tower business. We are ready to IPO the tower unit.
The unit will be the largest tower operator in Italy.”
Inwit operates around 11,500 tower sites for Telecom Italia and other operators.
Just after the interview the company announced
that it would be asking between €3.25 and €3.90 for
each share, valuing the unit at €1.95 billion at least.
The plan was to sell up to 40% of the company on the
Milan stock exchange.
Why an IPO in Italy, selling 40%, rather than,
for example, a sale to a specialist tower company,
as in Brazil.
Because it gives “two value-creation opportunities”,
says Patuano. Because tower companies trade at up to
16 times ebitda. Within the group they are valued at
“less than six times. If they are outside the company,
it becomes 16 times.”
Tower consolidation
And he expects “a second wave” of deals in the tower
market. “The tower market will consolidate,” he says.
“We don’t want to give away any possibility of earning from the second wave of consolidation. Whoever
wants to take part has to deal with us.”
That’s why Telecom Italia is keeping 60%, and
Patuano expects the next wave of tower consolidation
to begin in the fourth quarter of 2015 or the first
quarter of next year.
And then? “We can decide whether to be on the buy
side or the sell side. We will keep our options open.”
Finally, we turn to Brazil. It’s “a pure mobile play,
with a small fixed unit, but very much concentrating
on the mobile side”, says Patuano. And Telecom Italia plans to invest there, too.
“There are several structural differences between
Brazil and European markets, which makes the
Brazilian case interesting.” First, the population and
age profile. “On the average, Brazilians are 20 years
younger than the European average,” says Patuano.
“This age profile makes a huge difference — in
Europe the take up of new digital services is linear. In
South America it’s exponential.”
Usage of traditional services is much higher in
Europe, but Brazil seems to be a better market for
services such as WhatsApp.
“In Brazil, we’ve sold the towers and made money,
and bought frequencies, so it will be self-financing,”
he says. “We have two thirds of the equity of TIM
Brasil and we are not returning any cash to headquarters, and reinvesting the cash.”
There is a “need of a strong ICT and cloud offer”
in Brazil, “but it’s a bit premature”, he says. “It will be
some time — in the medium term.”
There is pressure to reduce the number of players
in Brazil and “that will make the remaining players
happier”, he says. “But we must not forget the relative
numbers. Brazil has much more population than Russia: 210 million people.” Russia’s is around 140 million.
“I don’t think priority number one is consolidation.
The absolute truth is that the Brazilian market has a
giant, Oi, which is facing a difficult time. Everyone is
looking at TIM because it is only mobile.”
Concentrate on mobile
Is it a takeover target? “This possibility has been
deeply analysed — we thought that the conditions
[for a restructuring] were premature. We decided to
freeze the project and concentrate on mobile. Never
say never. But for the time being we are happy as it
is,” says Patuano.
A few years ago there was at least a draft plan for
infrastructure separation in Italy, with the fixed network being floated out as a wholesale service that
competitors could use.
“That was interesting at the time,” he says. “There
was a window — if the preliminary conditions had
been right. The window is not there any more.”
That’s because “today in Telecom Italia we’ve been
able to cut our debt and there is much less pressure
on the financial side”, he says.
“The government is doing excellent work in designing a programme of incentives to stimulate investing.
It is being more solid about [why] digital infrastructure is central to economic strategy. We are much
more comfortable in proceeding on our own and are
doing so with NGN investments.”
Meanwhile there is talk of mobile consolidation in
Italy, with Wind, owned by VimpelCom, and Three,
owned by Hutchison, apparently discussing a merger.
“It’s not if, it’s when,” says Patuano. “There are
two operators playing the game of next-generation
networks and two operators playing the game of convenience.” He means Telecom Italia and Vodafone in
the first category.
“Hutchison and Wind are not making enough of
NGN or 4G. They tend to have a portfolio that is
less attractive to the needs of the customer. Because
of quality we are a premium service and we still win
back customers.”
Does he worry about a merger? “If they merge they
will gain scale and gain synergies and increase profitability and they will have a huge opportunity to renegotiate part of their debt,” he says. “And more space
for innovation in the network and that will be good
for the whole market. Because if we go in competing
for quality and we have enough space for innovation,
and the size of the pie will grow. And we will increase
our business and have happier customers.”
And across Europe? “I think there are two different
moves in Europe — peripheral Europe and central
Europe. In telcos there are some factors that are
relevant and size is one of those. Convergence is the
other,” says Patuano.
“I understand the importance Vittorio Colao [CEO
of Vodafone] gave to start buying fixed assets. What
are the conditions that can favour a huge increase in
investment in access networks? If consolidation helps
investment, politically speaking the combination will
obtain a green light much more easily.”
Is there a possibility for a wider European group
involving Telecom Italia? There is “not a black or white
answer”, says Patuano cautiously. “What is important is
to stay at the edge of innovation. Today we are one of
the largest players in the world, with more than 100 million customers, which makes us a big operator.”
That means no? “It is difficult to exclude combinations but today [combination] is not something that is
needed at any cost. We can walk alone.” Q
Interview: Gervais Pellissier of Orange
After nine years as CFO of Orange, Gervais Pellissier is running all the group’s European operations
outside France — and the big issue on his agenda is fixed-mobile convergence, from Spain to Moldova
Fixed-mobile convergence across Europe
is new focus for former CFO of Orange
Gervais Pellissier: I’m happy to come
back to a business management after
nine years of finance. We have a big
challenge in most of the operations.
That means fixed-mobile convergence
and transformation of many of the
mobile operations
Gervais Pellissier is delighted to be back into a business
management role at Orange after nine years of finance.
Since September 2014 he has been in charge of
Orange’s operations in Europe, but outside France
— and he seems enthusiastic about having his
hands on again.
“It’s my first operational role since I became CEO of
Orange in Spain in 2005,” he says. That was when he
joined the group from the French IT company Bull.
That management role in Spain was short, only a
few months. “It didn’t last as long as I expected,” he
says. By January 2006, after only three months, he
was put in charge of the group’s finance — though he
held on to the Spanish operations for a time.
That means he spent an extraordinary nine years
as CFO of Orange, until 2014 when the company
recruited Ramon Fernandez, the former director
general of the French treasury.
“I’m very happy to come back to a business management after nine years of finance,” smiles Pellissier.
This was a role he specifically agreed in discussions
with the chairman and CEO, Stéphane Richard.
Pellissier’s title is CEO delegate — in other words,
deputy CEO — of the group. It means, says Pellissier,
that he spends 90% of his time in the operational
role, and the rest “as a senior adviser to the chairman
and CEO in terms of corporate matters”.
That part of the role “is to be involved in big
transformations, in big deals even outside Europe”,
he says. “I am at the side of Stéphane, to help him.”
And the European role? “Mainly to help our countries outside France to transform themselves. We
have a big challenge in most of the operations. That
means fixed-mobile convergence and transformation
of many of the mobile operations.”
The most visible example is Spain, where he began
his career in Orange a decade ago, he says. “In 2005
my task was to combine Wanadoo with Amena.”
Wanadoo was the name for the internet service
provider business of Orange, in France, Spain and
elsewhere. Amena was the Spanish mobile operator
that Orange bought in 2005.
“My first mission there was to start the convergence,” he recalls. And that’s clearly the sort of role
he likes: “business transformation, mergers, trying to
combine companies”, he says. “I’m more of a combiner than a developer.”
According to Pellissier, there are two sorts of CFO.
“There are cavaliers and there are Benedictines,”
he says, “and you need both.” But very few CFOs
are have both characteristics in one person. “When
a CFO is a cavalier you have to be careful.” Someone needs to look after the balance sheet and be a
defender of the CEO, he warns.
But now his mission is convergence. The first priority in fixed-mobile convergence is to adapt, he says.
Fixed and mobile have very different characteristics.
“The mobile business started as a mark of freedom
for the individual.” He compares this with the time
when all the family had to share one phone line. “The
internet connection is still a collective line, and the
TV is a collective line. But mobile has been a liberation from the need to share connectivity.”
Now children aged 10 or 12 “want their own
mobile phone, their own privacy, their own connection. Mobile has allowed more individualisation
of usage.”
But fixed-mobile convergence “is recreating some
of the more collective environment”, says Pellissier.
The cable connection for TV “is a collective line —
and this is not the same as mobile”.
This is not, as it may have seemed for a moment
or two, a French philosophical discussion about the
nature of individuality: Pellissier is discussing the way
the market is evolving and how his Orange operations
need to change to take account of that.
“It is a strong market evolution to more family
offers and more collective offers,” he says. “It is a
very big change. Will there still be an encounter
round the TV set?”
It’s “a marketing evolution and an infrastructure
evolution to answer a need”, he says.
That is the background to the fixed-mobile convergence strategy that Pellissier is putting into place
across Orange. “When we convert the networks, our
basic business as a service provider is to offer the best
access wherever people are,” he says. “Fixed access on
broadband will be more powerful than radio access.”
Interview: Gervais Pellissier of Orange
But the company has to involve itself in a number
of connection technologies, including wifi and mobile
access where there is no fixed infrastructure. “It’s complementary, more complementary than competing.”
So one of the priorities for the next five years is
“more capacity and more speed, and more stable
speed, in the fixed networks”.
But how will Orange do this — its fixed-mobile
convergence strategy — across Europe? It depends,
is the answer. “We have eight countries in Europe
outside France. We might look at different ways to
combine fixed and mobile in each.”
He goes back to his favourite example, Spain, where
“there will be a combination of our own build and
[infrastructure] share with Vodafone, and we are
trying to buy Jazztel, which is a reseller of Orange
mobile services”.
Orange’s €3.4 billion bid to buy Spanish fixed
network provider Jazztel is still slowly making its way
through the regulators.
“Spain will be a mixture of co-investment, investment
and merging with another operator,” says Pellissier.
Poland will be different. “We are the incumbent
there.” Orange bought a controlling stake in the
former Telekomunikacja Polska in 2002. “Our moves
there will be direct investment in the network.”
Belgium is more complicated. Orange’s mobile
operator there is called Mobistar — the Orange name
was formerly used by KPN in Belgium as a licensee of
the original UK-based Orange. The inability to operate its brand in Belgium is clearly a source of irritation.
But the fixed market is divided up between cable
operators and the incumbent, Belgacom. “There is
very little space between them,” says Pellissier. “But we
will be able to enter the market thanks to the regulator.
Cable will have to have a bitstream offer, and we are
making tests right now, with a few hundred customers.
We will launch at the end of 2015 or early in 2016.”
More widely, he says, “you have to choose a
momentum to rejuvenate the business and accelerate
the transformation.”
He turns to three other, more challenge Orange
operations in Europe: Romania, Slovakia and Moldova. “We are working on different options. We are
not there yet,” is all he will say.
But he puts some figures on how much Orange plans
to spend across its European businesses. “In Spain,
more than €4 billion, in Poland, more than €3 billion,
and about €1 billion in each of Belgium and Romania.”
Slovakia and Moldova? Orange has 40% of the
Slovakian market and 60% in Moldova, but he dismisses both as “very small — very interesting but
very small”.
Some of these operations are “smaller than a small
region of France”, he shrugs.
Let’s turn to one of the bigger markets. How will
that €3 billion investment be spent in Poland?
“Orange Poland has not yet started the migration of
its copper network to fibre,” he says. “As in France we
will be moving from DSL to fibre. We are in discussions
with the Polish team on what the size of the investment
will be.” But Orange is aiming for “up to 50-60%
coverage of fibre in the next five years”, he says. The
company will have to give its competitors access to the
fibre network in the biggest cities in Poland, “but on a
commercial offer, not at a regulated price”, he says. In
the rest of the country there will be a regulated price,
he adds. “The question is, at which price?”
But mobile is still the biggest business for Orange
across Europe. “In most European countries we have
started 4G deployments,” he says. “In Spain we are
ahead of all the competitors, even Telefónica. Belgium has the best 4G.”
In Poland, though, 4G still reaches only 40% of
the population, “because the frequencies are not fully
deployed. Poland is late.”
We haven’t talked about EE, the UK operator that
is still a 50-50 joint venture between Orange and
Deutsche Telekom. But, of course, BT has bid £12.5
billion for EE in a deal that will leave Orange as a
small shareholder in the combined entity and DT as
a larger shareholder. It will take until early 2016 for
the merger to be completed.
Will Pellissier miss EE? “Yes, of course, he says.
I’ve been working with some of the team for nearly
a decade.” Having “EE no longer with us” will be
something of a wrench, it is clear.
But that fixed-mobile convergence strategy is driving the logic behind the planned merger. “The
main consideration has to be fixed-mobile convergence,” he says. And he points to “how quickly O2
has reacted” to the move: Telefónica’s UK unit has
accepted a £10.25 billion offer from Hutchison,
which owns Three UK. But neither of them will have
a strong fixed operation.
The BT deal “proves EE is the best UK network”,
says Pellissier. “It’s a new adventure.”
And with that merger, the Orange name will finally
leave its UK homeland, more than 22 years since it
was launched. It was a breathtaking choice of name at
the time; now it is the name the former France Telecom uses worldwide, but is vanishing from the UK.
“It’s a cultural reverse takeover,” smiles Pellissier. Q
Interview: Ernest Cu of Globe Telecom
Social media is the killer app in the Philippines, says Globe Telecom’s CEO Ernest Cu.
A deal with Facebook has brought expanded enthusiasm for mobile data packages
Free Facebook campaign is a success for Globe,
driving up adoption of mobile data, says CEO
Mobile operators from around the world
looked sceptically at Globe Telecom of
the Philippines when in October 2013
it launched a “free Facebook” campaign.
For most operators, over-the-top providers such as Facebook were stealing
their bandwidth, offering free services to
their own hard-won customers that in all
rights they should have been supplying.
The fact that no mobile operator in
the world had ever devised a compelling
service such as Facebook seemed to be
incidental.
But a year and a half later, Ernest Cu,
the CEO of Globe Telecom, declares the
project a complete success. Not only that,
but “we’re in the second round of our
work with Facebook,” says Cu. “That’s
really gone well. We’ve seen an expansion of mobile data use and we’ve got a
good base of people.”
The statistics show how effective the
deal has been, he says. “At first, only
20% of Facebook users among Globe’s
customers used mobile access. It’s
50-60% now.”
The idea was that Globe would persuade its customers to use their phones
for internet access by offering free access
to Facebook. All Globe customers, new
and existing, could opt to receive unlimited Facebook access on their mobile
phones. After the trial, subscribers would
Ernest Cu: Globe is offering Hooq, a SingTel-backed
upgrade to paid data plans to maintain
streaming video service including movies, TV and local
the richer internet experience and stay
content. It has a very similar model to Netflix
connected with friends and family.
When the free deal stops, usage goes down, “and
then they pay and come back”, says Cu. In the new,
second free trial, “the lift is not so big”.
Buy SMS, get Facebook
Globe is still analysing the results of this second stage,
which is a bit different. “If you buy any SMS package
you get Facebook free,” he explains.
But figures for the number of active users of data
has also shown the success of the relationship. “The
number of daily active users has gone up fivefold,”
says Cu. “The number of users each month has tripled. And mobile penetration has doubled.”
Social media “is the killer app in the Philippines”,
he adds. Having succeeded with Facebook, “now
we’re introducing more products as people evolve
their digital lifestyle”.
“The number of daily active
users has gone up fivefold.
The number of users each
month has tripled. And mobile
penetration has doubled.”
Spotify, the streaming music service, is one new
entry to the Philippines market that Globe is leading.
“The Philippines has practically zero revenue in music,
because it is all pirated,” says Cu. The Spotify deal “is
a way to build legitimate content. It will help record
labels get something. Anything is better than zero.”
Meanwhile the company is bringing down the
price for its premium service, to just 129 pesos
(about $2.85) a month. “That’s a level acceptable to
Filopinos,” he says.
Digital life
There’s an overall strategy here. It’s to build the
customers’ enthusiasm “for the digital life”, he says.
And that means a constant stream of new offers. Basketball is hugely popular in the Philippines. “There is no
football,” he says. Well, to be accurate, there is national
team, but it has never qualified for the World Cup or
even the Asian Cup. The national team, founded over
100 years ago, does not have a good record.
But back to baseball and more specifically the US
National Basketball Association. “We have partnered
with the NBA so that our customers can buy a league
pass,” says Cu.
And there are movies and TV. For that, Globe has
partnered with Hooq, an Asian equivalent of Netflix,
which was announced in early 2015 in association
with Sony and Warner Bros. The company behind
the project is Singapore’s dominant operator SingTel, which owns 47% of Globe.
It’s a very new service, and there are plans to introduce Hooq into India and other countries where
SingTel has interests — and also in Singapore itself.
“It offers streaming video,” says Cu, “including
movies, TV and local content.” The operation is
being run by Peter Bithos as CEO, who has worked
for the SingTel business in Australia and the Philippines for many years.
Interview: Ernest Cu of Globe Telecom
“Hooq has a very similar model to Netflix, with
a lot of local content,” says Cu. The service was
launched in March 2015 in the Philippines, and Thailand, India and Indonesia are on the list. “It’s all about
music, sports and movies,” he says.
According to the Hooq website, the service offers
“unlimited entertainment on any smart device —
Android, iOS, mobile, tablet or computer”.
It is, says Hooq, “a gateway to a world of unlimited
entertainment. With just one app, you can stream,
download and enjoy thousands of movies and TV
series. All from your phone, laptop or tablet.”
Bollywood blockbusters
The operation claims it “gives you unlimited access
to over 10,000 movies and TV series”, including
Bollywood blockbusters, Hollywood rom-coms and
Thai horror movies. It is being rolled out country by
country: try to log on in a country that is not served
and you’ll get a courteous apology and a request to
register for further information.
Self-optimising networks
Those pipes are changing. Globe has an advanced
project with Huawei to develop self-optimising networks. The project, which won a Global Telecoms
Business Innovation Award in 2015, has been running
on the company’s live network since 2014. It covers
over 120,000 GSM 2G cells, 50,000 UMTS 3G cells,
and 20,000 LTE 4G cells. The objective is to modernise Globe’s wireless network operation and maintenance and help to overcome the challenges brought
on by the rapid development of mobile broadband.
“It is very successful,” says Cu. “The network is
optimised every 15 minutes.”
According to his colleague Robert Tan, the CTO,
the network complexity has increased by 50% but
SON means that Globe has not needed to increase
its operations and maintenance staff. Eventually the
company is looking to expand the use of the SON to
cover 4.5G and 5G.
Cu says: “Like every telco, we’re also looking at
software-defined networks and network functions
“Right now LTE is in most of the major metro areas. We’re trying follow where
the devices are and we’re trying to give contiguous coverage in the cities.”
Hooq’s attraction to Globe is that pay-TV penetration in the Philippines “is still very low”, says Cu. “A
lot of TV is free-to-air, but TV habits are shifting.”
Is Hooq just for mobile? No, he says: “We have
a fixed network. Not a very big footprint, but there
are half a million on DSL.” And the company has
800,000 homes connected via LTE fixed wireless.
Globe offers two flavours of LTE: conventional
frequency-division duplex for mobile services and
time-division duplex for home connections. FDD has
one frequency for upstream and one for downstream
— because it is assumed by the engineers that people
will speak as much as they listen. TDD uses one single frequency for both up and down: if the purpose of
the link is to see internet pages or stream movies, with
only a little traffic in the other direction, then this is a
very efficient way of using spectrum.
“Right now LTE is in most of the major metro
areas,” says Cu. “We’re trying follow where the
devices are and we’re trying to give contiguous coverage in the cities.”
Penetration of smartphones among Globe’s customers is around 30%, “but we are expecting 50%
by the end of the year”, he says. And that stiffens
his resolve to expand Globe’s portfolio of apps
that it is offering customers. “Our core revenues
are being threatened,” he warns. “We need to be
able to grab the revenue from what’s running in
our pipes.”
virtualisation, all running on commercial hardware.
That’s what we’re being promised.”
Will it work? “What we’re going to see with NFV
and SDN is a different set of logos,” he smiles. In
other words, the logos of IT-standard commercial
hardware makers will start to appear in operators’
networks, replacing those of the traditional telecoms
equipment companies. “It’s going to be an interesting
technology,” says Cu.
He’s attracted to the promised ability to adjust customers’ services — factors such as latency and servicelevel agreements — without an engineer’s visit, just by
changing the software. He’s seen a demonstration: “It’s
magic. You used to have to send in an engineer,” he says.
Finally, we turn back to Globe’s developments with
Facebook and other moves to encourage the use of
mobile data. “We are sharing the experience with
SingTel,” says Cu. “We have a twice yearly CEO
forum and we have a product showcase.
And the experiences will also be shared with a
wider group of Asia-Pacific operators that work with
Globe in a roaming alliance, reaching from Vietnam
to Australia.
So, even though some operators around the world
are still grumbling about social media’s free use of
their bandwidth, Facebook is turning out to be a real
driver of the take up of advanced mobile services.
After all, that’s why people buy smartphones and pay
the operators for service. Q
Marketing upside interview: Rita Okuthe of Safaricom
Safaricom’s Rita Okuthe tells George Stenitzer how mobile money filled a void, transforming lives
and building the economy of Kenya
Why Kenya leads the
world in mobile money
“We speak to each and every customer individually
through our products and brand.”
In the years leading up to MPesa, Safaricom started
to recognise that customers were using mobile minutes as a currency of exchange. The question became
how to expand on what customers were already doing.
Before MPesa, money moved differently in Kenya.
Going to the bank meant standing in long queues,
perhaps for hours. With more than 40 million people, the country had fewer than 1,000 bank branches.
To put this in perspective, today more than half the
world’s adults, or 2.5 billion, have no bank.
Rita Okuthe: We listen to and
understand our customers. We
speak to each and every customer
individually through our products
and brand
Public transport
It may seem unlikely, but the most successful mobile
money on earth comes from Kenya. Mobile operator
Safaricom filled a void in a country where more people have mobile phones than bank accounts.
Mobile users in the United States and Europe are
just now getting acquainted with mobile money. But
Kenyans began to enjoy its utility and convenience in
2007 when Vodafone, which owns 40% of Safaricom,
launched MPesa (Swahili for “cash”) at Safaricom.
MPesa has since spread to Afghanistan, Tanzania,
Zanzibar, India and Romania. Yet it remains most
successful in Kenya, says Rita Okuthe, formerly the
marketing director of Safaricom, the largest operator
in Kenya, and now general manager of its enterprise
business unit.
MPesa’s success has spawned a raft of competitors.
Copycat services are springing up across Africa. Apple
Pay has launched in the US, and soon it’s coming to
the EU. Google, Facebook and others are introducing mobile money too. What can they learn from the
MPesa experience?
Not every country will prove as fertile for mobile
money as Kenya. The conditions need to be right.
One key is that Safaricom takes a customer-centric
approach to its strategy and marketing. “We listen
to and understand our customers,” Okuthe says.
Before MPesa, Kenyans used to send money via public transport vehicles. Sometimes the bus would be
robbed and people would lose their money. As Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore notes, unbanked Kenyans
may hold as much as $3.4 billion in cash savings that
earn nothing and are at risk of theft.
While those conditions provided fertile ground for
MPesa, many other things also had to go right.
QRegulators needed to allow an experiment with
mobile money to proceed.
QMobile money had to work on the simplest mobile
phones.
QMobile money had to be as easy to use as sending
a text.
QMobile money had to be backed by a highly trusted
brand.
QAny problems with individual transactions had to be
addressed immediately to uphold customers’ trust.
QThe e-float had to be easy to convert into Kenyan
shillings and back again. So Safaricom built a large
agent network to cover a country about the size of
France, but with only half of France’s population
density.
With those conditions met, mobile money evolved
quickly. “MPesa emerged as a cheaper option to
send money faster, between people’s handsets,” says
Okuthe. “It offered users a safe and quick means to
transfer cash across distances, without the need for a
formal bank account.”
When political unrest affected banks in 2008,
MPesa took on an even greater significance in Kenya’s economy. For many people, it was the only way
they could deliver money to family members in need.
Marketing upside interview: Rita Okuthe of Safaricom
Marketing
insights from
Safaricom
Q Safaricom offers many
actionable insights on
mobile money:
Q Recognize how
customers already use
your services.
Q Imagine how big an
impact a telecom can
have on a developing
economy.
Q Earn and build
customers’ trust in your
brand.
Q Get started with a single
simple service. Make
your service as easy as
sending a text.
Q Make your service
cheap, compared to
alternatives.
Q Offer broad distribution
through agents who
exchange currency and
e-float.
Q After establishing an
initial service, partner
with a bank to expand.
Safaricom’s moves in mobile money reflect the
company’s larger purpose: to transform the lives of
Kenyans. As Okuthe says, “We are focused on being
our customers’ business partner of choice, through
providing a relevant and innovative set of information, communications and technology solutions.”
MPesa is woven into everyday life in Kenya. People
use MPesa to buy vegetables in the market, to pay for
taxis, utilities and school fees, and to receive payments
from customers, employers and the government.
Today MPesa serves 18.5 million active customers, or
more than three out of four adults, in Kenya.
“Mobile money has made a significant contribution to the lives of our customers and has accelerated
Kenya towards a cash-light economy,” Okuthe says.
Monthly MPesa payments amount to 121 billion
Kenyan shillings, equivalent to about $1.2 billion.
“What we have achieved is the creation of the country’s largest payment system. Mobile money transfer
services now transfer the equivalent of one-third of
Kenya’s gross domestic product,” Okuthe says.
Rise in income
Most important, the availability of mobile money
improves the lives of average Kenyans. One study
estimated that MPesa has contributed to a 5% to 30%
increase in household income in rural Kenya.
MPesa has caught on as Safaricom cultivated a reliable, trusted, growing network of 85,000 agents who
exchange MPesa e-float for Kenyan shillings.
Now Safaricom is advancing mobile finance beyond
simple transfers. “The dynamism of MPesa keeps
evolving,” Okuthe notes. “It is dynamic enough to
accommodate emerging customer needs much faster
than any other financial product has been able to in
this market.”
In 2012, Safaricom extended the power of MPesa
by adding a disruptive new set of financial services
called M-Shwari — Swahili for “cool” or “calm”.
M-Shwari adds savings accounts with no minimum
balance, offered with the Commercial Bank of Africa.
M-Shwari also offers microloans that enable entrepreneurs to start or expand a business. The average
loan is about $12. Since the costs of handling cash are
lower, M-Shwari microloans offer lower interest rates
too. Customers make loan payments on time to avoid
the risk of defaulting and losing a phone number.
The new M-Shwari services have caught on quickly
as millions of Kenyans take advantage of convenient
savings accounts and easily accessed microloans. So
far M-Shwari has attracted over 7 million customers,
garnered Ksh 4.0 billion in deposits, and issued Ksh
1.2 billion in loans per month.
Safaricom has big dreams for the future of Kenya.
To stimulate technology entrepreneurs in Kenya’s
Silicon Savannah, Safaricom is challenging developers to identify needs and develop early-stage mobile
technology companies. For example, developers are
rapidly creating new applications that build on the
core MPesa services.
“We are committed to ensuring that local ICT
start-ups have the opportunity to scale and grow,”
Okuthe says. “We want to grow the use of mobile
technology in transforming lives. Through mobile
technology, we hope to complement government
efforts, attain our economic blueprints, and help
Kenya become a middle-income country by 2030.”
To support that thrust, Safaricom is accelerating
construction of its fibre network for fixed calling,
in addition to offering new managed services for
enterprises.
Sport and music
As steward of the Safaricom brand, Okuthe deploys a
wide range of marketing activities, with heavy emphasis on sporting and music events. Safaricom is the
biggest sponsor of sports and music in Kenya, contributing much to its cultural development. Sponsorships and events are helping to find tomorrow’s most
promising athletes and musicians, giving them unique
opportunities to develop their talents. To highlight
just a few:
The Safaricom Athletics Series of events enables
new sports talent to be found and nurtured. The
best athletes from the series move up to represent
the country on the global stage at events such as
the Olympics.
Kenya has a profound passion for running, and the
Safaricom Marathon attracts participants from all
over the globe who come to Kenya to compete and
raise funds for a good cause. It’s grown from 180
runners who raised $50,000 in the year 2000, to 1,200
runners who raised $725,000 in 2014. This year’s
Safaricom Marathon on 27 June at the Lewa Wildlife
Conservancy is expected to be even bigger. In all,
since the inaugural marathon in 2000, the Safaricom
Marathon has raised a total of $4.9 million.
To connect with rugby lovers, Safaricom took on the
title sponsorship of the Safaricom Sevens — previously
known as the Safari Sevens — in 2010. This annual
tournament, run by the Kenya Rugby Union, is one of
the biggest seven-a-side competitions in Africa.
Safaricom is a growing force in Kenyan music.
Niko Na Safaricom Live is now Kenya’s top music
property, focusing on growing and nurturing local
music talent. This event provides upcoming artists
and talents with the opportunities to enhance their
skills by performing on a global stage.
Similarly, the Safaricom Youth Orchestra offers
opportunities to underprivileged youths, ages 10
to 18, with budding music talents. Safaricom also
backs the Groove Awards, the premier Gospel music
awards showcase in East Africa. And the Safaricom
International Jazz Festival is raising the bar of jazz
performance in Kenya.
Transforming lives
To fulfil its mission to transform the lives of Kenyans,
Safaricom plays a large role in charity and community
development. Some small communities’ only source
of electricity is a Safaricom generator. The Safaricom
Foundation is working to impact communities by
supporting projects in the arts, culture, health, sports,
education and the environment. Safaricom also sponsors the Michael Joseph Centre, which exposes Kenyans to new technologies.
With mobile money, telecom services and cultural
development, Safaricom is playing a pivotal role to
help realise Kenya’s dreams of becoming a middleincome country over the next 15 years. Q
Interview: Christian de Faria, CEO of Airtel Africa
Five years after India’s Bharti Airtel bought Zain’s African business, CEO Christian de Faria
discusses the challenges of such a diverse environment, especially when telecoms is sometimes
seen as a cash cow
Diverse market across 17 countries poses
challenges for Airtel’s leader in Africa
Christian de Faria: The sector is
always seen as a cash cow. In some
countries this tax harassment is
becoming quite unbearable
Indian owned operator Bharti Airtel has launched 3G
services in all 17 of its African operations, and has 4G
in two of them, with a third due to come online soon.
It’s a hugely diverse market, says Christian de Faria,
CEO of Airtel Africa, with average income varying
widely from the richest of the 17, the Seychelles, to
the poorest.
But those figures about the launch of 3G and 4G
services show that “we are not being left behind”, he
says. “Africa is closing the gap in terms of adoption of
new technology. Ten years ago we were far behind,
but today we are more or less at the same stage,
though adoption is a different story.”
De Faria is just coming up to his second anniversary
in charge of Airtel’s Africa operations, based in Nairobi, Kenya, after seven years at African rival MTN.
And Airtel has owned the 17 operations for just five
years, having bought them from Zain in June 2010
for $10.7 billion.
That was a good profit from Zain, which was marking a swift end to its global ambitions outside its Middle East heartland. Five years earlier it had bought
the former Celtel’s business for $2.84 billion. For the
customers, it meant three brand names — Celtel to
Zain to Airtel — and three market strategies in just a
few years. And several changes of management.
French-born de Faria trained as an accountant and
has worked in high-technology industries around
the world for well over two decades — joining the
telecoms industry in Malaysia in 1993, implementing financial systems in a company part-owned by
Deutsche Telekom.
At MTN, which he joined in 2006, he ran nine of
the company’s 21 operations. At Airtel he is in charge
of all the company’s African businesses.
“We operate in 17 countries in Africa,” he says. “We
are dealing with countries with a very low GDP —
$300 to $500 — and up to $33,000 in the Seychelles.”
The units include what he calls “the powerhouse of
Africa, Nigeria, the biggest economy in Africa”.
And diversity is built into the model — not just the
economy, but also the politics, the regulation, phone
penetration, and the competition position.
“In terms of competition we are in countries with
two players and countries with nine players — the
competitive environment is very difficult. We are
market leader in 10 of the 17 countries,” says de Faria.
“And in most of the other seven we are a close number
two.” The exception is “where we came into the market late, in Rwanda, [where] we are number three.”
The competitive position varies widely from country to country. “Ghana has nine, with a very competitive market. And Tanzania is very competitive.”
High penetration
He continues: “Some countries have higher than
100% penetration — such as Ghana, Gabon, Congo
Brazzaville. Others have 40%. The strategy you have
in each market has to be different.”
The different management teams in each country
have to work with the different states of the market
and the economy. “Every market has its own specificity,” says de Faria. “Infrastructure varies from country
to country — electricity, communications, roads. In
some countries there is more [political] stability than
others. In some there is more instability.”
And each of the 17 countries has its own regulatory set up. “Regulators are very different. There are
countries where regulators are very independent from
the ministry of telecommunications, but in some it
is a parastatal organisation, so you can question the
independence of the regulator.”
One of the problems is that “the telecommunications sector is always seen as a cash cow”, he says.
“There is a very strong perception of this. In some
countries this is becoming quite unbearable.” He
calls it “tax harassment”, but says he “will not name”
Interview: Christian de Faria, CEO of Airtel Africa
the countries. “It is becoming better over time, but
you wish everywhere to have independent bodies”
as regulators.
On the other hand, Airtel does what it can to benefit from being part of a large organisation, stretching not just across Africa but also into the Indian
subcontinent.
Airtel One
Airtel has retained Zain’s bold plan — which actually dates back to the Celtel days — to minimise or
abolish roaming charges across its network. It used to
be called Zain One, and stretched from Africa to the
Middle East. Today it is Airtel One and, while the
Middle East is no longer included, India, Bangladesh
and Sri Lanka are included in the scheme.
“Is very, very popular,” says de Faria. “We are very
strong in east Africa — Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and
so on. It’s definitely a very popular product — you
are not charged for incoming calls.” It means that the
company has “an affordable tariff” that includes voice
and text messaging.
And Airtel has launched its mobile payment service,
Airtel Money, in all of its African countries, “and
17 million people carry out transactions on Airtel
Money”, says de Faria.
“It’s growing very, very fast. It is universal because
of the low penetration of banking in Africa. The percentage of the population having a bank account is
very, very low. Banks don’t have branches — but we
are everywhere. People can send money from the city
to the village, and they can pay bills. In this part of the
world, if you want financial services, you use mobile
financial services.”
The latest development is cross-network payments.
These are available “not only within the country but
also cross-border”, he says. “We are the first mover.”
Airtel’s customers in Burkina Faso can exchange
payments with MTN customers in Ivory Coast,
where Airtel has no network. “We are doing deals
with operators where we don’t operate. We are participating in the financial inclusion of the population
as well as communications inclusion.”
Procurement
The group also benefits from operating in 17 countries — as well as India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
— by centralising procurement. “We try to synergise
our market spread and breadth to get a better deal on
network infrastructure,” says de Faria. The company
standardises on kit from Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia,
and “on the billing side, we are in the process of looking at a billing platform. We have evaluated [a number] and we expect to complete the process very soon.”
Outsourcing seems to be less in favour than it was.
In 2010 Airtel signed a deal with IBM to manage is
African technology operations in a proposed 10-year
contract. There was also a parallel Indian deal. However in 2014 Airtel in India announced that much of
the Indian business was going to Wipro. And de Faria
is reluctant to talk about outsourcing in Africa.
“Outsourcing was the case but we are reviewing
where it is meaningful and where it is not meaningful for our business model,” he says cautiously.
“Outsourcing makes sense where there is economy
of scale. We are in the process of reviewing our outsourcing model — it is still work in progress.”
Tower outsourcing is different, and Airtel has
outsourced towers in 14 of the 17 African territories,
though some of those are still deals in progress. “We
were sharing infrastructure in the past. We have
been in the forefront. The second move is to share
the capital structure. The tower is passive — we can
strengthen the capital structure by outsourcing to a
specialist company, so we can reinvest in the country
and gain operational efficiency.”
This means “we can divert management attention
to taking care of the customer” and become more
customer facing.
The other three countries? “Not yet — because of
the particular economies in terms of value creation.
The volumes are not as interesting.”
The group “shares the best practices [with India]
and we have centralised procurement”, he adds. “We
have a forum where we share best practice. We import
and export the best ideas. We have procurement for
Africa, but certain items are procured globally.”
Branded handset
The company has its own branded Airtel handset,
but he adds: “Africa is very brand conscious. You
still have to offer the traditional brands — definitely
Samsung, and in French-speaking countries Alcatel
and Nokia. The Chinese manufacturers ae getting
market share slowly but surely. The price of devices
is falling very fast.”
There is also a group effort to develop apps for its
own market. “But we are also working with content
aggregators — across music, education, games and
video.” However, he notes, “we are not a content
producers”. What is popular in Airtel’s markets is
“football, games, especially music”, he says. “You can
log into Airtel and buy music, games, news. We also
have a mobile health service — and you can buy your
insurance with your phone.”
Launching 3G in all 17 countries was clearly a good
move for Airtel. “Niger and Chad were launched last
year. Traffic volume and revenue are growing ever
since — more than 70% year on year. Traffic is doubling: a huge rate.”
This can only increase, as “the price of smartphones
and feature phones is going down”, he says. In many
countries the penetration rate of smartphones is very
low — he puts it at 10-15%, which gives considerable potential for market expansion. “For many users,
their first contact with the internet is on a mobile
phone. There is a huge appetite.”
LTE is new, of course, coming to Rwanda and Senegal at the end of 2014, and “Gabon any time soon,
and selectively in many other countries”, he adds.
Finally we turn to corporate social responsibility.
“We are very active in the fight against Ebola in
west Africa.”
Airtel sponsors “45 schools across Africa. We are
responsible for 25,000 pupils. We are also training young people in ICT: 5,000 in Gabon, 6,000
in Chad,” says de Faria. “Besides putting a smile
on the population, you can see where you build a
school, or where there was a school without a roof.
It makes a difference.” Q
View from the Top: Alex Hawker of AsiaInfo
Operators need to use every customer interaction in real-time to understand the motivations
and maximise every engagement opportunity, writes Alex Hawker
Omni-channel: from buzzword to business case
Alex Hawker: western European
operators can save up to $4.6 billion
in opex a year
Alex Hawker is managing director,
EMEA, at AsiaInfo. A white paper
based on the Northstream research
is available in full at www.asiainfo.
com/omni-channel
The concept of omni-channel has been around for
ages, so long in fact that it
has become one of those
cover-all buzzwords that
has started to lose meaning.
So before we go any further let’s define what it is,
and how it is different from
another overused — and
often misunderstood —
buzzword: multi-channel.
A multi-channel presence
has become a basic requirement for operators, with
the digital channel in particular taking centre stage.
Operators have altered their business models from
single-channel to multi-channel. They are now accessible to customers across multiple channels. However,
this is only really meaningful if a customer chooses to
start and complete a transaction in the same channel.
Omni-channel, meanwhile, is the inevitable evolution to reduce complexity and to stop the ping
pong effect of multi-channel, whereby a customer
is frequently forced to reinitiate the dialogue with
the operator when entering via another channel. At
its best, omni-channel delivers the great promise of
subscribers moving fluidly between devices and shopping and communication channels, with the operator
in lockstep with their customer in real time and able
to add value to their relationship — with personalised
service and promotions, for example.
