TPG Telecom is building a smarter, modern 5G network IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
DIGITAL REPORT 2021
TPG TELECOM
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TPG TELECOM
TPG Telecom is building a smarter, modern 5G network
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TPG TELECOM
Yago Lopez General Manager, Wireless & Transmission Networks, TPG Telecom
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TPG TELECOM
Yago Lopez, GM of Wireless & Transmission Networks at TPG Telecom, talks mergers, COVID-19, and bringing next-generation 5G to Australia’s biggest metros.
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he 5G rollout has presented a monumental financial and logistical challenge for telecom operators around the world over the past two years. Some carriers, however, have had to contend with greater challenges than others. TPG Telecom’s 5G rollout has occurred at the same time as it executed one of the biggest mergers in the history of the Australian telecom sector, contended with the loss of Huawei as a key equipment supplier following a ban by the Australian Government - and did it all in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s been a challenging time, but when life hands you lemons you make lemonade,” says Yago Lopez, TPG Telecom’s General Manager Wireless & Transmission Networks. “Of course, the rollout has had its challenges, chief among them being the Huawei ban, but it has given us the opportunity to end up with a legacy-free, standalone, 5G-native network.” Now, with the merger complete, and the company on track to outperform its 5G coverage targets for the year, I sat down with Lopez to find out how a skillful integration, a diverse network of talented partners, and a refusal to succumb to the obstacles placed before it has resulted in TPG Telecom bringing a world class, state-of-the-art 5G experience to Australian consumers.
A “Match Made in Heaven” TPG Telecom is the result of a merger between TPG and Vodafone Hutchison Australia, which itself is a product of the merger between Vodafone Australia and Hutchison - better known in Europe and Asia as Three. Prior to being united, TPG was the country’s second-largest internet service provider (ISP), and was “very strong in the consumer and enterprise fixed line space” but did not have a mobile network. Vodafone, on the other hand, was a mobile network operator with limited assets in the fixed domain. “It was basically a match made in heaven,” recalls Lopez. “From an asset and market point of view, there wasn't much overlap between the two companies. As a merged company, we now have some of the most loved telco brands in Australia under one roof including Vodafone, iiNet, TPG and Lebara. This creates
“ We had to start our 5G buildout from square one” YAGO LOPEZ
GENERAL MANAGER, WIRELESS & TRANSMISSION NETWORKS, TPG TELECOM tpgtelecom.com
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a great opportunity to cross-sell one another's products. It was two highly complementary businesses coming together to create a much better business than the sum of its parts.” Joining the new company from the Vodafone side, Lopez remarks that “when you're going through a merger, the key thing is to understand the cultures of the companies that are coming together.” Bringing two outlooks, cultures, and “families” together successfully, he continues, is “all about empathy”. “One thing you absolutely cannot do when you're trying to execute a merger is to try and make one company into the other. You need to take the best elements of both, listen to both sides, and choose the right combination to ensure you get the best of both worlds.” 6
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One year later, and the integration process is nearly complete. “We needed to ensure that we become - and are seen by our customers as - one functional entity rather than two,” Lopez explains. The next step is to leverage the formidable combined capabilities of the brand new TPG Telecom in order to do something remarkable: take a bite out of the NBN. “In Australia, we have a governmentowned company called the National Broadband Network (NBN) and they're the main provider of fixed broadband services for both consumers and enterprises throughout the country,” says Lopez. “One of our key strategies at TPG Telecom is to leverage our 4G and 5G mobile network to deliver home internet services, as we try to
TPG TELECOM
YAGO LOPEZ TITLE: GENERAL MANAGER, WIRELESS & TRANSMISSION NETWORKS
“ In a 5G world, you have got to have strong partners. And our partners have been key to finding solutions to the challenges of our 5G rollout” YAGO LOPEZ
GENERAL MANAGER, WIRELESS & TRANSMISSION NETWORKS, TPG TELECOM
EXECUTIVE BIO
COMPANY: TPG TELECOM Spanish-Australian Yago Lopez’s passion for Science led him to pursue an academic path in Physics at the University of Oviedo (North Spain) where he graduated after joining Tubingen University (Germany) for part of his studies. He started his Telecommunications career in Vodafone Spain as an Engineer. From there, he built and international path which brought him first to Dusseldorf with Vodafone Group providing technical consultancy services to Operators around the world and then to Dublin as Vodafone Ireland Network Performance Manager. Yago moved to Sydney in 2013, joining Vodafone Australia as Head of Radio Networks. Since then, he has held multiple leadership roles in both technical and commercial sides of the industry. He is currently leading the Wireless & Transmission Networks of TPG telecom. Yago is a rugby fanatic and while he is not playing with Waverley RC, it’s easy to find him enjoying the beach with his young family.
