The second Local Supplier contract under the UK Government’s new £5bn Project Gigabit broadband scheme – worth £6.6m – has today been awarded to rural ISP GoFibre (BorderLink), which will upgrade broadband for more than 4,000 hard-to-reach Teesdale premises in Northern England. Project Gigabit aims to extend 1Gbps capable (download speed) networks to reach at […]

NEWS

Just weeks after the German Broadband Association (BREKO) revealed its Market Study 2022, the German market has seen a flurry of announcements about fibre rollout – even as some in the sector are expressing fears over consolidation.

Earlier this month, the BREKO report revealed that one in four German households is now connected to an optical fibre network but described the goal of reaching full coverage in Germany by 2030 as “fraught with risks”.

Report author Jens Böcker painted a positive picture saying “I am pleased to be able to present a positive assessment of the roll-out of fibre in Germany, whose progress is of utmost importance for the digitalisation and thus also for safeguarding the climate and the environment,” – but despite this progress Germany ranks third in Europe behind France and the UK in terms of progress in terms of fibre infrastructure.

The country’s Gigabit Strategy calls for all households –urban and rural – to be connected to fibre by 2030 with 50% achieving this milestone by 2025, but blockages to this currently include price increases, supply bottlenecks, and a shortage of skilled workers.

Despite all this there has been a raft of positive announcements in recent days including Liberty Networks Germany stating construction of a new full-fibre network starting in Rudersberg, a municipality in the Rems-Murr district of Baden-Württemberg. This initiative is a JV between Liberty Global Ventures and InfraVia Capital Partners and was described by newly appointed CEO, Dr. Christian Böing, as the first step on a “mission to roll out powerful full-fibre broadband in underserved regions of the country.”

Deutsche Glasfaser has also been busy announcing an agreement to build around 10,000 fibre-optic connections in sixteen districts around the city of Erfurt. Construction will start in January 2023 but only if marketing results in demand reaching a take-up quota of 33 percent. Competitor Deutsche GigaNetz is planning to expand its fibre optic network in other parts of the city, and plan to build in Zaberfeld, in Heilbronn in Baden-Wurttemberg – but again only if there is sufficient take-up.

Meanwhile German cable operator Tele Columbus is using its Pyur brand to connect around 6,200 housing cooperatives apartments in Luebbenau with fibre.

Demand is there with 26% of German households and businesses reported as having fibre connections in June 2022 but there is also great need for improvement. Deloitte’s Optical Fibre Study 2022 reported that three out of ten respondents encountering issues with the internet connection at least once a month.

However, many in the industry are concerned about the threat of consolidation. Soeren Wendler, the CEO of Deutsche GigaNetz, predicts that consolidation will occur as early as next year, but “interesting takeover candidates will only develop in seven to ten years”

Watch this space. There has never been a more interesting time to watch the German market, so make sure you join Total Telecom for Connected Germany on 6 – 7 December 2022 at Mainz Congress, Germany. To discover how to get involved visit www.totaltele.com/connectedgermany

 

RELATED CONTENT: GERMANY IS ON THE RIGHT PATH TO ACHIEVING IT’S FUTURE CONNECTIVITY GOALS

The post Fibre frustration in Germany first appeared on Total Telecom.

Press release

IFC Equity Investment in WIOCC Group to Support Africa’s Digital Infrastructure Expansion.

To improve access to quality broadband internet and data hosting services for homes and businesses in Africa, IFC today announced it is expanding its relationship with West Indian Ocean Cable Company Holding Ltd (WIOCC Group), a leading digital connectivity and infrastructure provider in Africa, with a $30 million equity investment. The new investment will support WIOCC Group’s continued rollout of terrestrial fiber-optic networks, investment in new subsea cables, and the launch of world-class, open-access core and edge data center infrastructure across the continent.

Digital infrastructure is the backbone of Africa’s internet economy. Ongoing investment in fiber optic networks and data centers will allow increased access to more affordable and higher-speed internet across the African continent, according to eConomy Africa 2020, a report by IFC and Google. This expanded access could yield significant economic gains: a 10 percent increase in mobile broadband penetration in Africa would yield a 2.5 percent increase in GDP per capita, notes a study by the International Telecommunication Union.

IFC’s digital infrastructure strategy in Africa is aimed at enabling reliable, and affordable connectivity. This includes investing in the growth of independent tower operators, data centers and broadband, as well as supporting mobile operators, with an emphasis on supporting expanded connectivity in fragile and conflict situations (FCS) and low-Income International Development Association countries (LIC-IDA).