Operators need to use every customer interaction
in real-time to understand the motivations and maximise every engagement opportunity. Doing so leads
to increased spend, higher satisfaction and a deeper
relationship with the customer across all channels.
The soft benefits of moving to an omni-channel environment are far from lost on operators. But however
compelling the concept, there has, until now, been a
lack of information regarding concrete implementations, with their associated challenges and benefits.
Independent research consultants Northstream have
studied how organisations in a variety of markets have
realised the benefits associated with the omni-channel
capabilities of next generation CRM, and to quantify
the benefits to the telecoms sector in particular.
Northstream concluded that, with a well-implemented solution in place, western European operators could save up to $4.6 billion in opex annually.
This was driven by:
Qaround 20% reduction in customer service opex,
by eliminating duplication of agent work in the
contact centre and retail store;
Qimproved net promoter score (NPS), resulting in
benefits from increased customer satisfaction and
up to 10% reduction in annualised churn; and
Qup to 30% savings in IT opex from back-office
streamlining and automation
By investigating the impact of next generation CRM
within other verticals, Northstream also demonstrated that, in addition to the immediate opex savings, an omni-channel approach could help to significantly increase sales revenue as well. The impact on
revenues could potentially be even more significant
than the cost savings.
Operators are dealing with a more complicated
environment than is seen in adjacent industries. Telco
propositions are complex by their very nature. As well
as the differences in the way products and services are
bundled, there are more sophisticated processes for
promotion, lifecycle and order management.
To support the complex inventories, contract offerings, numerous payment options and billing analysis
— all characteristic of the telco operator landscape
— requires a great deal of resilience and heavy lifting.
Omni-channel commerce is complex, calling for a
huge amount of accurate information to be available
to the customer and the operator 24/7. Managing
this requires specialised systems, built for the job and
integrated into the operator’s enterprise architecture,
not adapted or re-engineered systems simply bolted
on to do the job.
Naturally, there are some major challenges associated with the approach. It’s no great surprise that
legacy IT is considered by operators to be the main
barrier, according to the research. The existing disconnected multi-channel set-up means that operators can
perform omni-channel actions, but to do so involves a
lot of manual effort, which was expressed during the
interviews Northstream conducted with operators.
The complexity involved in the management of
these legacy systems and their disconnected multichannel set-up is hard to overstate. In practice
it means that operators face significant customerrelated challenges: primarily, channels cannot share
their customer data, preventing meaningful, holistic
customer insights from which the operator could create personalised, value-added services.
Operators already consider omni-channel to be vital
to customer experience, and in particular to improving Net Promoter Score, which leads to a compelling
business case based on opex savings alone, and likely
even more upside from increased sales.
However, omni-channel for telecoms is complex
and today’s implementations are relatively immature
as operators struggle with legacy IT.
Some operators are implementing an overlay,
which improves customer experience but may fail
to integrate the new digital business and channels
with the core business and traditional channels. Rearchitecting is more costly and risky, but it enables a
more powerful, future-proof solution. Q
global telecoms
BUSINESS
Picture: Deutsche Telekom
CEO and CFO Guide to Customer Experience Management
It’s always fun writing about customer experience management
in this industry — because you have only to ask for people’s reallife experiences with telecoms and they’ll quickly run into a long
diatribe about the times the installer didn’t show up, or they got
hit with a surprise roaming bill, or the streaming video crashed 10
minutes into a game they’d been wanting to watch.
due to the fact that loyal customers spend more, stay longer,
do not create extra serving costs and recommend our brands to
their friends.”
And that happens even if they work in the industry — which at
least means that telecoms executives know how bad it can be.
And know how vital a good, reliable, quality telecoms service is to
people in the 21st century.
If your car breaks down, you take it to a garage. If your central
heating boiler springs a leak, you call the plumber.
But the industry has such a complex ecosystem that it’s hard for
the customer to know where things have gone wrong.
Chief marketing officers know how important customer experience
is: read the comments of leading CMOs in our roundtable that
starts on page 32.
But when the streaming movie stops at the most exciting part,
is it your smart TV, is it the Blu-ray player that connects you to
the internet? Or is it your home hub? Or your fast broadband
connection? Or the movie service provider, somewhere in the
cloud?
As Mikhail Gerchuk of VimpelCom says in that feature, “The
biggest impact is on customer retention. Ultimately, good
customer experience generates extra revenue and extra margin
They’re all run or made by different companies. How is the poor
consumer to understand? The trouble is, it’s the telecoms service
provider that will get the blame.
Global Telecoms Business CEO and CFO Guide to CEM: May/June 2015 27
Customer centricity
It’s never been easier for customers to take their money elsewhere when any aspect of service
disappoints, and tell the world about it via social media. By Annie Turner
Operators need to bridge the reality gap if
they really intend to be customer-centric
Steps to becoming a customercentric business.
Source: TM Forum
The communications industry gets the importance of
customer centricity — and the fact that the customer
has to be the starting, middle and end point of everything we do. This was consistently underlined by
numerous senior executives from service providers at
TM Forum Live! at the beginning of June.
As many service providers strive to profit from
digital services, they know that customer centricity is the foundation of all successful native digital
companies and that they need to meet those expectations. Zappos, the US online shoe retailer owned
by Amazon, tells customers where else they can
buy the items they want if Zappos doesn’t have
them in stock.
As management consultancy McKinsey comments,
“Little wonder that 75% of its orders come from repeat
customers” and the competition to gain employment
there is fiercer than getting into Harvard.
Ryanair, the European no-frills airline, provides
further evidence that it pays to make customers
happy and is fundamental to staying in business. The
company has posted a jump in profits of 66% in the
financial year ending in March 2015. After incurring
losses in 2013, the airline, which had been famously
and openly contemptuous of its passengers, acknowledged that simply being cheap isn’t a sustainable
business model.
It turned its attention to providing much improved
customer services and, as the Financial Times wrote,
“Ryanair’s website update, business-friendly schedules to primary airports, allocated seats and extra
u
ccabin baggage translate into more passengers, and
88% of seats being filled. … With its discovery
8
tthat a little love goes a long way, Ryanair has
rrealised that market share is its to lose.”
A good message for all businesses to bear in
mind: it’s never been easier for customers
m
tto take their money elsewhere when any
aaspect of service disappoints, and tell the
world about it via social media.
w
Churn and acquiring new customers
iis expensive — and a global survey
published by Ovum in Novemp
ber 2014 shows that operators
b
aare likely to lose half their
ccustomer base over the next
12 months. About a quartter of all users globally
ssay they will definitely
providers,
cchange
with another quarter
w
iindicating they may
do so.
d
28 Global Telecoms Business CEO and CFO Guide to CEM: May/June 2015
The reality gap
These results support the overwhelming anecdotal
evidence that service providers’ stated priorities and
vision don’t match the reality of their customer service, and is not even close. On the upside this means
there is a huge opportunity for anyone who gets it
right and stands out from the crowd.
The big question is, how? As stated at the start of
this article, the customer has to be central to and
drive to everything you do. Customer centricity isn’t
only the responsibility of customer-facing staff —
they are totally dependent on the data, processes and
systems that underpin the information they act upon
and the options they can offer.
The most basic requirement of all is gaining an
understanding of customers, their experiences, preferences and wishes. Although this is fundamental
to success now and in future, it’s not a topic widely
adopted in the communications industry. There are
lots of things you can do, now, to get moving though.
Start by listening — the old maxim is that we have
one mouth and two ears for a reason. Most customers
are only too happy to give suppliers their opinion —
and the more upset they are, the more emotional and
forthcoming it is.
Ensure you have mechanisms in place to feed this
back into your organisation and act on it. Don’t forget your customer-facing staff are a potential goldmine of information and should be treated as such:
they are an untapped asset in this regard.
But it has to be easy for them to do it, without fear
of reprisal. Issue regular, obligatory surveys to these
staff and give them incentives to do more than tick
boxes — and make sure you act on it and let them
know you have. That includes stuff that may not seem
important to you or on your agenda. Staff should also
have a mechanism to record feedback as it’s given.
You should also give them discretion to appease
and please unhappy customers — remember the Zappos example — rather than being powerless to make
customers happier.
There is nothing more boring than listening to
other people’s convoluted stories about their frustrating experiences — the best way to understand these
frustrations is for senior executives to have to use their
own systems, regularly — that would certainly provide
excellent motivation to fix anything that doesn’t work
well and especially if it’s tied into their bonus schemes,
as Telstra, Sprint and others have done.
Beware snapshots
Although much faith is placed on analytics and touch
points, but there is a serious danger of only gaining
Customer centricity
A typical customer journey or channel hop
1. Rebecca receives an email from her
service provider with a new offer.
2. She clicks on an embedded URL in the
text to see more information and a brief
video on the web, as well as two product
reviews.
3. Left with a few questions, she calls the
contact centre to resolve them.
4. Satisfied with the answer, she posts her
interest in the product on social media,
receiving positive feedback from her
friends — and a special offer from the
company.
5. Encouraged, she mulls her options for
a few minutes, and then calls the local
store to ensure product availability in her
preferred colour and get directions.
6. On her way to the store, she hears some
radio advertising and notices some digital
signage promoting the product, further
reinforcing her intent to purchase.
7. At the store, she handles the product,
gets instruction on how to use it from a
video kiosk and completes the purchase.
8. Pleased, she proudly posts pictures of her
new acquisition on social media and tells
her many friends about her experience.
Source: TM Forum 2014
Annie Turner is senior director of
content at the TM Forum, the global
not-for-profit industry association
whose customer centricity
programme offers models, tools,
best practice, use cases, metrics
and more, developed and evolved
through members’ contributions
and collaboration to address
business needs.
a series of out-of-context snapshots, and therefore
a distorted overall picture. Customer experience
stretches from before someone deciding to become a
customer all the way to using your products and buying more — if you get it right — or terminating — if
you get it wrong.
This is why customer journeys are so important.
It ties all the individual experiences together, from
network performance issues to online experiences and
call centre interactions. If any one of these things is
poor, the overall experience is bad.
They give service context and deeper insight into
customers’ motivations around single activities —
such as the less obvious reason for a call which reveals
the root problem. Again, feedback loops so that the
information gleaned can be used are paramount if you
want to make improvements.
Building, maintaining and constantly refining customer journeys is an onerous, ongoing undertaking
but, as McKinsey states, “across industries performance on journeys is 30% to 40% more strongly
correlated with customer satisfaction than performance on touch points is — and 20% to 30% more
strongly correlated with business outcomes, such as
high revenue, repeat purchase, low customer churn,
and positive word of mouth.”
Remember that the most important part of the
customer’s journey is their experience of the network
— it is the single greatest source of customer dissatisfaction, as stated by Ovum in its global research cited
above. Yet this was not seen as part of ‘traditional’
customer experience until fairly recently, so much as
an engineering function.
The allure of omnichannel
Clearly channels of communication with service providers are also key and now customers channel hop —
see panel — which is one of the reasons omnichannel
is so important. Although omnichannel is a hot topic
in communications right now, it’s not well defined or
well understood.
Techtarget.com defines omnichannel as “the seamless melding of the advantages of in-store (brick-andmortar) shopping with the information-rich experience of online shopping. …What distinguishes the
omnichannel customer experience from the multichannel customer experience is that there is true
integration between channels on the back end.”
Rob Rich, TM Forum’s managing director of
research, comments: “This is a reasonable and practical definition, especially for retailers who have felt
the heat of competition from online retailers, and
it’s probably a reasonable place for most industries
to start, but it may not be enough in the longer term,
when customers will expect the same style of interaction throughout their lifecycle.”
Rich thinks it needs to be broader in scope and
more strategic: “Omnichannel is about more than
just standing up a set of linked store-fronts that cross
interaction channels, or integrating some aspects of
the supply chain with the store front. Rather, it is a
key enabler of aspects of customer centricity, supporting the need to identify, engage, inform and support high value customers throughout the lifecycle.
“It’s about optimisation of the customer supplier
dialogue over the long term, supporting the notion of
a happier customer and a more profitable business. It’s
about reinforcing the brand through consistent engagement. It’s about curating the vast amount of information
exchanged between the consumer and the company.”
Being sociable
Your omnichannel and overall customer centricity
approach needs to embrace social media — it is an
informal customer engagement channel and must be
treated as such. By correlating the unrivalled wealth of
information service providers hold about their customers with their online activities and views, there is much
to be gained, from dealing with immediate sources of
discontent to offering personalised services when you
have an understanding of their lifestyle and interests,
which also generate more revenue and loyalty.
In addition, great operational efficiency can be
gained by integrating social media information with
customer service workflows to leverage user-generated content, from Q&A platforms, for example.
Competent customer service staff can also make
timely offers through the most appropriate channels.
This article has implicitly dealt with things that
need fixing within service providers around their core
services to bridge the gap between today’s reality
and their vision of customer centricity. The imperative is well understood and the challenges huge.
Therefore it is a sobering thought that the internet
of things, virtualisation and digital services — which
will primarily be delivered through partnerships and
ecosystems — are in the process of becoming massive,
mainstream forces.
Individually and in combination they have big
implications for customer experience, which we do
not understand anything like fully. The only thing
that is certain is that the achieving customer centricity will never be a done deal, because there will always
be so many changing aspects of it. Q
Customer engagement
The public are not impressed with their telecoms operators. People expect more than
they used to and service providers are scoring badly in customer experience surveys
Damning evidence shows that telecoms operators
rate poorly when compared with other businesses
In an ever changing telecoms landscape where the
market is becoming increasingly mature and competitive, the need for operators to differentiate and
deliver on their offerings has become not just a priority, but a necessity.
Traditional methods like price or product features
are no longer sufficient to stay in the game. The digital
age has placed customers in the driver’s seat, radically
shaping how they shop and share their experiences.
Competitors are just a click away today, on a website,
blog or social media platform — just some of the many
channels and technologies they will take to, to discuss
their experiences. Given the numerous offerings and
channels, the ability to attract and retain customers will
make an operator stand out from the crowd.
“As technology unlocks new opportunities for our
customers, their behaviours and expectations change.
One of the biggest changes we’ve seen is that we’re
no longer judged solely by how we compare to our
competitors. Instead, technology has blurred the
traditional boundaries and we are seeing many more
companies competing for our customers’ attention,”
says Gareth Turpin, general manager of customer
and commercial at Telefónica’s O2 UK.
Those expectations have produced some damning
evidence of their experiences. In the UK, telcos are
among some of the lowest-ranking industries, according
to the Institute of Customer Service and its UK Customer Satisfaction Index. In a UKCSI survey published
January 2015, more than one in five (22%) customers
in the telecoms sector — considerably higher than the
all-sector average of 13% — experienced a problem in
Telcos are among some of the
lowest-ranking industries, says one
survey. Scores for staff competence,
ease of doing business, speed of
problem resolution and finding
information on websites are low
the three months preceding the study. Scores for staff
competence, ease of doing business, speed of problem
resolution and finding information on websites were
low, compared to the all-sector average.
From its 2015 survey of 540 consumers worldwide,
Procera Networks found that 60% reported not
receiving continuous high-speed coverage and 90%
experience video quality problems every day. Yet,
85% said they never, or rarely, call customer service
to complain about either issue.
Losing customers
Clearly the rules of customer engagement — or in this
case, non-engagement — are changing and operators
must adapt or risk losing customers to the competition.
The “pure scale of customer interactions” is one
of the main challenges facing operators in analysing
performance, says Turpin. With hundreds of millions of customer interactions across various channels
every week, operators need to understand how their
performances have been received.
A range of tools and programmes are necessary to
measure customer experience accurately. “The reality
is that a one-sized fits all approach simply doesn’t cut
it,” he says.
To ensure the highest level of accuracy, the use and
design of feedback mechanisms are crucial, according
to Michael Crow, director of customer experience
solutions at international customer experience consultancy KPMG Nunwood.
In deciding on the appropriate methodology, the
first rule is to contact customers in their preferred
channel of choice, says Crow. That, he says, will in
turn maximise the accuracy of the feedback received.
He says it is fundamental to understand the elements that drive experiences — both emotional and
rational — and how internal processes and systems
impact customers’ perceptions. “A thorough understanding of the specific experiences from a customer
and internal perspective is needed to ensure we measure the right things.”
One such example is the design of feedback tools in
which seemingly minor things like the presentation of a
survey could affect outcomes. “It is important to know
that customers will lose interest in sharing their true
perceptions if they have a negative survey experience.
This means we need to make sure the surveys are visually
appealing, where possible include entertaining feedback
mechanisms and crucially, keep it as short as possible.”
Tailored experience
Paul Clarkson, TalkTalk’s account manager of its
sales through service unit, agrees that customer experience should be tailored to every individual.
Customer engagement
One survey says that 85% of people
do not complain to customer service,
even though 60% reported not
receiving continuous high-speed
coverage and 90% experience daily
video quality problems
“We survey our customers and ask how they would
prefer to be contacted — whether it’s call, webchat or
email. Based on that, you get your customer demographic. Then you set up your business to match
those requirements.”
Since launching its webchat service, Clarkson has
seen a drop in voice calls. “That has decreased the
cost of handling calls and, more importantly, our customers receiving an increased satisfaction of getting
what they want.”
O2’s Turpin said that after receiving feedback from
customers stating their preference for digital channels, the operator introduced a self-service application called MyO2. The app, which sees 13 million
interactions each month, gives customers access to
their bills and other services on their smartphones.
Outlining the operator’s focus areas, he says the
first is to “make it as easy as physically possible to get
access to the latest products”.
The operator is working on integrating its online
and actual shops in an effort to make shopping simpler and easier for its customers. In March 2015 it
trialled a click-and-collect service, which enables
customers to order a product by phone or online and
collect it in a store that same day. Order deadlines
have also been extended for next day to 10pm.
Its second focus is on following up after the initial
sale. “Once they’ve got the latest technology, we want
to help them get the most out of it.” Turpin notes
that O2 was the first operator to offer free technology experts through its team of O2 Gurus, available
to anyone, regardless of whether they are a customer.
“This is just the start. We believe that for customers
to truly feel valued and special, we need to go beyond
that. We need our customers to feel rewarded for
their loyalty,” he says, pointing to O2 Priority, said to
be the UK’s largest digital loyalty programme.
Recognising that it can be a challenge to create a
consistent brand experience across all channels, the
company brought its sales and service departments
into one directorate in 2011 in a bid to deliver better
service to customers.
Flexibility and choices
In a bid to give its customers more flexibility and
choices, the company launched O2 Refresh in 2013,
what it claims is an industry first: the initiative separates the handset cost from the airtime cost, allowing
its customers to change their devices whenever they
want without penalty. Turpin says the move has not
only saved them money but also given its customers
the flexibility they want — automatically reducing
their bills once their handset has been paid for.
The initiative also addresses yet another ongoing
challenge in the market. “Telecoms is associated
with a lack of integrity around encouraging customers to buy more than they need,” notes KPMG
Nunwood’s Crow. “Customers don’t trust operators
when their bills are high and don’t understand what
they have been sold, as the customer is not only
exposed to operators through their phone or online
network, but also to retailers and equipment manufacturers,” he explains.
O2’s cumulative efforts appear to have paid off —
the operator’s customer loyalty was ranked first in
the UK market with contract churn rate at 1% in the
first quarter of 2015. It has also emerged as number
one network for the sixth consecutive year in a study
on customer service satisfaction by the country’s
regulator Ofcom.
The ultimate challenge in customer experience
management, says TalkTalk’s Clarkson, is “considering everything that is going to impact your customer”.
Processes must be “cast iron” to ensure successful
customer management. That means considering every
eventuality and building a process to respond to that.
“If you can do that successfully and not miss anything, you get a good customer satisfaction model. If
not, you end up with gaps in your processes,” he says.
“That’s when complaints and dissatisfaction happens.”
Managing customer relationships across these
channels requires absolute clarity of the customer
journey and an internal commitment from telco companies to take ownership of customer interaction that
are traditionally seen as the responsibility of other
organisations, Crow says.
Market benefits
At the same time the market benefits from unique
opportunities such as the continual and long-term
nature of customer relationships. “It presents a very
clear opportunity to engender loyalty and advocacy in
a way that businesses outside the telecoms sector will
find difficult to achieve,” he says.
More crucially, the wave of mergers and acquisitions
sweeping across the world should be seen as a huge
opportunity for operators to overhaul and strengthen
their approaches to customer experience management.
The quad-play offering could emerge a key differentiator in the telecoms customer experience.
“Quad-play could potentially further reduce the risk
of churn as a consumer is less likely to want to split
an individual service from a combined package, due to
the time and effort involved,” he notes.
“To make quad-play attractive, telecoms companies
need to harness the potential for using customer data
to personalise a very complex offering.”
As the battleground for consumers heats up, the
competitive advantage will ultimately go to the operators who successfully manage the customer experience — and deliver on those expectations. Q
CMO round table
We asked a number of top CMOs how important customer experience is to them, and how they
use CEM. These are their answers
Top CMOs answer questions about
customer experience
Mikhail Gerchuk, group
chief commercial and
strategy officer, VimpelCom
Cynthia Gordon, chief
commercial officer, Ooredoo
Rickard Bäcklin, vice
president, brand and
marketing, TeliaSonera
International Carrier
Are you as CMO responsible for the end-to-end
customer experience? Are, for example, retail stores
and call centres organised under sales or in separate
business units. If so, how do you manage it? If not,
how do you manage it?
Mikhail Gerchuk, VimpelCom: All sales and distribu-
tion channels as well as customer care are an integral
part of the commercial function and I manage it. At
the same time we have dedicated customer experience
teams both in business units and in the group.
The commercial team drives the decisions on where
the network should be improved based on customer
analytics and customer feedback.
In terms of sales and call centre, which are also the
key touch points, we have different ways of managing
it to ensure that we focus on our customers and what
is important to them.
Firstly, we monitor and manage key KPIs, such as first
call resolution, and Net Promoter Score. To do this we
use closed feedback loop systems that automate customer feedback collection, processing and resolution.
Cynthia Gordon, Ooredoo: As chief commercial officer,
I am responsible for end-to-end customer experience.
According to our group guidelines for the customer
experience organisation and given our group focus,
customer experience, in our operating companies,
is not under the CMO or CCO and instead reports
directly to CEO or chief strategy officer.
Retail stores and call centres are in separate units,
reporting in most of the cases to the CCO or COO
— same at the group, both separate units are reporting to the CCO.
Rickard Bäcklin, TeliaSonera International Carrier:
Customer experience is an entire company responsibility, involving every employee, whether customer
facing or not. The customer experience function is
Mike van den Bergh, chief
marketing officer, PCCW
Global
Chris Williams, head of
global marketing, Amdocs
however organised and driven from brand and marketing, and is thus the responsibility of the CMO.
Our approach is simple: listen and take action.
But for actions to lead to a great customer experience every time, they need to be consistent — and
this requires structure. We are using the Forrester
customer experience maturity disciplines — strategy,
customer understanding, design, measurement, governance, and culture — to construct our approach to
customer experience.
Because customer experience is a priority at management level, employees have the support they need
to build an even more customer focused culture. And
so we can track our progress and keep improving, we
measure what we do regularly and systematically.
To manage and develop our customer experience
work we have put together a customer experience
council spanning the main functions in the company.
This also enables us to capture the improvements that
otherwise may go undetected within functional units
Mike van den Bergh, PCCW Global: At PCCW Global
we are committed to putting the customer first. As
the company’s CMO, I am also chairman of our
customer service forum which brings together senior
representatives from service management, marketing,
product, sales and IT to ensure that the customer is
always central to our end-to-end processes.
We also use the forum to review and optimise the
way in which we deliver and manage our service
delivery to our customers. Customer experience is a
core attribute of the PCCW Global brand and marketing are heavily involved in driving the continual
improvement thereof.
Chris Williams, Amdocs: Amdocs provides customer
experience solutions to over 200 communications service providers globally, and we often see the CMO as
the orchestrator of the end-to-end customer journey.
CMO round table
This does not mean that the CMO needs to own
all of the company resources that touch the customer. Sometimes the CMO owns a bulk of the
customer-facing resources, including the web portal
and the stores. In other cases, the CMO is the person on point to make sure that the overall customer
experience is differentiated and better than that of
the competitors.
Overall, we view the CMO as the voice of the
customer inside the organisation and the guardian of
the brand, and believe that marketing has to own and
drive customer experience.
What is the main value of CEM to you as a CMO? For
example, is it for customer retention, to boost revenue
per user, to avoid bad publicity, better visibility of
customers’ needs and so on?
Gerchuk: We see value in all, but from the analytics
we see that the biggest impact is on customer retention. Ultimately, good customer experience generates extra revenue and extra margin due to the fact
that loyal customers spend more, stay longer, do not
create extra serving costs and recommend our brands
to their friends.
Gordon: CEM is about creating differentiation for us
in the market, with objectives of generating less churn
and additional revenues, especially focusing on data
experience. Differentiating through customer experience is one of the main pillars of the group strategy.
Each and every initiative we are implementing
to improve our customer experience has a direct
financial positive effect. Overall customer experience
success is measured through improvement of the customer lifetime equity.
Our efforts are reflected in over 25% improvement
of NPS in the last two years, and in a 25% decrease
in churn rate.
Bäcklin: It’s where it all starts; by understanding what
makes a great customer experience, we can direct all our
efforts connecting to the total customer journey — from
needs awareness and through the complete buying and
use journey — towards supporting that experience.
For us customer experience is a key differentiator,
to be perceived as both the company and people best
to do business with.
And as we’re purely B2B, it’s all about relationships,
and acknowledging that our customers buy from who
they like best. Excellent customer experience also
drives loyalty, and motivates customers to recommend us to others.
Williams: Customer experience is now the only true
source of long-term sustainable competitive advantage for a service provider. So, depending on the
market context and the organisation’s objectives,
customer experience management can be tuned up
towards churn reduction or revenue growth, or say
cost reduction by incentivising customers to interact
through unassisted channels.
By implication, big data analytics is an intrinsic part of
any successful customer experience effort. It’s important
today to take a multidimensional approach to customer
experience, and not restrict it to any single domain.
With over-the-top players perceived as setting the
benchmark for customer experience, the service provider CMO should also seek to deploy new digital or
OTT-like models, showcasing innovation.
How many customer-facing operations — internal or
outsourced — do you bring together with your CEM
systems (for example, retail outlets, customer care
agents, your web portal, and so on)?
Gerchuk: We try to cover most of the touch points via
which customers interact with us, the largest being
network, pricing and billing, followed by retail and
service and call centres.
Also we see increased interaction of our customers
via digital channels. In some of our operations it is
not big, but growing rapidly; therefore we focusing
on digital channels as well.
The next step for us is to focus not only on each
touch point but to follow customer interaction with
us via many different channels. We understand good
experience in one touch point and bad experience in
another equals to bad experience.
Gordon: In all 10 operations across our footprint in
the Middle East, north Africa and south-east Asia,
we have CEM systems in places in sales and call
centres, both internal operations — on-premise call
centres and direct/franchise shops — and outsourced
operations — outsourced call centre operations and
dealers/distribution.
Bäcklin: A couple of years ago we decided to throw
out our legacy systems and go for one master-data
system implemented in Salesforce. At the core of
this system is the customer, and we’re continuously
connecting the dots to reach a truly customer centric
IT support system. This includes customer care, our
web, a customer service portal and of course our people in the field.
Van den Bergh: Our CEM systems bring together and
Van den Bergh: The telecoms market is becoming
more complex and increasingly competitive. Many
of our customers are also suppliers, competitors and
channel partners to PCCW Global, and so building
and maintaining strong relationships with all of these
role players has never been more critical for building
successful and sustainable business.
Customer loyalty is the key driver for us all, but in
order to build loyalty it is vital that we understand our
customers’ needs and preferences as viewed from all
customer touch points.
report information from all customer touch points
including network quality, product performance,
ordering and service configuration, billing and customer service management.
As the network and many communication services become virtualised, customers are increasingly
demanding a self-service model to augment their
existing face-to-face relationships. We continually
enhance and expand our online service portal capabilities to meet the changing needs of our customers
— and try to always stay ahead of their expectations.
CMO round table
Williams: From our vantage point of working with the
leading service providers worldwide, it is clear that
the most successful players are those who have managed to join the dots between as many operational
systems as possible.
Only in this way can you arrive at a 360-degree
view of each customer: a buyer at an important small
or medium business customer is also a consumer customer, and service providers need to cut across internal silos to deliver a truly personalised experience to
that person, seamlessly.
Apart from the customer profile systems, another
important source of information is the network and
the specific customer experience across the network.
How importantly is CEM regarded among your
company’s board and how do they reflect that
importance — in terms of budget, management
attention and so on?
Gerchuk: Our customer’s sentiment (NPS) is monitored very closely by the board and executive team.
We also have Net Promoter and churn as a key personal KPIs for all leadership team in our management
performance system.
We report monthly to shareholders on our key customer experience projects. In some of our operating
companies the customer experience committee led by
CEO meets on weekly basis.
Gordon: Customer experience is as pillar of our group
strategy and it is reflected also in the group and all
operating corporate scorecards through NPS.
In terms of budget, the budget allocated for customer experience is for measurement and monitoring
platforms as well as benchmarking and surveys. Each
and every customer experience improvement project
has a positive financial effect and business case.
Management attention is reflected in our regular customer experience sessions with top management teams.
Bäcklin: We believe in inspecting what you expect,
and have therefore introduced our Net Promoter
Score as a common KPI for all employees.
Customer experience also occupies one of three
main focus areas in our top level strategy, and is therefore on the daily agenda of our management team.
When comes to resources and initiatives, we just have
one question to answer: Is it good for the customer?
Van den Bergh: Providing an exceptional level of
service to our customers is at the core of our company’s values and central to our brand. It permeates
throughout the organisation and is reflected in our
products, processes, systems and the way that staff are
measured, motivated and trained to provide proactive
quality service.
We constantly measure our performance through
regular customer service reviews, service benchmarking and customer surveys and invest heavily in
systems and services to support the changing communication and information needs of our customers.
Williams: Our perspective is that customer experi-
ence has to be at the top of the board’s priorities
– you only need to read half-a-dozen annual reports
from the leading players in our industry to see that
this is in fact the case. It may be defined in a variety of ways but the ultimate value proposition rests
on CEM. The good news for the CMO is that the
importance of CEM reinforces their position at the
top table.
Which parts of the company — such as IT — do you
work with to ensure you have high-quality CEM?
Gerchuk: We strongly believe that each function has
a role to play, sometimes indirectly, in providing
superior customer experience. Our goal is to create
a culture where each individual understands that.
However, the biggest part is played by commercial
and IT functions.
For our customer experience programme in the
VimpelCom group we use Net Promoter System
as a toolkit. One of the important elements of NPS
is robust IT infrastructure that allows us to link
customer perception with technical KPIs of our
product. So we work very closely with our technology and IT colleagues.
Gordon: All parts of the organisation are responsible
directly or indirectly for CE. This is key to ensure
high quality CE.
Technology, sales, customer service, marketing
— product/value proposition — as well as finance
— billing/payment — and communication are all
responsible for CE. And we are measuring their
direct effect on CE every day.
Bäcklin: It’s very important for us to make sure every
unit is on-board with our customer experience work.
Therefore we have a customer experience council
to analyse customer experience data — such as NPS
results — so customer pain points can be quickly
identified and prioritised and to pinpoint organisational gaps based on customer feedback.
The customer experience council also captures
ongoing customer focused initiatives to spread to the
rest of the organisation.
We also have a close cooperation with IT to ensure
that the customer view is central when designing support systems for our customer relations.
Van den Bergh: The marketing team work across all
functions to ensure that customer needs and preferences are central to all of our activities. This includes
very strong interfaces with product development,
sales, pre-sales, IT and service management.
We have a key role to play in specifying requirements and designing the user experience/user interface aspects of customer-facing IT systems.
Williams: It is easy to forget the back-office teams in
the customer experience debate. According to independent research we recently commissioned, a significant majority of consumers globally say that network
issues are the primary driver of their experience.
The CMO is well positioned to hold the ring and
mobilise all the necessary functional experts to deliver
for the customer. Q
gtb
GLOBAL
TELECOMS
BUSINESS
50 CMOs TO WATCH
2015
Who are the 50 chief marketing
officers in the telecoms industry
to watch?
We on Global Telecoms Business are looking for
the 50 CMOs to watch in the telecoms industry
worldwide.
We’ll be publishing our list of the 50 — from
operators and vendors — in November-December,
online and in the printed magazine.
Many people in the telecoms industry are telling
us that CMOs have an increasing influence on
operators’ strategy, on the services they offer
consumer and enterprise customers and on their
long term development policy.
That’s why we are asking for your suggestions
now of the most important CMOs in fixed or mobile
operators around the world — in vendors too.
Deadline for nominations:
Wednesday 30 September 2015
Publication:
November-December 2015 issue
How to nominate:
Send an email saying who you are putting
forward, with a few sentences about why they are
a CMO to watch, with their contact details so that
we can follow up with them — and perhaps do an
interview if they are selected as one of the 50.
Send the email to the editor, Alan Burkitt-Gray, at
[email protected]
Please start the email subject line with ‘CMO to
watch’ and the person’s name
CFOs to watch
In the January-February 2016 issue
we will also be publishing the latest
list of chief financial officers to watch.
We’ll be asking for nominations in the
next issue — or keep an eye on the
website,
gtb
GLOBAL
TELECOMS
BUSINESS
50 CFOs TO WATCH
2016
Co-sponsored feature: Amdocs
The onus is on service providers to adopt a multidimensional approach to customer experience,
writes Uri Gurevitz. They should be inspiring subscribers with exciting, innovative services that are
delivered intelligently
In the multiple dimensions of customer
experience, service providers still
have the edge over OTT players
QFirst, consumers feared that their privacy might be
Uri Gurevitz: Today’s new world
of customer experience takes on
multiple dimensions, including brand,
offering portfolio, network and the
IT systems that make it all come
together
Should service providers be worried that their customers are going to abandon them and flock to new
connectivity services offered by over-the-top players,
such as the new Google Fi mobile virtual network
operator service recently launched in the US?
Well, not according to consumer feedback contained in Amdocs’ Customer Experience Spotlight
2015, a large-scale, global consumer survey, conducted earlier this year.
The good news for service providers from this
survey is that the vast majority of consumers —
80% — prefer doing business with a traditional service provider, and are not tempted to switch their
connectivity service from their current operator to
an over-the-top disruptor such as Google, Amazon
or Facebook.
True, there were some marked variations geographically, with 69% of Indian respondents saying
they would stay with their operator but, at the other
end of the scale, 97% of Singaporeans were keen
to stay put, with some even going as far as to say
that they hoped their government would not allow
OTT players to branch out into connectivity. And
in the UK, 68% of consumers said they would not
consider switching over to a Google-like connectivity service.
When consumers were asked to explain the reasons
why they didn’t want to leave their service provider,
three factors shot to the top:
compromised by the internet companies wanting
to use their data.
QSecond, they expressed doubt about the quality of
the service they would receive — citing a combination of slow speed, low voice quality, and poor
coverage outside of cities.
QFinally, a sense of distrust was mentioned: a global
internet brand, driven purely by a commercial
logic, does not have the level of customer intimacy
enjoyed by many operators.
Given this, and the mixed reception Google Fi
received in industry press concerning the actual value
to the consumer of its pricing model, we can be confident that the Google Fi offering isn’t going to change
this consumer mindset.
Further good news, related to the propensity to
recommend, also came out of the survey, with 63%
of our 2015 Customer Experience Spotlight sample
confirming they would recommend their service
provider to family and friends. Here again, we found
clear variations by country. Only 58% of Filipino and
Thai consumers were positive about recommending,
while 72% of North Americans were.
As we dug down to the causes of that enthusiasm,
89% said that customer support was a key factor,
network quality ranked second at 59%, with pricing coming third, at 58%. These results hint at the
need for operators to take a holistic view of customer
experience, ensuring consistency across all channels.
Indeed, while 20 years ago customer experience was
just thought of as concerning the complaints process,
today’s new world of customer experience takes on
multiple dimensions, including brand, offering portfolio, network and the IT systems that make it all
come together.
The OTT-pay TV challenge
Globally, pay TV service providers continue to surpass
OTT providers in the crucial areas of content, video
quality and customer service, according to our consumer survey. For two consecutive years, the results
demonstrate that the vast majority of consumers say
that pay TV service providers offer better services in
these three areas, with 81-86% of our global survey
respondents favouring pay TV service providers.
Co-sponsored feature: Amdocs
Recent services offered by pay TV operators strive
to cement this preference for content, video quality and customer service. For instance, Comcast
has introduced a series of new functionalities for
improved customer experience, including the ability
to allow consumers to track their service technician in
real time with Comcast Tech Tracker, improved customer service by allowing customers to schedule callbacks in 15-minute intervals at the their discretion,
and child-safe content tailored for younger viewers.
Similarly, Time Warner Cable’s digital TV service
allows consumers access to a wide variety of HD
content, and enables them to record and capture HD
broadcasts through their DVRs, with the ability to
set and control DVR preferences remotely through
mobile applications.
In terms of content, Verizon is going the route
of flexible bundling of content: it lets its FiOS TV
customers buy a so-called “skinny bundle” of TV
channels, and then augment it with a variety of channel packs, which are groups of networks with similar
themes, such as a sports pack including ESPN and
Fox, that can be changed monthly.
an effort to improve their UIs and offer a better customer experience.
Time Warner Cable, Orange, Cablevision, Cox,
Dish, DirecTV and Verizon all offer apps for mobile
internet devices to allow subscribers to watch TV
anywhere with a mobile internet or wifi connection,
fuelling customer demand for TV everywhere.
Pricing is definitely a challenge for Pay TV providers. Our Global Pay TV Survey 2015 showed that
68.1% of consumers surveyed prefer OTT services
when it comes to pricing.
Operators have begun to counter this with aggressive pricing, personalised bundling and, in some
instances, embracing OTT business models. Dish
TV’s strategy for acquiring new customers includes
Sling TV, an OTT cloud TV service, starting at $20,
specifically targeted towards millennials who prefer
OTT subscriptions over pay TV.
Telus, the Canadian service provider, offers its
Optik TV customers access to Netflix directly from
their Optik TV set-top box, removing the inconvenience of having to switch hardware and source inputs
or fumble with additional remotes.
“By inspiring subscribers with exciting, innovative services, delivered intelligently
through personalisation and contextualisation and shaped by a dynamic quality of
experience, service providers can bring value to their customers and themselves.”
These types of skinny bundles appeal to customers
who might want to watch football in the autumn and
then swap out of a sports package for something else
in the spring.
But in our separate Global Pay TV Survey 2015,
we found that OTT providers do have an edge over
pay TV operators in four important areas: their user
interface, availability of content on multiple devices,
price and recommendations.
Stemming the cord-cutting trend
Uri Gurevitz is the director of market
insight and strategy at Amdocs
www.amdocs.com
In order to close this gap, pay TV providers have
begun to introduce innovative new services and
hardware. Operators such as Comcast, Time Warner
Cable and Dish have launched new functionalities to
improve their current UIs.