A true customer-centric approach Michael Riches, CEO of Axicom, talks about how his company’s unique customer-first approach is helping them move from being a supplier to a true partner. As Australia’s largest independent owner and operator of shared wireless infrastructure, Axicom has undergone a strategy and cultural transformation to place the customer at the heart of everything they do. Their focus to understand their customers’ critical issues, anticipate their changing needs and create innovative infrastructure solutions, continue to help them deliver long-term value to their customers.
predominant focus. Understanding your customer and stepping into their shoes – looking from the outside in – is imperative in any market but critically important in the telecoms sector where the requirements of the customer are changing and evolving so rapidly” explains Michael Riches, CEO of Axicom.
“The principle I seek to instil in my team, and all our employees, is that creating value for our customers should be the first and
As a long-term player in the market, Axicom’s depth of IP and processes as well as their ongoing investment in digital, enables them to provide speed and transparency in delivery.
“We have a strong focus on digital transformation and automating a lot of our processes which allows us to work with our customers in a collaborative and co-ordinated way and deploy faster and more effectively across our sites.” Riches explains. “Creating meaningful customer experiences, not just good service, continues to drive the way we operate”. It is Axicom’s customer-centric approach that has seen them develop true partnerships with their customers, including TPG Telecom. Axicom worked in a highly collaborative and consultative way with TPG Telecom to understand their future network needs and key business objectives and provide solutions that deliver long-term value. Abandoning the traditional dynamic of supplier and vendor, working together, TPG Telecom and Axicom were able to speed up the 5G deployment
process, eliminate procurement delays, and create a better alignment of outcomes oriented towards the overall enhancement of the network. “TPG Telecom’s 5G deployment has gone ahead at a speed that has not been seen in this market and as a key partner we’re proud to be part of that success” says Riches. And there’s every sign that TPG Telecom and Axicom will continue to move forward together as true partners, with the recent extension of the lease term of existing network sites for an initial period of 19 years.
For more information, contact Axicom at salesaus@axicom.com.au or visit axicom.com.au
TPG TELECOM
2020
Year Founded
6,000 Number of Employees
A$4.35bn Revenue (2020)
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“5G is going to be really important when it comes to letting people have a seamless, work from anywhere experience” YAGO LOPEZ
GENERAL MANAGER, WIRELESS & TRANSMISSION NETWORKS, TPG TELECOM
keep our customers within our own network rather than give up ground to the NBN.” Taking on the state-sponsored ISP is no small thing. However, Lopez is confident that Australian consumers deserve to be offered more choice and better value than a single government-run infrastructure body can provide. “At the end of the day, we are providing choice and value to Australian consumers and enterprises,” he says. “The NBN is kind of a monopoly in that a lot of Australians only have one choice when it comes to their home connectivity, and we want to change that.” Of course, in order to offer the worldclass service that might stand a chance of holding up in direct competition with the NBN for Australia’s home internet market, a successful 5G rollout is critical. 5G, Huawei, and Making Lemonade When the Australian government announced that it would ban Chinese tech firm Huawei from its 5G buildout back in 2018, Vodafone found itself faced with a serious issue. “Before the ban, we were planning to use Huawei as the natural vendor to upgrade our 4G network to non-standalone 5G, because we'd already been working with them for a long time,” recalls Lopez. “When Huawei was banned from supplying Australia's 5G equipment, all of Vodafone's existing radio and transmission network infrastructure was Huawei, which presented a big challenge for us.” tpgtelecom.com
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Changing the Future of Network Rollouts
Through the development of the innovative Sector Assembly method, Vecta is empowering TPG Telecom’s nationwide 5G rollout. Vecta is a specialist assembly and testing service provider for telecommunications equipment owners and operators. As a key partner of one of Australia’s leading telecom operators, TPG Telecom, Vecta has torn up the rulebook for cell site assembly, testing, and installation, delivering an innovative, proprietary new method that is set to change the process of network rollouts forever. “Through the Sector Assembly concept, we are driving innovation in the construction of 5G networks,” says John Bonello, Executive Director of Vecta. “Radio systems can now be assembled and tested in a factory and, for the first time in the industry’s history, system level testing is being carried out in a precision laboratory.” The results, Bonello explains, are profound. “We’re delivering radio sites that work first time after installation, backed by reduced cost, improved network performance, reliability, health and safety and environmental impact.” Prefabrication of cell site equipment also allows for more effective