In the past fiscal year (July 1, 2021–June 2022), 34 percent of IFC’s digital infrastructure investments were in FCS and IDA countries.

Over the last decade, IFC committed and mobilized more than $7 billion in digital infrastructure and services, with more than $2.5 billion between July 2020 and June 2022. In addition to providing financing, IFC supports investees to improve corporate governance and align environmental and social practices with IFC’s performance standards.

“At IFC, we recognize that there is a critical need for reliable digital infrastructure, which is fundamental to improving the quality of people’s lives and driving business growth,” said Mohamed Gouled, IFC Vice President of Industries, during a signing ceremony with WIOCC Group today in London. “In the past fiscal year, ending in June 2022, IFC invested $1.3 billion in digital infrastructure, with over half of those investments taking place in Africa’s telecommunications, media, and technology sector. Our partnership with WIOCC Group underscores IFC’s commitment to closing the digital divide in Africa.”

IFC’s equity investment builds on its previous financing to WIOCC Group, in the form of a $20 million loan issued in 2020 via IFC’s fast-track COVID-19 financing facility, a facility set up to help sustain economies and preserve jobs during the pandemic crisis.

“IFC is a true strategic partner that has been there for us since the start. IFC’s role as one of the founding lenders in 2007 was critical in enabling WIOCC Group to grow and thrive. This new investment supports our goal of establishing an integrated, open-access, core-to-edge cloud ecosystem throughout the African continent, underpinned by truly scalable, carrier-neutral, open access, shared infrastructure that delivers high-quality and affordable digital connectivity,” said Chris Wood, WIOCC Group Chief Executive Officer. “By decentralizing the cloud and enabling content delivery to the point of use, we are establishing the infrastructure required to expedite successful deployment and adoption of 5G, the Internet of Things and other key developments that will deliver economic growth throughout the 2020s.”

Featured image is WIOCC Group CEO Chris Wood (left) shaking hands with IFC Vice President of Industries Mohamed Gouled (right).

The post WIOCC Group secures $30 million equity investment from IFC to support Africa’s digital infrastructure expansion first appeared on Total Telecom.

Opensignal has published their biannual September 2022 Mobile Network Experience Report, which measures the 4G and 5G (mobile broadband) services of all four primary network operators – EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three UK – to determine which delivers the best performance. Both EE and Three UK picked up most of the wins. As usual, this […]

Network operator Cityfibre has announced that they’ve started to deploy their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across the Cambridgeshire (England) market town and civil parish of Whittlesey, which is expected to cost the operator around £3m to complete. The overall project in Whittlesey, which is being delivered by civil engineering partner Granemore Group, […]

PRESS RELEASE

Rakuten Symphony today announced the general availability of its Symops Service Assurance suite of products. The Symops products are a result of four years of investment to fully operationalize the end-to-end fault, configuration and performance management in a fully virtualized, dynamic cloud-based telecom operation.

The nature of dynamic deployment of capabilities in 5G, combined with the continuous deployment and re-deployment of cloud native clusters, as well as software micro services that appear in the entire 5G standard, mean that the current tooling of telecoms operations is no longer fit for purpose. Symops Service Assurance is designed to resolve near real-time Root Cause Analysis and Next Best Action functions using cloud native observability frameworks and dense telemetry.

Fully deployed in commercial networks, the solution has delivered modernized monitoring, managing, network change management, and navigation of daily operational tasks with up to a 40% reduction in time. Configuration mistakes and errors can be decreased by 70% and trouble tickets cut in half. All enablers that are traditionally sold as separate products, including fault management, performance management, configuration management, automation engine, data management and analytics, are sold as part of the Symworld™ platform. Consolidation of operational domain data (RAN, Core, Transport, BSS, and security) and end-to-end data management leads to transformational outcomes versus traditional approaches.

Current commercial operations in Rakuten Mobile covers more than 270,000 cells plus all associated domains, managed by a network operations team of only 250 people. The results show how the applications manage failures proactively and cut downtime, in very complex network environments and at scale.

“The operational tools of yesterday were not designed for the scale, complexity or dynamism of 5G and cloud-native networks and operations. To succeed in the new operating environment, telecom must adopt a new approach to diagnosing, isolating, and resolving network issues at scale and in near real-time.” said Narendra Narayana, Managing Director & President of Rakuten Symphony India. “The stakes are higher than ever for operators and subscribers alike, casting a spotlight on an urgent need to adopt end-to-end observability and automation in operations. Part of the Symworld platform, Symops Service Assurance consolidates the fragmented operational landscape of today, leading to faster time to market, reduced costs and near real-time fault analysis.”