Comcast, for example, has introduced voice-enabled remotes that allow users to search for content
by voice commands and key phrases. Time Warner
Cable customers can use new hardware devices that
include wifi, phone and IP video all in one. Dish has
recently offered a remote with touchpad and voice
control, a 4K Ultra HD set-top box, streaming apps
such as Vevo and a whole home-music solution, in
In Spain, Telefónica has used various OTT methods
both to broaden its reach and boost the user experience of its Movistar IPTV service. In the middle of
2013 it launched Movistar TV Go, its TV everywhere
offering, primarily aimed at out-of-home and mobile
viewing. At the end of 2014 it added Movistar Series, a
Netflix-style service focused around TV series, which
it again offers to existing Movistar customers. And in
early 2015 it launched a full version of its Movistar
IPTV service through Samsung smart televisions.
With such integrated and expanded value propositions, pay TV providers are diversifying their service
portfolio in order to match and eventually gain on
their OTT competitors, stemming the trends of
cord-cutting, cord-shaving and cord-never.
In today’s world of rising customer expectations,
rapid technology advancements and intensified competition, the onus is on service providers to adopt a
multidimensional approach to customer experience.
By inspiring subscribers with exciting, innovative services, delivered intelligently through personalisation
and contextualisation and shaped by a dynamic quality of experience, service providers can bring value to
their customers and themselves. Q
Experiences
Ask for comments and anecdotes about telecoms operators’ service quality, and you’ll be
inundated. And most of them make uncomfortable reading for the industry
Faults, missed deadlines and unhelpful call
centres: listen to what the customers say
It’s not hard to get poor experiences of the telecoms industry — and sadly few good ones — from
friends, family and colleagues. One Facebook posting, another on a web forum, and the reports came
in within hours.
“After a storm, my line went dead then was
attached to someone else’s phone number for
incoming calls,” said one, an executive with a telecoms organisation.
“Engineers from the infrastructure company called
me three times, thinking they were talking to the
owner of that number, and followed up with an automated call to say my line had been fixed. It wasn’t.
“In the meantime I had to explain this to the
company from which I rent the line, resulting in an
engineer being dispatched when I asked them not
to — and they had agreed not to request a visit. The
fault was fixed at the exchange in my absence after
two and a half weeks.”
Another correspondent, who runs his own small
business, said: “I record my calls to the company
because their customer service is so bad, then I upload
them to the internet and ask the CEO to have a listen.
“My favourite was the chap saying they could not
take complaints by phone as they’d received too
many, then giving me the email address as ‘complaints — that’s complaints plural, obviously’.”
Some people say their broadband
was installed fast and on time. Many,
though, complain of unexplained
delays or rescheduled visits
A third added: “When I moved into a new apartment it took the operator about a month to connect
me, despite repeated increasingly frantic calls from me.
“I had an urgent work deadline and having no internet or telephone service created a lot of problems and
much tearing of hair from my client. I know there
are internet cafés but in my home town it is almost
impossible to work in them as they are full of people
screaming and shouting for no apparent reason.”
Another had a better experience with the same
company — we won’t name any of them here, as the
challenges seem to be universal. “I use that company
at home, always have, and find them excellent. Not
the cheapest but as I must rely on a good internet
line always working they are the best. The rare outages have been dealt with swiftly and the care team on
Twitter is also very quick to respond.”
Difficult issues
A retired executive, who used to work for one of the
biggest telecoms companies in the world, but not in
that operator’s home market, wrote: “I had an issue
with our IPTV service and was not getting very far,
and they said that they would put me through to
a special department set up to assist with difficult
issues. They put me through and they were brilliant! The guy there was helpful, knowledgeable and
empowered — and fixed the problem.
“At the end of the call I asked the guy who or what
they were — but he would not go into detail. I also
asked how I could get hold of them in the future. He
said that they cannot be accessed directly, but had to
be put through via the main service number.”
But a business user, frustrated at the lack of a fixed
broadband internet service, bought a data-only SIM
for her router — as she had already hit a 15 gigabytes
limit for her smartphone.
“No idea how I did that,” she told us. “But I can’t
just top up online with this other company because
they send me an authentication code by text, although
my data-only SIM is for use in a dongle or router, and
phoning the call centre is much more painful than
going to the dentist. Why text a router?”
But she was impressed by original company’s 3G
coverage in the rural area she lives. “So I thought
the experience couldn’t be any worse and maybe
I’d switch my router to them. It took a while to get
through to someone who could explain my options.
The website was as clear as a foggy morning — with
no 3G options, all 4G. But finally, I was online.”
However, this provider cut her router off a few days
late. “Having rebooted the router twice, I tried to top
up online, but it wouldn’t let me register as it kept
Experiences
One MVNO changed the network
provider it used, and sent out new
SIM cards during the holiday season
when many bill-payers would be away
telling me that email address was already in use and
sent an authentication code by text.
“I called. First time, I got cut off mid call. Second
time having repeated all the information, it turned out
that I hadn’t reached my limit at all and that, when
the account was set up, the email wasn’t attached to
my SIM number as it should have been.
“That would be fixed, but would take 24 hours. In
the meantime, by rebooting the router at intervals, I
finally got back online — so it looks like the problem
was with the network.”
you 200 minutes to numbers including these for a
small monthly fee. How about that? This has cut my
bills hugely and I’m so, so impressed that they wanted
to help me pay them less money.”
One customer reported going online to order fixed
broadband for his home. “The email said it would
be delivered at 9.00am the following Thursday. At
8.50 a courier arrived with the kit in a box, which I
unpacked. I got a text a few minutes later saying the
service was in operation and I should plug everything
in. I did and it worked.
“A couple of years later I upgraded to a faster service, with fibre to the cabinet. This time a technician
arrived a few days later, installed the kit, and again it
worked perfectly.”
That’s how it should be. But others told of less happy
experiences. There was the MVNO that changed the
infrastructure provider it used, and sent out new SIM
cards during the summer holiday season when many
bill-payers would be away — and then cancelled the
old SIMs after a few days, leaving at least one teenage
girl without a phone service on a Saturday evening.
A self-employed consultant recalled: “I had my
operator booked in to install my new line and so
on when I moved house. On the day they were due
to show, there was nothing. It turned out they’d
rescheduled from July to November. I cried.”
New modems
Compensation for distress
Another business user wrote: “I renewed my contracts.
The letter sent out in reply was incomplete. I had to
phone three times to get someone who could answer.
“They told me that the salesman had not put on
the order that I was to receive new modems so the
salesman had to be given a week to respond. “A week
later, nothing. Two more calls and I am told this was
drivel. It has to be after-sales who fix it. Another call
and routers arrived.
“Today — just now — I received an email telling me my prices are all going up. It had a different
number to ring. I called: eight minutes on hold and
just seven minutes speaking to someone, and my line
rentals have all just been reduced further.”
At the end of that elaborate process, that customer
was happy with the reduced price.
Another happy customer told us: “I have been really
impressed with my cable company’s willingness to
save me money. They actually told me to ring every
six months or so to ask if I’m getting the best deal I
could get.”
She added: “Recently I called to say our package
was too expensive and they worked out a new one that
I’m much happier with. I said I was pleased they were
willing to do deals for existing customers — there are
various loyalty discounts active on the account — and
the advisor said something like: ‘Well, we value and
appreciate our customers. You are what makes our
business.’ Which is an attitude all businesses should
have — but many don’t.”
Another, in a similar position, told us: “I could write an
entire book on how the operator messed up connecting
me when I moved into my new apartment four years
ago. They ended up refunding all the connection costs
and compensating me for the distress they caused.”
Someone else told us: “An engineer drilled through
the windowsill in our rented apartment. We complained because we had not given permission to do
this. It was very strange because he was installing a
cable and he ran it through the window, so that the
window had to close onto it, and then through a hole
in the wooden windowsill.”
When she complained, the company’s legal department “contacted us and arranged to pay for the damage to be fixed. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t
seen it with my own eyes.”
And, finally, another frustrated customer told us: “I
had what I thought was a relatively simple request. I’d
come to the end of my two-year contract and wanted
to switch from a contract to pay-as-you-go. I’ve done
this before with no problem.
“I was assured my new SIM would be sent out. A
few days later a tablet arrived. But no new SIM.
“I called up and after many hours and multiple calls
to different departments on different days the operator finally worked out what had happened. Somehow,
switching from contract to pay-as-you-go had been confused with ‘ordering an expensive additional 4G tablet
account’. I had to return the tablet at my own expense.”
And, said this angry customer, once trips to the
post office and the hours spent on the phone trying
to resolve it were taken into account “it probably took
at least one working day to sort out”.
Such sagas appear universal, drive customers crazy
and break the first rule of business — be easy to do
business with. Q
Pay less money
That cable operator even phoned on a different
occasion to say they had noticed a lot of calls to a
high-rate number, which she needed to use for work.
“They said OK, there’s an add-on option that gives
View from the Top: Vincent Rousselet of Amdocs
Customer experience can undeniably be a true source of sustainable competitive advantage,
writes Vincent Rousselet, but only if it is exciting, intelligent and dynamic
Millennials need a personalised
experience. So do the rest of us
Vincent Rousselet: We know that, as
an industry, we have to look beyond
ourselves, to other industries, to find
excellence
Vincent Rousselet is vice president
market insight and strategy at
Amdocs
In a recent pan-European survey of operators, 88%
of respondents said it was important to offer millennials a more advanced customer experience than
that available to other groups. As my nephew Théo is
turning 18 this month, I thought I’d check this with
him. I asked Théo what he, as a millennial, regarded
as important in terms of his customer experience.
You won’t be surprised to hear that technology, and
mobile in particular, plays a central role in Théo’s
life. In fact, it has become so embedded — in his
smartphone, his laptop, his PlayStation — that he is
barely conscious he’s using technology at all.
In his words, “wherever I am, I expect stuff to
work — it is as important to my baccalauréat [schoolleaving examination] revisions as to keeping in touch
with my friends.”
So does it make sense to offer Théo and his friends
a more advanced experience than the rest of us? I see
three issues with this.
First, why should the younger customer segments
receive a more advanced experience? If millennials
are comfortable with technology, shouldn’t their
experience be less, rather than more, advanced?
After all, these younger customers can perhaps sort
themselves out on their own, using their own digital
native skills.
Secondly, who is to determine what an advanced
experience is? Is it online and self-service only? But
what if connectivity goes down? A 7 May 2015 article
in the Economist highlights the danger of heaping
work on the customer. Isn’t the panacea an omnichannel set-up, where appropriate means of interaction are offered to all customers, giving them the
freedom to choose what suits?
Finally, preferences and usage patterns vary from
person to person. Théo’s sister, Cassandre, who has
just turned 15, earned her place in family folklore
with a record of 12,000 texts a month — that’s a text
every 3.6 minutes, not allowing for sleep. My 16-year
old daughter never exceeds one gigabyte of data a
month. On the other hand, her younger sister, aged
14, consumed 22 gigabytes of data on her iPhone in
January this year — thank God for the free data trial
is all I can say!
Hoping Théo could help some more, I then asked
him which organisation provides, in his view, the
best service and experience. Given he lives less than
three kilometres from Disneyland Paris and holds an
annual pass there, no bonus points for guessing that
he immediately mentioned the Magic Kingdom.
“You go to Disney to have a good time,” he says. “I
turn up, I get recognised, you know what to expect
and, on top of that, there is always some sort of surprise, like a new ride — so people are happy.”
Like Théo, most consumers do not compare their
communications service provider with another one.
The customer experience benchmarks they cite,
unprompted, are typically from other industries —
for some, it’s retail, for others it’s financial services,
for Théo, it’s Disneyland.
Combined with the traditional rankings from bodies such as the ACSI and the Institute of Customer
Service, we know that, as an industry, we have to look
beyond ourselves to find excellence.
The second lesson from Théo’s answer is that
customer experience in the communications industry can undeniably be a true source of sustainable
competitive advantage. But only if it has three
characteristics:
QIt must be exciting: innovative digital lifestyle services — the equivalent of a new ride in Disneyland
or the MagicBand bracelet that serves as e-wallet,
hotel key and location device — will inspire customers and can re-ignite their relationship with the
service provider;
QIn addition, the experience must be intelligent, that
is to say personalized and contextualised. For Disney, it is recognising Théo, and that early June is
his birthday. Basic CRM in action. For service providers, it’s the blending of BSS and network data;
QIt has to be dynamic too: providing real-time
offers based on previous visits and purchase history underpins better acquisition, retention and
cross-selling.
For many service providers, fusing these multiple
dimensions of customer experience can be challenging. It requires simplifying operating environments
and optimising business processes. Hampered with
legacy systems which delay time to market, cost will
be a likely obstacle.
Yet delivering an experience that is designed around
each customer, and not just millennials, brings significant benefits. Even better, the experience should
be branded distinctively to communicate the values of
the organisation.
In a hyper-connected world and a hyper-competitive communications marketplace, not making this
journey towards a personal and dynamic customer
experience is certain to erode the organisation’s
performance. Q
global telecoms
BUSINESS
Picture: Deutsche Telekom
CEO and CFO Guide to Software-Defined Networks
Virtualisation is going to be one of the biggest transformations
in the telecoms industry since the old analogue networks went
digital a quarter of a century ago.
Burroughs, Sperry Univac, NCR and Honeywell. With a few local
rivals in different parts of the world: Bull in France, Fujitsu in
Japan and ICL in the UK.
And there is a sense that it is being driven by a new generation
of technologists within telecoms operators, people who are
wondering why the industry does what it does in the way that it
does it.
To a large extent, all of them had their customers — giant
enterprises, most of them — in their grip. If an insurance
company used Honeywell mainframes in its IT department,
it was stuck with Honeywell. A power company that used ICL
machines to send out its bills needed ICL.
In the analogue era there was a good reason for the telecoms
industry doing things its own way: there was no equivalent. In
the digital era, for the first couple of decades, this approach
was still understandable — because, said the vendors and
the operators — telecoms was not like other businesses. In
particular, it was not like IT.
But look at the transformation of the IT industry over the past
20 years. Remember when the industry was run by a small
number of giant mainframe makers? There was IBM, which
dominated: Big Blue. At least it is still around, but there
were some almost forgotten competitors, companies such as
And the industry rebelled. Now, they use off-the-shelf machines
built to a limited number of industry-accepted standards and
what makes the difference is what software they use: Oracle,
SAP and so on.
Big business has been running software-designed systems for
years. And they work. Now, with that example, the telecoms
industry is planning its move to software-designed networks.
But which suppliers will be the Burroughs, Sperry Univac or
Honeywell of the telecoms industry?
Global Telecoms Business CEO and CFO Guide to SDN: May/June 2015 41
Open Networking Foundation
Standard hardware with open-source software developed by a community and shared online.
That’s the vision that Dan Pitt believes will transform the telecoms networking industry
ONF moves to next stage in the mission to switch
the telecoms industry to open-source software
Dan Pitt:
The Open Networking Foundation’s
mission is not to form standards
but to help make SDN available to
operators. The community builds the
software and shares it. Then they can
customise it for their own customers
“You can use a white box, off the shelf.
The need for expensive hardware is
dissipated.”
Is there a de facto standardisation? The SDN community is favouring the use of open-source software,
says Pitt. “It’s better the community builds the software and shares it. Then they can customise it for
their own customers.”
Atrium project
There are two themes for software defined networks
and the Open Networking Foundation this year, says
Dan Pitt: Open Source and the OpenFlow protocol.
And the ONF’s announcement of Atrium combines
them both.
The ONF’s role since it was launched in 2011 has
been to champion open software-defined networking,
says Pitt.
The ONF was founded by six companies, all
operators, telecoms service providers or over-the-top
companies — Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google,
Microsoft, Verizon and Yahoo! — but now it counts
vendors, as well as many other operators, among its
members, including Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco,
Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, Nokia and ZTE.
“We’re a tiny organisation, with just four full-time
employees. We depend on a community of people,”
says Pitt. “Our mission is not to form standards but to
help make SDN available to operators.”
The organisation does create some standards —
“as few as necessary”, says Pitt — and also creates
guidelines, creates marketing messages, provides
tutorials, and organises plugfests — gatherings of
product and application developers — where they
can test interoperability.
The idea behind ONF and the SDN community is
that open-source software will be a vehicle for a dramatic — and rapid — transformation of the way the
telecommunications industry builds networks.
42 Global Telecoms Business CEO and CFO Guide to SDN: May/June 2015
The Atrium project — see separate feature — brings
together a number of other organisations in the SDN
project, including ONOS, the Open Network Operating System, backed by operators including AT&T,
China Unicom, NTT and SK Telecom, as well as a
number of vendors.
At the moment, says Pitt, experts around the world
are still exploring what open-source software can do.
“The idea is to let people dabble,” he says. Then the
software developed “will be put in our repository” so
that other members of the community can use it. “Let
people play,” he says.
Is this a reliable way to develop software that will
drive the world’s telecoms networks? It’s an efficient
way to do it, he says, and the ONF can created a
Software Leadership Council to oversee the project.
“There have been a million open-source software
projects, but most have been failures because they
don’t build a community,” he says. “We have recruited
some great ONF members on to our council.”
The Software Leadership Council is charged with
managing ONF’s open-source software projects and
its online community development. The SLC recommends ONF’s software strategy to the board and
works to develop new projects, events, and activities
that emphasise the software part of SDN as a vehicle
to put SDN directly in the hands of network operators and their suppliers.
Open-source community
It is chaired by Stuart Bailey, founder and chief scientist of Infoblox, and members include Jono Bacon,
who wrote the best-selling book on open-source,
The Art of Community. He is the founder of the
Community Leadership Summit, the primary annual
conference for open-source community managers
and leaders.
“This year we launched OpenSourceSDN.org,
which is a portal where people can put projects. It’s
the code repository,” says Pitt. “It’s available to anyone. We’re hoping it will attract interested parties,
including for smaller open-source projects.”
Now there’s an opportunity for a “two guys and a
dog” company “to address the long tail of opportunities” in SDN, he says, in areas such as tools, applications, security and orchestration. “They can build a
diverse ecosystem of SDN software.”
There are other projects that people are working
on, some of which have been turned into official
subprojects for Open Daylight, “and loaded on to our
repository”, says Pitt.
But how does ONF tell if the work is successful?
From the number of network operators that are
taking part, “and how much code is being contributed”, he says.
OpenFlow — the protocol that is incorporated into
Atrium — began at Stanford University in California
as a project to open previously closed networking
technology, so that it can be built out of COTS
— common off-the-shelf technology — and make
networks programmable. ONF developed OpenFlow
into an industrial-strength protocol that can be used
for full-scale telecoms networks.
“It is a means to an end — which means a workable
SDN,” says Pitt. “It’s not a be all and end all.” It’s a
vital part of the project, that he compares to a drive
shaft on a car. It’s essential, but not the reason to buy
a car in the first place.
OpenFlow is flexible enough to look at the applications that are being delivered, and adjust the flow as
necessary — and, indeed, according to other factors
such as the time of day and business priorities. “It can
look at multiple factors, including different headers.”
Commodity servers
Conventional systems “are very rigid”, he adds.
“OpenFlow is completely different from the way
networking works today.” The functions are moved
to commodity servers, very like those in a traditional
office network. “You can use a white box, off the
shelf. The need for expensive hardware is dissipated.”
OpenFlow is strictly vendor-neutral. “A number of
organisations don’t like that,” says Pitt. “Some of them
aren’t cooperating all that well. There is some reluctance on their part to go with good native OpenFlow.”
But if some vendors are digging their feet into the
sand, “operators don’t want to perpetuate this”, and
are generally supportive of the move to SDN with
OpenFlow in hardware and open-source software.
“Operators say that OpenFlow is the key, and they
are finally getting the hardware support for OpenFlow,” he adds.
“This is going to be a really important year for OpenFlow.” The mood is, he says, “let’s get on with it”.
So Atrium is the next big step in bringing together
open-source and OpenFlow. “There are four main
pieces to this: the application, the controller, the
OpenFlow southbound interface, and the switch.”
The application “is a pretty simple border gateway
protocol”, he says. “We want this enabled on the
Quagga open-source routing stack. The controller
will use the Open Network Operating System —
ONOS. The southbound interface is native OpenFlow. “For the switch, we are supporting a white box,
“Companies are going to change,
because the margins and the business
models are different. And companies
will build up customised solutions…
Some people still don’t want to change.
But competition will drive change.”
built with the Open Compute Project, while enabling
vendor switches to plug in, too.”
The idea is that “you can take a bare metal server,
put some network interface cards in it, and you’ve got
a switch”. And then ONF is asking other potential
collaborators to plug into this.
The system is totally open — to the extent that “you
can go to the website and download the software”, and
you have a switch (and controller and application).
Systems integration
In the networking world, “if you want to build an
SDN you can get the components and assemble them
yourself, but people don’t want to do their own systems integration.” The ONF “is essentially doing the
integration for them”.
Atrium is a big step for the open-source SDN movement. “A number of software vendors have contributed to Atrium,” he says, and there have already been
a number of demonstrations of the software around
the world, particularly in the US and Australia, where
the government’s science funding organisation, the
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation, has been active.
“We are compiling a list of companies that are
committed to future releases of Atrium,” says Pitt.
“They want to add to the framework — and it’s quite
an impressive list of organisations. We’re cooperating
with a number of projects, trying to move the whole
industry’s ecosystem forward.”
The vendors that are backing Atrium are mainly
“the smaller ones so far”, says Pitt. “Not yet the big
guys. But we expect to get later cooperation from
them. And if it is useful to customers, the vendors will
get on board.”
Some vendors are claiming to be open, but aren’t
really, he hints. “Some of them are using open-source
software as an efficient code development module,
and then building proprietary products.”
But companies will change, he says. “Juniper is saying that it can run others’ software on commercial
hardware. Companies are going to change, because
the margins and the business models are different.
And companies will build up customised solutions.”
The pressure is coming from the operators, companies such as AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, NTT,
and Telefónica. “Verizon is an OpenFlow advocate,”
says Pitt. And Colt and its Japanese subsidiary KVH
“are very aware” of the importance of these developments, he adds.
“Some people still don’t want to change. But competition will drive change.” Atrium will help push
SDN into the industry’s hands. Q
Co-sponsored feature: Ericsson
As the first SDN services are going into commercial operation, operators will be able to use
networks more efficiently and invest savings in better infrastructure, says Ericsson’s Jan Häglund
Operators will be faster and more agile as
SDN promises to transform the industry
This work caught the interest of service providers.
The first applications of SDNs were primarily in data
centres. “But this developed from more of a technology push to an operator and customer pull,” he says.
Operators were looking beyond transport and wondering “how you can get service in a more dynamic
way”, he says.
They will be centralising control software, so they
will be able to implement “any change”. Häglund
points to home gateways, the devices that sit in
people’s homes and provide broadband-based services from basic internet access to a full menu of
IPTV services.
New services in software
Jan Häglund: Ericsson is supporting
the use of open-source software for
SDNs. Ericsson has always thought
that creating openness is the way to
build a successful industry
The industry is at the tipping point between the proof
of concept of software-defined networks and putting
SDNs into operation.
But, says Ericsson’s Jan Häglund, now the industry
needs to ask: “What kind of technology will SDN be,
and what impact will it make?”
Ericsson is working with a number of leading service
providers “about how to put SDNs into action”, says
Häglund, who is a vice president at the company and
head of its network analytics and control product area.
“What problems can SDNs solve?” asks Häglund.
“There is an urgency, because our industry is not
addressing the needs of our customers. We’re too slow.”
Worse, he adds: the telecoms industry is not matching the speed and agility of over-the-top service providers “and what they are able to do”.
But change is coming, with network functions
virtualisation and SDN, he says. “This means that
a major transformation is about to happen in the
way you operate networks and the way you troubleshoot networks.”
It will be a complete transformation, “and it
will reach all the way to the marketing of services,
because if you are more agile you can offer new services — though you have to decide how you will tell
your customers.”
All in all, “service providers will need to be faster
and more efficient”, says Häglund. “We are seeing
that it is starting to happen.”
The idea of software-defined networks originally
emerged from Stanford University in California “to
solve the complexity of transport networks — to make
them easier to manage and upgrade”, says Häglund.
“At the moment the services are defined by what’s in
the box,” he says. “And the box is pretty complex and
costly.” Every time an operator wants to introduce
a new service it has to distribute a new generation
of home gateways — sometimes visiting customers’
homes in order to install them.
“So the industry is looking a virtual gateways —
which means a simple device in the home and the
services hosted in the cloud.” That means, of course,
that once the device is installed it can be left in place.
New services can be implemented in software in the
cloud, and rolled out to customers automatically,
without any technicians’ visits.
“More than that,” says Häglund. “You can individualise services, depending on what people want and
what they are prepared to pay for. It means service
providers can make an individual offering — and
make it faster.”
There are a number of cost savings that arise from
this approach. The boxes are simpler and there no need
to replace them as services are developed and upgraded.
“We calculate that savings over five years will be 20%,
which is a significant sum in this industry.”
Beyond home gateways, “the logical continuation of
this is service-provider cloud services”, says Häglund.
“We are already seeing trials of SDN for cloud, and
services should be commercial in 2016.”
And then, in good circular fashion, there will be
advances in SDN for transport services, where SDN
started. “This makes commercial and economic sense.”
Ericsson “has a complete offering” in softwaredefined networks, says Häglund. “We are virtualising
all our applications and network functions. We have
a complete portfolio for SDN.”
Of course, an important element of SDN development is that most of those involved in the industry
embrace the idea of open-source software at the
heart of systems. “This is a very important topic,”
agrees Häglund. “The whole idea is to create openness. This includes both northbound — the interface
with applications on the network, and issues such as
security — and southbound — including transport,
devices and so on.
Open-source software
“Ericsson has always thought that creating openness is the way to build a successful industry,” says
Häglund. The company uses open-source software
for both northbound and southbound connections.
This represents a conversion to open-source, he
admits. “We started, like everyone else, with a
proprietary SDN, because there was no industry initiative for open-source at that time. But we stopped
that.” Now Ericsson bases all its products on OpenDaylight software.
But if everything is open source, what is there
to distinguish one vendor’s work from another’s?
And how does a vendor such as Ericsson protect
its intellectual property in the work it does with
service providers?
“Yes, unless you can earn money you won’t be
innovative,” says Häglund. “What we look at is the
core points, especially those defining southbound and
northbound services through open-source software.”
This idea is “to make sure these are as open as
possible”, he says. “And then the applications go
on top — from Ericsson and other suppliers. They
will to some extent be proprietary to Ericsson and
the others.”
But open-source is a positive move for the industry, he adds. It provides operators with a greater
choice and thus encourages innovation. “And, to be
frank, a service provider doesn’t want to be stuck
with one provider.”
With open-source SDN the operator is less likely to
be stranded if a supplier goes out of business — and
suppliers will compete equally to win business from
their service provider customers.
“There is a trade-off,” Häglund admits. “For us to
do something proprietary it is often quicker. And it is
tempting for service providers also to go this way, as
it promises quicker results.”
More choice for service providers
www.ericsson.com
But he is strongly in favour of the open-source route.
“We firmly believe that it is the right choice in the
long term.” It will give service providers more choice.
The transformation to SDN is starting, he explains.
Ericsson’s software controller “is in commercial
preparation for launch with several large service providers”, says Häglund.
But the industry’s transformation to full SDN will
take time, he says. “It won’t be a revolution. Operators will adopt step-wise approaches, with hybrid
networks and with natively defined applications.”
That means service providers will need a strategy
to manage the migration, as for many years their
networks will include both proprietary hardware and
parts that have already transformed to SDN.
“The trick is how to get there as a softwaredefined network,” he says. But what’s the target
date? That’s hard to define, but Häglund points to
that 2020 date for the first 5G commercial imple-
mentations. “At that point a large part of the service
provider network will be SDN,” he says.
Programmability will be valuable to the implementation of 5G networks: “What do you use programmability for? If you take any manual work — such as
optimisation and tuning — SDN will fit very well.”
The move to SDN will require some shifts in culture among service providers, he adds “In a network
with vertical boxes, you know who’s responsible for
each box, and you can go to the vendors if something
goes wrong. But with everything defined in software
it becomes a different game. Who do you call?”
Operators will have to develop new skills to make
the most of the benefits of SDN. “Management and
control is where the differentiation will lie,” he says.
“Customisation and analytics will be key differentiators.” And there will be a marketing challenge when
operators work out new ways to promote customisable services to their end users.
SDN is a constant partner of network functions
virtualisation, the other side of this software transformation that is taking over the telecoms industry.
“NFV is about virtualising the functions, including
computing and storage. SDN is about virtualising the
network that delivers the services.”
The hard-wired services of today are costly and
cumbersome, and will in future be delivered with
programmable software.” But does that mean complexity will go away from hardware, in this new
world of virtualisation?
“No, a lot of innovation is still needed,” says
Häglund. “We’re seeing the evolution of mobile
broadband technology from LTE to LTE-Advanced
to 5G, and we’re seeing new access technologies.
There will be new hardware needed for cloud services, and the industry will aim for more efficient use
of resources.”
Increased efficiencies
The ultimate benefit will be that the increased efficiencies that will come from virtualisation will give
operators the resources to invest in more capacity to
provide more and better services to customers. And
those resources will be needed — but operators will
be able to use them more intelligently.
Because the new networks of the future will have
software at their heart, analytics will have a key role
in letting operators take more educated decisions.
Even in allowing automated decisions in many
cases, says Häglund.
“Radio network optimisation, for example,” he
says. “Traditionally the work of tweaking and tuning
a radio network to get higher performance is done
by technicians. But more and more we will be seeing
real-time analytics used to enhance performance.”
Take cloud infrastructure, he adds. “Today a network is defined by the equipment, and is limited by it.
It has to be planned a year in advance, and operators
have to hope there is enough,” he says.
With virtualisation, “you will be able to scale up
resources on the fly, in order to react to end-user
behaviour or to events”, he says. “That’s where the
analytics will help: the trick will be to make sense of
the data. The software-defined network becomes the
last part of that loop.” Q
SDN adoption
Network design will be the biggest opportunity and challenge for operators as they start to
implement and roll out SDN. It offers them an opportunity to rethink the way their networks are built
Rethink the networks, as SDN is about
to change the way everything is done
John Donovan, AT&T: Our technologydriven business requires a workforce
pool with the skills we need to
advance the network of the future
The concept of software defined networks captured
the imaginations of the telecoms industry in 2013,
when the not-for-profit Open Networking Forum
was founded to promote the technology.
Two years later, the development in new approaches
to communication networks and data centres through
SDN have gathered momentum, changing up what
network operators thought they knew all along.
In their transition to SDN, operators will be
confronted with challenges from hardware and software to staffing and culture. Collectively still, they
remain committed to capture a slice of a market
which the vendor community has repeatedly touted
to offer lower costs, higher agility and greater
returns on investment.
networks, SDN has the ability to solve those problems. In separating the network control plane from
the forwarding plane it provides a centralised view of
the distributed network for more efficient orchestration and automation of network services.
SDN provides a more “horizontal approach” which
enables platforms as well as control and management
frameworks to be more automated, says Cooperson.
That means operators have the capability to automate
and the flexibility to move services elsewhere where
they are needed.
To keep pace with the rapidly changing demands in
today’s industry, the provisioning of new applications
or capabilities into the network — the way operators
want it — is crucial.
Networks
Self-service
If one thing is certain, it is that SDN will change
how operators plan, build and operate networks of
tomorrow.
Already the industry is seeing a dramatic change in
network design from the traditional proprietary hardware boxes to a more dynamic set of software parts
operating on commercial, off-the-shelf hardware.
Network design will be the “biggest opportunity
and challenge” for operators as they start to implement and roll out SDN, says Dana Cooperson,
research director for Analysys Mason’s networkfocussed software research programmes.
SDN offers an opportunity for operators to rethink
the way their networks are built.
“In the past, when operators introduced a service, they considered what’s needed to support the
service. First, it’s getting the building blocks
in place, followed by
connecting everything.
There are typically a lot
of products and boxes
to maintain, along with
all the operation support systems,” says
Cooperson.
“But if you need a
new service, you have
to design another stack
of hardware and software around it. That’s
not very flexible.”
With its different
approach to designing,
building and managing
Using SDN techniques, companies can provision
their own networking resources through a selfservice portal. “With SDN you can download a new
configuration into the box on the premises without
having to send somebody down. This way, operators
can offer the service in a more attractive way,” says
Cooperson. At the same time, customers too may
want the option of spinning workloads up and down
dynamically, she adds.
“If the customer decides that they need more bandwidth, they can go into the self-portal system and
request 20 megabytes themselves. The service request
can be handled remotely in a new downloaded capability, and so the cost associated with upgrading the
customer is minimised,” she explains.
Andre Fuetsch, senior vice president of architecture and design at AT&T, says the separation of
the control plane from packet-forwarding hardware, as well as virtualisation, are transforming how
the operator is designing, operating and staffing its
networks.
“We are building a platform which exercises some
of the SDN principles — such as a controller — as
well as instantiation, fault management, capacity
management, accounting and performance to support
a virtualised environment,” Fuetsch adds.
In the process of laying out its architecture and
design, AT&T has developed and deployed in “small
iterative steps” which has allowed it to “be adaptable
to the changing environment and to accelerate the
speed of innovation — learning what ideas work, and
what doesn’t,” he says.
The operator has put SDN in the driver’s seat as
it shifts to a more agile networking strategy called
user-defined network cloud. To make that change,
SDN adoption
Yves Bellego, Orange: We want to
simplify the process to deliver the
services to our business customer.
We aim to make provisioning much
faster
AT&T is overhauling a
majority of its network,
equipment and software as it aims to virtualise and control over
75% of its target network under its Domain
2 architecture by 2020.
Another carrier that
has made the leap
from proof of concept
to real life — for its
enterprise users — is
Orange. As part of its
SDN for Business programme, the operator
piloted SDN services
for small, medium,
business enterprises in
France in April 2015.
The pilot is said to feature a 100% digital and automated SDN solution.
“The goal is simple. We want to simplify the process to deliver the services to our business customer.
We aim to make provisioning much faster and give
more control to the customer for web portals to adapt
to the services they are using,” says Yves Bellego,
director of technology strategy at Orange.
The challenge, he says, is to establish a smooth
integration between different functions. “What needs
to be tested significantly are the different elements —
SDN controllers, virtualised functions, and orchestrator. We are very keen to ensure interworking in
the environment,” he adds.
Data centres
Dana Cooperson, Analysys Mason: In
the past, there were typically a lot
of products and boxes to maintain,
along with all the operation support
systems
With the exponential increase in devices and the rise
in cloud computing, service provider data centres
must advance across various fronts to support demand
for capacity and bandwidth.
SDN has the potential to do exactly that, revolutionising legacy data centres by enabling the integration of physical and virtual environments. For
example, applications can be migrated between virtual data centres and across physical environments
without reconfiguration. Cloned environments for
development and testing can also be set up
in just minutes.
Improved
performance is one impact
SDN will have on data
centres, says Bellego.
Reducing latency is a
“big push” for the operator — and that’s where
SDN is needed. Besides
easing the congestion
of data centre networks,
more equipment and
greater processing power
can be added quickly and
easily, in turn reducing
latency and improving
responses.
“We are building large data centres with huge traffic and we need to ensure good performance. We
need to optimise the flow from the customer device
to the server to the data centre — this is the kind of
optimisation that we need to deliver,” he says.
Gone are the days where operators can afford to
consider the data centre as a separate part of the network. “Today we need to have an end-to-end view
and optimise the architecture from the customer
device to inside the data centre.”
Networking staff
With automated provisioning, dynamic virtualisation and network flexibility set to stay in the vocabulary of telcos, today’s network operators will have to
adapt accordingly. The technology will change the
role of the network administer as well as the skills
required for the job, says Cooperson.
“For example, what do you do if there is a problem
and you can’t go up to a physical box and pull out
something. When those old processes can’t be used,
what do you do? What do you replace them with?”
Carriers will require a formidable group of IT professionals with SDN knowledge who can support the
transition into that technology.
Since the launch of Domain 2.0 and its vision for
a user-defined network cloud, AT&T has sought
to equip its employees with software skills. The
carrier partnered with online education provider
Udacity to launch an online so-called “nanodegree”
programme last year to develop a group of software
experts in the company.
“To accomplish more with technology, companies
need a workforce with advanced technology skills.
But education models evolve slowly. We’re not waiting for someone else to solve this problem,” says John
Donovan, senior executive vice president of AT&T
technology and network operations.
“Our technology-driven business requires a workforce pool with the skills we need to advance the
network of the future,” he adds.
Standardisation
As operators look to deploy SDN more heavily, the
next step the industry has to work on is ensuring
standards and interoperability, says Orange’s Bellego.
“We need to converge on an architecture where the
functions reside and work out the interfaces that need
to be opened so we can agree on the building blocks.”
“What we need to avoid are propriety solutions that
are not compatible. We don’t need everything standardised now but if we can at least agree on the building blocks — that will enable the vendors developing
the blocks to work together.” Groups such as ONF
are “a step in the right direction,” he adds.
Dan Pitt, ONF’s executive director, has said that
interoperability remains a focus and the group is
working with other SDN initiatives, such as OpenStack and OpenDaylight.
While it’s clear that the implications of the transition are many, work on SDN is still moving fast, at
least for the tier-one carriers which have the largest at
stake — and the most to gain. Carriers should realise
by now that it’s time to let go of the old and prepare
their networks of tomorrow for the future today. Q
Open source software
The vision of software-defined networking has come closer with the ONF’s release of Atrium to
solve integration challenges facing network operators
SDN community launches Atrium to link
open source software for networking
OPEN NETWORKING
FOUNDATION
Saurav Das, ONF: We have adopted
an extensible architecture so that
adding features and a variety of
forwarding planes will follow easily.
With community contribution, this
platform should evolve even more
rapidly
Urs Hölzle, Google: Transitioning
the networking industry to shared
development around open source
code rather than proprietary
protocols is a key part of the ONF
missions
The Open Networking Foundation has released
Atrium, an open SDN software distribution that is
designed to help the networking industry adopt open
SDN by integrating established open source software
with some critical connecting pieces.
The first release incorporates three elements:
Qthe Border Gateway Protocol;
Qthe Open Network Operating System; and
Qthe Open Compute Project components.
The software elements run in either controllers or
switches, communicating via the OpenFlow protocol,
and include plug-in opportunities for other switching
solutions to help foster an open ecosystem of interoperable, hardware-based OpenFlow switches.
“ONF is actively creating the ecosystem and the
architecture needed to bring open SDN to network
operators around the world,” says Dan Pitt, executive
director of the Open Networking Foundation.
“Atrium is the first top-to-bottom, soup-to-nuts
open source implementation that someone can actually download from GitHub and use to run a real
network.” Pitt adds: “Atrium’s philosophy is to build
on software from many developers that has been
community developed and tested to help network
operators more easily build custom solutions and
allow vendors to take advantage of common building
blocks, reducing their development costs and improving interoperability.
“ONF views open source software as critical to accelerating commercial adoption of open SDN.”
Integrating components
The first package — called
Atrium 2015/A — integrates previously standalone open source
components.
This release of Atrium also benefits from ONOS’s scale, performance, and high availability, he adds.