testing in controlled factory settings - especially with regard to detecting and eliminating passive intermodulation. “Passive intermodulation is a problem for many telecom networks. It’s an effect that basically creates self-interference, which reduces network capacity and quality of service. It’s something that you don’t want in your mobile network,” Bonello explains. By testing the cell site equipment in controlled conditions using Vecta’s fully shielded anechoic chamber, “We’re currently the only business worldwide that’s able to offer passive intermodulation, or PIM, testing for cellular products to the ISO 17025 accredited laboratory standard.” Vecta was chosen by TPG Telecom to develop and deploy its Sector Assembly method in order to support and speed TPG Telecom’s rollout of a standalone, future-proofed 5G network, contributing to the successful delivery of 5G to 85% of Australia’s largest metros ahead of schedule. “Vecta is adding significant value to TPG Telecom as they fast track the 5G rollout using this innovative process,” Bonello says. “In modern networks, mobile operators face performance, value, safety and environmental challenges that must be overcome. In partnership with TPG Telecom, the sector assembly method was developed to help remove these obstacles, resulting in an incredibly strong solution that meets the TPG Telecom KPIs for their 5G rollout.” He added that “Working in close collaboration with Yago’s team has resulted in a highly successful product with a level of factory assembly, testing and inspection never seen before in a network deployment.”
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TPG Telecom is building a smarter, modern 5G network
The majority of 5G rollouts around the world - including in 5G ‘leader’ countries like South Korea - eased the transition from 4G to 5G using non-standalone 5G networks. By piggybacking on existing 4G infrastructure, the process of rolling out a 5G network becomes more gradual, reducing costs and potential disruption. However, with 4G infrastructure built using Huawei equipment, a complete network build was required. “Without Huawei's equipment to build on, we had to start our 5G buildout from square one,” says Lopez. “TPG Telecom is probably the only operator in the world where the move from 4G to 5G meant completely ripping apart our mobile network, because all our 4G infrastructure was built by Huawei. Instead of being an incremental expense, building from nonstandalone 5G and slowly rolling it out across the network, we needed to build the entire network from the ground up.” It’s a testament to the dedication and skill of TPG 14
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“ One thing you absolutely cannot do when you're trying to execute on a merger is to try and make one company into the other” YAGO LOPEZ
GENERAL MANAGER, WIRELESS & TRANSMISSION NETWORKS, TPG TELECOM
PARTNERING FOR SUCCESS “In a 5G world, you have got to have strong partners. And our partners have been key to finding solutions to the challenges of our 5G rollout,” explains Lopez. “TPG Telecom has partnered with Nokia for our radio access and mobile transmission networks and Ericsson for our standalone core. For the optical components on the fixed side we've partnered with Ciena, and we've also been collaborating with Samsung on emerging technologies like V_RAN and Axicom - which is a tower company. We've been working with all of them to help support a 5G rollout with a ‘no legacy’ mentality.” He adds that TPG Telecom has also “relied heavily on a partnership with steel fabricators Site Pro 1 and radio frequency experts Vecta Labs to assemble our new 5G sites in controlled warehouse environments, which is safer, more reliable, and faster – and an Australian first.” Lopez reflects that, in the 5G era, “partner relationships are also changing. You can't just have one-to-one conversations anymore; we want all our partners to be able to collaborate with one another to really create this ecosystem where ideas and skills are shared without TPG Telecom necessarily having to be at the centre of every conversation.” To that end, TPG Telecom recently opened its new Innovation Lab in Sydney. “Together with our partners, the lab allows us to test innovations in 5G network technologies. The lab is driving innovation in our 5G network and allows us to develop and showcase use cases that will enable the digitisation of more industries across Australia,” says Lopez.