The applications contained within Symops Service Assurance include the following:

Cloud Observability: A framework that enables accurate and real-time telemetry data collection from the underlying networks, built from the ground up to correlate the insights from the network functions and cloud infrastructure. It enables improved localization of the resource performance issues compared to the delays and loss of detail associated with proprietary element management systems (EMSs). It further contributes to the effective deduction, improved mean time to repair, proactive monitoring and building of closed-loop scenarios.

Performance Monitoring: Powers end-to-end resource performance visibility of multi-vendor and multi-technology network resources so telecom operators can monitor, manage, analyze and automate predictive actions based on network conditions, all from a centralized location. It provides a comprehensive view of network performance and gives deep insights into telecom data, which eventually eliminates data inaccuracy and data misallocation while improving network efficiency and customer experience.

Fault Monitoring: Simplifies network alert management via advanced alert monitoring capabilities, providing all mechanisms to monitor and manage network-wide faults with machine learning capabilities to improve fault correlation and incident ticket creation.

Configuration Management: Flexible multi-vendor and multi-technology for automated network provisioning, parameter configuration and change management. Orchestrates all network changes, upgrades, golden parameters and configurations for different domains directly to the network elements or through EMS. Leverages the speed and flexibility needed to enable SON and fast network changes while assuring service availability and reliability.

Platform-wide automation capabilities: Leverage on ML/AI to further improve the AutomatedRoot Cause Analysis and Next Best Action to drastically decrease the MTTI and MTTR in operations.

Open source-based, open community standards-driven, cloud-native performance and observability frameworks with targeted use of automation have become integral for fast problem resolution in today’s complex telecom networks. The combination of Rakuten Symphony’s Intelligent Operations suite of products (Symplan™, Symbuild™ and Symops products) with its Symworld automation platform is helping to guide new and existing network operators through an era of unprecedented change.

The Symworld platform helps telecom operators scale faster as cloud sets the pace for speed, innovation, and network expectations. It supports a full range of cloud-native OSS products(Intelligent Operations) that help greenfield and brownfield service providers plan, build, and operate a mobile network at a significantly lower cost than traditional approaches. The platform has been proven to enable zero-touch provisioning at scale, shortening site commissioning times from weeks to minutes for rapid network builds at 40% lower capital cost. Operators can run networks at 30% lower operating costs and accelerate new feature introductions by 10-15x. Protection and transparency are assured via security embedded at every layer.

RELATED STORY: RAKUTEN SYMPHONY OPENS GLOBAL INNOVATION LAB IN INDIA

The post Rakuten Symphony launches ‘proven at scale’ service assurance first appeared on Total Telecom.

NEWS

The latest report by the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), the Private-Mobile-Networks August 2022 report, has identified 66 MNO’s and 70 countries/territories where organisations are involved with private mobile network projects. This equates to 889 organisations deploying LTE or 5G Private Mobile Networks (PMN) in one or more locations – up from 794 reported in June 2022.

Unsurprisingly manufacturing is the major adopter of PMN’s with 165 identified companies, growth of almost 50% from the end of 2021, with other strong interest from education, mining, and power utilities sectors.

LTE is the dominant technology, used in 672 of the private mobile networks for which GSA has data, whilst 5G is being deployed by 354 organisations. 5G Standalone currently accounts for just thirty-seven deployments.

The USA leads the way with the most organisations deploying private networks based on LTE or 5G, followed by Germany, China, the UK, and Japan.

Joe Barrett, President of the Global mobile Suppliers Association called private mobile networks a microcosm of the wider 4G and 5G ecosystem and reported “a strong positive correlation between liberalised spectrum and the adoption of private mobile networks.”

An executive summary of the report is available from the GSA website based on dataset of over 50 equipment vendors, 66 operators and 70 countries and territories.

Private mobile networks are discussed extensively at the Total Telecom Congress on the 1-2 November 2022, where the GSA are an Association Partner. Operators and public sector organisations can apply for a free pass

 

The post Private mobile network deployments now in 70 countries first appeared on Total Telecom.

The growing national scourge of copper telecoms cable theft has raised its ugly head again, this time in Rutland (England), after Openreach (BT) highlighted that their local broadband ISP and phone network had – over the past few months – been struck multiple times by the criminal activity. But arrests are being made. The operator […]

Rural broadband ISP Gigaclear, which has so far deployed their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover 300,000 premises across England, is on-track to cover 2,500 homes in the Gloucestershire town of Lydney after it deployed specialist engineering to drill under a historic railway line. But it may go further than that. The town and civil parish, […]