ONF member companies and others are already
porting Atrium to OpenDaylight for release later this
year, to leverage its widespread industry support and
access to a broad variety of use cases including NFV,
campus, and data centre.
The Open Compute Project — OCP — is a pioneering project for open source hardware. ONF will
release future packages to support additional needs of
network operators.
“We have adopted an extensible architecture so that
adding features and a variety of forwarding planes
will follow easily,” says Saurav Das, principal system architect at the Open Networking Foundation.
“With community contribution, this platform should
evolve even more rapidly.”
Atrium 2015/A will be available by the end of June
2015 with the following:
QDocumentation for installation, configuration, and
operation;
Q A snapshot of ONOS verified to work with the whitebox software stack as well as other vendor switches
that have provided a driver for their pipeline;
QA BGP peering application that runs on ONOS
and includes the Quagga BGP stack;
QA collection of OpenFlow v1.3 device drivers in
ONOS, meant for talking to vendor equipment
with different hardware pipelines;
Q Indigo OpenFlow client together with Open Network
Linux and OFDPA for the OCP white-box switches;
QMininet with the use of Open vSwitch (OVS) to
emulate the hardware pipelines of the switches
involved; (hardware pipelines represent a sequence
of match-action tables in an OpenFlow switch);
QFull testing suite for functionality tests.
“Atrium is entirely focused on ease of open SDN
deployment by lowering barriers to adoption,” says
Yatish Kumar, the Atrium project lead and a member
of the ONF Technical Council, director of the ONF
Specifications Area, and CTO of Corsa Technology.
“We continue to view OpenFlow as key to meeting
operator needs for a functional multi-vendor south-
Open source software
Atrium supporters
A number of organisations have contributed to the
release of Atrium:
Q AARNet, the Academic and Research Network of Australia
Q Accton
Corey Bell, Open Compute Project:
We are moving the industry to new
models of efficiency and innovation
in networking and computing for
the benefit of all who operate IT
infrastructures
Q Big Switch
Q Broadcom
Q Centec Networks
Q Corsa Technology
Q CSIRO Australia, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
Q Dell
Q ESnet
Q Extreme Networks
Q NoviFlo
Q ON.Lab
Q Pica8
Others committed to contributing to future releases of Atrium include:
Neela Jacques, OpenDaylight: It’s
great to see more momentum
building around open solutions for
users. ONF is a key partner and we
share a common vision and purpose
to promote SDN
Q Allied Telesis
Q Facebook
Q Riava
Q Bristol is Open
Q Gigamon
Q Sify Technologies
Q BT
Q Huawei
Q SM Optics
Q BTI Systems
Q Infoblox
Q Spirent
Q CAICT, the Chinese Academy of
Q Ixia
Q Tencent
Q Mellanox
Q University of Bristol
Q Lenovo
Q University of Campinas
Q Luxoft
Q University of Lancaster
Q NEC
Q Wipro
Q NTT Group
Q Zeetta Networks
Information and Communications
Technology
Q Ceragon Networks
Q CPqD
Q Criterion Networks
Q Deutsche Telekom
Q ECI
Q P4.org
bound protocol. We will build on Atrium’s offerings
not only in the controller and switch spaces but also
in the application space, making sure that the OpenSourceSDN.org community has a voice in what is
included in future releases.”
Industry support
Guru Parulkar, ON.Lab: We value
working closely with ONF and pleased
to bring Atrium to life and provide
ONOS and BGP peering application as
the key building blocks
ONF’s open source software initiatives are built on a
collaborative effort to ensure its work is complementary to and interoperable with the work being done by
other organisations.
“Transitioning the networking industry to shared
development around open source code rather than
proprietary protocols is a key part of the ONF mission,” says Urs Hölzle, chairman and president of
the Open Networking Foundation and senior vice
president of Google’s technical infrastructure, and a
Google Fellow. “Atrium is an important step toward
realising this direction.”
Cliff Grossner, research director at IHS’s Infonetics Research, says: “Top priority SDN use cases have
been identified and SDN will be migrating from the
lab to production deployments over the next two
years. Collaborative efforts in building integrated
open source SDN solutions like Atrium are an important next step in speeding SDN deployments and
fostering innovation.”
Says Open Compute Project CEO Corey Bell: “We
are pleased to see OCP adopted for the open source
hardware and operating software for the forwarding
plane in Atrium. Together with ONF and partners
we are moving the industry to new models of efficiency and innovation in networking and computing
for the benefit of all who operate IT infrastructures.”
Neela Jacques, executive director of OpenDaylight,
adds: “It’s great to see more momentum building
around open solutions for users. ONF is a key partner
and we share a common vision and purpose to promote
SDN. We look forward to seeing the next release of
Atrium running on OpenDaylight offering even more
opportunities for operators to adopt open SDN.”
Guru Parulkar, co-founder and executive director
of ON.Lab, adds: “We value working closely with
ONF and pleased to bring Atrium to life and provide
ONOS and BGP peering application as the key building blocks. We look forward to continuing our relationship with ONF and enabling real progress of open
source software in achieving mainstream adoption.” Q
The SDN world
Who’s who and what’s what in SDN
Software-defined networking is still new and, for some people, there are a baffling
number of different organisations promoting the technology and encouraging
people to work together to develop open-source software for the industry.
This is a quick guide to who’s who and what’s what in the world of SDN — with
apologies for any omissions.
http://www.opennetworking.org
SDN is the physical separation of
the network control plane from
the forwarding plane, and where a
control plane controls several devices.
It is an emerging architecture
that is dynamic, manageable, costeffective, and adaptable.
This architecture decouples the
network control and forwarding
functions enabling the network
control to become directly
programmable and the underlying
infrastructure to be abstracted for
applications and network services.
The OpenFlow protocol is a
foundational element for building
SDN solutions.
Members of the Open Networking
Foundation help shape the future
of networking by promoting the
development and accelerating the
adoption of open SDN. There are
over 150 members, from enterprise
IT, cloud and telecom service
providers, network equipment
vendors, and silicon providers.
Benefits include:
QHands-on opportunity to drive
the formation of SDN through
interactive working groups;
QCollaboration with experts on
SDN and the OpenFlow standard;
QEarly access to emerging standards,
frameworks, and use cases;
QRoyalty-free access to the
OpenFlow protocol and associated
standards, logos, trademarks, and
intellectual property;
QMarket visibility through ONF
sponsored activities
Funded solely through membership
dues, set at $30,000 a year, though
there is a special rate for start-ups:
$1,000 a year for the first two years
following incorporation; $5,000 for
years three to four; from year five
onwards it’s the full $30,000.
The ONF has a Software
Leadership Council that is charged
with managing ONF’s open-source
software programmes and online
community development.
The SLC recommends ONF’s
software strategy to the board and
works to develop new programmes,
events and activities that emphasise
the software part of SDN as a vehicle
to put SDN directly in the hands
of network operators and their
suppliers.
The SLC is chaired by Stuart
Bailey, CTO of Infoblox; other
members include Rob Sherwood,
CTO of Big Switch Networks;
Jono Baco of Xprize; Jasson Cassidy
of Flowgrammable; Saurav Das,
principal system architect at the
ONF; Carl Moberg of Cisco; Ben
Pfaff of VMware; and Dan Talayco,
who has been involved with SDN
since 2009.
Open Source SDN
http://opensourcesdn.org
OSSDN is a non-profit online
community dedicated to recognising,
producing, and sharing open
source software that helps network
operators deploy SDN. Its goal is to
create, reference, or otherwise point
out solutions that can be leveraged
by those who manage networks.
OSSDN is sponsored by
the ONF. It is looking for a
community manager to implement
its community strategy, including
managing the various development
projects on the website, managing
engagement and interactivity with
its audiences, keeping information
current, and generating and
fostering community spirit and
participation.
This role coordinates with Open
Networking Foundation’s Software
Leadership Council and reports
directly to ONF’s technical program
manager to support their respective
missions, ensuring consistency
in voice and cultivating a strong
community around the various open
source SDN initiatives.
OpenFlow and the OpenFlow
standard
http://archive.openflow.org/
The original OpenFlow website is
now an archive, as the ONF is now
responsible for OpenFlow-related
information.
The OpenFlow Switching
specification was created in 2008 to
evangelise and support OpenFlow.
Although originally hosted at
Stanford University, the goal was
always for OpenFlow to be owned by
the community: hence the move to
the ONF.
OpenFlow is the first standard
communications interface defined
between the control and forwarding
layers of an SDN architecture.
OpenFlow allows direct access to and
manipulation of the forwarding plane
of network devices such as switches
and routers, both physical and virtual
(hypervisor-based).
OpenFlow-based SDN
technologies enable IT to address
the high-bandwidth, dynamic nature
of applications, adapt the network to
ever-changing business needs, and
significantly reduce operations and
management complexity.
The SDN world
Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab)
http://onlab.us
The Open Networking Lab was
founded as a non-profit organisation to
“pursue the vision of what networking
could be for the public good”.
Networks today are described too
often as closed, proprietary, complex,
operationally expensive, inflexible — in
a nutshell, they impede innovation and
progress rather than enabling them.
ON.Lab has a vision of what
networking could be through the
promise of SDN. With SDN,
the control plane is separated
from the data plane, the hardware
innovation cycles are decoupled
from the software innovation
cycles. In an SDN-enabled world,
internet and cloud innovation are
able to accelerate innovation while
significantly reducing the costs of
building and operating networks.
Members include AT&T, China
Unicom, Ciena, Cisco, Ericsson,
Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel, NEC, the US
National Science Foundation, NTT
and SK Telecom.
It is based in Menlo Park,
California. However, in June 2015 the
latest news and announcements on its
website were dated November 2014,
when ON.Lab launched ONOS. All
subsequent announcements are on the
ONOS site.
ONOS
http://onosproject.org
Sources: organisations’
websites, as shown
The Open Networking Lab, ON.Lab,
launched the open source SDN Open
Network Operating System (ONOS)
at the end of 2014 on behalf of the
ONOS community of partners,
contributors and end-users.
The open source software was
then released and made available for
download.
ONOS is a complete open source
SDN network operating system that
enables agile service creation and
deployment at scale on any hardware,
including white boxes.
This disruptive platform delivers a
highly available, scalable SDN control
plane featuring northbound and
southbound open APIs and paradigms
for a diversity of management,
control, and service applications
across mission critical networks.
ONOS’s releases are named after
birds. Avocet was the first release
and focused on the best architecture
and its base features. Blackbird was
second and drove performance and
scale to industry leading levels.
Cardinal has been all about enabling
important operator use cases.
OpenStack
https://www.openstack.org
improvements in the Open vSwitch
Database Integration project, and
a technology preview of advanced
OpenStack features such as security
groups, distributed virtual router and
load balancing-as-a-service.
OpenDaylight software is a
combination of components
including a fully pluggable controller,
interfaces, protocol plug-ins and
applications. With this common
platform both customers and vendors
can innovate and collaborate in order
to commercialise SDN-based and
NFV-based solutions.
Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)
https://www.opnfv.org
The OpenStack project is a global
collaboration of developers and cloud
computing technologists producing
the open standard cloud computing
platform for both public and private
clouds. It is backed by a community
of developers and some of the
biggest names in the industry.
OpenStack software controls large
pools of compute, storage, and
networking resources throughout
a data centre, managed through a
dashboard or via the OpenStack API.
OpenStack works with popular
enterprise and open source
technologies making it ideal for
heterogeneous infrastructure.
OpenStack has a strong ecosystem,
and users seeking commercial
support can choose from different
OpenStack-powered products and
services in the marketplace. The
software is built by a community of
developers, in collaboration with
users, and is designed in the open at
OpenStack summits.
OpenDaylight
http://www.opendaylight.org
OpenDaylight is an open platform
for network programmability to
enable SDN and create a solid
foundation for NFV for networks at
any size and scale.
For companies looking to manage
their networks using OpenDaylight,
there is deeper integration with
OpenStack, including significant
OPNFV is a new open source
project focused on accelerating
NFV’s evolution into an integrated,
open platform.
The OPNFV community is
collaborating on a carrier-grade,
integrated, open source platform to
accelerate the introduction of new
NFV products and services.
By integrating components from
upstream projects, the community can
perform performance and use casebased testing to ensure the platform’s
suitability for NFV use cases.
OPNFV will also work upstream —
with other open source communities
— to bring the learnings from its
work directly to those communities
in the form of blueprints, patches,
and code contribution.
The scope of OPNFV’s initial
release is focused on building NFV
infrastructure (NFVI) and virtualised
infrastructure management (VIM) by
integrating components from upstream
projects such as OpenDaylight,
OpenStack, Ceph Storage, KVM,
Open vSwitch and Linux.
GitHub
https://github.com
GitHub is a web-based Git
repository hosting service, which
offers both plans for private
repositories and free accounts, which
are usually used to host open-source
software projects. It has over nine
million users and over 21.1 million
repositories, making it the largest
code hoster in the world. Q
CTO roundtable
LTE is the fastest growing mobile technology ever, and CTOs are the people handling those
challenges. We asked four leading CTOs about the main issues they are facing
Rolling out LTE, and technology challenges
with roaming and VoLTE: CTOs explain
What are the main challenges you as a CTO face
in rolling out LTE in your network? Were there any
unexpected challenges?
Ibrahim Gedeon, Telus: No challenges to classical
design, biggest issue is the multitude of frequencies
and band in light of how we approach hetnet and the
importance of rolling out SON.
Ibrahim Gedeon
CTO, Telus
Andrei Ushatskiy, MTS: The main challenge is defining the strategy of LTE technology implementation
while taking into account business requirements,
license restrictions, various spectrum availability
options, and other related restrictions — the necessity to clean up 800 megahertz, necessity to refarm
1800, certain restrictions imposed by the regulator
on use of 1800.
Hisham Allam, Zain: Usually every LTE rollout so
Andrei Ushatskiy
CTO, MTS
Hisham Allam
CTO, Zain Group
far in Zain has gone smoothly and as per the plan.
However as every project has its challenges, LTE
rollout has its challenges, mainly the availability of
high capacity backbone network sits on top of them.
The unavailability of fibre network causes stress on
the existing transmission network. Also regulatory
constraints related to available spectrum bandwidth
means that we were forced to launch LTE services
without its maximum throughput.
Allam: From a technical point of view LTE is considered
a simpler and easier network to manage, due to its flat
network architecture. It required fewer network nodes
to manage. Also with increasing availability of spectrum,
we managed to offer LTE-Advanced to our subscribers.
Blanco: The user data experience has far outperformed what we have seen with 3G previously. Even
in a number of special events where we have had very
high load the system performance and user experience has been positive.
Does the performance you’re getting out of LTE live up
to the promises of the vendors?
Gedeon: Yes.
Ushatskiy: During development of the LTE imple-
mentation strategy we conducted a thorough analysis of
global experience. We talked not only with prospective
providers, but also with other operators that introduced
LTE ahead of us. That’s why today the efficiency of
our own LTE network meets our expectations.
Enrique Blanco, Telefónica: The main challenges
Allam: The main driver for good performance for
have been the physical roll out and also upgrading
transport networks to make sure we can provide our
customers with the best LTE experience.
Generally we have been very pleased with how LTE
has performed across our deployments. The introduction of LTE has been much smoother than the
deployment of 3G was some ten years earlier.
LTE is mainly spectrum and internet quality. There
are others factor such as devices used and spectrum
used too. We have seen tremendous improvement
in data performance in all our opcos where we have
launched LTE in terms of overall system efficiency,
performance and user experience.
For the customer, LTE has offered better user
experience and faster download/upload speeds where
we are now achieving over average throughput of two
megabits a second.
The challenge has been in measuring KPIs that
reflect the actual user experience after LTE rollout tests. It has become more complex especially if
combined with device issues, for example an LTE
data session can be dropped when a customer is not
transmitting data but they have an always-on device.
Measuring this drop as a KPI will not show the real
experience of the customer since sessions are re-established quickly without the customer noticing the drop.
What are the main technological and service
advantages that you see in rolling out LTE and, if you
offer it, LTE-Advanced?
Gedeon: Better performance in terms of bits/hertz.
We are rolling LTE-Advanced, devices on VoLTE
and carrier aggregation remain lagging. No impact
from a subscriber viewpoint yet.
Enrique Blanco
CTO, Telefónica
Advanced allows us to further raise the efficiency of
spectrum usage and enhance the user experience —
for instance, peak data transmission speed. We have
been testing and implementing LTE-A in the MTS
network in Russia since 2014.
Ushatskiy: From the standpoint of technology LTE
enables the most efficient use of the existing spectrum.
From the standpoint of user experience LTE allows
us to secure a much higher peak data transmission
speed and lower latency compared to 3G networks,
which is crucial for a number of user applications.
As a development of LTE technology, LTE-
Blanco: Generally yes. We have seen some disap-
pointing issues but overall it has been much easier
than when 3G was introduced
CTO roundtable
Have you been able to offer LTE roaming? If so, how
have you done it, and with which operators? If not,
what are the obstacles that are holding this back,
technical or commercial?
Gedeon: Not yet, we will launch North America-wide
with AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile US
first; Sprint I believe to follow.
Ushatskiy: MTS was the first operator in Russia to
launch international LTE roaming — November
2013 with SK Telecom from South Korea. At the
moment this service is available for MTS subscribers
in 43 countries and 63 networks.
Of course it was a challenge. We had to choose
proper IPX/Diameter signalling providers and
upgrade billing systems for LTE roaming. But thanks
to everyone involved it was an exciting journey with
mutual assistance and skill-sharing.
Q there is no legal framework that defines the princi-
ples of routing voice calls from commercial data networks to the PSTN, including security requirements;
Qthe market does not have sufficient penetration of
mobile terminals with LTE support on the kernel
and operating system level.
Our strategy is to minimise time-to-market development of future VoLTE services and to be ready to
face market demands as it arrives.
Allam: We believe VoLTE is a differentiated service
for LTE. We have implemented IMS in two Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait, and VoLTE is tested and ready
for service there. We are just waiting for mobile
manufactures such as Apple and Samsung to start
testing with us in order to go live.
Our objective of introducing VoLTE is to be leader
in the market, to have such HD crystal clear quality
of voice, and gradually to start offload 3G network.
Allam: We launched LTE in four opcos so far, and
Blanco: Yes we do now offer VoLTE commercially.
the amount of traffic and growth is huge and more
than our expectation. Part of our LTE strategy is to
have good coverage in country, and later on we shall
extend this to be outside the country.
We are planning to enable roaming in the four
opcos where we have LTE and we are in testing phase.
We went live in Saudi Arabia with a few Asian operators, and every day, we are testing this service with
new operators. We faced many technical problems
since the functionality is new and not mature enough.
Our first deployment has been in Germany with very
good reports so far. Our strategy is clear that VoLTE
brings user experience benefits in areas such as voice
quality, set up times and integration of voice with
other advanced services.
Blanco: After the successful commercial launch of
inbound LTE data roaming during the 2014 World
Cup in Brazil, with connections both inside and outside the Telefónica group. Roaming partners include
AT&T, Belgacom, Bouygues Telecom, China
Mobile, Etisalat, HK CSL, KDDI, Rogers Wireless,
SK, Sunrise, Swisscom, T-Mobile, Verizon.
A second major milestone concerning roaming is
the forthcoming Copa America to be held in Chile in
2015. As major result most American operators inside
Telefónica will be interconnected for commercial
inbound roaming with Chile, with plans to extend
this coverage to outbound roaming after the event.
Besides of some technical issues, the main obstacles have been commercial, as the roaming market
is declining with changes in the regulation rules and
with the rise of new agents.
Do you offer — or do you plan to offer — voice over
LTE? Please say something about your VoLTE strategy.
Gedeon: That is the plan. We are frankly not rush-
ing, planning before year end. With circuit-switched
fallback and the HSPA network, the need we believe
is not urgent. It aligns with everything over packet
and IP; however the cost to enable VoLTE roaming
is a touch rich so we are approaching VoLTE slowly.
Ushatskiy: In terms of technology we are ready to
support VoLTE. We have already integrated the
IMS core around which VoLTE services will be built.
However there are some regulatory and business barriers to the development:
Let’s look forward. Do you see a transitional stage
between 4G and 5G? If so, what should its attributes be?
Gedeon: Some call it 4.5G, but it is critical for us
and others to ensure the current investments establish building blocks for 5G. We believe it should be
geared around internet principles and NFV.
Ushatskiy: According to the observable industry
trend, LTE-M technology might become a transient
phase between 4G and 5G. LTE-M represents a
significant upgrade of LTE, facilitating a highly efficient service for a larger number of M2M devices in a
given area. Naturally we expect this technology to be
downward compatible with LTE meaning its implementation will not require any serious modernisation
of the existing network.
Allam: Yes and we call it 4.5G. We are already in
coordination with our partners are creating the definition of 4.5G and we think it will be a transitional
period to 5G. We think that between now and 2017
we will achieve it.
Blanco: Obviously it is early to be precise about 5G
but our desire and strategy is to ensure 4G develops and is an integral part of any future 5G world.
Clearly the exploitation of the very high bands above
6 gigahertz require new technology development, so
5G will have distinct aspects which go beyond a pure
natural evolution of 4G.
The key difference areas with 5G are likely to be
at the two ends of the spectrum — at the high end to
bring availability of the very high speeds, low latency
high performance more towards the cell edge and then
also for lower speed solution with M2M and internet
of things where there are very different challenges
around battery life, very cheap devices and so on. Q
Mobile devices
How do you achieve interoperability and security and reduce development time and cost for
devices connected to the internet of things? Bryan Sullivan and Takafumi Yamazoe offer a solution
Open-source software project aims to reduce
fragmentation that’s slowing down the IoT
cloud
smart
phone
browser
Designers of smart watches, personal
healthcare devices and other sensors
must customise their developments
to each operating system, such as
iOS or Android
Bryan Sullivan is vice-chair of the
board of the Open Mobile Alliance
and Takafumi Yamazoe is with NTT
DoCoMo
openmobilealliance.org
cameras
web apps
glasses
GotAPI
smart
lights
plug-ins
device web APIs
toys, robots
sensors
remote
controls
healthcare devices
watches
bands
Fragmentation is slowing down the internet of things
— because of the sheer number of things that devices
need to connect to.
Increasingly, many types of devices and sensors
need to connect to our smartphones, our cars or our
home gateways. Smart watches and personal healthcare devices will need to connect to our smartphone,
appliances to our home gateway and many of these
will connect to our car.
Today, developers of each of these sensors and
devices must customise their development to each
operating system, such as iOS or Android. Additionally, similar features from different device manufacturers require different application programming.
This can hurt time to market or even consistent
functionality across various operating systems, while
also driving up development costs.
The advent of the internet of things and associated
machine-to-machine technologies offers unprecedented opportunity to enhance the way we live, work
and play. From healthcare to automotive to public
utilities, there is almost no aspect of life that will not
be touched by IoT.
According to Cisco’s 2015 Visual Networking Index,
the number of IP-connected personal devices and
M2M connections online will grow to more than 24
billion by 2019. However, in order to realise the potential benefit of IoT, there are business, technology and
privacy hurdles that must be addressed and overcome.
What’s more, today there is no way for web-based
applications running in a browser to work with
external devices such as a smart watch. And native
applications provided on your device require software
development kits that are different for each device.
Again this drives up technical complexity, cost and
time to market.
A third challenge involves the use of cloud-based
servers to manage these devices and act as the
interface between the device and the smartphone.
Cloud-based data storage, while extremely useful and
necessary for many applications, can compromise
application speed, as well as add cost and personal
data security risk for smaller personal networks.
In order to address these issues, the Open Mobile Alliance has developed a secure framework for smartphone
web applications to access external devices and internal
apps through web-standard technologies supported by
major web browsers and smartphone platforms.
This allows developers to create applications compatible with a variety of devices, which until now have
required dedicated native code development efforts.
With the framework, called GotAPI, applications
running in browsers can access external devices consistently across any operating system, giving developers the
opportunity to help create a new ecosystem of interoperable devices and applications. This open architecture
allows developers to write less complex applications for
smart devices while expanding market reach.
GotAPI enables application development independent of any particular operating system via web technologies, and bridges applications and external devices
through a standardised framework for APIs, providing
for registration, discovery, access, security and authentication, so that these functions no longer have to be
implemented independently for each external device,
eliminating costly development time and effort.
Plug-ins implement the host-device-internal web
APIs, exposing services from external devices to
applications.
Data privacy and confidentiality is maintained and
application speed is optimised, because data is not
going through other companies’ cloud-based servers.
Many companies have contributed to the development, including NTT DoCoMo, which contributed
its web API as the basis for OMA’s GotAPI.
In April 2015, the Device Web API consortium
was created to promote the use of GotAPI for IoT
and wearable devices. More than 60 companies have
joined this effort — including NTT DoCoMo, SoftBank and KDDI. There is already a Device Web API
manager supporting GotAPI, available for download
from Google Play.
It is the hope of the OMA and the Device Web
API consortium that the GotAPI community will
continue to grow.
NTT DoCoMo’s open-source software project at
GitHub already supports various devices through
plug-ins with device web APIs. Additionally, healthcare device web APIs are being developed at OMA.
Given these efforts are already underway, we can
look forward to a variety of devices coming to market that can connect to our smartphones, cars and
gateways to enhance our lives in an open, secure, and
cost-effective manner. Q
Co-sponsored feature: Polystar
Making sure VoLTE works is not just about delivering a service. It’s
crucial to the future of service providers, writes Peter Heikenborn
No half measures for reliable VoLTE rollout
Peter Heikenborn: To ensure
the reliable rollout, seamless
performance and smooth operation
of VoLTE, CSPs must have access to
test solutions that can deliver the
all-round performance necessary to
achieve this
Peter Heikenborn is vice president of
the T&M business unit at Polystar
www.polystar.com
Despite the growing momentum behind VoLTE
deployments, communication service providers recognise the significant challenges they represent
— perhaps CSP’s greatest single technical and operational challenge.
There are several reasons for this. First, it’s just
plain complicated. VoLTE has been a long time in
the making and requires the supporting infrastructure
of an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), or something
that at least delivers most of the capabilities of an
IMS. This means that there are layers of additional
complexity that must be considered.
Second, VoLTE cannot exist in isolation. It must
co-exist with voice services available in legacy networks, such as 2G and 3G.
As a result, a complex parallel capability, single
radio voice call control (SRVCC) must enable
seamless handover between LTE and legacy network infrastructure. Without this, each VoLTE
service would exist only as an island; calls would fail
as users move out of the LTE domain and CSPs
would not be able to offer a seamless service that
would have any value.
Third, users roaming to a new network that does
not support VoLTE must be able to make calls as
normal. Users should be aware of the promised
benefits — but they should not have an adverse
experience when they move beyond coverage or to
another country.
The issue of seamless service is of profound
importance. As all-IP LTE networks were not
designed with a native voice service, and as VoLTE
is effectively an add-on, CSPs have to get VoLTE
deployments right from the outset. If they don’t,
other providers can step in to offer voice services
over the LTE infrastructure CSPs have deployed at
such expense.
The failure to deliver VoLTE successfully represents an existential threat to CSPs: without a
reliable, seamless voice service, LTE operators will
simply offer networks to access services delivered by
other providers.
Fourth, the launch of a dedicated voice service will
also bring Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) and Video over
LTE (ViLTE) as complementary solutions. Thus,
VoLTE is a gateway to a whole host of new service
capabilities, models and new modalities of communication, incorporating context, dynamic switching
from voice to video and back again, and others that
have yet to be foreseen.
Finally, CSPs need not only to deliver an attractive,
reliable and seamless VoLTE service to the user, they
must satisfy legislative requirements, such as lawful
intercept and emergency services. Failure to do so has
significant consequences in terms of penalties from
national regulators.
How then, can a CSP deploy VoLTE and ensure
that these challenges are overcome? And, as VoLTE
must also encompass the additional capabilities of
VoWiFi and ViLTE, how can CSPs ensure that
they maintain service performance as the service is
itself enhanced?
The answer lies in testing. Test, test and test again.
A relentless drive for validation, stress testing and
troubleshooting is a fundamental requirement for the
success of any VoLTE deployment. VoLTE is of
such importance that there isn’t going to be a second
chance to get it right. It has to be done correctly, first
time and every time.
This means that CSPs need test solutions that
can be used at every stage of the life cycle of their
VoLTE, VoWiFi and ViLTE deployments. This
starts with the verification of systems that are procured from their vendors. Interoperability across
the new interfaces defined by VoLTE standards
and between solutions from different providers is
crucial.
CSPs must simulate individual user sessions.
User devices can be simulated in sophisticated
equipment that can generate both signalling and
media plane traffic, to ensure consistent end-toend performance. The resulting call flows can
be examined at various points across the network
to verify compliance with relevant standards and
interworking.
High-volume stress testing must also complement individual test cases and scenarios, which can
include mass call or session generation. During this
process, compliance with regulatory requirements,
such as public safety and lawful intercept can also
be validated.
Similarly, as VoLTE promises higher quality service, it is also essential to validate session quality, for
both voice and video, achieved through the use of
PESQ/POLQA and PEVQ algorithms.
As CSPs extend VoLTE and incorporate VoWiFi
and ViLTE, they must be able to perform the same
conformance, validation, functional and operational
testing for these newer capabilities.
When services are live, CSPs need the capability
to rapidly troubleshoot any problems that might
emerge. They must be able to identify, replicate
and analyse specific issues that may span multiple
network elements.
Getting VoLTE, VoWiFi and ViLTE right first
time cuts to the heart of what CSPs can offer their
customers in the future. The reliable rollout, seamless performance and smooth operation of VoLTE
are absolutely critical. There can be no half measures.
To ensure this success, CSPs must have access to test
solutions that can deliver the all-round performance
necessary to achieve this. Q
Mergers
Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes is reported to be joining Altice to head European
expansion as merger with Nokia comes a step closer
Alcatel-Lucent approves takeover
by Nokia as CEO heads to Altice
Rajeev Suri, Nokia: Our innovation capability will be extraordinary, bringing together the R&D engine
of Nokia with that of Alcatel-Lucent and its iconic Bell Labs
Michel Combes, Alcatel-Lucent: The merger will create a European champion and global leader in
ultra-broadband, IP networking and cloud applications
Alcatel-Lucent’s board of directors has approved its
proposed €15.6 billion acquisition by Nokia.
The company has completed its merger consultation with its French Group Committee as required
by French regulation. The group indicated that it
does not oppose the merger, leading Alcatel-Lucent’s
board to express its support for the deal.
The merged entity will be called Nokia and will be
based in Finland, with Nokia’s management in charge.
Meanwhile reports in France said that Michel
Combes, the CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, is expected to
join Altice, the expanding French telecoms group,
in charge of its European expansion. Altice made no
comment except to announce that Combes was ceasing to be a non-executive director of the unit.
Combes — a former head of Vodafone Europe — was
expected to leave Alcatel-Lucent before or after the
Nokia merger. If he does join Altice, he will be filling
the role once designed for Jean-Yves Charlier, former
CEO of SFR, which was taken over by Altice’s Numericable in 2014. Charlier is the new CEO of VimpelCom.
Philippe Camus, Alcatel-Lucent’s non-executive
chairman since 2008, said: “The board is very pleased
to see that the consultation of Alcatel-Lucent’s
French group committee on the proposed combination with Nokia has been completed in line with the
contemplated timing.” The opinion of the French
Group Committee will be submitted as part of Alcatel-Lucent’s offer response to France’s financial markets regulator, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers.
The proposed transaction, first announced in April
2015, is subject to approval by Nokia’s shareholders.
Camus said: “It encourages both teams to continue working towards the creation of a European
champion and global leader in ultra-broadband, IP
networking and cloud applications, for the benefit of
our clients, employees and shareholders.”
Nokia agreed in April to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in
an all-stock deal valued at €15.6 billion.
Rajeev Suri, president and CEO of Nokia, said:
“Together, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia intend to lead
in next-generation network technology and services,
with the scope to create seamless connectivity for
people and things wherever they are.”
The takeover is expected to create a European
telecoms equipment group worth over €40 billion
which will be in a stronger position to compete with
Ericsson and Huawei. It will also bolster Nokia’s
position in China and gain key contracts with AT&T
and Verizon in the US market.
In addition, the Finnish company will give AlcatelLucent shareholders 0.55 shares for each share in the
French company they own.
The deal, to be finalised in the first half of 2016, is
expected to expand its total addressable market by 50%
to €130 billion. The takeover will also raise its potential market growth to 3.5% per year during 2014-2019,
resulting in €900 million of operating cost savings by
the end of 2019, the companies said in a joint statement.
Risto Siilasmaa, Nokia’s chairman, and Suri will
lead the merged group and the company will remain
headquartered in Finland with a strong presence in
France. Alcatel-Lucent will have three members —
including the vice chairman — on the board of nine
to 10 members.
Nokia said it intends to be an “important contributor”
of the overall development of the technology industry
in France. Upon completion of the transaction, it aims
to establish a €100 million fund to invest in start-ups in
France with a focus on the internet of things.
Mergers
Analysys Mason’s comments on the merger of Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia
QNokia’s acquisition of Alcatel-
Lucent gives the company a
much stronger share of the
communications service provider
infrastructure, software and
services market. However,
for success, Nokia must do
a complete acquisition and
be able to perform a portfolio
rationalisation very fast, or it
can suffer the worst pains of its
former mergers.
Q Nokia Networks gets access to
key tier-one customers in the US,
which it was lacking, as well as
to customers in China through the
subsidiary Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai
Bell. Asia and Africa are markets
that are still in very early stages
of 4G planning and these markets
present opportunities for Nokia
Networks to take market share
away from its closest competitors,
Ericsson and Huawei Technologies.
QNokia Networks acquires a
key product-focused portfolio
from Alcatel-Lucent, including
IP transport network, optical
technology, specific network
analytics and wireless technology
assets which should enable the
combined company to compete
more effectively with Ericsson
and Huawei as more operators,
particularly, large tier-one
operators, move towards fixed
mobile convergence
QFixed broadband is a resurgent
area now and in the future, with
related connected home and FMC
opportunities. Hence, having a
FACTS ABOUT THE COMPANIES
Nokia
Alcatel-Lucent
61,000 employees
52,000 employees
(6,000 in Finland)
(7,000 in France)
Operations in 140 countries
Operations in 130 countries
Listed on Helsinki Stock Exchange
Listed on Euronext Paris
Listed on NYSE
Listed on NYSE
Net sales €12.7bn
Net sales €13.2bn
Europe 31%
Europe 23%
Asia Pacific Japan India 26%
Asia Pacific Japan India 10%
North America 15%
North America 44%
Greater China 11%
Greater China 10%
Middle East Africa 9%
Middle East Africa 8%
Latin America 8%
Latin America 5%
Cash €7.7bn
Cash €5.6bn
Ebit margin 12.8%
Ebit margin 4.7%
Net cash €5.8bn
Net cash €1.6bn
R&D (Future Works)
R&D (Bell Labs)
12 countries
15 countries
Total R&D €2.5bn
Total R&D €2.2bn
Source: Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent
www.newconnectivity.com
strong position in this area will
be key for Nokia Networks to
position itself at the top, ahead of
its closest competitors.
QNokia Networks has also just
completed a round of divestments
and restructuring, to focus itself
on its core strength in mobile
broadband. The acquisition
comes at a good time to combine
portfolios, after additional mobile
product line rationalisation.
QThe combined company will have
a well-rounded portfolio that
can cater to the requirements of
communications service providers
engaged in optimising and
monetising their networks and in
moving towards virtualisation and
the digital economy in the longterm. However the manner in
which the Alcatel-Lucent assets
are integrated will be key to
success in this area.
QThe deal is expected to be
QThe acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent
also gives Nokia an OSS portfolio
and Nuage Networks that provides
it with WAN-SDN solutions and
access to a broader range of
customers. But this acquisition
does not provide it with products
to address the BSS space.
finalised in the first half of 2016,
but it will take much longer for
the portfolio rationalisation to
have an effect on the market. In
the meantime, this will create a
slowdown in infrastructure deals
and could result in an advantage
for the competitors.
Nokia has also confirmed that it is exploring a sale
of its Here maps unit. Bids for the unit — valued by
Nokia at €2 billion — are expected soon.
Suri added: “Our innovation capability will be
extraordinary, bringing together the R&D engine of
Nokia with that of Alcatel-Lucent and its iconic Bell
Labs. We will continue to combine this strength with
the highly efficient, lean operations needed to compete on a global scale.”
In a joint statement, the two companies said
that the combined company would target approximately €900 million of operating cost synergies to
be achieved on a full-year basis in 2019. It would
target about €200 million of reductions in interest
expenses to be achieved on a full-year basis in 2017.
The transaction is expected to be accretive to Nokia
earnings on a non-IFRS basis — excluding restructuring charges and amortisation of intangibles — in
2017, they said.
Suri added: “We have hugely complementary technologies and the comprehensive portfolio necessary
to enable the internet of things and transition to the
cloud. We will have a strong presence in every part of
the world, including leading positions in the United
States and China.”
Market analysts Analysys Mason said that the combination would have “a much stronger share of the
communications service provider infrastructure, software and services market” but warned: “However, for
success, Nokia must do a complete acquisition and be
able to perform a portfolio rationalisation very fast,
or it can suffer the worst pains of its former mergers.”
Suri said: “Together, we expect to have the scale
to lead in every area in which we choose to compete,
drive profitable growth, meet the needs of global
customers, develop new technologies, build on our
successful intellectual property licensing, and create
value for our shareholders. For all these reasons, I
firmly believe that this is the right deal, with the right
logic, at the right time.” Q
Co-sponsored feature: Huawei
An online rating, charging and billing system which puts business agility, innovation, operational agility and customer
centricity at its core would help service providers through the digital wave, writes Roopesh Singh
Evolution of rating, charging
and billing in the digital era
Roopesh Singh: Real-time rating
and convergent billing have become
the two most important capabilities
as service providers move towards
digital business
In the current digital era, there is mounting pressure
on communications service providers to differentiate
and innovate in order to capture the opportunities
for delivering advanced products, services, and offers.
With the rapid growth of over-the-top providers,
there is the need for service providers to transform
themselves to ride the digital wave.
As part of the transformation journey service providers need to transform the way business is run, from
traditional to digital. They need to take advantage of
innovative digital technologies and create the digital
mind-set and culture in their organisations.
Service providers have been investing heavily in
building and upgrading the networks and diversifying
into new and innovative digital services.
But, one of the key concerns for service providers is
to recover such investments and monetise these services through flexible and open rating, charging and
billing systems. Real-time rating and convergent billing have become the two most important capabilities
as service providers move towards digital business.
They become part of business and service capabilities
instead of just being part of the IT functions.
Pillars of success
All businesses require three key pillars to succeed in this
competitive age. They are: business agility and innovation; operational agility; and customer centricity.
Business agility and innovation
Time to market is one of the most critical factors in
this competitive age and service providers need to act
Business
innovation
Operational
agility
Pillars of
success
All businesses require three
key pillars to succeed in this
competitive age
Customer
centricity
fast based on customer demands and market challenges. Therefore they require an agile system with
flexible and sophisticated rating and billing capabilities which should be able to perform real time rating
and charging as well as real time discounting for
pre-paid and post-paid subscribers to launch new and
innovative products and offers.
