Line of defence (cover story)

MONEY interviews Harald Roesch, chief executive officer at Melita, on the service provider’s constant investment, its cloud-to-premises network experience and the layers of defence it is offering businesses to help mitigate cyber attack risks.

Is Melita ready for 5G and how does the company cope with a rapidly changing technological world?

We’ve invested a significant amount in our mobile network during 2018. As a result Melita is currently the only operator in Malta which has a 5G-ready mobile network. Although today there are only a handful of 5G-enabled phones available on the market, the number of models will grow through the rest of 2019 and beyond. As the availability of 5G smartphones increases, we are in an excellent position to give our customers the very best experience possible on a mobile network.

We’re equally well-placed in terms of broadband access via a fixed internet connection; Melita is the only network to offer 1,000 Mbps speeds nationwide across Malta and Gozo. This puts Malta in a unique position in Europe — none of our European neighbours has access to such powerful networks throughout the whole country. Melita’s investment in its mobile and fixed networks puts us significantly ahead of the European Commission’s goals for 5G and gigabit connectivity.

Connectivity isn’t just about connecting people but also about machine-to-machine connections in what is termed as the Internet of Things (IoT). This segment is growing at such a rate that by next year it is predicted there will be more than 20 billion connected devices worldwide touching every sector, from manufacturing and healthcare, to finance and retail. Melita is also well-placed to help our customers with the fourth industrial revolution, since our 5G-ready mobile network is also NB-IoT and LTE-M-enabled.

Can you safely say that Melita has the lion’s share of the Maltese mobile market?

Melita is the market leader in TV and internet. In mobile, Melita was the third operator to enter a market that was well developed with two strong brands already in place. Despite this challenge, we are seeing more and more individuals and businesses opting for Melita mobile. In the business segment this is a result of increased focus in this space but also because more satisfied business customers are promoting us as a provider of choice for business clients. Today we have 130,000 mobile subscribers, with the latest Malta Communications Authority figures* revealing that we have 21% market share in mobile.

* https://www.mca.org.mt/articles/key-market-indicators- electronic-communications-and-post-q1-2014-q4-2018

Many terms could be jargon for some. Can you elaborate, in layman's terms, on your new B2B services, Cloud Connect and DDoS Mitigation?

In layman’s terms a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is a form of cyberattack which may render a server, website or internet service unusable. For many businesses today, such a disruption can be highly costly, with impacts including downtime, customer frustration and both immediate and longer-term revenue loss. It’s a sad reality that DDoS attacks are becoming more common and more complex, making them an increasing risk-factor for all businesses.

To help in managing this risk, Melita is offering enterprise-grade DDoS mitigation solutions through CenturyLink – one of the largest global connectivity networks. CenturyLink provides layers of defence through enhanced network routing, rate limiting and filtering that can be paired with advanced network based detection and mitigation-scrubbing centre solutions. Perhaps some of those terms could be classed as jargon – put more simply, attack traffic is filtered out and good traffic is sent back to the customer via a dedicated Melita internet connection. Our enterprise customers that utilise this service are better equipped to stay connected to the internet, with their websites and critical applications up and running.

Turning to Cloud Connect, this is a service for our enterprise clients seeking a private connection from their offices in Malta to the cloud services provider of their choice. Through our nationwide fibre optic network, Melita provides private connections to leading cloud providers including Microsoft, Amazon, Google and IBM. This results in a consistent and agile cloud-to-premises network experience. In addition to speed and reliability, the network also has an abundance of capacity, meaning there are no constraints on scalability or bandwidth-heavy workloads in the cloud.

Melita is offering Cloud Connect in partnership with Telia Carrier; with more than 65,000km of fibre assets across 280 Points of Presence (PoPs) in more than 115 cities and 35 countries worldwide, Telia Carrier’s service, combined with Melita’s resilient international network, is uniquely placed to support Maltese businesses looking to shift critical processes to the cloud using direct and secure connections that bypass the public internet.

…ON AVERAGE OUR CUSTOMERS GIVE US A RATING OF 8.9/10; IF WE WERE A HOTEL, ON TRIP ADVISOR, THIS WOULD GIVE US AN ‘EXCELLENT’ RATING, SO WE’RE DOING WELL

Harald Roesch

Many a time you hear clients grumble about the waiting time when calling a service provider to lodge a complaint or to have a query answered. How does Melita score in customer relations these days?

Our average answering speed for calls to our customer care team is 52 seconds in 2019 and was 56 seconds during 2018. However, we believe that customer service isn’t just about the speed of answering the phone; it’s far more about the quality of the solution provided, and this is reflected in our Customer Service Promise, where we commit to handling all queries in the best possible way. We know that customers are much more interested in getting their question answered correctly, or their problem resolved quickly, than in getting the call answered a few seconds more quickly. Therefore, we focus on improving our systems and processes while empowering our customer service advisors to give an informative, satisfactory answer. We then ask our customers for their feedback every time they are in touch with our customer care, visit our shops or have a technician come to their home. On average our customers give us a rating of 8.9/10; if we were a hotel, on Trip Advisor, this would give us an ‘Excellent’ rating, so we’re doing well.

We also offer a variety of digital channels to get in touch, be it instant chat on our website, Facebook Messenger, our online Help Centre, our Community Forum, or via our app, MyMelita.

Can you tell us about the international landscape such as the gigabit internet launch in Italy, and IoT in Germany?

It has certainly been a very busy and innovative few months for Melita. Melita Italia, a fully owned subsidiary of Melita Limited, is now up and running and providing gigabit internet services to several cities in Italy which are covered by the Open Fibre network.

This network was created specifically to create a wholesale fibre internet market in a country where penetration is still low. This, combined with Melita’s experience in providing superfast internet services in Malta, created an excellent opportunity for growth.

The initial response from customers in Italy has been positive — even more so because of the inclusion of SmartWiFi, in our service offering.

Melita was the first operator to introduce Plume technology to Europe when we launched in Malta in late 2018. We have now become the first operator to launch this service in Italy. Essentially, Plume delivers Adaptive WiFi™ which guarantees that Melita customers can enjoy superfast internet throughout their home. This is done by combining breakthrough cloudbased technology and Artificial Intelligence to deliver a comprehensive smart home services bundle. Adaptive WiFi gives you the fastest and most consistent WiFi experience on any device, anywhere in your home. The Plume service also includes an additional service, HomePass, which allows members to precisely control who gets onto their Wi-Fi networks, for how long, and what they can do. AI Security protects devices from suspicious content when they are connected to the internet to keep users safe online by protecting against cyberthreats such as phishing or malware.

What is the biggest challenge telecom companies are facing?

There are a number of challenges facing operators in Malta. The primary challenge remains the economies of scale which guarantee that the relative costs incurred to upgrade our infrastructure to meet changing demands will always be considerably higher than in most other countries. We also continue to face the challenge of illegal TV services which are very prevalent in Malta. We are committed to ensuring that Malta remains at the forefront of connectivity in Europe, while offering excellent, legal TV services, including the best Sports TV package available in Europe, so that we continue to give our customers every possible reason to remain our customers, and to recommend our services.