Multi-play bundled offering: Service providers offering multi-play services should be able to innovate with
converged view across the lines of business and launch
bundled offers to improve the overall revenue as well
as customer loyalty. Charging and billing systems
should allow bundled offerings and subscriptions for
multi-play services across different network access.
Mobile broad band monetisation: As service providers
are investing heavily on upgrading networks to increase
data speed and support mobile broadband services,
they should be able to monetise these investments in
return. To fuel use of mobile broadband, service providers should be able to charge not only based on basic
parameters such as time and duration, but also on smart
service and content, with the option of not charging.
Policy-based charging: With the threat of OTTs
treating connectivity as dumb pipes, service providers
should differentiate the data flowing on their networks
and charge it smartly. Service providers should combine
the policy management capabilities and charging capabilities together to make flexible offerings to consumers,
promoting fair usages as well as fuelling overall usages.
Enterprise billing: Charging and billing system
should provide the convergent data model for all
customer types including large enterprises, small and
medium-sized enterprises, small-office-home-office
users, and family and individual customers to provide
flexible rating and charging capabilities.
Enterprise customers are important and high value
customers for service providers . Hence, they should
be able to perform:
Qhierarchy and flexible payment redirection;
Qshared quota and limitation management; and
Qenterprise bills at different hierarchies.
Billing on behalf: As service providers diversify
towards the newer digital services, they face the challenges to charge evolving video services, peer-to-peer
services and XaaS in cloud environments. In the digital economy where multiple services from different
partners are aggregated or mashed together to provide
complete solutions, it will pose challenges not only for
direct billing but also for billing on behalf of partners.
Co-sponsored feature: Huawei
Policy-based charging
Time change
QoS decision
Policy control and
charging architecture
10:00-18:00
Policy
Manager
Rating &
Charging
Location change
Sy
roaming
25%
used
80%
used
Charging decision
Policy
Event
Quota change
Gy
Gx
Tariff A
Tariff B
Notification and redirect
Your left traffic
quota is ***, After
quota exhaust, the
service will be
restricted .
Service change
Number xxxxxx
Service change
GGSN(PCEF)
Service providers would require the flexibility and
capability to rate and bill any products or services, an
event or transaction, a physical or digital entity and
monetise through smart offerings; that is when the
true innovation flourishes.
For every business entity, the billing system should
support different attributes such as multi-currency,
multi-time zone and multi-language. Data and application should be isolated between different business
entities. The offer, the price plan and the policy
should be managed by business entity hierarchy.
Operational agility
Roopesh Singh is chief architect at
Huawei
www.huawei.com
A digital service ecosystem requires an agile and low
cost operation. A key challenge for the telecommunications industry is to improve the cost-to-value
ratio and reduce the total cost of ownership. Service
providers would be required to consolidate the rating
and charging systems across the lines of business and
across the customer segments — pre-paid or postpaid, retail or enterprise, or hybrid — to achieve this.
To enable operational agility, the charging and billing
system should be based on open and standard interfaces
and should incorporate thick configurable layers which
reduce the delay in any change management and adaption of business processes. They should be convenient
operations for service providers — and easy to manage.
Billing as a service: To reduce the total cost of ownership and improve efficiency and system resilience,
the charging and billing system should be built on
cloud architecture running on pooled infrastructure.
Such system should be highly scalable just by
increasing the pooled resources and should not
require any subscriber/data migration during expansion. Such system should support n+1 cluster load
balance for effective utilisation of resources and
should support service continuity during upgrade.
Unified product catalogue and test simulation: A
charging and billing system should support a centralised and flexible offering/product management
capability through a unified product catalogue. This
should support offer management, along with version
management and rollback. A number of different
service provider employees — including systems
administrators, market offer designers or IT/technical engineers — should be able to cooperate via the
catalogue to achieve high operational efficiency.
The charging and billing system should also provide a simulation tool to test online the offer to
shorten the end-to-end time to market.
Multi-tenancy: The charging and billing system
should be able to support multiple tenants in crosscountry or international MVNE/MVNO mode as
separate business entities to make operations easier.
Customer centricity
In this competitive age, transformation from network
centric to customer centric operations is critical.
Clear and transparent bill: The monthly bill is one
of the most important — sometimes the only — communications which is assured to be read by customers.
Hence, the monthly bill can be used to communicate
key information, to cross-sell or up-sell offers and to
create and promote the brand.
Most customer complaints and issues arise out
of billing. A simple, clear and converged bill can
eliminate many issues and can not only generate huge
savings in customer service cost but also increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
A billing system should provide a friendly and intuitive graphical user interface to define the bill format
based on customer profile.
Payment model: Customers expect flexibility in their
payment model. For each of the services, they should
be provided with the options to choose either a prepaid or post-paid or hybrid account. They also expect
that payment schedule should meet with their needs.
In addition, they expect to perform on-demand rating
and bill generation to choose from pre-pay to postpay to now-pay.
Bill shock prevention: Customers do not expect any
surprises and expect real time usages and balance
updates. The charging and billing system should
provide flexible notification capabilities to inform
customers on different threshold conditions.
Do-it-yourself: Customers would like to define and
choose their own plans instead of choosing from the
predefined offers. The charging and billing system
should provide do-it-yourself capability to allow subscribers to choose their voice minutes, messages and
data amount. Such DIY packages would create the
interest and loyalty among subscribers.
An online rating, charging and billing system which
puts business agility, innovation, operational agility
and customer centricity at its core would help service
providers sail through and surf the digital wave. Q
CFO roundtable
We asked three leading CFOs — all of operators with substantial interests in emerging markets
— about their attitude to mobile payment services. These are their answers
Mobile money and its financial implications
for operators: leading CFOs give their views
What is the best financial argument for a
company offering mobile money services?
John Tombleson, Safaricom: If a company is suc-
John Tombleson
CFO, Safaricom
cessful in launching mobile money services, or more
specifically payment services, then eventually there is
additive profit to the bottom line. Once a company
is successful, such as Safaricom has been, 20% of our
revenue comes from MPesa, then there is definitely
an excellent return on investment.
Andrew Davies, VimpelCom: There is not one single
Andrew Davies
CFO, VimpelCom
Brett Goschen
CFO, MTN
financial argument. However for financial services to
be successful, it should drive its own revenues. Telcos
are well placed to achieve this due to its established
billing relationship with the customer, the many care
and sales touch points it has, and uniquely in developing countries where many people have a mobile but
no banking relationship.
Mobile money drives direct revenue in the form
of services fees, transactions commissions, and even
interest for more sophisticated products. Mobile
money users tend to stay with telcos longer than nonusers — thereby lowering churn — and generated
higher data ARPU. Thus they create greater long
term revenue for the operator.
Brett Goschen, MTN: The additional revenue
stream at acceptable margins is the main driver and
in this regard mobile money already accounts for
17% of our Uganda operation’s total revenues with
growing margins.
A number of our other operations, after a slow
start, are also now progressing well with mobile
money customer and revenue growth. For our
subscribers, many of whom do not have access to
traditional banking channels, it provides a convenient, secure and inexpensive way to access financial
services and conduct transactions they would not
otherwise have access to.
What do you see as the main benefits (or
potential benefits) to your company that
arise from offering mobile money services
— including higher revenues, lower churn,
more loyalty and so on?
Tombleson: The biggest fallacy I often hear is that
mobile money is for developing countries rather
than developed countries, and that mobile money
is for the unbanked. This is a very, very convenient
payment service, and generally people with a bank
account are the ones who make most of the payments in a country — 80% of Safaricom’s MPesa
revenue comes from customers who also have a bank
account. It’s just that you do not have to have a bank
account to participate.
Davies: Higher revenues, lower churn and loyalty are
all the key benefits — however this is for both our
consumer activity, as well as our B2B engagement as
we engage customers in newer services.
On average, churn levels are half or less for MFS
users versus non-MFS users, and data consumption is
much higher. MFS can offer the platform to drive the
overall customer digital experience leading to newer
services. MFS offers also significant cost savings for
the end user and the operator itself; for example top
ups or recharges are much lower and more convenient for everyone involved if done on line rather than
via a visit to a retail store.
Goschen: Yes, higher revenues, lower churn and
loyalty are key benefits however over the medium
and longer terms, we also believe that mobile
financial services will be a key enabler for growing
other new revenue streams such digital services,
e-commerce, solutions to SMEs etc. Also provides
some opportunity to optimise the prepaid airtime
distribution model.
What are the challenges that a CFO has to
address before a company can offer mobile
money services — including licensing, risk
management and so on?
Tombleson: We are moving real money from person to person, or person to business, or business
to person, or business to business and the controls
need to be bullet proof. In Safaricom’s instance, we
facilitate $1.5 billion of payments every month, and
if you leave a control crack open, someone will take
advantage of that.
Davies: Financial risk management that was unfamiliar to most telcos becomes important.
Banks traditionally have lower returns on capital
than telcos do, so CFOs must be comfortable with
lower returns as they move more into banking, and
the measures normally applied in a telco need to be
adjusted. However leveraging the mobile as a digital
channel and staying mainly on the distribution side
of marketing financial services addresses a number of
these issues.
CFO roundtable
The CFO also needs to understand payment flows
— such as float balances — and needs to have a completely transparent view of cash-in and cash-out in
the MFS portfolio. Once this has been completed it
is essential to identify areas of exposure if any and that
appropriate measures are taken to optimise risks, not
only seeking ways to reduce risks without first understanding the value generation part/upside.
The CFO has to ensure processes are established
between central and local treasury teams for getting the most out of our relationships with financial
institutions.
Goschen: The model we adapt is very much dependent on the specific country regulatory requirements
and can either be a mobile operator led model, a bank
led model or a hybrid of the two. All three models are
in operation across our markets.
We have however seen a faster take up in services
the in markets that lean more towards the mobile
operator led model. However that said, as we move
to onto some of our key upcoming services, such as
international remittance, digital payment, saving or
lending, we will require bank partners to bring us the
necessary license and expertise.
Goschen: Licensing or obtaining the required
regulatory approvals is usually the first and most
significant challenge. Given the size of the mobile
operators in most of our markets, there is often
some resistance from the traditional banking community as well as concerns from some central
bankers as to their having sufficient oversight over
mobile money transactions.
Usually significant engagement is required to allay
their concerns. Risk management, the control systems and reporting to address has to be a priority
and needs to be bedded down and thoroughly tested
before launch.
New sets of skills and expertise have to be attained
and developed, some examples being in the area
of anti-money laundering, or more complex settlement procedures — remittances — involving
foreign currencies or the vast ecosystem of partners
required.
What are the long-term challenges that
your company is addressing — such as
interworking between different networks or
across borders?
Is a relationship with a traditional financial
institution — a bank or a card company —
necessary or desirable for a mobile operator
that offers mobile money services?
Tombleson: We are offering a payment service which
we call MPesa, and as such we have a core banking
platform similar to that a bank would have. The difference is, our unique account number is the mobile
number — which is a globally unique number.
We could also offer a card as an additional form
factor to access the payment system, except that this
requires another piece of equipment in the chain such
as a POS terminal or an ATM machine.
And in the future I would expect the mobile phone
would be used to facilitate a payment from the luxury
of your lounge at home, and a card could be used to
make a payment on an international e-commerce site.
But either way, the money comes out of the same
MPesa account.
Davies: Yes. It is generally necessary to piggyback on
the existing national banking infrastructure to offer
mobile money services no matter which model is
chosen by the mobile operator.
The decisions on partnering with traditional
financial institutions usually turns on one of two
factors — regulation and revenue potential. For
example, in some countries central bank regulations
restrict the role non-banks — that is, telcos — can
play in mobile money. As result, partnering in these
countries is a necessity.
Tombleson: Every challenge is really an opportunity,
which we have to knock off one by one. MPesa started
as a person to person payment mechanism; it evolved
into people being able to pay for utilities and so on;
and now we are targeting the cash to retail segment,
and retail to FMCG suppliers.
We believe we have made a fast start to his new
opportunity and in March this year we converted 5%
of the retail cash business. Traditionally 95% of retail
purchases in Kenya would have been done using cash,
now it stands at 90%. The social benefits of converting cash to electronic is immense.
Our next challenge will be facilitating payments to
governments and counties, and winning more of the
international remittances.
Davies: For financial services, the first step is in establishing the new services, interworking is an element
that needs to be considered, however until there is a
working model in place, there is a real risk of services
getting caught up in discussions.
Vimpelcom has always been open to discussions
to support local interworking, and we have been
working to find the best service in the countries we
operate. For example, our services in Russia and
Italy are enabled to work in the traditional banking systems, however in Pakistan we are working
closely with other mobile financial services providers to allow money to flow from one operator to
another.
Inter-working — interoperability between operators — is key to create scalability and allows all to be
a large market participant. Inter-working between
banks, operators and other players in the value chain
creating truly global products requires engaging multiple regulators, but if delivered correctly can potentially bring more gains to all participants.
Goschen: We are working towards an open system as described however for us, I would say that
that for us, the most significant challenge will
be to ensure we continue to develop our offerings and remain innovative and flexible. Continuous engagement with the regulators will also
be required to maintain and enhance a positive
regulatory environment so that the mobile financial
services keeps developing. Q
global telecoms
BUSINESS
innovationawards 2015
GTB Innovation Awards 2015:
results in full
Jean Philbert Nsengimana, the
minister of youth and ICT of
Rwanda, receives Hamadoun
Touré’s award from GTB editor Alan
Burkitt-Gray
Hamadoun Touré, former secretary-general
of ITU, wins special award at Global
Telecoms Business Innovation Awards
Hamadoun Touré, secretary-general of the International
Telecommunication Union for eight years until December 2014, has won
a special editor’s award for his contribution to the industry from Global
Telecoms Business.
The award was presented as part of the Global Telecoms Business Innovation
Awards 2015, presented in London on 13 May 2015.
Alan Burkitt-Gray, editor of Global
Telecoms Business, said that Touré
“has made an outstanding contribution
to telecoms, but also to the application
of telecoms in advancing the world’s
economy — especially for those in
emerging markets and poorer countries — as the leader of one of the world’s
leading international institutions”.
Touré’s award was collected on his behalf by Jean Philbert Nsengimana, the
minister of youth and ICT of Rwanda, who was also a guest at the Innovation
Awards dinner. The dinner was attended by 300 distinguished people from the
telecoms industry worldwide. Last-minute travel difficulties meant that Touré
was unable to attend in person.
Touré also played a key role in creating the Broadband Commission, including
senior executives from vendors and operators such as Cisco, Ericsson, Digicel
and many other companies, and from the political world — people such as
the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame.
Fixed network
infrastructure innovation
Virtual network builds
with an API
Growing core capacity
to match access
demand
100G Ethernet network
interface device in
customer trial
Winners: Verizon Partner Solutions
and Canoga Perkins
Winners: BT and Huawei
Technology for the world’s first 3-terabits a
second real-time superchannel innovation,
applied to upgrade BT’s live Belfast-Dublin
network to 400 gigabits a second.
In field trials in June 2014 the fastest
speeds using commercial grade hardware
in a real-world operating environment were
achieved on fibre linking Ipswich and London.
In December 2014 the joint project team
brought one of the key technologies — 16QAM
— into the live network by delivering Europe’s
first live 400G commercial link, between
Belfast and Dublin on BT Ireland’s network.
100 gigabits a second traffic over Verizon’s
metro ethernet network, between wholesale
customer Splice Communications and data
centre provider CyrusOne.
Using the first 100 gigabits a second
ethernet network interface device in the
industry, Verizon provided a 100 gigabits
a second switched ethernet connection
between its wholesale customer, Splice
Communications, and CyrusOne, a data
centre provider, over nearly five miles in
Dallas.
Verizon proved that 100 gigabit traffic
can be transported over its switched metro
ethernet network.
62 Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards 2015
Winners: Megaport and Brocade
100% software-based network and
communications services platform. Services
include internet exchange peering and private
on-demand elastic connectivity.
All services, features and lifecycle functions
are created, modified and deleted in real time
from a portal, a mobile app — on Android or
iOS — or a RESTful API between dozens of
data centres worldwide.
Megaport’s software is backed by a
Brocade hardware deployment across all
data centres. The project resulted in multiple
service offerings that were then beta-tested by
Megaport customers through the third quarter
of 2014.
Megaport and Brocade representatives
were unable to attend the dinner
Next-generation network
for UK research and
education
Winners: Jisc and SSE Enterprise
Telecoms
Janet 6 education and research network
running on 6,500 kilometres of dark fibre at
100 gigabits a second with capacity to scale
up to 1,000 gigabits.
SSE Enterprise Telecoms has enabled
Jisc, which provides networking services to
research and education centres in the UK,
to build and launch its own next-generation
network. The network supports nearly 1,000
facilities and institutions in more than 30
sites.
Jisc now has complete control to provision
optical, ethernet and IP services without fear
of capacity shortages or breakages.
X 64
Co-sponsored feature: TeliaSonera International Carrier
Millions of Turkcell customers who have LTE-capable phones are yet to experience 4G at their
home country, Turkey. TeliaSonera International Carrier’s IPX means they can use 4G when roaming
Turkcell’s customers experience
4G roaming with TSIC’s IPX
Bernd Hoogkamp, TeliaSonera
International Carrier: Making the
transition between technology
platforms is something engineers
don’t do. End users do that.
www.turkcell.com.tr
www.teliasoneraic.com
A virtualised solution for 4G mobile roaming has
won a Global Telecoms Business Innovation Award
for Wholesale Service for Turkcell and TeliaSonera
International Carrier.
The service is aimed at Turkcell’s customers who
will use 4G roaming services when they are outside
the country.
Ten million Turks travel abroad each year and also
Turkey is the world’s sixth most popular tourist destination, hosting 37 million international tourists each
year, a $25 billion industry,
“We were approached by Turkcell, which wanted
its high-value roaming customers to have 4G while
they are roaming,” says Bernd Hoogkamp, TeliaSonera International Carrier’s head of products,
voice and mobile.
The opportunity for Turkcell lies in the fact that
about 25% of its smartphone users already have
smartphones that are 4G-capable. As TSIC points
out, “Making the transition between technology platforms is something engineers don’t do. End users do
that. They choose smartphones, change behaviours
and select subscriptions. In short, it is the end-users
who make the change happen.”
Says Hoogkamp: “We have provided a virtual
Diameter solution to Turkcell, connecting to the
core networks and providing the possibility of 4G
service abroad.
TSIC provides the technology for 4G roaming, but
Turkcell negotiates the roaming agreements with
individual operators in each country. Turkcell had 25
countries opened for testing purposes for 4G roaming
by December 2014. As of 10 June, Turkcell offers 4G
roaming in 35 countries through its cooperation with
42 operators thanks to TSIC’s IPX.
Turkcell’s home network has an evolved packet
core test environment containing the mobile management entity and the relevant home subscriber
servers.
TSIC’s IPX provided a direct connection between
these units and TSIC’s Diameter routing systems.
Furthermore, the home network had GTPv2 data
connections into TSIC’s IPX.
TSIC was able to directly connect to other
mobile networks.
TSIC has two Diameter signalling controllers,
one in Frankfurt and one in Stockholm, “with more
in the planning”, says Hoogkamp. The services are
being expanded because “4G is becoming much
more significant”, he explains. “It’s not only Turkcell. The amount of data generated by 4G roaming
is exceeding expectations.”
As a result TSIC is upgrading its data roaming facilities, especially in the Nordics, where the
company is implementing 10 gigabits a second
interfaces to support the massive uptake in 4G data
roaming. But LTE roaming is bringing new challenges — apart from the sheer volume of data that
end-users are consuming. “It’s more complex in
the sense that it’s a new technology, and carriers
need to agree on the peering infrastructure. And
all mobile network operators need to agree on the
business conditions.”
There are other challenges, he adds. Even though
“any new smartphone today will have 4G”, there
is not enough international coordination on frequencies used for 4G. “Networks around the globe
are using different frequencies,” says Hoogkamp,
“That’s one of the reasons 4G roaming has had a
slow start,” he adds.
The next challenge, which TSIC is addressing, is
voice over LTE. “The majority of operators today
focus on data,” says Hoogkamp. “They are using
circuit-switched fallback for voice, meaning that voice
calls automatically revert to TDM service”.
“This will change,” says Hoogkamp, “operators
are starting to offer VoLTE, and with that they will
provide VoLTE roaming”. Q
global telecoms
BUSINESS
Integrated inventory to support
rapid FTTP service provisioning
Winners: Chorus and GE
Chorus and GE delivers innovative
standards-based integrated inventory
solution to enable rapid turnaround of
service provisioning requests for FTTP.
To support the ultrafast broadband
deployments in New Zealand that
Chorus won in 2011, Chorus needed
to deploy an innovative integrated
fibre inventory to enable delivery
of fast and efficient services to
consumers.
As part of the ongoing deployment
of the ultra-fast broadband initiative in
New Zealand Chorus needed to evolve
its systems and process to support
and automate fibre based provisioning.
Following the successful deployment of
Comptel’s service fulfilment solutions
the second phase of the project focused
on a full ordering stack including
integrated inventory.
GE’s Smallworld physical inventory
has been in use at Chorus since
1999. Chorus implemented Comptel
Fulfilment in 2013 and worked with
GE and Comptel to proactively develop
a solution integrating their systems
to meet provisioning and integrated
inventory requirements. GE and Comptel
collaborated to create a joint product
solution meeting these needs based on
TM Forum standards.
The goal is to enable requests for
service to be automatically processed.
This means that the order can be
processed, instructions issued to
field crews to install the fibre and
the service activated with minimal
manual processes and handovers. The
integrated inventory went live in late
2014, with the end-to-end provisioning
live in early 2015.
This has delivered benefits in quality,
speed, and customer experience
including:
Q generating customer FTTH connection
details from Smallworld enforces a
regime of quality physical network
inventory records;
Q with quality records exposed to
customers they know with confidence
when ultrafast broadband will be
available for them to order;
Q accurate physical network inventory
records lead to greater technician
efficiency in the field, with less time
spent clarifying which customer
connects to which distribution point;
Q less time spent on records clarification
equals faster install times for
customers; and
Q providing the foundations for
improved fault resolution and asset
maintenance.
Gemma Cleland from Transfield
Services said the field force had this
to say about the implementation. “The
feedback I have received so far from
the field seems to be very positive. They
are especially happy with the additional
inventory information that they are now
getting provided.”
London-Johannesburg
low-latency service
Top speed media-smart
gateway
Wireless network
infrastructure innovation
Build-operate-transfer
model for LTE in Rwanda
Winners: Perseus and Ciena
Winners: Swisscom and
SoftAtHome
Silicon South economy
transformed by gigabit
services
Winners: Olleh Rwanda Networks
and Nokia Networks
Winners: C Spire Wireless and
Adtran
Low-latency connection — only 158.41
milliseconds round-trip delay — between
London and Johannesburg Stock Exchange,
using existing subsea cable route.
A few years ago, connectivity to South
Africa was so poor that the Johannesburg
Stock Exchange — home to companies
such as SAB Miller, BHP Billiton and
Anglo-American —hosted its exchange
infrastructure in London.
Now it has moved its exchange matching
engine to South Africa. Brought online in late
2014, the Perseus LiquidPath link provides
traders and commodity brokers worldwide
a new way to access one of the world’s key
emerging markets.
Swisscom Internet-Box providing consumers
with multiple simultaneous interfaces — ADSL,
VDSL2, vectoring, LTE and fibre — and offering
802.11ac wifi service.
With core software powered by
SoftAtHome’s operating platform, the
Swisscom Internet-Box offers users speeds up
to one gigabit a second.
It has seamless support for multiple and
simultaneous high-speed interfaces, making
it able to deliver the fastest broadband to
the widest range of homes in Switzerland. It
can generate guest wifi credentials and has
parental controls.
The high-definition telephone service can
connect up to four wireless DECT devices.
Third parties can add applications and other
features.
Gigabit network for HDTV, security, wireless
and other next-generation services to
consumers and businesses to build new
economic future for central Mississippi.
C Spire — which provides mobile
communications, internet access and data
and cloud services to nearly a million
subscribers in four US states — launched
its gigabit technology initiative to support
continuous growth.
It partnered with Adtran to deliver ultraflexible, high-capacity, deep fibre solutions that
it required, including fixed-line gigabit services
to support its fibre to the home initiative.
Collaboration with Korea Telecom to build first
commercial LTE network in Rwanda, covering
95% of the population, using a wholesale
model.
Olleh Rwanda Networks is a joint venture
between the Rwandan government and Korea
Telecom that is working with Nokia to build
Rwanda’s first commercial LTE network,
operating on a wholesale model and covering
95% of the population.
Nokia is building the LTE network on a
build-operate-transfer model, using FDD LTE,
though the company had almost zero initial
presence in Rwanda. Local staff are being
trained so they can take over the network in a
phased manner after three years.
X 66
global telecoms
BUSINESS
Accelerating mobile broadband
monetisation and service agility
Winners: Etisalat Egypt and Ericsson
Etisalat Egypt targets ‘New Day —
New Idea’ enabled by Ericsson’s
integrated policy and charging for agile
monetisation with measurable results.
Accelerating mobile broadband
monetization and service agility,
Ericsson and Etisalat Egypt completed
a project providing Etisalat subscribers
with more flexible on-demand data
subscriptions for mobile broadband and
ADSL services.
Etisalat has significantly reduced
time to market and opex, and greatly
improved revenues and customer
satisfaction.
The challenge: Etisalat Egypt had
strong growth plans for its mobile
broadband services in the face of
arduous competition and users’
demands for greater control, but was
hampered by duplicated/inefficient
functions for OSS/BSS. Etisalat
understood that greater service agility
was required to realise its vision of
‘New Day — New Idea’, to be more
efficient, improve time to market, and
deliver on customer expectations for
transparency and control.
Market realities:
Massive scale
pioneering self-aware
optimising antenna
Pre-5G massive MIMO
project
Q Etisalat is third entrant in competitive
market;
Q highly-penetrated market at 120%;
Q low, declining ARPU;
Q services revenue is flat to declining;
shifting from voice to data;
Q low enterprise customer penetration;
and
Q customers increasingly demanding
cost controls.
The solution: Etisalat Egypt employed
Ericsson’s integrated policy and charging
— EIPC — solution to enhance services
for both mobile broadband and ADSL
internet subscribers, allowing them to
merge services into flexible bundles and
access the internet from different devices
with the same subscription fee.
EIPC is a scalable, flexible BSS
Winners: China Mobile and ZTE
Winners: China Telecom Beijing
Research Institute and Huawei
Greater efficiencies in antenna engineering to
improve LTE coverage as network increases
from 120,000 to 250,000 base stations.
By the end of 2014, China Telecom
had completed LTE network deployment of
120,000 sites covering over 150 cities. In
2015 deployment will increase to 250,000
sites covering over 300 cities.
The China Telecom Beijing Research
Institute engaged with Huawei to resolve all
challenges, resulting in the self-aware and
optimising antenna solution. During initial
deployments, applications gave labour
savings of about 20%.
Massive MIMO solution, using multiantenna technology (64-port/128 antenna),
maximising use of existing site locations and
spectrum resources.
In November 2014, in Shenzhen, China,
ZTE successfully completed the precommercial field test of the world’s first
pre-5G 3D/massive MIMO base stations in
partnership with China Mobile for a high
building coverage scenario.
This further demonstrated the superiority of
the new technology over existing intelligent
antennas in complicated multi-path urban
and indoor environments, as well as open
rural areas.
solution that delivers decoupling,
configurability, convergent real-time
charging and policy support, a strong
user-experience focus and reduced total
cost of ownership. It thereby creates
an invaluable competitive advantage
for Etisalat in a rapidly evolving
marketplace.
Transforming mobile
service delivery in
Indonesia
Self-organising network
joint innovation in the
Philippines
Winners: XL Axiata and Cisco
Winners: Globe Telecom and
Huawei
Virtualised evolved packet core to support
all packet core services, including 4G, 3G,
2G, wifi and small cell networks into a single
solution.
XL Axiata had a key project to
operationalise its mobile core, allowing
resources to be virtualised and used on
demand.
It tested Cisco’s unified computing system
servers as a compute platform to deploy
Cisco VPC and Gateway GPRS support node.
Cisco VPC combines all packet core services,
for 4G, 3G, 2G, wifi and small cell networks,
into a single solution, providing those
network functions as virtualised services.
Mobile broadband network modernisation
programme using SingleSON solution on
more than 120,000 GSM, 50,000 UMTS and
20,000 LTE base stations.
Globe deployed the SingleSON solution
on its live network in 2014, the objective
being to modernise network operation
and maintenance and help to overcome
the challenges brought about by the rapid
development of mobile broadband.
Existing operation and maintenance
methods and limited human resources offer
challenges to operators.
global telecoms
BUSINESS
Macro cell-small cell
coordinated indoor
active distribution
project
World’s first fully
virtualised VoLTE solution
Winners: Vip Mobile, Metaswitch
Networks and OpenCloud
Winners: China Telecom and ZTE
Wholesale service
innovation
Centralised traffic
steering service
Automating multi-vendor
ethernet provisioning for
mobile backhaul
Winners: Vodafone Netherlands
and Vodafone Roaming Service
Winners: Mid-Atlantic Broadband
Communities and Cyan
Large-scale CDMA/LTE dual-mode ethernet
based macro-cell-small-cell coordinated indoor
active distribution system for indoor coverage.
The Qcell solution uses ethernet cable to
replace the feeder, and supports CDMA/FDDLTE/TDD-LTE simultaneously, and can realise
deep convergence with the macro coverage.
The simplified architecture effectively reduces
deployment difficulty and costs.
Qcell supports macro-cell-small-cell
coordination, carrier aggregation and cell
combination to create a high performance
hetnet network. The simplified networking
reduces deployment time by 60%.
Virtualised VoLTE — with a VoLTE stack
running on a live LTE network using VoLTE
handsets with virtualised evolved packet core.
Telekom Austria, which owns Vip Mobile
in Serbia, had previously conducted trials
of virtualised network functions individually.
However, with this project it chose to virtualise
the entire core network production chain of a
VoLTE service using the live LTE network and
VoLTE handsets.
Through this successful deployment,
Telekom Austria together with vendors have
proven agility of NFV.
Regional metro network using SDN to connect
broadband, wholesale and cloud connectivity
needs of wireless carriers and enterprises in
southern Virginia.
Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities
operates a Sonet/TDM transport network,
and required a solution that could scale with
mobile backhaul, provide ease of network
operations, and configure third-party devices.
Cyan’s Blue Planet open SDN orchestration
platform enables MBC to simplify, manage
and orchestrate multi-vendor networks to
achieve end-to-end network control, service
automation and service agility.
Minimising outbound cost and maximising
inbound revenue with a full-service roaming
hub for all wholesale roaming services of 21
group operators.
Teams from Vodafone Netherlands and
VRS in Spain worked together to migrate all
the signalling traffic of Vodafone Netherlands
to the VRS platform within a week. Traffic
steering parameters were agreed and finetuned by both teams and centralised steering
could commence within days of the migration.
VRS was achieving a 96% internalisation
rate of Vodafone Netherlands traffic,
representing €2.2 million of savings on cost.
Innovation 4G roaming service
Winners: Turkcell and
TeliaSonera International Carrier
Enabling the 4G change ahead of 4G
rollout, Turkcell’s IPX-based Diameter
roaming configuration supports end
users in a first not seen outside Turkey.
Ten million Turks travel abroad each
year and as the world’s sixth most
popular destination Turkey hosts 37
million international tourists each year
— a $25 billion industry. This project
delivered:
Q4G experience to Turkish roamers
from summer 2014; and
QA day one 4G experience for tourists
roaming in Turkey.
Making the transition between
technology platforms is something
engineers don’t do. End users do that.
They choose smartphones, change
behaviour and select subscriptions. In
short, it is the end-users who make
the change happen. With 4G enabled
phones in their hands by 2013,
Turkcell’s end user expectations had
rocketed and outstripped the slow pace
of Turkey’s 4G-spectrum auction. It
begged the question: could they benefit
from 4G roaming when Turkcell, the
home MNO, was not yet 4G?
Turkcell partnered with TSIC to fix
the 4G roaming puzzle. Turkcell’s
home network had an evolved packet
core test environment containing the
mobile management entity (MME) and
the relevant home subscriber servers
(HSS). But it had no evolved UMTS
radio access network (e-UTRAN). TSIC’s
IPX provided direct connection between
these units and TSIC’s Diameter routing
systems. Furthermore, the home network
had GRX (GPRS Roaming eXchange)
connections into the TSIC IPX. TSIC was
able to directly connect to other MNOs,
including the visited network. Turkcell
had 25 countries open and tested for 4G
roaming by December 2014.
Commenting on this new way of
solving user expectations, Hande Asik,
international corporate communications,
Turkcell, said: “While travelling to
4G-enabled countries, our subscribers
can today elect to use the high speed
data downloads of 4G. Turkcell uses
TeliaSonera International Carrier’s IPX
network to establish secure and high
performance 4G roaming services to
subscribers in visited networks, even
though Turkey has yet to deliver 4G
technology domestically.”
Matthew Jones, head of mobile
solutions at TeliaSonera International
Carrier, said: “I’m proud that Turkcell
selected our IPX-based services and am
impressed with how our teams worked
together to enable a 4G roaming service
for a non-4G network operator … It’s a
first for TSIC and Turkcell, an excellent
example of innovation and contributes
to the notion of ‘anywhereisation’ – the
demand to share the moment anytime,
anywhere, with anyone, on any device.”
X 70
Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards 2015 67
Co-sponsored feature: PCCW Global
PCCW Global and Crypteia Networks cyber security services wins innovation award for using big
data analytics, machine learning technology, and global threat intelligence to proactively defend
client enterprise networks around the world. Crypteia Networks’ CEO, Yiannis Giokas, explains
How to beat the cyber attacks worldwide
by identifying threats on a global scale
QA digital society does not pay as adequate atten-
tion today to safeguarding its online activities (also
called the “weak link”).
Giokas explains that while publicly visible attacks
can have embarrassing and reputational impact on
an organisation, it often translates into significant
financial and liability impact. The Target Stores
attack, for example, cost the company more than
$162 million, not to mention the jobs of many senior
company officials.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the number
of reported security incidents increased by 48% in
2014 over the previous year, to 42.8 million or the
equivalent of 120,000 attacks a day.
Yiannis Giokas: As cyber threats
become more sophisticated and
prevalent, our clients increasingly
demand better and more responsive
protections. The combination of
PCCW Global’s network footprint with
Crypteia’s MOREAL threat monitoring
capabilities now delivers the market’s
most comprehensive cyber security
solution.
Addressing the threat
Today’s networked enterprise is at risk
Enterprise infrastructures are more at risk today than
ever before, says Yiannis Giokas, CEO and founder
of Crypteia Networks, PCCW Global’s cyber security subsidiary based in Athens, Greece. But by how
much? Do corporate names like Sony Pictures, Target Stores and Deutsche Telekom ring a bell?
“Every year companies are spending more than
$67 billion on security solutions and services,” he
says, quoting figures from the industry analyst firm
Gartner Group. “But cyber attacks are still leading to
more than $4 trillion of damage.”
This is happening due to four main reasons, says
Giokas, who set up Crypteia Networks in 2011. The
company won a Global Telecoms Business Innovation Award — along with PCCW Global — in May
2015 for its use of big data analytics, machine learning
technology, and global threat intelligence to proactively protect enterprise networks around the world.
According to Giokas:
QOptimising the security infrastructure and maintaining that posture is nearly impossible to achieve;
QA unified process to exchange zero-day security
vulnerabilities does not exist (yet);
QThreat actors have increasingly malicious motives
as to achieve destructive and financial impact; and
So where are the threats coming from? “Threats
are classified based on the goal of the attack,” says
Giokas. “Financial-driven attacks typically are made
by cyber thieves; service disruption attacks (that can
impact web site performance and other online activities) usually are initiated by hacktivists or competitors; and data leakage attacks can derive from multiple sources, such as cyber criminals, nation states,
competitors, and so on.”
The GTB Innovation Awards nomination recognises the collaboration between the global communications service provider PCCW Global and
cyber security services experts Crypteia Networks
— a wholly-owned subsidiary of PCCW Global —
to deliver self-learning network security and threat
identification on a global scale.
The solution – MOREAL
According to the nomination, PCCW Global enterprises around the world can now protect their organisations from malicious attacks by adopting Crypteia’s
MOREAL threat management service, allowing them
to benefit from having access to a truly global threat
intelligence monitor and database. The solution combines real-time network analytics and machine learning with enterprise networking expertise to deliver a
unique approach to network security.
MOREAL is a cloud-based network security solution for enterprises that is able to proactively predict,
discover and identify network security threats by
mining the data activity logs produced by connected
network elements, such as firewalls, routers, intrusion
detection tools and other security devices, in order
to evaluate patterns and behaviours consistent with a
potential cyber attack.
Co-sponsored feature: PCCW Global
He continues: “Within this scope, real-time analytics are crucial for today’s environments. Furthermore, it is true that people in their day-to-day life
are utilising connected systems that are potentially
exposed to exploitable threats. Consequently, it is
critical to have the ability to understand, monitor
and collect user behaviour in order to accurately
position the infrastructure in an optimal secure
posture. But of course, we shouldn’t re-invent the
wheel each time a new user or a new deployment is
made, and that is where machine learning is coming
into the picture.”
The algorithms can identify similarities and predictive behaviours. Feedback helps to identify behaviour
which is seen to be threatening. “MOREAL can do
this lightning fast and even prevent them before they
happen,” says Giokas.
Crypteia’s MOREAL is able to
evaluate patterns and behaviours
from not just a single enterprise but
from the entire network, and can
parse the data and threat activities
by region, industry, and other
segments
www.pccwglobal.com
See a demo of MOREAL online at
www.crypteianetworks.com
Most security applications and services in the
market rely on recognising known vulnerabilities
and exploits rather than identifying new or constantly changing threats. “This is why MOREAL has
become an extremely powerful tool for enterprises,
as it leverages existing data in the network to provide
usable information to the enterprise via a simple
dashboard, whilst continually evolving to combat
emerging threats,” says Giokas.
The latest version of MOREAL was launched in
May 2015, and became available on a global scale
via the PCCW Global communications network.
The operator’s network extends to 3,000 cities
and 140 countries around the world, enabling
MOREAL to capture and mine data traffic patterns
worldwide.
In this way, the solution is able to evaluate patterns and behaviours from not just a single enterprise
but from the entire network, and can parse the data
and threat activities by region, industry, and other
segments, delivering to clients actionable information more relevant to their own ecosystem. As a
result, PCCW Global and Crypteia Networks are
using their combined strengths to deliver a network
security solution which for the first time is capable
of evolving as rapidly as the network threats it is
designed to combat.
Giokas adds: “Threats are becoming more and
more sophisticated, so within this scope, PCCW
Global, through the Crypteia Networks acquisition, wanted to leverage the data science capabilities that we are offering within the cyber security
domain. The MOREAL platform that we have
developed is self-defining what a threat is and
is not based on its data analysis and algorithmic
capabilities.”
Crypteia Networks was founded in order to redefine the way security operation centres function.
“We were a hungry cybersecurity start-up and our
core team had a strong security and software development background that led to the creation of the
MOREAL threat intelligence platform,” he says.
Giokas explains the role of real-time network analytics and machine learning in this approach. “In the
security domain, the ability to have a holistic view of
your network and the threats that you are exposed
to — based on the importance of your assets — is
very important.”
Security management moves to the cloud
Crypteia Networks ensures that a cloud-based network security management solution remains secure
by leveraging the fundamental benefits of the cloud
itself. “Cloud infrastructure is operated by a large
number of engineers with different backgrounds —
people in areas such as development operations, IT,
network, security and so on, with vast experience
in environments such as PCCW Global, Amazon,
SoftLayer, Microsoft, Google and others. They outnumber and have more experience than most corporations’ IT and security teams,” Giokas says.
“Additionally, cloud computing is eliminating a
number of limitations that on-premise solutions have,
such as power outages, CPU/RAM/storage faults,
and of course CAPEX costs.”
He adds: “The same security measures that someone would take in an on-premise solution are
today used in cloud environments. Thus, a cloud
approach today should be considered an extension
of the LAN and not a different domain with different rules.”
Giokas explains how quickly the solution can
adapt to new or constantly changing threats. “The
MOREAL threat intelligence platform is aggregating
threat-related knowledge constantly and in real-time,
combining it with the outcome of the analysis we
do in PCCW Global’s IP network, as well as our
customers’ networks, so our visibility in the evolving
threat landscape is constantly growing”.
“On top of that, MOREAL’s machine-learning
capabilities enable it to self-define whether legitimate lookalike behaviours are actually legit or not
— and this constant intelligence is the key differentiator that makes the PCCW Global solution fast
and accurate.”
But there is something else: “Our security operation
centres and our security research teams are constantly
adding knowledge into our threat database, so our
adaptability to the evolution of threats is virtually in
real-time,” he says.
MOREAL, as a cloud-based solution, is available
in all geographic sectors where PCCW Global is
offering its services. Crypteia Networks, as part
of PCCW Global, is offering its services both to
PCCW Global customers and to others, as well via
its channel partners. Q
global telecoms
BUSINESS
Implementing LiveStream Protection against
Perform video streaming distributed denial of
Winners: Abu Dhabi Media,
service attack
Deutsche Telekom and Octoshape
Winners: Mobistar and Orange
Direct, high-capacity
international fibre
connectivity to Somalia
Winners: Dalkom and WIOCC
Business service innovation
Virtualising configure-ondemand IaaS
Winners: Aspider-NGI, Cisco and
Telindus
Global delivery of live cloud-based high-quality
OTT content ensuring reliable connectivity to a
variety of end devices.
Abu Dhabi Media needed support with the
global delivery of its live content that would
ensure reliable connectivity to a variety of end
devices.
This project is an example of how cloudbased, high-quality OTT services can be
deployed within a tight time frame providing
a global reach, currently unequalled on the
market today.
Partnering with Deutsche Telekom BDI has
enabled Abu Dhabi Media to strengthen its
position on the market by offering a unique
service to its customers that stands for quality
and reliability.
Network traffic monitored for distributed denial
of service attacks and clients notified in case
of attack, so they can launch mitigation and
reroute traffic to be cleaned.
In December 2014, Mobistar suffered four
DDoS attacks in less than 24 hours successfully
managed by our Internet provider. This DDoS
attack caused connection congestion and
directly impacted Mobistar customers.
Orange evaluated the situation and
successfully handled the congestion attacks.
Resolving the challenge was complex
because the end-customer solution included
a partially outsourced service from a third
party supplier.
Subsea connection to the coast of Somalia,
new landing station and state of the art
data centre in Mogadishu with fibre-optic
connectivity into the city.
Working in partnership, WIOCC and local
operator Dalkom Somalia have fundamentally
changed Somalia’s international connectivity
landscape, dramatically impacting one of the
last corners of Africa without direct fibre-optic
connectivity. WIOCC landed the high-capacity
EASSy submarine cable on the coast of
Somalia and connected it to a new landing
station and state-of-the-art data centre in
Mogadishu. Dalkom is now extending fibre
connectivity into Mogadishu.
Virtualised packet core to give flexibility and
service agility to scalable cloud-based mobile
virtual network services.
Customers of Aspider, a mobile virtual network
enabler for consumer and M2M mobile
services, currently use configure-on-demand
IaaS. Cisco collaborated with Telindus to
implement a plan to virtualise these solutions
for Aspider-NGI.
The Cisco virtualised packet core will give
Aspider-NGI even more flexibility and service
agility so its customers can implement
scalable services in minutes along with
redundancy levels that exceed service level
requirements.
Global network threat identification
for enterprises
Winners: PCCW Global and Crypteia Networks
PCCW Global and Crypteia Networks are
using big data and machine learning to
proactively protect enterprise networks
around the world.
The collaboration between global
communications service provider PCCW
Global and Athens-based security
experts Crypteia Networks delivers selflearning network security and threat
identification on a global scale.
Enterprises in 170 countries can
now protect their organizations from
malicious attacks by adopting the
Moreal threat management service
and benefit from access to a truly
global threat database. The solution
combines real-time network analytics
and machine learning with enterprise
networking expertise to deliver a unique
approach to network security.
Moreal is a cloud-based network
security solution for enterprises which
is able to proactively predict, discover
and identify network security threats by
data mining the activity logs produced
by connected network elements in order
to evaluate patterns and behaviours
consistent with a security threat.
Most security services currently
in use rely on recognizing already
known threats rather than new or
constantly changing threats. This is
why Moreal has become an extremely
powerful tool for enterprises, as it
leverages existing data in the network
to provide usable information to the
enterprise via a simple dashboard
whilst continually evolving to combat
emerging threats.
According to
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the number
of reported security incidents increased
by 48% in 2014 over the previous
year, to 42.8 million or the equivalent
of 120,000 attacks a day. Enterprises
need a solution which is able to
proactively learn and evolve in order to
combat the growing number of threats,
or they face a potential loss of both
revenue and reputation.
The latest version of Moreal was
launched in February 2014, and
became available on a global scale via
the PCCW Global network in October
2014. PCCW Global’s network extends
to 3,000 cities and 170 countries
around the world, enabling Moreal to
capture and data mine traffic patterns
worldwide. In this way, the solution is
able to evaluate patterns and behaviors
from not just a single enterprise but
from the entire PCCW Global network.
PCCW Global and Crypteia Networks
are using their combined strengths
to deliver a network security solution
which for the first time is capable of
evolving as rapidly as the network
threats it is designed to combat.
X 72
Ericsson Converged Wallet solution powers next-generation mobile financial services in Peru
Ericsson and ASBANC recognised for their
work toward financial inclusion in Peru
For more information on Ericsson’s
Wallet platform, please visit:
http://www.ericsson.com/
ourportfolio/products/wallet-platform
ASBANC, Peru’s National Bank Association, partnered with Ericsson for the design and implementation of its Mobile Money project. It stands as the
country’s largest private initiative for financial inclusion and the first implementation in the world where
all of the financial institutions in a country joined
efforts to bring its unbanked people into the financial
system.
ASBANC selected Ericsson’s Converged Wallet
solution to power next-generation mobile financial services with the goal of bringing 2.1 million
unbanked Peruvians on board within five years. The
solution includes full systems integration in one platform that is capable of hosting all services from differ-
ent financial and commercial institutions for secure
interoperability. Ericsson’s mobile wallet platform
now provides ASBANC customers with a simple,
functional and relevant digital experience.
With Ericsson’s mobile wallet platform, Peruvians
can now easily and securely store, transfer and withdraw money using their mobile devices.
Over the next few years, Peru’s largest banking
initiative will give citizens the freedom to bank with
mobile phones, a dynamic that is becoming essential
for billions around the world. This will help welcome Peruvians into the Networked Society, ensure
ubiquitous access to mobile money, and open up new
business opportunities. Q
Etisalat Egypt uses solution to offer subscribers more flexible, on-demand broadband and ADSL
mobile data services
Ericsson Integrated Policy and Charging
provides enhanced user experience
for Etisalat Egypt customers
For more information about
Ericsson’s Integrated Policy and
Charging (EIPC) solution, visit
ourportfolio/products/chargingand-policy
Ericsson and Etisalat Egypt’s ‘New Day — New
Idea’ project provides Etisalat subscribers with more
flexible on-demand data subscriptions for mobile
broadband and ADSL services through enhanced
service agility.
In the face of arduous competition and user demand
for greater control, Etisalat Egypt had strong growth
plans for its mobile broadband services. It understood
that greater service agility was required to be more
efficient, improve time to market, and deliver on
customer expectations for transparency and control.
Etisalat Egypt deployed Ericsson’s Integrated Policy and Charging (EIPC) solution to enhance services
for both mobile broadband and ADSL Internet sub-
scribers, allowing them to merge services into flexible
bundles and access the Internet from different devices
with the same subscription fee. EIPC is a scalable,
flexible BSS solution that delivers decoupling, configurability, convergent real-time charging and policy
support, a strong user-experience focus and reduced
total cost of ownership.
Through this partnership, Etisalat created an invaluable competitive advantage in a rapidly evolving
marketplace. It now had the improved service agility
needed to assure a flexible, seamless convergence
across services, address new OTT revenue streams
and give customers more control for an enhanced
experience. Q
global telecoms
BUSINESS
Nanjing e-government
network
Winners: Nanjing Commway and
Huawei
‘Smart Nanjing’ solution using LTE for rich
functions from traditional trunking to voice and
video dispatching and real-time video distribution.
The Nanjing municipal government decided
to invest in building a wireless broadband
municipal network to provide secure and
ubiquitous broadband services.
Huawei’s eLTE solution provides network
coverage across all Nanjing, enabling
convergence of fixed and mobile networks,
integrating currently fragmented information
systems.
This solution contributes to a unified
information platform for public security, traffic
policing, fire-fighting, medical and public
health, power supplies, and hydrology to
permit information sharing as well as unified
video and voice dispatching.
Mobile Connect: secure
digital identity and
authentication
Establishment of Zain
Innovation Campus
(ZINC) in Jordan
Making digital app
sales easy across every
channel
Real-time fully managed
intelligence service for
roaming partners
Winners: Zain Jordan and
Coventry University
Winners: Telefónica UK and
CloudSense
Winners: Tata Communications
and Polystar
Campus at a leading business park — in
association with a UK university — to provide
facilities for start-ups by young people.
In April 2014, Zain announced its intention
to roll out the Zain Innovation Campus,
including all the initiatives and programmes
under its corporate entrepreneurship
responsibility scheme.
The campus was inaugurated in October
2014 and is spread over 800 square metres in
the premises of King Hussein Business Park.
The campus provides all the requirements
needed by the start-ups in addition to
providing teleconferencing features with 500
Startups in Silicon Valley in the US. ZINC is
today the leading hub for all digital innovation
coming out of Jordan.
Digital small business service so that users
can optimise investments in smartphones,
tablets, 4G and the cloud, with flexible
bundles.
Having expanded from mobile to fixed
voice and network services, Telefónica
O2 wanted to offer key business apps in
conjunction with existing services. It chose
the CloudSense platform, a fully Salesforcenative platform, with the aim of balancing the
rich functionality of the latest technologies
with a simplified customer journey.
It recognised that customers begin their
journey online but later would want human
support. They needed to optimise investments
in smartphones, tablets, 4G and the cloud.
Delivering better understanding of roaming
usage and behaviour to Tata Communications’
customers and to support SLAs of VIP and
corporate accounts.
RoamPulse, designed and built by Tata
Communications, enables mobile network
operators improve their customers’ roaming
experience and improve the efficiency of their
roaming business.
Polystar’s network and customer insight
solution was selected to provide real-time
analytics to support a new, managed reporting
and monitoring service for roaming partners.
RoamPulse was successfully launched
with several initial customers in 2014 and
full-scale commercial rollout will take place
during 2015.
Work area optimisation
for telecoms engineers
UC and SIP trunking with
prepaid billing
Winners: Vodafone and Genband
Winners: BT and University of Essex
V-Net: NFV gets real
Winners: Masergy and Overture
Networks
Winners: Etisalat, Apigee and GSMA
Digital identity solution giving the end user a
safe, seamless and convenient way to access
digital services using their mobile phone.
Mobile Connect is a digital identity
solution that offers security and convenience,
consistent user interface and low barriers to
entry across the digital identity ecosystem,
thereby driving global scale.
For higher security authentications this
may require a PIN but it’s the only PIN
required and only used between end-user and
operator, never the digital service provider.
The technology behind Mobile Connect is
widely adopted open source technology, Open
ID Connect, offering ease and consistency for
digital service providers.
Field engineering tool to optimise field
engineering teams’ work and reduce travelling
time, improving customer service.
The iPatch tool was created for the purpose
of improving a number of business objectives
within BT’s field engineering teams. The
University of Essex, in collaboration BT,
implemented all the functionality of the
tool, as well as researched and developed
relevant additional advanced multi objective
optimisation algorithms.
The tool was put into use May 2014 and
this led to an estimated saving of £1 million
by December 2014. The reduction in travel
time saved £143,000 in fuel costs. iPatch
will enable a further 7% productivity uplift in
2015-16.
Application server for hosted UC services,
offering enterprise customers the opportunity to
migrate from legacy premises-based PBXs to
IP-based UC.
Vodafone Fiji is offering enterprise customers
the opportunity to migrate from legacy,
premises-based, PBXs to next generation,
IP-based, unified communications.
Genband worked closely with Vodafone
to define an innovative payment and billing
solution for the new offer, leveraging the
prepaid billing system that Vodafone has
deployed for its mobile network.
The solution is also integrated with Vodafone’s
mobile network — making it possible for
business customers to have a single number
service available from multiple devices from any
internet connection across the globe.
NFV-based solution as the foundation for
a distribution solution to be deployed at
enterprise customers’ branch offices and
remote locations.
Overture and Masergy joined to develop the
Project V-Net technology as the foundation for
a distributed solution that can be deployed
at enterprise customers’ branch offices and
remote locations.
Overture’s carrier ethernet VNF includes
a virtual network interface device based on
Intel’s data plane development kit platform,
which enables high performance networking
from software-based functions.
global telecoms
BUSINESS
Banking for the un-banked: new
channels for financial inclusion
Winners: Asbanc and Ericsson
Ericsson and Asbanc have delivered a
new mobile money banking channel to
millions of Peruvians without access to
traditional banking services.
Since June 2014, Ericsson and
Asbanc have been working to deliver
a new channel for financial inclusion
in Peru.
Project highlights: Asbanc, Peru’s
National Bank Association, is partnering
with Ericsson for the design and
implementation of its mobile money
project — the country’s largest private
initiative for financial inclusion.
Asbanc estimates that 2.1 million
Peruvians will own and benefit from a
mobile wallet by 2019. The Ericsson
m-commerce solution includes the
development of a mobile money
platform, systems integration, learning
services, managed services and
support.
Background: In emerging markets,
such as Peru, the development of
m-commerce services is beneficial
on societal and individual levels by
providing the unbanked with money
accounts and opening the gates to the
formal economy.
The challenge: the majority of Latin
Americans — 61% — are unbanked,
and there is still a high degree of poverty.
With almost half of the labour force
being casually employed and cash being
the most frequent method of payment,
financial security is a grave concern.
The solution: Asbanc selected Ericsson’s
converged wallet solution to power nextgeneration mobile financial services with
a goal to bring on board 2.1 million
unbanked Peruvians within five years.
Ericsson’s solution includes full
systems integration in one platform
capable of hosting all services from
different financial and commercial
institutions to secure interoperability.
The Ericsson solution additionally
bridges interoperability between more
than 30 financial intermediaries.
Benefits for consumers: the Ericsson
wallet platform provides Peruvians
with the ability to store, transfer and
Cloud management
system: enabling open
digital ecosystems
Easy Office cloud portal
and XaaS catalogue for
SME customers
Winners: BT and BearingPoint
Winners: MTS, Teligent and NF CSB
System to enable to rapid construction and
operation of digital ecosystems, including life
sciences and a smart city development.
The compute management system of BT
Compute has been developed to enable the
rapid construction and operation of digital
ecosystems. It now underpins some of BT’s
most innovative offerings, ranging from BT
for Life Sciences through to MK:Smart — the
smart city development for Milton Keynes.
Online cloud-based platform for sales of XaaS
and telecoms services, with single portal and
services catalogue for online ordering of services.
Easy Office, available at cloud.mts.ru,
represents an online platform for sales of XaaS
and telecoms services, with a single portal
and services catalogue for online ordering of
services, single number for authorisation and
verification, a single bill for all services used,
and less paper work for customers.
Services range from basic office software
and antiviruses to videoconferencing and
warehouse optimisation to CRM and website
development, integrated into a single catalogue
and made available to MTS customers across
Russia. The catalogue is being developed and
expanded by new applications with m-health
solutions to be added soon.
withdraw money in a completely secure
environment. Over the next few years,
Peruvians will increasingly have the
freedom to send, spend and receive
money with a mobile phone — a
dynamic that is quickly becoming
an essential part of life for billions of
people around the world.
This will further help usher all
Peruvians into the networked society,
ensure ubiquitous access to mobile
money, and open up new business
opportunities.
Benefits for Asbanc: with the Ericsson
mobile wallet platform, Asbanc will
additionally be able to:
Q Discover new revenue streams.
Generate revenue through interest
float, transaction fees, subscription
fees, account management, and
currency exchange.
Q Attract new customers. Build their
customer base with Ericsson’s secure
and easy-to-use platform.
Q Expand their services. Launch related
payment services while offering new
services to merchants and financial
institutions.
Omni-channel sales
growth engine
Transforming business
operating model for
telecom fulfilment
Winners: Sky Italia and Sigma
Systems
New system for customer acquisition,
extending the same customer experience
across all points, with product catalogue that
handles complex rules.
Sky recognized the need for a new system
for customer acquisition and successfully
implemented Sigma and Salesforce for the
first time. Sky wanted a comprehensive
omni-channel strategy extending the same
customer experience across all touch
points all day, every day. The solution
was a centralised CPQ engine with a
unique enterprise catalogue for a range of
promotions and offers.
Winners: Telstra and Wipro
Telecoms fulfilment operations transformed
by robotics process automation, governed by
command hub and prioritisation of orders by
predictive analytics.
Telstra, like most service providers, had
two key business objectives: to enhance the
customer experience and to reduce cost. A
data analytics project was initiated to come
out with predictive modelling to identify
orders at order entry which are likely to fail
at delivery. This helped to take proactive
measures to expedite on-time fulfilment and
add value to the organisation.
X 74
global telecoms
BUSINESS
Broadcast cloud for
Diamond League
Quality and productivity Real-time energy
innovation in call centres monitoring service
Winners: IMG and Hibernia
Networks
Winners: AssisTT and SYS
Technologies
Consumer service
innovation
Winners: Turkcell and Asay Enerji
Maymay mobile
maternal healthcare app
for Myanmar
Winners: Ooredoo, Koe Koe
Tech and Population Services
International
Cloud-based broadcast-quality HD TV
distribution project with global reach to deliver
supplemental feeds for international sports
events.
IMG wanted to use an alternative to
delivering every event separately on expensive
traditional satellites. This new broadcast
cloud project required distribution of eventspecific supplemental feeds in addition to the
multilateral world feeds that all rights holders
currently accept.
Hibernia Networks designed and engineered
an individually customised mixture of
technologies that not only provided a fully
integrated, high quality product, but stayed
well within the proposed budget, thus
exceeding expectations.
Fraud management in a
dynamic environment
Winners: Mobily and Subex
System to resolve quality and efficiency
shortcomings in call centres, with new control
mechanisms to handle erroneous call rejection
problems
Inbox is a project that aims to resolve
quality and efficiency shortcomings that
directly affect the quality and human
resources process in call centres.
An automatic system to eliminate all of the
manual operations and user preferences was
developed and tested in November 2014.
The company can individually control and
follow up some tasks such as monitoring in
accordance with predetermined call intervals,
tracing the number of calls per assistant,
preparing a monitoring list which lets more than
one QCM to monitor an assistant, and preventing
different QCMs to monitor the same call.
Sales through service
transformation project
Smart meter system enabling corporate and
enterprise customers to monitor and manage
real-time energy consumption in any devices
connected to the internet.
The Turkcell energy monitoring service was
launched in November 2014 and is available
for corporate/enterprise customers.
It is the first and only solution to monitor
and manage real-time energy consumption
in any devices connected to the internet;
to understand the big data with a clean
and simple user-interface; to compare all
consumption points on worldwide map and
between the time intervals; and to predict
future consumption.
Synergy hosted
UC, mobility and
collaboration
Winners: Timico and Genband
Winners: TalkTalk and Wipro
Protective measures to consolidate fraud
management operations to enhance prevention
for mobile and internet services, with
significant financial savings.
Mobily wanted to eliminate known frauds,
uncover new patterns, minimise run-time,
augment internal controls and support
continuous fraud management process
improvement.
Subex’s ecosystem was best suited to
meet the needs. The key objective of the
engagement was to help Mobily build a
proactive fraud management function through
a combination of best practices, domain
expertise, tool capabilities and analytics.
Strategic partnership delivering revenue
assurance of £56 million over three quarters,
with 84,000 re-contracted customers, 68,000
TV customers and 30,000 fibre customers.
A team of experts was formed to drive sales
across all service campaigns of the client. The
team comprised of the sales coaches, location
leads and partner champions in two locations.
One of the key responsibilities of this team
was to introduce this concept into the world of
conventional customer support processes.
A predictive model based on customer
demographics provided an intelligent way of
identifying propensity to buy and the product best
suited for a customer. The complex analytical
back-end is supported by a simple front-end
for service representatives to identify a potential
customer in the initial 30 seconds of the call.
Maternal healthcare app for women in
Myanmar/Burma to provide material on
maternal and child health during and after
pregnancy.
Maymay, which means ‘mother’ in the
Myanmar language, is a maternal healthcare
app, with a particular focus on pregnant
women. The app bridges the mobile and
health sectors to help ensure that a wealth
of useful maternal, child health and wellness
information is readily available to women
across the country both during and after
pregnancy.
Powered by Ooredoo, the app was designed
by local startup Koe Koe Tech and developed
in conjunction with Population Services
International, a global health organisation
dedicated to improving the health of people in
the developing world.
Initial development of the service was made
possible via funding granted from the GSMA
Connected Women programme.
Feature-rich hosted voice, UC, mobility and
collaboration solution allowing business
customers to work, share and edit documents,
video conference and communicate.
Timico Synergy breaks down the barriers
between enterprise and small and medium
business service offerings.
Powered by Genband Nuvia, the launch of
Synergy represents a ground-breaking service
that enables a business of any size to access
the same suite of features and services in the
office, at home or on the move.
X 76
Ericsson and Volvo Cars enable drivers to reconnect with the road with ‘Sensus Connect’ in the
new Volvo XC90
Ericsson and Volvo offer customers a
fully connected experience based on
Ericsson Connected Vehicle Cloud
For more information about
Ericsson’s Connected Vehicle Cloud
solution, visit
ourportfolio/transport/connectedvehicle-cloud
Volvo and Ericsson joined forces to help drivers and
passengers disconnect from the home and reconnect on the road for access to favourite services,
infotainment, navigation and audio. The Volvo
XC90 ‘SENSUS Connect’, powered by Ericsson’s
Connected Vehicle Cloud (CVC) offers customers
a fully connected experience. Consumers now have
access to the most comprehensive in-car control
system on the market.
The design behind Volvo’s all-new XC90 has
completely reconceived how drivers operate a vehicle
with the most modern in-car control system on the
market. One that is crucially easier to use, ensuring
drivers can keep their eyes on the road as much as
possible while being completely connected via the
cloud. Supported by Ericsson, it offers integrated
cloud-based applications for music streaming and
other services, such as the world’s first integrated
Park and Pay application, and the ability to mirror
and use Apple iOS devices in the touch screen display.
The XC90 offers customers a fully connected
experience based on the Ericsson Connected Vehicle
Cloud and the navigation system by HERE, providing the possibility to remotely update content and
simplify the entire car experience. Ericsson Connected Vehicle Cloud currently serves customers in
China, the US and Europe, and is already connecting
hundreds of thousands of Volvo Connected Cars
around the world.
Volvo is working with Ericsson to define connected car technology for the future with a groundbreaking vision to create a world where cars will
communicate intuitively with their drivers, other
cars and the road itself. Q
YOU MAKE MONEY WHERE
OTHERS DARE NOT TREAD
You use telecom-specific analytics to know what customers want and advanced
Service Enablement to create and deliver it, fast. You can manage the cloud and virtual
network in real time. You swiftly roll out networks with accelerated plan-to-provision.
You let partners use your component-based catalog to build on your assets and
increase your revenues. You are an Agile Operator, powered by the Ericsson Agility
Suite. And you are changing what’s possible in telecom.
YOU ARE THE AGILE OPERATOR
ericsson.com/ossbss
@EricssonOSSBSS
global telecoms
BUSINESS
The connected car
Winners: Volvo Cars and Ericsson
Volvo and Ericsson joined forces to
let drivers and passengers disconnect
from the home and reconnect with the
road, the Volvo XC90 Sensus Connect,
powered by Ericsson’s connected vehicle
cloud.
Background: Volvo is working with
Ericsson to define connected car
technology for the future. Volvo and
Ericsson’s vision is ground breaking,
creating a world where cars will
communicate with their drivers, other
cars and the very road itself.
Enter the new Volvo XC90: the design
behind Volvo’s all-new XC90 has
completely re-conceived the way drivers
operate their cars with the most modern
in-car control system on the market
today, that is crucially easier to use,
ensuring drivers can keep their eyes
on the road as much as possible while
being completely connected via the
cloud. Supported by Ericsson, it offers
integrated cloud-based applications for
music streaming and other services,
such as the world’s first integrated park
and pay application, and the ability to
mirror and use Apple iOS devices in the
touch screen display.
Sensus Connect — instinctive
understanding: Volvo’s new interface
is the XC90’s onboard experience,
powered by Ericsson, that combines
connected services, infotainment,
navigation and audio. Sensus Connect
also offers the world’s first car to
infrastructure communication feature
park and pay, and the US launch
of Volvo on Call, one of the most
comprehensive, global telematics
solutions for connecting cars.
Fully connected experience: the XC90
offers customers a fully connected
experience based on the Ericsson
connected vehicle cloud and the
navigation system by Here, providing
the possibility to remotely update content
and simplify the entire car experience.
Sensus Connect includes a broad
selection of cloud-based applications
Klif affordable mobile
internet access in
AMEA
Integrating SMS/IP
messaging: the ‘green
button’ experience
redefined
Winners: Orange, Mozilla and
TCL
Programme to increase mobile internet
access for millions across Asia, Middle East
and Africa with bundle of data, voice, text and
3G smartphone.
The aim of the Orange Klif programme is to
increase mobile internet access for millions
across the Africa, Middle East and Asia region
who have found access to mobile internet
unaffordable.
For a street price under $40 the customer
receives a digital bundle offer of data, voice,
text, and a 3G Firefox OS smartphone
exclusive to Orange that is available in 13
of Orange’s markets in the region, with the
upfront cost giving four to six months of data.
with a branded look and feel. The
selection of cloud-based services,
which may vary depending on
market, includes internet radio,
connected navigation, finding and
paying for parking, discovering
new restaurants at the destination,
seamless streaming of favourite
music and much more.
For example, the XC90 will not
only tell you when it’s time to visit
the garage, but will also suggest an
appointment for you at your Volvo
dealership. The connected service
booking application is the first step
in making the dealer workshop fully
integrated into the connected ecosystem.
In-market today: Ericsson connected
vehicle cloud currently serves customers
in China, the US and Europe, and
is already connecting hundreds of
thousands of Volvo connected cars
around the world.
‘blah’ unified
communications app
Buying energy credits
by mobile phone
Winners: TIM Celular and
Amdocs
Winners: Digicel and Redknee
Winners: Deutsche Telekom and
Jibe Mobile
Centrally managed cloud-based RCS platform
to provide subscribers with video calling,
group messaging, and file sharing.
Deutsche Telekom’s RCS service powered
by Jibe was launched on Android and iOS in
Slovakia and Romania in June 2014. Deutsche
Telekom provided management and launch
leadership teams on site with Jibe engineering
and cloud operations teams in Mountain View,
California, and Düsseldorf, Germany.
The biggest service breakthrough for
users is the integrated SMS/IP messaging
experience allowing subscribers to click
the same messaging button used for SMS
to access IP messaging — presenting the
“green button” experience.
UC app offering rich communications services
including IM, HD VoIP, video calls and
conferences, within the brand for 73 million
customers.
TIM Brasil has become one of the
world’s first service providers to offer rich
communication services — such as instant
messaging, high-definition VoIP, video calls
and conferences — while keeping the user
inside the brand.
Based on the Amdocs unified
communications solution and specially
adapted to meet TIM’s requirements, blah
proves that service providers can successfully
compete with OTT players and deliver
differentiated, high-value services.
Converged billing system and SMS gateway
allowing customers to purchase electricity at
any time directly from their mobile phone.
Redknee’s converged billing system and
SMS gateway is supporting Digicel’s Easypay
‘Easipawa’ prepaid electricity metering service,
enabling Digicel customers to purchase
electricity at any time directly from their
mobile phone. Energy customers simply
enter their meter number and the required
amount of electricity, receive an SMS message
confirmation, and the payment is deducted
directly from their Digicel airtime balance.
Digicel’s postpaid customers can add the
purchased amount of energy to the monthly
bill.
global telecoms
BUSINESS
Effective call centre
management project
Winners: Singtel Optus and
Hewlett-Packard
Project by operator’s customer experience
transformation team with front-line customer
service, IT and networks to improve callcentre efficiency.
SingTel Optus operates several customer
call centres aligned to its fixed line and
wireless services portfolio.
To address these issues, Optus’s customer
experience transformation team embarked on
a joint initiative, involving front-line customer
service, IT and Networks with the objective
to improve call centre efficiency. HP provided
consultancy services.
First US LTE roaming
launch in Alaska
Winners: Alaska Wireless
Network and Syniverse
Leb keys mobile app:
Latin-Arabic mobile
keyboard
Winners: Touch Lebanon and Foo
Solutions
Free mobile app that carries a third-party
keyboard so users can chat more efficiently in
Arabic, using Latin letters that are not needed.
Touch Lebanon created Leb Keys, a mobile
app that carries a third party keyboard: a
Latin Arabic mobile keyboard. The keyboard
was created by identifying the letters that
the Lebanese don’t use when chatting and
replacing them with the numbers they do use.
The free app was then placed on Google
Play and the App Store for everyone to use,
Touch customer or not.
The downloads of the Leb Keys app have
exceeded all targets, reaching 350,000
within six months of launch, representing over
17% of Touch’s 2.1 million customers.
SMS ticket for Minsk
metro
Roaming project: roam
like you’re home
Winners: BeST (life:)) and
Tagvance
Winners: Digicel and WeDo
Technologies
Payment of metro tickets by sending SMS,
with unique number checked by scanners at
station turnstile.
SMS-ticket is an innovative service that
subscribers can use their phones to use the
Minsk metro. The SMS-ticket price is equal to
the cost of one token.
The SMS-ticket contains a unique number
which can be read by scanners at the
entrance of metro stations. Almost any phone
is suitable for payment, even feature phones
with black-and-white screens.
95% reduction in roaming rates by charging
customers as if they were at home, resulting
in strong revenue growth across 27 markets.
Roam Like You’re Home allows Digicel
customers to enjoy the same rates that they
would enjoy at home while abroad.
If a customer from Jamaica, for example,
was roaming in the United States, standard
roaming costs to call home is $1.68 a
minute while with RLYH they only pay $0.08.
If they were to make calls within the US, it
would cost $0.08 a minute but while on
RLYH, it costs $0.02 a minute.
Data would cost $5.06 per megabyte while
with RLYH it costs only $0.03 a megabyte.
Digicel has experienced a strong revenue
growth despite an average 95% drop on
roaming rates across 27 Digicel markets.
Digital Hub API and
services platform
Winners: VimpelCom, Opera
Software and Skyfire
90% time-to-market
reduction through
innovative product
catalogue
Winners: Mobiltel and Amdocs
Partnership by two leading US operators, one
regional and one national, to allow customers
to roam on to each other’s LTE networks.
Alaska Wireless Network launched LTE
roaming and interworking with T-Mobile US
in September 2014 by using the Syniverse
IPX network, the LTE roaming backbone
supporting nearly 800 LTE roaming routes
reaching more than 185 operators in 44
countries.
The project between Syniverse, AWN and
T-Mobile US was unique in that it represented
the first domestic LTE roaming agreement for
the US.
The launch provided AWN with a
nationwide LTE footprint that allows the
company to compete against national carriers
in the Alaska market.
Upgraded product catalogue in a new
architectural environment to reduce overall
deployment cycles and speed up deployment
time — from four weeks to three days.
Mobiltel has managed to reduce its time
to market, from idea to rollout, for consumer
services by an astonishing 90%.
Amdocs decided to deploy the existing
Amdocs product catalogue, upgraded
to a new version, within a new type of
architectural environment where supporting
systems would only need to updated with
incremental changes rather than uploading
the entire database.
Digital Hub to improve the way mobile
internet and smartphone apps work for 230
million mobile customers of 14 mobile
networks worldwide.
Digital Hub is a VimpelCom platform
improving the way mobile internet and
smartphone apps work for its mobile
customers. It is designed to give the best
mobile internet customer experience across
all devices and options to access internet
on mobile, with additional convenience and
control to address customers’ needs.
Opera Software integrated services with
VimpelCom group digital APIs, resulting
in a tailored, transparent in-app customer
experience for customers, including
integration with Opera Mini co-branded
browser and WebPass service.
X 78
global telecoms
BUSINESS
Sharper world with
4k TV and home
broadband
Winners: Hutchison Global
Communications and Le
Shi Internet Information and
Technology (Letv)
Bundled offer comprising high-speed 4K
home broadband service, entertainment
content and smart TV, to increase availability
of 4K content.
Hutchison Global Communications and
Letv, a content and smart-device provider,
jointly launched a bundled offer comprising
high speed 4K home broadband service,
entertainment content and smart TV.
Viewers enjoy a one-stop device, content
and broadband service from one single
provider. It eliminates management of
separate contracts and lessens customer
support time. Letv’s smart TVs turn the
customer’s home into an all-inclusive
entertainment centre, covering smooth
streaming of a wide range of TV programmes,
movies, gaming and video conferencing in
superb quality.
gtb
Improving mobile
Indoona voice over IP
subscribers’ experience service
through direct operator Winners: Tiscali and Metaswitch
Networks
billing
Homepoint multi-service
unit for smartphones
and tablets
Winners: Orange and Sercomm
Winners: Zain Jordan and SLA
Mobile
Direct operator billing to allow customers to
pay for digital and virtual content from thirdparty providers by charging to monthly bill or
prepaid credit
Zain Jordan partnered with SLA Mobile
to roll out a mobile payment solution that
enabled customers to pay for digital and
virtual content from third-party providers by
charging the transaction to their monthly
mobile phone bill or using their prepaid credit.
SLA Mobile has joined forces with
technology solutions providers Rubikomm
and Actel to provide Zain customers with a
multitude of applications for direct operator
billing in order to ensure they receive a safe
and seamless payment experience online.
App gives users access to social network
designed for smartphones, offering chat with
text, photos, videos, audio, file sharing, group
calls and chats.
Tiscali’s Indoona application gives users
access to a unique social network designed
for smartphones, offering: chat with text,
photos, videos, audio, locations and stickers;
local and cloud file sharing; group calls and
group chats; and free minutes to international
destinations and extra minutes available at
very low rates. Tiscali based their Indoona
service on Metaswitch’s open source Project
Clearwater, built to run in an NFV environment
and the cloud.
Tiscali has developed its own services
and smartphone application to run on top
of Clearwater IMS, allowing it to provide a
compelling feature set, enabling it to compete
on level terms with OTT operators.
Sharing platform for smartphones and tablets
to let users create a secure Wi-Fi network for
friends and share phones, videos and music.
Homepoint is an innovative small device,
a sharing platform with which customers
can easily give a secured wifi to guests; play
music from a smartphone to a stereo system;
and access all files stored on a USB key or
SD card plugged to the Homepoint, including
photos, videos and others documents, thanks
to the dedicated application.
Orange involved Sercomm to transform
this strong technical challenge concept into a
product. Sercomm and Orange internal teams
worked closely on the hardware, design and
software.
GLOBAL
TELECOMS
BUSINESS
POWER100
Who will be the
Power 100 for 2015?
See page 9 for more details
50 women to watch in telecoms
Anne Bouverot, director general of the GSMA, introduces our report on women in telecoms
Changing the status quo
Anne Bouverot: Women don’t hold as
many leadership or board positions
as men. I believe we can change the
status quo
I’m pleased to see that Global Telecoms Business is
highlighting the women to watch in technology in
this edition.
However, it’s no secret that women are still underrepresented in this sector. Much has been written about the fact that girls are not choosing to
study STEM — science, technology, engineering
and mathematics — subjects, that there are far fewer
women than men working in technology companies
across the globe and that women don’t hold as many
leadership or board positions as men.
I believe we can change the status quo. Making
women aware of the many opportunities in mobile
and ICT is a passion of mine.
From the beginning, I saw that computer science
and telecoms were dynamic, growing sectors and
pursuing these subjects would prepare me for many
different career opportunities. More than 20 years
later, I am even more convinced of this!
While new generations of women are increasingly
embracing technology in their everyday lives, they
may not realise just how exciting it is to work in
mobile and ICT.
Of course there are enormous opportunities for
people with deep technological skills, but there
are just as many for people focusing in other disci-
plines, whether it’s creating connected cars, advancing mobile commerce, or even designing the master
plan for a smart city. The opportunities are limited
only by the imagination.
We need to make women in mobile and ICT the
norm rather than the exception.
Motivating women to work in the mobile industry needs to start from the ground up. We need to
ensure that girls and young women are given the
opportunities and guidance to pursue STEM subjects
in the first place, provided with practical experience
like internships in the field and also inspired by the
potential of mobile to change people’s lives.
And we also need to encourage women who are
already on career paths in technology to continue on
in them and address the challenges that may cause
them to abandon their careers mid-stream.
To make this a reality, we need to address
the entire ecosystem. It starts with engaging the
stakeholders involved — educators, policy makers,
mobile operators, manufacturers and suppliers —
and extends to women themselves recognising the
opportunities for their talents in the mobile and
ICT industry.
Working together, we can strike a new balance, for
the benefit of all. Q
X
Women account for less than 40% of the
industry’s workforce, and it’s even worse
at high management levels. Agnes Stubbs
introduces GTB’s first ever list of the 50
women to watch in telecoms
The gender roles
are shifting, but
slowly, and women
remain underrepresented
In her $10.5 billion bid to
acquire Verizon’s wireline
operations in California, Florida
and Texas, in early 2015,
Frontier Communications’ thenCEO Maggie Wilderotter pulled
out her address book and tapped
into some of the industry’s
toughest dealmakers.
It was to be an all-women
network featuring JP Morgan
Chase investment banker
Jennifer Nason, the global
chairman of its technology,
media and telecommunications
practice; Martha McGarry,
partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate,
Meagher & Flom; and seasoned
mergers-and-acquisitions
strategist Joele Frank, founder of
Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer
Katcher.
“I hired them because of their
talents and competencies,”
Wilderotter, who stepped down
as CEO in April 2015 and is
now executive chairman, told
Bloomberg. “But it’s a win-win
that they’re women.”
The move is a sign that gender
roles are shifting in the telecoms
and technology space.
However, recent findings still
reveal some damning statistics. A
report by Gartner in 2014 found
that the percentage of women in
chief information officer’s roles
has remained largely static at
14% since 2004. The study found
50 women to watch
Muna Al Hashemi
Michelle Bourque
CEO, Batelco Bahrain
VP of product and marketing, wholesale
and access strategy, business markets,
BCE Nexxia
Hashemi is the first
woman to hold a CEO
role in Bahrain’s telecoms
industry. She joined Batelco
Bahrain in 1994 and was
in charge of Batelco’s consumer division
since 2008. Hasemi began her career in the
engineering department and rose through the
ranks in various divisions, including customer
services, accounts, product marketing, product
development and customer marketing. She
is also a board director at Umniah, Batelco’s
group operation in Jordan.
Khawla Al-Jaber
Group technology strategy director, Zain
Al-Jaber has more than
two decades of experience
across technology sectors
including 2G and 3G mobile,
internet and broadband
data. She has a broad range of expertise in
strategies, business development, product
development, VAS and service fulfilment, as
well as sales and marketing. Al-Jaber has
also been instrumental in various greenfield
implementations especially in areas of
launching products and services.
Catherine Birkett
CFO, Interoute
Birkett has led the
company’s finance
department since the end
of 2004, having joined the
company in 2000. As CFO,
she has completed six acquisitions, including
the European hosting business of Via/PSI, the
Nordic video conferencing group VCG and
Quantix the cloud application management
group. Birkett has driven the business through
a high growth period to a position in 2013 with
revenues of €417 million, ebitda €92 million
and generating cash.
Bourque leads a team of
product and marketing
professionals at BCE Nexxia.
Prior to Bell, BCE Nexxia’s
parent company, Bourque
worked at MTS-Allstream, AT&T Canada
and Unitel where she held senior leadership
positions, including director roles in corporate
programmes, voice planning and engineering,
local voice order entry, marketing portfolio and
project management, and marketing operations
and business planning.
Anne Bouverot
Director general, GSMA
Former Orange executive
Bouverot was appointed
as director general of the
GSMA and a member of its
board in 2011. During her
four years at the organisation she was a strong
advocate of global operators, pushing ahead
with advocacy programmes in the industry.
Before the GSMA, Bouverot was executive
vice president for mobile services at Orange,
where she defined the strategic transformation
programmes which served over 120 million
customers. From August 2015, Bouverot will
be chair and CEO of Morpho, a French security
firm.
Ruth Bridger
VP marketing, Xorcom
Since 2008 Bridger has
been VP of marketing at
Xorcom, a manufacturer
of Asterisk-based modular
and scalable VoIP to PSTN
hardware telephony solutions for commercial
installations. Prior to that, Bridger was
marketing manager at Surf Communication
Solutions, a developer of infrastructure
platforms enabling the convergence of voice,
video and data across wireline and wireless
networks.
X
The gender roles are shifting
50 women to watch
(continued)
that women occupied 11.2% of
technology leadership roles in
Europe, the Middle East and
Africa, compared with 18.1% in
North America, 13.4% in Latin
America and 11.5% in Asia.
Also in 2014 Google,
Facebook, Apple and other
major tech companies found that
men outnumbered women four
to one or more in their technical
sector. And in a report released
February 2015, the GSM
Association found that women
accounted for less than 40% of
the workforce in three-quarters
of telcos surveyed.
The numbers tell the same
story of old: women remain
under-represented in leadership,
and across all levels, in the
industry. And while the numbers
are growing, they remain
staggeringly low.
Stephanie Liston, a former
board member of the UK
regulator Ofcom, agrees that
female representation across the
industry has been slow to rise.
“Traditionally there have not
been many women in technology
and engineering; people tend
to enter the industry through
an engineering perspective,”
she says. Liston founded the
London-based Women in
Telecoms and Technology group
in 2000 out of “loneliness”,
she says: “There weren’t many
women in any of the meetings I
attended then.”
Since then, the networking
group has grown from four to
1,200 worldwide with the aim to
encourage women in all stages in
their careers.
Mignon Clyburn
SVP, global solutions and sales
operations, AT&T Business Solutions
Commissioner, Federal Communications
Commission
Chow leads a national sales
and support organisation
of over 2,000 professionals
responsible for supporting
customers and sales teams
across AT&T’s business markets. A veteran
of the industry for over two decades, Chow
has held leadership positions in engineering,
sales, marketing, customer care, international
operations, product management, and
strategic planning. She serves on AT&T’s T
University governing board which supports
the corporation’s leadership development
imperative.
Appointed to a second term
at the FCC by president
Barack Obama in 2013,
Clyburn has voted to
adopt the controversial
net neutrality rules despite opposition from
carriers. Clyburn has served at the FCC since
2009, after 11 years as a member of the sixth
district on the public service commission of
South Carolina. In addition she is an advocate
for enhanced accessibility in communications
for disabled citizens, and works closely with
representative groups for the deaf and hard of
hearing.
Chua Sock Koong
Margherita Della Valle
CEO, Singtel
Deputy group CFO, Vodafone
Chua is responsible for
the company’s consumer
business, group enterprise
and group digital life. She
has risen through the ranks
since joining Singtel in 1989 as treasurer. She
was appointed CFO in 1999, then group CFO
and CEO international from February 2006 to
October 2006 before being promoted to deputy
group CEO. Chua sits on the boards of Bharti
Airtel, Bharti Telecom and key subsidiaries of the
group. She is also a member of the Singapore
Management University Board of Trustees and
the Public Service Commission.
Della Valle has been group
financial controller and
deputy CFO of Vodafone
group since October 2010,
having been CFO of its
European Region from April 2007 to October
2010 and CFO of Vodafone Italy from 2004
to 2007. She joined Omnitel Pronto Italia —
which became Vodafone Italy — in 1994 and
held various consumer marketing positions
in business analytics and customer base
management.
Mary Clark
CMO, Syniverse
Named CMO in 2014,
Clark leads Syniverse’s
product marketing,
corporate communications,
branding, digital strategy,
strategic events and industry relations. She
was previously senior vice president of nextgeneration roaming services and standards
and senior vice president of roaming. In these
roles she spearheaded product introductions in
Syniverse’s real-time intelligence and strategic
consulting services, defined the company’s LTE
strategy from concept to product introduction
and took on a leadership role in its acquisition
of MACH.
Minority
“Women are still a tremendous
minority but we are growing
in numbers and strength,” says
Illisa Miller, CEO of iMiller
Public Relations, noting the
steadily increasing number
of women in managerial and
executive positions.
“We haven’t shattered the
glass ceiling but we’re breaking
it in areas. You can see that
at AT&T with its women
executives. Yahoo has set the
Anne Chow
Karen Freitag
President, Sprint Enterprise Solutions
Freitag is responsible
for the profit and loss
of Sprint’s enterprise
business-to-business sales.
Her organisation provides
platform solutions serving a broad range of
industries and customers with a portfolio of
services including IP, 3G and 4G wireless,
wireline and M2M solutions. She joined Sprint
as the vice president of global sales and
business development in February 2013.
X
X
50 women to watch
(continued)
bar with really strong women in
leading positions,” notes Miller.
Why is the gap still so
pronounced in an industry
known to invest in innovation?
Pointing to the “sadly skewed”
scales, Noreen Rucinski, CIO
of Business Texter, says that
women themselves may be
partly responsible: “Over the last
several years, I have seen more
women at the CEO and CTO
level. But rarely do I see any who
step up or speak up and direct.”
Anne Bouverot, directorgeneral of the GSMA, says she
faced significant opposition in
her drive to increase the number
of women speakers at the annual
Mobile World Congress — from
women themselves.
“I was given all sorts of
reasons like ‘I’m too busy’ or
‘I’m not ready to speak because
I don’t have anything to add’.
In general, it is harder to get
women to speak, than it is men,”
says Bouverot.
This year’s MWC saw an 18%
attendance from women, about
the same as last year.
Women may be the ones
holding themselves back, says
Miller. As an example, some still
find it intimidating to walk into a
room and “be the only woman in
a room of internet technicians”.
She says the lack of self-belief
and confidence is a reflection
of a culture that is bombarded
by influences such as fashion
magazines. “Society tells women
what it expects of them. If we’re
not aware of these, we can’t
overcome those challenges.”
Such influences can have
negative impacts on women’s
thinking and hold them back.
Suzanne Bowen, VP of
DIDX and co-founder of Super
Technologies, observes that
women are still more likely to be
the listeners in a mixed-gender
group. “Women have it but
they don’t express themselves as
much. It’s a lack of confidence
and taking a risk to add to the
conversation.”
Bowen is quick to add that
there are many more women
who are getting braver about
Cynthia Gordon
CCO, Ooredoo
Gordon joined Ooredoo
Group in 2012 as group
chief commercial officer
where she oversees
marketing, distribution and
customer services. In addition she works with
operators to develop, review and implement
commercial strategies to drive revenue and
profitability growth in local and international
markets. Before Ooredoo she was VP of
partnerships and emerging markets at Orange,
and before that was CMO of MTS, the Russian
operator.
Monique Hayward
Director, outbound marketing network
platforms group, Intel
An 18-year Intel veteran,
Hayward leads a team that’s
responsible for promoting
Intel’s vision to transform
network infrastructure. She
has also led teams and managed strategic
programmes in marketing, communications
and business development in software and
services, global diversity, mobile platforms and
corporate marketing.
Christine Heckart
CMO, Brocade
Appointed CMO in
March 2014, Heckhart is
responsible for the strategic
direction of Brocade’s global
marketing organisation.
She is instrumental in driving the strategy to
generate brand awareness and to develop
and execute demand generation programmes
globally. With more than 25 years of experience
in the technology industry, Heckhart has held
a senior marketing leadership positions at
networking and other high tech companies
such as ServiceSource, NetApp and Juniper
Networks.
Mari-Noëlle
Jégo-Laveissière
EVP of innovation, marketing and
technologies of Orange group
Promoted to her present
role in March 2014, JégoLaveissière is a member of
the executive committee of
the Orange group. Previously,
she was senior vice president of international
and backbone network factory. During 20102012, she was SVP for R&D for the group. JégoLaveissière has held various executive positions
since joining France Telecom in 1996, including
VP for home marketing of Orange France, head
of a French region where she was in charge
of technical and commercial entities for mass
markets and business clients.
Susan Johnson
SVP of global supply chain, AT&T
Johnson is responsible for all
supply chain functions within
AT&T including strategic
sourcing, purchasing,
supplier diversity, supply
chain logistics and distribution. She began
working for Pacific Telesis in 1994 in corporate
development and has served in a variety of
positions within AT&T. She was head of AT&T’s
corporate strategy group and SVP of business
development, responsible for developing new
revenue opportunities through the application
of emerging technologies, and was SVP of
customer information services. Most recently
she was SVP of investor relations, the primary
contact with the investment community.
Kay Kapoor
President, government solutions, AT&T
Mobility & Business Solutions
Kapoor assumed the
position of president
at AT&T’s government
solutions in 2013 and has
since led on delivering
network and technology services to the US
federal government. Previously, she served as
CEO of Accenture Federal Services. Kapoor
has 25 years of experience in the federal
government market and has held various
management positions at Lockheed Martin
and ITT.
X
50 women to watch
(continued)
sharing “without being
embarrassed or not feeling
accepted”.
Building your network
In an industry that is “all about
relationships”, Telarix’s director
of marketing and human
resources, Lisa Tovar, points out
that networking is more crucial
than ever before.
“The majority of relationships
— I hate to say it — happens
at the bar,” Tovar observes.
Instead of shying away, it’s an
opportunity for women to show
their personalities — while
discussing business. “Put yourself
out there. This industry is very
small. It may not seem so but it
is. You will see the same people
as you evolve and build those
relationships,” she says.
Rimma Perelmuter, CEO and
global board director of Mobile
Ecosystem Forum, says that,
in general, women may be too
studious to a fault.
“Sometimes we are too
busy doing the homework
and the presentations — and
not dedicating enough time
to networking and fostering
the right relationships and
champions.”
Emphasising the importance of
networking, Liston advises: “Get
out there and be seen. People
need to know you’re there at all
levels of your career.”
Speaking up: The double standards
In a January 2015 op-ed in the
New York Times, Facebook’s
Sheryl Sandberg and Adam
Grant, a professor at the
Wharton business school,
pointed out that male executives
who spoke more often than their
peers were rewarded with 10%
higher rating of competence
while female executives who
spoke more than their peers
received 14% lower rating from
both men and women.
“When a woman speaks in a
professional setting, she walks
a tightrope. Either she’s barely
heard or she’s judged as too
aggressive. When a man says
virtually the same thing, heads
X
Ronnie Klingner
Sara Mazur
President of wholesale voice, PCCW
Global
Head of research, Ericsson
With over 13 years’
experience in telecoms,
Klingner leads a team
that covers operations,
engineering, sales and
back-office support. Previously as regional
vice president of US wholesale voice, she led
a PCCW Global sales team that served carriers
in the Americas, growing the business by more
than 200%. Prior to PCCW Global, Klingner
was regional sales director for Teleglobe
International.
A scientist with 17 years
of experience in R&D,
Mazur has held various
management positions
within the company before
she was appointed VP and head of Ericsson
Research in November 2012. Previously as
head of system management within business
unit networks, she focussed on unit-wide
technology and research coordination and
strategic management of technologies. She has
also served as expert and head of a research
unit responsible for radio network research.
Dominique Leroy
Brooks McCorcle
CEO, Belgacom
President, partner solutions, AT&T Mobile
& Business Solutions
The first woman to lead
Belgacom, Leroy was
appointed in 2014 and will
hold the position for the
next five years. She was
EVP of the consumer business unit of Belgacom
since June 2012. She joined the company in
October 2011 as VP of sales for the consumer
business unit. Prior to Belgacom, Leroy worked
at Unilever for 24 years where she was
managing director of Unilever Benelux and
member of Unilever’s Benelux management
committee.
Catherine Livingstone
McCorcle is responsible
for launching solutions
to drive value and
growth in AT&T Mobile &
Business Solutions. Her
responsibilities were expanded in late 2014 to
lead AT&T partner solutions, which combines
the AT&T partner exchange reseller programme,
AT&T Wholesale (including Global Wholesale)
and ACC Business (an alternate sales agent
programme). Over her 24-year tenure with
AT&T and its predecessor companies, Brooks
has held positions in M&A and finance, and
executive positions in consumer marketing,
customer care and sales.
Chairman, Telstra
Livingstone has been a
non-executive director
since November 2000,
was appointed chairman
in May 2009 and was last
re-elected in 2014. She is chairman of the
nomination committee and a member of the
audit and risk committee and the remuneration
committee. She was chairman of Australia’s
science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific
and Industrial Research Organisation, from
2001 to 2006.
Kate McKenzie
COO, Telstra
Appointed COO in October
2013, McKenzie is
responsible for Telstra
operations, chief technology
office and innovation
portfolios. Prior to her present role, McKenzie
was group MD at Telstra innovation, products
and marketing from 2010 where she oversaw
product, promotion and pricing across the
company, including the major product units,
mobile products, fixed voice and broadband,
network applications and services, data and
IP as well as the NBN team and the chief
technology office.
X
50 women to watch
(continued)
nod in appreciate for his fine
idea. As a result, women often
decide that saying less is more,”
they wrote.
Such barriers can prove
detrimental to businesses and
should merit a closer look
by companies. For a start,
corporations are tackling the
numbers in concrete ways — by
implementing gender quotas.
In 2003, Norway became
the first country in the world
to introduce a 40% quota
for female directors of listed
companies. Since then, quotas
have also been imposed in other
European countries, such as
Belgium, Iceland, Italy, the
Netherlands and Spain.
Under a March 2015 German
law, 100 of the largest German
companies must award at
least 30% of board seats to
women by January 2016.
Another 3,500 companies
must present a quota plan with
binding targets, demonstrating
how they will add women to
their boards by the end of
September 2015.
Elsewhere in the world,
Malaysia has enforced a 30%
quota for new appointments to
boards and Brazil has imposed a
40% target for state-controlled
companies.
According to Bloomberg
business journalist Paula Dwyer,
a growing number of studies
show that boards with greaterthan-average gender diversity
prove better at managing risk.
Companies with at least one
woman on their board are said to
generate faster revenue growth,
produce larger returns on equity
and be more innovative, she
reports.
Numbers alone aren’t enough
to change corporate behaviour
and culture. Nicola Wolfram,
COO at German-based
messaging company Tyntec,
says that imposing gender
targets could end up being
counterproductive and used
“as an excuse for not making
any real changes that can
disrupt deep seated cultural and
behavioural patterns”.
Maxine Moreau
Funke Opeke
EVP, global operations and shared
services, CenturyLink
CEO, Main One Cable Company
Moreau is responsible for
the company’s operations
including end-to-end
planning, engineering,
construction, operation
and maintenance of its global network, as well
as region operations and hosting data centres.
In her previous role as senior vice president of
integration and process improvement, Moreau led
the integration of CenturyTel, Embarq, Qwest and
Savvis, creating the third largest telco and internet
provider in the US in terms of lines served.
Claudia Nemat
CEO Europe and group CTO, Deutsche
Telekom
Nemat has been a
member of the board of
management since 2011
and manages Deutsche
Telekom in Europe. Before
joining Deutsche Telekom, she spent 17 years
working for the consultancy McKinsey. In her
last position there, she was responsible for the
high-tech sector in Europe, the Middle East
and Africa. In addition to her roles at Deutsche
Telekom, she is also non-executive member of
the board at Greece’s OTE.
Opeke is CEO of Main
One Cable Company, a
Nigerian company that
provides open access,
wholesale, international
broadband capacity to four countries in west
Africa. She raised $240 million plus $28 million
in contingency and launched the company
to build a pioneer private 7,000 kilometre
submarine cable system in west Africa. After a
20-year career in the US as executive director
of Verizon Communications’ wholesale division
in New York, Opeke returned to Nigeria in 2005
as the CTO of MTN Nigeria Communications.
Kathy Perone
COO, Hibernia Networks
With over 30 years of
experience in domestic
and international telecoms
services, Perone has
pioneered service offerings
for media, financial, government and global
enterprise customers. Before joining Hibernia
in 2011, Perone was president of XLNT
Technologies, providing consulting services to
private equity, investment banking and telcos.
She was also previously CEO of Westcom,
president and CEO of Focal Communications
and president of North America at Level 3.
Uche Ofodile
CEO, Tigo DRC
Karen Puckett
Ofodile joined the Millicom
group as CEO of Tigo in
October 2014. Before that
she was credited to have
transformed the Vodafone
brand as CMO, resulting in the doubling of revenue
and becoming the second largest telecoms
operator in Ghana. She played an instrumental role
in Vodafone Ghana’s success by overhauling the
strategy and driving business performance.
EVP and COO, CenturyLink
Puckett presently leads
revenue-generating
initiatives, including
sales, sales support,
marketing and the
customer experience for consumer, business
and government agency customers in the US
and globally. She has been at the forefront of
the company’s transformation from a local
operator to an industry leader in advanced
communications services. She has been
instrumental in executing the company’s
growth strategies in cloud, data hosting and
managed services while maintaining its
focus on operational excellence and financial
strength.
X
50 women to watch
(continued)
Appointing more women on
boards is good for business —
except when it’s implemented
by quota, argues Dwyer.
“When companies in other
countries have been forced
to include women, they often
complied with the quota —
then found creative ways
around it.”
One example, she says, is to
dilute a new female director’s
influence by adding two male
directors.
Wolfram contends that
supervisory board members
are far too removed from
daily corporate activities to be
impactful. “Supervisory boards
have — by definition — no
hiring power in a corporation or
influence on product roadmap.
The opportunity for a female
supervisory board member
to trigger real change is still
minimal, at best.”
The key to breaking down
cultural and behavioural barriers
in the workplace is to expose
more employees to diversity.
A change in attitudes will then
follow, says Wolfram.
“Companies need to place
more women where they can
really interact on a day-to-day
basis and make a difference.”
Women should be positioned
in roles where they can make a
meaningful change, challenges
Rucinski. “Today, if you have
a C-level meeting with the
likes of AT&T, Verizon or
T-Mobile, you will see a good
group of women with roles
from service managers to
engineering,” she says. “The
question is: what jobs do they
really have? What positions
are they in and what services
do they manage? Are they in
charge of strategy or do they
handle the files that then go to
the men who are in charge of
strategy?”
Sabine Sitterli
MD, Airtel Ghana
Regional VP, networks EMEA, Akamai
Quist is the first Ghanaian
woman to lead a
multinational telco in Ghana.
Her experience covers
both mobile and fixed
telephony, and extends to value added services
for consumers and enterprises. Before joining
Airtel Ghana, Quist was the director of Vodafone
Ghana’s enterprise division.
A 14 year veteran of
Akamai, Sitterli joined
the company from AT&T
Global Network Services in
2000. As head of networks
in Europe, Middle East and Africa, Sitterli
leads a globally distributed team of business
development and network strategy managers
with responsibility for enabling, scaling and
expanding the Akamai platform across the
region. She led the effort to establish and
develop Akamai’s network and colocation
relationships with hundreds of operators.
Sandra Rivera
VP, data centre group general manager,
network platforms group, Intel
Rivera has held marketing
and business development
roles for 13 years at Intel,
focussed on communications
markets and products, with
responsibility for product marketing, segment
marketing, channel and ecosystem marketing.
Prior to Intel, Rivera co-founded the CTI Authority,
a computer telephony distributor, served as
president of Catalyst Telecom’s CT division
and had responsibility for the Dialogic sales
organisation in eastern US and Canada.
Michelle Robinson
Mary Stanhope
VP Marketing, Global Capacity
Stanhope is responsible
for the definition, strategic
positioning and market
adoption of the company’s
product and services.
She has over 20 years of experience in the
communications industry holding business
development, product marketing and systems
implementation roles of responsibility in
companies such as Sidera Networks, RCN,
Teleport Communications, Atos Origin and
SchlumbergerSema.
VP, state government affairs, Verizon
Robinson began her career
at Verizon over ten years
ago and is today one of its
highest ranking women.
She is responsible for
shaping and advancing public policy strategies
for its telephone, mobile and enterprise
business segments. She also directs Verizon’s
philanthropic activities toward the needs of the
communities in Verizon’s southeast region.
Sheryl Sandberg
COO, Facebook
Career versus parenting
Even in the 21st century where
the likes of Sandberg and HP’s
Meg Whitman are running
some of the world’s top tech
companies, long-established
Lucy Quist
X
As COO of Facebook,
Sandberg oversees the
company’s business
operations including
sales, marketing, business
development, legal, human resources, public
policy and communications. Before joining
Facebook in 2007, she was VP of global online
sales and operations at Google, where she built
and managed the online sales channels for
advertising and publishing and operations for
consumer products worldwide. Her 2013 book,
Lean in, has inspired a movement of support
groups and impacted public discussions on
gender equality at work.
Sun Yafang
Chairwoman of the board, Huawei
Sun has been chair of
Huawei since 1999. After
joining the company in
1989, Sun has served
as an engineer of the
marketing and sales department, director of the
training centre, president of the procurement
department, among many others. Prior to
Huawei, Sun was a technician at the stateowned Xinxiang Liaoyuan Radio Factory, a
teacher at China Research Institute of Radio
Wave Propagation, and an engineer at Beijing
Research Institute of Information Technology.
X
50 women to watch
(continued)
roles about women as caregivers
and men as breadwinners are still
deeply intrinsic.
Which leads to one of the
most discussed challenges that
women still face today — the
struggle between career ambition
and parenting.
Ruth Bridger, VP of marketing
at Israel-based Xorcom, says the
desire to invest greater time and
effort in child rearing has been
one of common factors that have
hindered women’s progression to
leadership.
“I am lucky to live in a
country where there is a great
support system for working
mothers. Still, the woman’s
role is considered more central
to the child’s needs and so
the commitment to work is
somewhat less than what a man
can invest,” she says.
In Germany where
Tyntec’s Wolfram is based,
it is “less common” to see
working mothers in senior
or management-level
positions. “Aside from the
inflexible work and social
support environment, there
is the added cultural pressure
for German mothers to
take on more parenting
responsibilities,” she says.
Serpil Timuray
Margrethe Vestager
Regional CEO, AMAP, Vodafone
Competition commissioner, European
Commission
Timuray has been
Vodafone’s regional CEO of
its Africa, Middle East and
Asia Pacific region since
January 2014. Timuray
joined Vodafone as CEO of Vodafone Turkey in
January 2009 and was appointed as a nonexecutive director on the board of Vodacom
Group in South Africa in September 2012, the
boards of Vodafone India, Vodafone Hutchison
Australia, Safaricom Kenya in November 2013
and board of Vodafone Qatar in June 2014.
She began her career in 1991 in marketing
at Procter & Gamble, where she was later
appointed to the executive committee of
Procter & Gamble Turkey, and became general
manager of Danone Turkey from 2002-2008.
Mary Ann Turcke
President, Bell Media
Turcke was appointed
president at Bell Media in
Canada in 2015. She joined
the company in 2005 as
VP of customer experience
and operations for small and medium business
and was promoted three years later to EVP of
field operations, leading its team of 12,000
installation and service technicians in delivering
fibre TV, internet and other Bell residential and
business services.
Marni Walden
EVP, president of product innovation and
new business, Verizon Communications
Appointed to her current
position in February 2015,
Walden is responsible for
growing Verizon’s emerging
businesses, such as IoT,
digital media and telematics. She also oversees
the company’s strategy development and
planning group. Walden has held positions as
EVP and president, product and new business
innovation, as well as EVP and COO for Verizon
Wireless.
Padmasree Warrior
Former CTO, Cisco
Jayshree Ullal
Change in corporate culture
CEO, Arista Networks
According to a Boston
Consulting Group study,
Shattering the Glass Ceiling:
An Analytical Approach
to Advancing Women in
Leadership Roles, restrictive
workplaces do not accommodate
new mothers.
In addition companies
that emphasise a “culture
of presence” — preferring
that employees be physically
present as opposed to
telecommuting or remote
working — “do not favour
women”, says the report.
The study found that for
women who aspire to leadership
positions, the secret to work-life
balance isn’t in free or low-cost
day care but having a supportive
employer and flexible work
programmes.
Since she joined in 2008,
Arista has been at the
forefront of software defined
networking. In 2014 Ullal
led the company to an IPO
on the New York Stock Exchange. Before Arista
she was senior vice president at Cisco and
responsible for $10 billion in annual revenue
from data centre, switching and services,
including Cisco’s flagship Nexus 7000 and
Catalyst 4500 and 6500 product lines.
Since her appointment as
competition commissioner
in November 2014,
Vestager has challenged
the practices of companies
such as Google and taken it to court for anticompetitive behaviour. As Denmark’s deputy
prime minister and minister for economic and
interior affairs, she drove talks on bank capital
rules during the country’s EU presidency in
2012, later playing a key role in the setup of
the EU’s banking union.
Warrior was chief
technology and strategy
officer of Cisco until
new CEO Chuck Robbins
appointed a new CTO
in early June and asked Warrior to become
a strategic adviser. Warrior, who joined the
company in 2008, was charged with aligning
technology development and corporate strategy
to enable Cisco to shape and lead major
market transitions. She directed technology
and operational innovation across the company
and oversaw strategic partnership, mergers
and acquisitions, the integration of business
models, the incubation of technologies as well
as the cultivation of technical talent. Before
Cisco, Warrior spent 23 years at Motorola
where she served as executive vice president
and CTO.
X
50 women to watch
(continued)
“Such cultural prejudice is
something that companies can
work to dismantle — with the
knowledge that improved work
culture and less emphasis on
face time are of benefit to male
employees too.”
Tovar — mother to a girl
— says she has benefitted
from having an understanding
employer and a flexible work
culture. That, she says, has
enabled her to pursue her
present leadership roles.
Sharon White
Suzi Williams
Chief executive, Ofcom
Global brand and marketing director, BT
An economist, White took
over as chief executive
of UK regulator Ofcom in
March 2015. Before joining
Ofcom she was second
permanent secretary at the UK Treasury,
responsible for overseeing public finances.
Before that she held board-level positions at
the ministry of justice and the department for
international development. She has worked as
a civil service adviser at the prime minister’s
policy unit and in Washington DC as a senior
economist at the World Bank.
Williams led BT’s bid to
become a sponsor of the
London 2012 Olympic and
Paralympic Games, four years
after starting a successful
brand transformation at the operator. The 2012
marketing programme paved the way for the
successful launch of BT Sport. She has worked
in marketing and brand positions at Orange, the
BBC and Procter & Gamble. Williams leaves BT
in September.
Meg Whitman
CEO, YouTube
Enough about the glass ceiling
While it is important to note the
numerous statistics, Wolfram
points out that all the talk
surrounding shattering the
glass ceiling should not be the
focus. The goal, she says, is to
“eventually get to a point when
we stop talking about women as
a group in this context.”
For now, she says it is crucial
that companies with a sustainable
business model realise that they
need to create a workplace that’s
“rich in diversity and reflects the
world they operate in”.
Time and investment will
be needed to achieve a lasting
impact on gender diversity, she
says. The potential social and
economic benefits of a more
diverse workforce will be worth
the effort.
DIDX’s Bowen believes that
true progress will be represented
by a full participation of men and
women. “Nirvana is when we
don’t go by our gender. Instead,
it’s based on the qualities and
skills we bring to the table —
our connections, experience and
knowledge.”
According to Michelle
Bourque, VP of product and
marketing, wholesale and access
strategy, business markets
for BCE Nexxia, part of Bell
Canada where women represent
25% of all executive positions,
there has been a “perceptible
shift in how we view diversity in
the workplace today”.
She adds: “It has moved
from not only being ‘the right
thing’ to also being a business
imperative.” Q
CEO, HP
Whitman is the only woman
to have led two large US
public companies — eBay
and Hewlett-Packard. She
was appointed CEO of HP
in September 2011, and announced in October
2014 that the company was going to split
in 2015, and she will head Hewlett Packard
Enterprise, which will look after computing and
telecoms hardware and services. A separate
company, HP Inc, will take over printers and
PCs. Whitman was CEO of eBay for 10 years
from March 1998 where she raised the
company’s market valuation from $7.7 billion in
1998 to $57 billion in 2004.
Maggie Wilderotter
Executive chairman, Frontier
Communications
In April 2015, Wilderotter
became executive
chairman at Frontier
Communications. She led
the company as chairman
and CEO from 2006 until March 2015.
Previously, she was senior VP of worldwide
public sector at Microsoft. Wilderotter is
chair of the US president’s national security
telecommunications advisory committee and
a member of the executive committee of the
Business Roundtable.
Susan Wojcicki
Wojcicki moved from her
position as senior VP of ads
and commerce at Google to
head YouTube in February
2014. Her priorities include
creating premium bundles for advertisers and
promoting celebrities on YouTube. The owner
of the Menlo Park garage in which Google was
founded, Wojcicki was Google’s sixteenth hire in
1999, becoming the company’s first marketing
manager and the force behind Google’s doodles.
She was responsible for developing the web,
online video and mobile advertising products.
Julie Woods-Moss
CMO, Tata Communications
Woods-Moss has been CMO
of Tata Communications,
part of the $96.79 billion
Tata group, since 2012,
and is CEO of its next-gen
business. She is responsible for all companywide marketing and communications across all
strategic business units as well as the Formula
1 relationship with additional sales responsibility
for the next gen provider segment. She has
worked for IBM and UPC and joined BT in 2004,
becoming CMO and president of strategy.
Ying Liang
SVP Europe, PCCW Global
Ying draws on 19 years of
experience in marketing,
sales, business development
and project financing, having
developed sales channels,
country operations and international sales
teams in Asia, Europe, Africa and the US. Prior to
PCCW Global, she held positions at Tiscali, the
World Bank, BT and France Telecom.
CFO summit: M&As
M&As are the answer to
gaining scale
What are the challenges of M&As? A panel
of CFOs tell the Global Telecoms Business
CFO summit how M&As can provide a
strategic advantage
of Ooredoo, which has seen rapid growth through
acquisitions in the past ten years. Pinter said that
despite the wave of consolidation in the industry, the
Qatar-based operator has “slowed down” and is “not
in any rush” to acquire.
Carriers today have several considerations: whether
to “acquire the same, or look elsewhere at adjacent
industries in order to build synergies”, he said. “In
other words, do you want to be a telecoms conglomerate or concentrate on what you do best?” Pinter
added.
The question of whether M&A is the answer isn’t
one that is “black and white”, said Kai Uwe Mehlhorn, CFO of Russia’s Rostelecom. A diligent view of
what you want to do and how you can influence the
competitive landscape is crucial, he said.
Corporate cultures
Left to right: Natasha Good of
Freshfields, Caba Pinter of Ooredoo,
Kai Uwe Mehlhorn of Rostelecom and
Joachim Piroth, euNetworks take part
in the M&A panel
As the telecoms industry continues to consolidate in
2015, could mergers and acquisitions provide a strategic advantage in today’s increasingly competitive
landscape? The response at the third annual Global
Telecoms Business CFO summit was a definite yes.
During the conference’s opening panel discussion,
CFOs discussed their strategies in ascertaining the
business case of M&As. Other considerations include
the challenges of post-merger integration and recognising cost synergies.
Ultimately, the most successful deals will be
dependent on a CFO’s ability to combine financial
operations with company processes and cultures.
The panel was chaired by Natasha Good, partner at
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.
Achieving scale
All photos: ???????????????
The first question every CFO should consider when
assessing a deal, according to Joachim Piroth, CFO
of euNetworks, is how an acquisition will help a company “grow towards a clear target”. Achieving scale
is one of the company’s main motivations, and M&A
has been one of the ways to achieve that.
In October 2014, the European bandwidth infrastructure provider acquired Fibrelac, giving it access
to the dark fibre operator’s 360-kilometre network,
which connects 11 cities in Switzerland — including
Bern, Geneva and Zurich.
The acquisition was a “fast integration” which fit
perfectly into euNetworks’ business model. “I’m a big
fan of tucked-in assets which you can directly implement without any direct synergies,” said Piroth.
Also on the panel was Caba Pinter, regional CFO
Where some mergers and acquisitions prove to be
a perfect fit, others are failures for various reasons
— such as the inability to merge corporate cultures,
noted Mehlhorn.
He pointed to the 2007 joint venture between
Nokia and Siemens that led eventually to Nokia’s
buyout of the German company’s 50% stake. The
original joint venture, Nokia Siemens Networks, was
loss-making, resulting in thousands of job cuts. “On
paper, the deal looked perfect. However, because of
corporate cultures, one plus one — in that case — did
not become two.”
Equally, the 2006 merger of France’s Alcatel with
AT&T’s former technology arm, Lucent Technologies,
burned significant cash and suffered operating losses.
Both serve as cautionary tales of companies that
have suffered from fragmented governance of merged
companies with strong cultures, he said.
In 2014, Rostelecom and Tele2 Russia completed
the final stage of a merger to form a national mobile
operator in Russia. Tele2 RTC Holding, the joint
venture, aims to launch its mobile services in Moscow
in the middle of 2015. Mehlhorn said the companies
are working on combining corporate cultures and
creating synergies between both companies to build
a better network.
Pricing
CFOs and COOs should strive to be involved in the
final stages of a deal, especially when the offer price is
being discussed. “This is handled differently in every
company but it’s always better to be in the front seat
on these issues,” said Mehlhorn. “It’s important to
have an influence on certain aspects of the deal and
take proactive steps to assess and mitigate risks.”
A question was posed about the effect the wave of
consolidation would have on offerings for customers.
Mehlhorn said that customers are expected to emerge
as the ultimate winners in most cases, as they will
enjoy the benefits of better quality of services. Upon
completion of a deal, it is crucial that systems are well
integrated so as to minimise any disruption customers
may face.
Mehlhorn said that on the operator front, carriers
will be able to enjoy the benefits of network sharing,
which will enable them to reduce opex and capex, as
well as create sufficient revenue.
CFO summit: CFO’s role
Regulation
The discussion covered comments made by the European Union’s newly appointed anti-trust chief Margrethe Vestager in March 2015, who said that as a
result of growing consolidation in Europe, competition
could be undermined and prices could soar. The European Commission is presently scrutinising Hutchison
Whampoa’s £10.25 billion bid to acquire O2 UK
from Telefónica as well as the proposed joint venture
between TeliaSonera and Telenor in Denmark.
Regulatory forces will have a huge impact on
future M&A activities, especially in Europe, said
John Strand, CEO of Strand Consult, adding that
regulators are of the belief that where there are more
competitors in the market, there is more competition.
“It is not the number of players in the market but the
technological development that is creating the competition,” said Strand. “We need to take regulators to a
classroom and teach them about what competition is.”
The challenge for operators, said Strand, is the persistent pressure to upgrade networks as new technologies come to the market. “You go from 2G to 3G to
4G. If you decide not to invest, you’ll lose customers,
disappear and fade away. [Today’s operator] has two
choices – to make investments or consolidate.”
Another panellist, Guy Maidan, services expert
in the channels and partners unit at Amdocs, said
more collaboration is needed between CFOs and IT
departments. CFOs need to understand the complexity of their IT departments and ask: How would this
affect the business?
Telekom Malaysia’s Bazlan Osman pointed to the
migration of billing systems — an area that IT oversees
— as a key example. “As we move towards a dual service, we are now transforming our backend and billing
system. When old systems are migrated into another,
late billings are bound to happen. We need to understand how these changes will affect our business.”
Interoute’s Birkett said that increasingly, her role is
to advise her CEO in “every decision” rather than “just
auditing and reporting the numbers”. She said: “We
have a fairly scarce capital so every discussion — whether
to invest in marketing or sales — comes back to money.”
The discussion led to whether as second-in-command, the role of CFO is a natural progression to
CEO. “You have to be commercially rounded to be
a CEO. Not many CEOs are just pure accountants.
That’s not the way it works anymore. The two roles
are linked in skill sets,” said Birkett.
Balancing act for today’s Operators can protect
revenues by minimising
CFO in the telecoms
revenue and fraud
industry
The CFO’s role is expanding, said speakers leakages, says Sigos
at the GTB CFO summit. The job is no
longer just auditing and reporting the
numbers
Sigos is able to verify if billing is correct
with the use of live CDRs, the company’s
Bjorn Koetz tells GTB CFO summit
As technologies such as cloud computing and the
internet of things become more sophisticated, leaders
in the industry must have a deeper understanding of
how these will impact their businesses.
“To talk about payback, you have to understand the
technologies. You cannot comment if you don’t have
an understanding,” said Catherine Birkett, CFO at
Interoute.
She was speaking on the changing role of today’s
CFO, in a panel at the Global Telecoms Business
CFO summit.
With revenue and fraud leakages estimated to cost
telecoms operators between 1-5% of their revenues,
Sigos seeks to address such threats through its revenue assurance solution.
Designed to detect inaccurate billing in complex
and fast changing tariffs, the service will test and
verify the complete billing chain, from the creation
of a voice call or SMS, up to CDR comparison and
re-rating of each individual CDR. Billing error rates
can be detected in near real-time and revenue leakages can then be minimised or stopped.
With its service, Sigos said it aims to avoid revenue
losses due to errors in charging or billing. In addition,
it is able to immediately verify if the billing is correct with the use of live CDRs, Bjorn Koetz, head of
product management and marketing at Sigos, told the
Global Telecoms Business CFO summit.
The service is said to be equipped with automatic testing for complex tariffs as well as automated support for
revenue assurance which includes reporting and alarm.
“As operators, we need to make sure that all services
we provide to our customers generate revenue and
nothing goes down the hill,” said Koetz.
X
Catherine Birkett, Interoute: You
have to understand the technologies.
You cannot comment if you don’t
have an understanding
CFO summit: accounting and convergence
Operators need
Fixed-mobile
common language when convergence ‘a priority’
measuring success
for Telekom Malaysia
New accounting rules become effective in
January 2017, warns Vodafone’s deputy
CFO, and operators will need to change
their reporting systems
Margherita Della Valle: Let’s use
this opportunity to manage our
businesses better and become
more sophisticated at managing
profitability
The time has come for the
telecoms industry to move
away from traditional key performance indicators to other
standards in order to measure
success accurately, Margherita Della Valle, deputy group
CFO of Vodafone, told the
CFO summit.
“Why do we keep measuring
the wrong things in telecoms?”
asked Della Valle. “If we do not measure our returns,
they are not going to improve. If we are not measuring return on capital, what are we measuring? We
have been quite slow at adapting. If we want revenues to continue to be part of what we measure in
telecoms, we need to be conscious that there is a big
change coming our way.”
The change that Della Valle is referring to is the
new revenue standard — IFRS 15 Revenue from
Contracts with Customers — which was issued jointly
by the International Accounting Standards Board and
the US Financial Accounting Standards Board in May
2014. It will become effective on 1 January 2017.
Operators will need to consider implications of the
new revenue standard, Della Valle said, adding that it
will require system changes and could have an impact
on the profile of revenue and profit recognition.
Already, several operators are investing on billing
systems to prepare for the implementation of the
standard. “It’s important that we all work on this
now. We should all make sure we have a common
language and change our reporting systems the same
way,” she said.
“As operators, we have a role to play in defining
standards, both internally and externally,” Della Valle
said. The matter is even more crucial as measurements are linked to incentives such as compensation
and bonus plans.
“As an industry, let’s use this opportunity to manage our businesses better and become more sophisticated at managing profitability,” she said.
Della Valle warned that there will be challenges in
unifying reporting systems because of several existing
factors: accounts and average revenue per account, or
ARPA, are not standardised and definition of return
on capital employed is complex.
However, she concluded: “It’s important that we
work on this now.”
Incumbent operator launches 4G business
to provide customers with seamless fixedmobile experience
Baslan Osman: We cannot stay where we are as a fixed line provider. Customer
demand for data is growing
In 2007, state-owned Telekom Malaysia exited the
mobile industry when it spun off its mobile unit,
Celcom, into what is known today as Axiata Group
— leaving the operator solely as a fixed-line provider.
Today, Telekom Malaysia is back in the mobile
business with the 2014 launch of its first 4G mobile
broadband service, known as TMgo. The move was
a clear statement of intent regarding its multi-play
aspirations in an increasingly converging market.
Bazlan Osman, CFO of Telekom Malaysia, told the
CFO summit that its return to the mobile space was
inevitable. “We cannot stay where we are as a fixed
line provider. Customer demand for data is growing,”
said Osman, pointing to its declining revenues in fixed
line. Last year, 70% of its revenues came from internet and data while only 30% was from voice services.
A year after the 2007 exit from mobile, the operator
signed a national high-speed broadband project with
the government to develop next generation HSBB
infrastructure and services as part of the country’s
vision to be a developed nation by 2020. “The project
was not just a catalyst to propel Malaysia towards
becoming a high income nation but the catalyst for
Telekom Malaysia’s transformation,” said Osman.
“To us, convergence means to provide seamless
experience beyond technology, whether it’s fixed or
mobile on any devices, whether big or small screens,
products or services.”
The operator plans to roll out its LTE service
throughout the country, especially in rural and suburban areas, by the end of 2015. In addition, the
company has handed its code division multiple access
spectrum to the Malaysian Communications and
Multimedia Commission in order to convert its near
1,200 CDMA sites to LTE.
Osman says it’s not just about converging services
but also providing “a seamless experience” for both
consumers and wholesale customers.
CFO summit: assets, capex and opex
Companies lose money through inefficient asset tracking, says Subex
Reasons for inefficiencies in capital
investments include ineffective asset tracking
and management, low process controls, a lack
of visibility across the asset lifecycle
Operators have had to commit a significant amount of
capex investment in order to occupy as much market
space as possible, but over the last few years a high
capex intensity has led to a heavier debt burden. “Is
this sustainable?” asked Ashwin Chalapathy, speaking
at the GTB CFO summit.
The best practises for optimising capex
investment are monetising fixed assets and network
monetisation, he said.
The top reasons for inefficiencies in capital
investments include ineffective asset tracking and
management, low process controls, a lack of visibility
Ashwin Chalapathy: Sub-optimal capital decisions are due to poor
data quality
across the asset lifecycle and a capex drain from low
return-on-investment projects.
“We are scared to pull the plug on projects like that,”
said Chalapathy. “Sub-optimal capital decisions are due
to poor data quality. This is no surprise.”
He said there was a significant variation between
a company’s assets and its working network
In 2014, Telekom Malaysia acquired a majority
ownership of a 55.3% stake in Packet One Networks,
with the remaining 44.7% shared between Green
Packet and South Korea’s SK Telecom.
Osman said the partnership has given Telekom
Malaysia a foothold in mobile broadband services.
The partners will work together to capitalise on
mobile opportunities and deliver the next generation
of converged services. “Our goal is to be the convergence champion,” Osman concluded.
AT&T pushes ‘audacious’
move to virtualisation for
capex and opex savings
Global supply chain VP says AT&T’s Domain
2.0 will make 75% of its network softwarecentric
Susan Johnson: We are changing
everything. We are going to pull the
network out to the software layer
With the surge in traffic resulting from the internet
of things as well as the rapid growth in mobile device
usage, operators across the world must look to ways
of lowering the costs of deploying their networks.
While it used to be conformist and conservative in
its approach, AT&T is now adopting what it calls an
“audacious” revamp of its network.
It first began in 2013 when the company unveiled
the next generation of its supplier domain programme, Domain 2.0, which it said “places customers
at the centre of the network with a modern-cloudbased architecture, a global first at this scale”.
More than just a network design change, the programme will change the way it works with suppliers
as well as how it manages software, systems and platforms, Susan Johnson, senior vice president of global
supply chain at AT&T, told the GTB CFO summit.
Then came last year’s Mobile World Congress
when it announced detailed plans for virtualisation,
which will replace its network with an NFV-powered
software-defined network.
equipment — which he put at “anywhere between
15% and 30%”.
Companies need better data quality and governance,
said Chalapathy. Companies need better data to enable
better capital decisions — on matters such as maintain
versus replace, buy versus lease, and end-of-life
monetisation.
Operators such look at legacy systems that are not
creating revenue — remembering the real estate costs
and the energy costs.
“Reduce power costs and heating, ventilation and air
conditioning opex by accelerating migration to newer
network technologies,” said Chalapathy.
Companies should generate actionable insights,
using big data to drive down capex and increasing
accountability.
“Leverage technology,” said Chalapathy. “You can
bring down your cost significantly.”
From network, equipment and software to operations and culture, “we are changing everything”, said
Johnson. “We are going to pull the network out to
the software layer.”
By 2020, the carrier aims to make 75% of its
network software-centric with the use of network
functions virtualisation and software defined networking technologies.
In September 2014, AT&T launched its networkon-demand SDN service which allows its customers
to add and change network services in real time. “It’s
all about the flexibility of the architecture which is
crucial from a telco standpoint,” said Johnson, adding
that the service also enables companies to manage
their cost structure more effectively.
As part of its ongoing Domain 2.0 effort, about 40%
of its strategic IT applications have been migrated to
the cloud, with an ongoing process of one application
to be migrated a day. According to the company, that
move has enabled greater operational efficiencies
over applications running on dedicated hardware.
In addition, about 400,000 processor cores are
running the cloud IT apps and operating 50% more
efficiently than on dedicated hardware, it claimed.
Johnson said that Domain 2.0 has given AT&T
the power to drive innovation through open APIs,
IP differentiation and flexible architecture, as well as
fundamentally shift the cost structure through an open
source software and more competitive ecosystem. More
importantly, AT&T expects the transformation to virtualised networking to result in capex and opex savings.
A big part of its evolution to SDN and NFV will
also involve its Domain 2.0 vendor partners such
as Brocade, Ciena and Cisco as future networking
deployments are expected to further reduce capex
over the five years. “This is a big opportunity for
change and will allow us to look at our network model
in a different way,” said Johnson.
As part of its network revamp, the company will
also seek to transform its internal culture. Johnson
said culture change will be crucial to the success of
AT&T’s move to a software-driven network.
The company has been studying corporate cultures at
Silicon Valley and aims to jump-start a culture of innovation and risk-taking within the company. “There is going
to be a lot of change at AT&T and we are embracing the
culture change [that comes with it],” said Johnson.
X
CFO summit: savings and investment
Taking cost out of
operations is priority
for BT
BT director says company strategy has
delivered over £5 billion of cost savings
over six years
Damien Maltarp: BT is upgrading
fibre broadband network to achieve
speeds of up to 500 megabits a
second
BT’s ambition is to grow its cash flow while continuing to seek out opportunities to reduce cost.
The company generates £2.6 billion of free cash
flow a year.
Damien Maltarp, group investor relations director
at BT, told the GTB CFO summit: “Taking cost
out of the supply chain is priority.” He said that the
company’s vision of cost-transformation has delivered
over £5 billion of cost savings over six years.
One way it has done so is through insourcing about
11,000 jobs over the last five years. “You pay a margin
to those outsourcers. You can increase your margins
by insourcing [the jobs],” said Maltarp.
Cost transformation has allowed BT to make significant investment in areas such as customer service,
said Maltarp, who was speaking on behalf of Tony
Chanmugam, who was indisposed.
“We see customer service and cost transformation
going very much hand-in-hand,” he said, adding
that the biggest cost for a business is when things
go wrong, such as an engineer who shows up at the
wrong time or place. The goal for BT is to eliminate
that cost of failure.
By the end of 2015, Maltarp is confident that
BT will return to growth. One reason, he said, is
because of the company’s investment to upgrade
its fibre broadband network over the decade that
could achieve speeds of up to 500 megabits a second
across the UK. It aims to pilot G.fast technology in
the middle of 2015.
The advent of data signals that fixed-mobile convergence is happening. “That move to data is happening,” said Maltarp. “We felt we needed to accelerate our plans.” The UK incumbent announced
its acquisition of EE in a £12.5 billion deal in
December 2014, laying down the gauntlet to other
multiplay providers in the UK.
“Increasingly, we’re seeing that customers who are
watching Premier League [football] matches from
Sky are also buying broadband from them. We realised there was a real risk that our customers will leave
us if we don’t compete,” said Maltarp.
“In a converging world, sports in the UK is a key
driver in who you choose for your TV service, and
that is increasingly linked to who you choose for your
broadband too,” he added.
Emphasising the company’s commitment to BT
Sport, he said: “We will continue to compete with Sky
for rights. The market is big enough for two players”.
When asked whether the industry would soon
see the acquisition of media company by a telco,
Maltarp said: “Not all content is equal. The need
to go out and buy media when there is an active
wholesale market is unnecessary. The question to
ask is, what content is important? In the UK, sports
is the key driver of our people’s decision.”
How are operators
investing in networks for
the future?
TeliaSonera focuses on core network
and connectivity while OTE aims for
technological leadership
Christian Luiga, TeliaSonera: For us, money is cheap. We have a firm strategy of
keeping our A-rating
Babis Mazarakis, OTE: Operator is replacing its copper network. The higher your
speed, the cheaper you can offer IPTV
Building its core network and providing customers
with better connectivity is TeliaSonera’s main priority for investing in the future.
In 2014, TeliaSonera announced a three-year
investment of 9 billion Swedish kronor ($1.25 billion)
to expand fibre broadband infrastructure between
2015 and 2018, with the goal to provide fibre connectivity to 1.9 million households in both urban and
rural areas.
CFO summit: emerging markets
“Firstly, the core network is going to be a fundamental part of our business,” said Christian Luiga,
CFO of TeliaSonera, which in 2009 was the first
operator in the world to launch a 4G LTE network.
“The second is our connectivity and competitiveness. If we don’t have the core in place, we don’t
have any place at all.”
Asked how TeliaSonera decides between sustaining
capex or investing in new areas, Luiga said: “For us,
money is cheap. We have a firm strategy of keeping
our A-rating. The aim is not to get interest now but
to keep long term money.”
Technological leadership a key objective for OTE
Babis Mazarakis, CFO of Greek operator OTE,
said the operator intends to be a “technological
leader” through its investment in next generation
access networks, as it gradually seeks to replace its
copper network.
Outlining the company’s integrated network
strategy for next-generation access, Mazarakis said
the company will seek to do so through several
ways — such as rolling out VDSL, using vectoring, and deploying fibre-to-the-building as well as
fibre-to-the-home.
The operator will also push to transform its IP and
OSS platforms by retiring legacy systems and moving into a single radio-access network.
He added that the OTE will also be exploring
the potential of mobile data through investments in
spectrum. With the average mobile traffic per user
set to grow rapidly in the next five years, content
should be seen as an opportunity, said Mazarakis,
noting that telecoms operators are gradually moving into the business. “The higher your speed, the
cheaper you can offer IPTV,” he said.
That trend is already evident in the UK and US.
In 2009, Comcast acquired NBCUniversal, bringing
content creation and distribution in one company. In
2014, AT&T agreed to pay $48.5 billion for satellite television network DirecTV, pending regulatory
approval. Verizon also has some exclusive rights to
NFL American football games on mobile devices. In
the UK, BT has moved into pay-TV, paying billions
for sports rights.
David Eurin, Liquid Telecom: Are
the regulators and investors going
to welcome me or are they going to
fight me this year?
Key issues to consider
when investing in
emerging markets
Government strategy, network investment
and electricity are all key considerations,
but you have to be in it for the long haul,
the GTB CFO summit heard
Bonface Ndawala, Zain: Having a
clear understanding of why you’re
operating in your chosen field is key
because you will face local challenges
As telecoms revenue in developed markets remains
flat for the foreseeable future, appetite for investment
in emerging markets is expected to increase. In order
to invest successfully in unknown territories, operators must possess an understanding of regulatory,
financial and competitive risks.
CFOs from a number of operators shared key issues
and questions that companies should consider, in a
panel at the GTB CFO Summit.
What is the development of the country going to look like?
When we consider investing in these regions, it starts
with what we believe about the development of the
country, said Christian Luiga, CFO of TeliaSonera.
“What is its population growth? What is its economic
development?” More importantly, what are the intentions of the government?
“The intention from the government to build and
invest into infrastructure is going to be very important in our decision to invest,” he said. “In this market, investment in networks is crucial. If electricity is
down, you’ll see it in the revenue and income.”
Do you understand the regulatory environment?
Governments can change the game, said David Eurin,
chief strategy officer of Liquid Telecom, which operates optical fibre networks in Africa.
Regulations such as government spectrum auctions,
issuing of licences and expansion of network coverage will change the landscape, he said. “In Africa, we
always welcome change. There have been instances
when governments have introduced not-so-good
ideas, such as special telecoms tax and high duty.
Those, in particular, have hit operators very hard.”
Are you prepared to stay for the long haul?
Making a quick profit is not going to happen in
regions like Africa, said Bonface Ndawala, CFO of
Zain’s South Sudan operations. “You have to agree
with the partners who are investing there for the long
haul. Having a clear understanding of why you’re
operating in your chosen field is key because you will
face local challenges.”
For example, how do you run a network when electricity is out? “Can you imagine running two generators 24 hours a day? Is the situation always going to
be like that?”
No, he said. “Because these issues are temporary.
This is a growth industry. With the increasing number of smartphones, there is a huge potential for
mobile data growth in Africa. It’s a case of supply and
demand. With the existing low penetration rate and
great potential for data, money will be made.”
Evaluating the opportunities — and the timing
Eurin added that about two years ago, Liquid Telecom acquired several east African telecoms assets in
order to build a fibre network. “The timing was good
then. There is always an opportunity in every country. The question is: is now the right time to enter?”
He asked: “Are the regulators and investors going
to welcome me or are they going to fight me this
year? They may have done the previous year, but
maybe this year, they won’t.”
For example, he added, “4G may not be on their
agenda this year but that may change next year. A
lot about what makes a successful investment comes
down to timing and when you enter.”
X
CFO summit: deals and competition
What makes a deal
successful in the
telecoms industry?
With many M&As under his belt, Sunit
Patel, CFO of Level 3, gives his view on
how to ensure deals are successful
Sunit Patel: What price should you
pay is a very deep question. How do
you assess the revenue base and how
will it develop over the years?
Rule one is don’t pay too much, said Level 3’s CFO,
Sunit Patel, speaking at the CFO summit. Level 3 has
been involved in a number of deals over the past few
years — notably its $1.9 billion takeover of Global
Crossing, announced in 2011. In 2014 it bought TW
Telecom, a US-based metro operator, for $5.7 billion.
“We’re becoming more enterprise focused,” said
Patel at the conference. “What price should you
pay is a very deep question. How do you assess the
revenue base and how will it develop over the years?”
Level 3 looks at the cost base and what kind of
benefits it can get, as well as the integration cost and
difficulty of integration. “We spend a long time doing
due diligence,” he said.
The potential integration cost drives the company’s
determination not to pay too much. But if the due
diligence produces a good result, “it’s a win-win,
and our level of comfort is reasonably high”, he said.
“Besides strategic fit, the relative fit is important.”
Rule two is that there should be free cash flow per
share, he said: “Don’t buy it just because it’s cheap.”
But revenues bases are risky, he said: “You think
it’s good, but you end up buying painfully. When
you buy a company with a piece of revenue declining,
it can hurt your shares for as long as two years.” He
quoted investor Warren Buffett, who said: “It’s far
better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than
a fair company at a wonderful price.”
The question for Level 3 is, how does that business
fit with us and how can we drive value? “A lot revolves
around what it does for your strategy and how you
advance your scale,” he said. “Fit and scale is important. What kind of synergies do you get out of that?
We spend a fair amount doing the due diligence.”
The third rule: assess the strategic fit. That means
the strategic goals, the relative size and the culture.
“How do you improve your strategic position?” he
asked. “Does it fill a product gap, how does it serve
your customers more and more on our own network,
which allows them to scale with us?”
He referred to the Global Crossing deal, a company
that was big in comparison with Level 3. “The cultural
fit in making that work was a lot more difficult” because
of the size, said Patel. “Bridging the cultural gap is not
as easy you think. It’s easy to calculate synergies.”
The CFO’s role in this is to decide the integration pace.
Define clear objections and set a plan to meet them.
To do a successful deal, a company like Level 3
needs “the commitment of your shareholders”, he
added: “You can go through rough patches. Continuity is important.”
Big data is king with
insights on users, says
CFO of Candy Crush
company
Former Clearwire CFO says operators
should view gaming as an opportunity
Hope Cochran: We are a gaming company but we have data scientists watching
data every day
Big data and analytics have provided King Digital
Entertainment — maker of mobile game Candy
Crush — with the competitive edge it needs to
understand its customers as it continues to beef up its
portfolio, said Hope Cochran, its CFO.
“We are a gaming company but we have data scientists watching data every day,” said Cochran, who
was previously CFO of US wireless network operator
Clearwire. Cochran said the use of data has provided
critical information as to how gamers react and how
the games are being played.
In a move that further demonstrates its increasing
focus in data analytics, the company in April 2015
chose Exasol, an analytic database management software company, to power its data analytics, analysing
over 1.5 billion of the company’s game plays per day.
In the fourth quarter of 2014, King saw 356 million
average monthly unique users across web and mobile
platforms, with 8.3 million users spending money.
The company generated over $2.6 billion in sales in
2014, with Candy Crush generating nearly half the
amount.
As mobile game usage growth continues its upward
trajectory and games remain a key driver of engagement on mobile devices, Cochran said operators
should view gaming as an opportunity.
Mobile gaming, said Cochran, has enabled a different type of gamer with women over the age of 35
most likely to pay for its games, its data has revealed.
“These are users who are filling two minutes of their
day. There’s no time pressure. They can pick up
where they’ve left off. Together, mobile devices and
your networks have enabled that,” said Cochran.
CFO summit: revenue and big data
Flexibility and
adaptability needed in
business processes,
says Ascom
Tesh Kapadia: Customer behaviour
is locked within a call detail record.
Each CDR tells a story of call
origination
Investment in revenue assurance and a
strong revenue assurance strategy will
also be key in delivering value and overall
profitability towards the business, says
Ascom executive
Declining revenues, shrinking margins and pricing
pressure are just some of the numerous challenges
the wholesale international voice market has faced in
recent years.
To stay ahead of the competition, carriers must be
flexible in their business processes and systems, said
Tesh Kapadia, vice president of sales at Ascom. Specific
to the wholesale voice market, the ability to automatically update rates and tariffs based on market changes
as well as ensure that the sheer volume of data can be
processed are two basic requirements, said Kapadia.
He added that carriers should stay nimble in all
aspects of the wholesale business. That means being
proactive in managing volume commitments, assuring responsible revenue, detecting risks, capitalising
on market opportunities and maintaining flexibility
in designing inter-carrier agreements.
The ability to execute all of the above while creating a differentiated product in today’s marketplace
will create the winning combination.
Investment in revenue assurance and a strong revenue assurance strategy will also be key in delivering
value and overall profitability towards the business.
Auditing vendor invoices, distinguishing network costs,
analysing and predicting margin as well as statistically
analysing all product offerings are several ways to do so.
In addition, traffic behaviour provides a “powerful
data repository”, said Kapadia, adding that if properly
utilised, it has the ability to link revenues to cost of
sale as well as create better routing decisions.
“Customer behaviour is locked within a call detail
record. Each CDR tells a story of call origination,”
Kapadia said.
Big data can empower
Operators should share best
customer service, says WDS practices in fraud management,
Operators should use big data to measure
says Neural
audiences from multiple channels, WDS
marketing chief tells GTB CFO summit
With customer churn rates remaining high, delivering a
seamless service in a multi-channel world needs to be a priority for operators.
“Something is fundamentally broken in customer service. All we’ve done is chase the low cost market. The race
to the bottom isn’t sustainable,” said Tim Deluca-Smith,
global head of marketing for WDS, a Xerox company.
“Detractors are more likely to switch. It’s the consumer
that suffers the most.”
Deluca-Smith predicts the rise of the digital care revolution. “Consumers will engage on their preferred channels
and already there is a preference for digital. We will see
this through social media, digital assistance — not voice,”
he said.
Big data should be used as business intelligence to drive
a more personal, consistent and effective care experience
across digital and contact centre channels.
“The data disconnect is the single biggest challenge to a
consistent omni-channel experience,” he said. “It’s about
how you use big data to save cost, not so much to monetise.”
Deluca-Smith urged operators to use big data to measure audiences from multiple channels. “What if your care
channels learned from each other? Care operations must be
analytically driven. They must learn from the millions of care
transactions that are processed daily. If you embed [big data]
in your processes, it will power them up on an even more
efficient level,” he said.
Mobile payment apps and OTT players have introduced
the potential for more sophisticated cases of fraud, warns
Neural Technologies
Risk management demands “top-tier attention” from CFOs, said Luke
Taylor, COO of Neural Technologies, as it is strongly correlated with
bottom line performance.
The need to protect vital assets, operate efficient finance organisation
and monitor the economic impact of risk is crucial to protecting revenues,
said Taylor, adding that protecting profitability and having full financial
visibility are critical for any CFO.
As the telecoms industry continues to develop new technologies such as
LTE, big data, 5G and wearables, new fraudulent threats have emerged.
Mobile payment apps and OTT players have also introduced the potential
for more sophisticated cases of fraud.
To address these threats, operators must have risk management initiatives
that are “supported by the very top,” said Taylor. “Operators need to be
supported by CFOs and allow those initiatives to continue progress,” he said.
Education will also have a serious impact on fighting fraud as sharing
of best practices will help drive the agenda. “Have your vendors, service
providers, partners, suppliers and employees understand your strategies on
risk management,” said Taylor.
As the number of frauds — both internal and external — rises, Taylor
urged CFOs to “take the lead” on the matter.
“CFOs should not treat risks and fraud as embarrassments,” he said.
“More visibility within the company, as well as externally, is needed. If
you share, that will encourage your colleagues and associates [to become
whistle blowers],” Taylor said.
innovationsummit
Innovation in fibre, LTE and
applications changing world,
GTB conference hears
From Rwanda and Somalia to the US and Sweden, the world’s telecoms
innovators gathered at the GTB innovation summit to say how they’re
changing the world
M
Massimo
Fatato, HP:
NFV is so complex
N
that it is crucial that
th
the industry works
th
together to support
to
ccarriers and their
ccustomers
K
igali, the capital of Rwanda, will have full LTE coverage
by the end of 2015, as well as an extensive fibre network.
Sean Koo, the chief operating officer of Olleh Rwanda
Networks, a joint venture between KT of Korea and the
government of Rwanda, told the Global Telecoms Business
Innovation summit that 3,000 schools in the country will be
connected by the end of the year.
Further east, on the African coast in Somalia, Dalkom
is also providing advanced fibre connections, CEO Jama
Mohammed told the conference, which was held on the same
day as the GTB Innovation Awards.
“We are delivering services in a remote, challenged and
unsecured area.” The biggest challenge in Somalia was
connectivity. It was linked to the world only
by satellite a few years ago. With fibre “the
first six million people are now connected”,
he said. “We are trying to extend the network, extending to last-mile services.”
The idea in Rwanda is that LTE
— which ORN will offer on a
wholesale basis to other operators
— will eventually be replaced by
fibre. “We are going to connect
to all the institutions in the country,” said Koo. “We are going to connect schools and provide distance learning.”
In Somalia, Dalkom has designed a fibre metro
network to cover Mogadishu, the capital. “We’re connecting operators and institutions such as government,
education, health and media, so people can have basic services.”
Dalkom will be using wireless to extend the network to
the rest of Somalia, he added. Like ORN in Rwanda, it is
taking a wholesale approach. “We are trying to see how we
can come up with competitive pricing, bringing in all operators together to share the infrastructure. That is driving cost
down,” said Mohammed.
Prices are coming down everywhere. Romeo Ganescu,
group director of product development at VimpelCom, told
the conference that “in Pakistan it’s less than the cost of a
one-stop bus ride”.
Koo explained ORN’s public-private partnership model
and contrasted the situation with South Korea, where three
major operators all give nationwide LTE coverage “and there
is too much over-investment”.
There are three mobile operators in Rwanda, too, and they
are increasing capex and opex — but he hoped that the ORN
wholesale solution can help spread broadband access, especially “once the consumer is addicted to the internet”.
Virtualisation
Massimo Fatato, from Hewlett-Packard’s communications
and media solutions division, explained the benefits of virtualisation that are emerging — especially the virtual customer
premises equipment.
“The introduction of network functions virtualisation is
still so complex and full of uncertainties that it is crucial that
the industry works together to support carriers and their
customers,” said Fatato.
A number of speakers at the summit — which was chaired
by telecoms lawyer Stephanie Liston — talked about the
impact of the internet of everything. Guillaume de Riberolles, marketing director at Orange, warned that operators
would be unable to subsidise smart devices in the way that
they have subsidised smart phones.
And the market will be different, he said: “Are the customers
ready to pay every 18 months for a new Apple watch? We do not
know whether the Apple watch will be successful — but if Apple
fails all the market will fail, and that will have consequences.”
Peter Wirén, project manager at Volvo Cars, which is working with Ericsson on connected cars, warned: “We need to find
a good business model to connect, while using a lot of data.
We’re seeing more and more telematics, which are being used
to keep track of the engine and keep track of the road ahead.”
BT research principal Paul Garner spoke of the company’s
smart-city project which is designed to enable the English
city of Milton Keynes to make more effective use of infrastructure. “We’re half way through a three-year project to
develop a data hub designed to provide services for the end
innovationsummit
users. Data owners will be able to publish to the data hub,”
he told the conference.
BT and the MK:Smart project want to make it straightforward
for apps developers to go into the hub, with a simple graphic
interface, to “create, trial test and ultimately commercialise”
services. “At the moment the hub is free to use. The hub is not
commercial. We plan to make it commercial in 18 months.”
David Traynor, chief marketing officer of Aspider-NGI, a
mobile virtual network enabler working with large carriers,
said that machine-to-machine developments “are not innovative enough”. Global roaming “is a barrier” to services, he
said. “How do we get open application program interfaces?”
Wirén of Volvo said that one of the challenges was car makers’ four-year development cycles. In the future cars “will be a
platform where you buy access to a car”. The service provider
“will learn where you are and what you want and there will
be a car waiting for you when you want it”. But, he admitted,
“there’s a fine line between being very scary and nice.”
Customer experience
Wipro VP Vinay Firake followed by warning that “customer
experience is really at the heart of survival itself” at a time of
“intense competition and hyper-consumerism”. Operators
need a view of customers across multiple products.
“If a customer calls and says, ‘Where is my order?’, we can
accurately say where it is — even if it’s a complex product.”
Mary Clark, CMO of Syniverse, spoke about the attraction
of free roaming. She compared the situation in the US —
where “retail roaming disappeared in 1999” — with that in
the rest of the world.
In Europe, even though the cost of roaming has fallen, “people
still turn off roaming”. She said the industry had educated the
user not to use roaming by charging too much, and they were
risking $16 billion of revenue because of what she called “silent
roamers” — people who rely on wifi when they’re abroad.
Operators should be saying, especially to high-value customers: “We know who you are. I can get to you. We can
send you an offer.” That will reduce bill shock — and one
company, she said, cut its roaming costs largely in order to
save the cost of calls to customer service centres.
Fixed broadband
How fast can fixed broadband go? “We’re seeing more and
more customers buying ethernet connections,” said Steve
Cole, ethernet product manager of Verizon Partner Solutions. “The metro ethernet market is growing in teens, and
we’re expecting better growth. The price points will come
down as we’re buying more.”
Tad Deriso, CEO of Mid Atlantic Broadband, also talked
of the importance of carrier ethernet. Demand has exploded,
he said: “We’re seeing customers that had five megabits two
years ago now have 100-200 megabits.”
How fast is fast enough? “We’re struggling with that all the
time. We’re in a rural market and the question is the affordability. There is a need for speed, but at a price point.”
He put that at “$30-$40 in our community”, and asked:
“We’re seeing one gigabit in rural towns and communities.
Do they really need that?”
Yes, sometimes, said Mohammed of Dalkom, who lives in the
Kenyan capital. “In some gated communities in Nairobi there’s
a demand for one gigabit per second per household,” he said.
Mary Clark,
Syniverse:
Retail roaming
disappeared in the
US in 1999 but in
Europe the industry
has educated the
user not to use
roaming
Syniverse’s Clark had already warned that operators need
to be aware of the challenges from Google, which is rolling
out a mobile phone service, starting in the US. Now Tamas
Paloczi of Deutsche Telekom said that of the over-the-top
providers, “the big ones like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are offering an obvious threat to telcos”.
He added: “We’re not in an industry that is rocketing.”
Operators need to go into partnership with the OTTs, he
said. “YouTube accounts for 24% of mobile
traffic. Facebook chat is 22% of instant
chat. Netflix has 30 million streaming
subscribers.”
Brendan O’Rourke, chief information officer of Telefónica O2
in the UK, said that operators were moving into OTT
applications. Telefónica has an
app called ToGo, which lets
customers call or text via wifi
anywhere in the world without
incurring roaming charges —
“or in your home if you have
poor mobile coverage”.
ToGo was developed inhouse. “I operate a lab of 20-25 people,”
said O’Rourke. Telefónica now offers the app
in the UK, Germany and Brazil, he added.
Kobus Smit, head of voice and messaging, also warned
of the power of OTTs. “Operators have to be competitive
and relevant in a world where they’re fast becoming irrelevant because of competition from very good products from
OTTs,” he said.
Smit does “the boring stuff”, he said, because he believes in
developing services based on existing mobile voice and SMS
standards, “and making them better”.
He complained that, as operators, “we hadn’t done anything to improve our services”. OTTs have “fast innovation
cycles”, but operators “can benefit from that, and where possible we will partner with them to make sure it works well”.
There is “serious competition out there”, he said. “WhatsApp is very impressive, but we have the mobile numbers and
they are the key identifiers.”
Gregor Kastelic, director of IT and services at Mobiltel
in Bulgaria, said: “Innovation for us is a must. We have succeeded in reducing the time to market not from months to
weeks but from weeks to days.”
The company is working with Amdocs in a highly competitive market, and now it is able to react to competitors’ offerings. “In three days we are able to provide a better offer,” he
told the Innovation Summit. Q
Télécoms Sans Frontières
‘I’m still alive,’ Nepalese earthquake survivors
tell their families, thanks to TSF satellite phones
urvivors of the Nepal earthquakes
made almost 3,000 minutes of
phone calls to their relatives
thanks to satellite phones brought into
the disaster zone by Télécoms sans
Frontières.
People from 1,581 affected
households were able to let family
members know they were still alive,
after the devastation caused by the two
earthquakes in April and May.
The TSF team arrived in Nepal
within three days of the first
earthquake, which struck with
magnitude 7.8 on 25 April. TSF was
quickly able to provide services to
local and international aid agencies,
including search and rescue teams from
the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore,
China, the US, the UK, Germany,
Spain, France, Norway, Belgium,
Japan, Switzerland and Canada.
TSF sent emergency response
teams to villages and communities,
offering free national or international
calls using satellite lines. These calls
are the opportunity for the affected
population to reach out for help, often
asking for financial or material aid
S
Télécoms sans Frontières flew its teams into Nepal within three
days of the first devastating earthquake, providing relief support
and allowing survivors to call their families
from their friends and family abroad,
or sometimes, a simple call just to
inform their loved ones that they are
fine after the earthquake hit their
community.
Two examples of how TSF team
members were able to help:
One man broke his leg while cutting
wood to try to rebuild his house.
Villagers found him and carried him
back to the camp where TSF was
carrying out its calling operations.
A Nepalese rescue officer used a TSF
phone to summit a helicopter, which
arrived 20 minutes later to take him,
along with other injured villagers, to a
field hospital for treatment.
A few weeks later a woman in one
of the temporary camps asked if the
TSF team if could go and see her
87-year-old father in his tent. He had
injured both his legs during the first
earthquake and had not been able to
move since.
With TSF’s help, he called his
daughters and grandsons, who were
extremely moved to hear his voice and
relieved to learn that he was still alive.
After the first earthquake TSF sent
staff from its offices in France and
Thailand, and the teams continue to be
reinforced throughout the duration of
the mission. All connections are put in
place to deliver common services to all.
Coordination in Nepal is challenging
because many areas are extremely
difficult to access. Thanks to TSF,
satellite lines and internet connections
mean that rescuers are able to share
information, reports, damage and needs
assessments within the humanitarian
community. They work together to
identify priority areas and to transport
aid to the remote populations of the
Himalayan foothills. Q
Global Telecoms
Business will
be supporting
Télécoms Sans
Frontières by
publishing
regular reports Communications for life
about its activities. TSF continues its
valuable work through contributions
from the telecommunications industry.
For more information and to learn about
ways to support the charity,
see www.tsfi.org
Supporters of Télécoms Sans Frontières
throughout the industry can now donate
online using PayPal to help its work
around the world.
Earthquake
survivors in
Nepal call
members of
their families
using TSF’s
satellite phones
A donation of $10 offers a threeminute hope for three refugee families
or disaster victims anywhere in the
world or supports the transmission of
a two megabyte file of priority health
care needed by humanitarian workers
in a crisis. A donation of $1,500
finances the connection of a Telecom
Community Centre in remote areas for
three months.
US supporters can donate in dollars,
tax free. UK supporters can increase
the value of their donation in pounds
through Gift Aid. Those making euro
payments will receive a donation
certificate which may be used for tax
deductions. For details go to tsfi.org/en/
donate-on-line
gtb
GLOBAL
TELECOMS
BUSINESS
POWER100
Who will be the
Power 100 for 2015?
The deadline for this year’s Global
Telecoms Business Power100, our
annual list of the 100 most powerful
a
people in the telecoms industry
p
worldwide, is on Monday 3 August.
w
W asking readers for nominations
We
now.
n
W published the first list at the end
We
of September 2008, to mark the
o
100th print issue of Global Telecoms
Business, so this is the eighth time
we’ve produced our list of the
top 100 people in telecoms. The
list features senior executives from
operators and vendors, regulators,
international organisations and
investors, from all parts of the world.
2015?
Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of
Google, was number one in the first
list. He was followed in 2009 by the
late Rob Conway, then CEO of the
GSM Association. The following year
AT&T’s Randall Stephenson led the
Power100.
Number one in 2011 was Hamadoun
Touré, then secretary general of the
International Telecommunication
Union, and in 2012 it was Dan Mead,
CEO of Verizon Wireless, the world’s
biggest LTE operator. In 2013 AT&T’s
Stephenson led again.
In 2014 the judges went back to
social media world, and picked
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
So who will feature in this year’s
Global Telecoms Business Power100?
And who will be number one this
time?
GTB will be publishing the Power100
for 2015 at the end of September, in
print and online.
Deadline:
Monday 3 August 2015
It’s up to you. Send in those nominations now, please.
By Monday 3 August
Go to www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com
and follow the link to GTB Power100
Partner is
OUR MIDDLE NAME.
Your success is our success. That’s why we work hard to bring you the network services
you need to get ahead. We’re committed to understanding you and your customers’
needs along with the transitions in technology that are required today, tomorrow and
well into the future. To better reflect this, Verizon Global Wholesale has officially
become Verizon Partner Solutions.
Verizon.com/wholesale/partnersolutions
Verizon Partner Solutions serves technology customers including network, hosting, xSP and security companies.
© 2015 Verizon.

Interview: Telecom Italia CEO Marco Patuano shifts

Transcription

Similar documents

Carlota Reyners Fontana - Cabinet EC VP Neelie Kroes

SPEECH BY MR. KWAKU SAKYI-ADDO, CEO GHANA CHAMBER

A4AI Ghana Experts Workshop

Cat Link Technology

North Atlantic MNPS Airspace Map

on Mark Scharenbroich and his Nice Bike message . . .

Cador- Romania Vienna ANRSC

Zhulian-USM Joint Laboratory - School of Industrial Technology

Product Guide

Team Engagement