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Reäl end-to-end.
Delivering Endto-End Expertise
the build, deployment, and planning, all the way through to optimisation, engineering, and operation. We’re also offering our services across the fibre and fixed wireless network sector, as well as cloud and cybersecurity.”
umlaut continues a decade-long partnership with TPG Telecom, offering specialised, in-depth expertise to support TPG’s 5G rollout.
In Australia, umlaut has been a core partner of TPG Telecom for more than a decade. “Prior to the Vodafone-TPG merger, we were a longstanding partner of Vodafone at a group level where we worked with them on numerous projects over the years,” Ekmen explains. “We had a strong history with Vodafone Hutchison Australia, working with them on infrastructure and security projects, as well as 5G.”
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umlaut is a globally recognised, technologydriven and future-oriented company providing end-to-end consulting, engineering, and testing services to companies across the automotive, aviation, energy, rail, telecommunications industries and beyond. Founded 24 years ago in Germany, umlaut has grown into a multinational, globally active company - recently acquired by consultancy giant Accenture - with more than 4,500 employees delivering specialised consulting, engineering, and network testing services to the world’s largest enterprises. “We are defined by the added value we create for our clients, their companies, products, and their end customers as well,” says Hakan Ekmen, global CEO for umlaut’s telecommunication unit. “Our credo is to always add something on top, like the umlaut from which we get our name.” In the telecommunications industry - where Ekmen has been overseeing umlaut’s operations for the past 14 years - umlaut delivers “services and expertise from end-to-end, starting with
“As the telecom sector continues to innovate and develop new technologies and services, we’re going to see 5G deliver real-time connectivity and faster data speeds. And we’ve been closely engaged with TPG on their own deployment of 5G, as well as the development of new products and services to capitalise on this next generation of telecommunications technology,” says Ekmen. “With our specialised set of skills and in-depth, detailed knowledge of the verticals where TPG is focusing its efforts, I think we can continue to strengthen our partnership, help them adopt and capitalise on new technologies, and drive winwin outcomes for both umlaut and TPG for many years to come.”
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Telecom’s network engineering department that the company has managed to not only build and spin up an entirely new standalone 5G network in such a short space of time, but this success will also build towards future wins for TPG Telecom. “Every piece of equipment we're putting into our network is 5G ready, and that's something that we're going to be able to continue to leverage for years to come. We're very proud of what we've built in such a short amount of time,” Lopez says, adding that the merger between Vodafone and TPG “came at a great time, because it combined all the expertise and assets of Vodafone with some of the strategic spectrum purchases made previously by TPG - as well as their fibre and fixed assets. When you put the capabilities of our two companies together, and remove all that legacy infrastructure from our network, you end up with something really special.” TPG Telecom’s 5G rollout has been gathering pace. “We're exceeding our rollout targets. We originally intended to cover 85% of Australia's top six metros - Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra - by the end of the year,” Lopez says. “Right now, we're on track to also hit that goal in four of the most populated regions in the country - the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, New South Wales Central Coast, and Wollongong - by the close of 2021.” As TPG Telecom’s 5G services reach more of the Australian population, the lower latencies and higher throughput connectivity it delivers is supporting improved video streaming, gaming, and enterprise applications. “The technology is really helping us deliver the kinds of services our customers are going to be requiring in the near future. And we want to be able to offer to Australians the best of those 18
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“ It’s been a challenging time, but when life hands you lemons you make lemonade” YAGO LOPEZ
GENERAL MANAGER, WIRELESS & TRANSMISSION NETWORKS, TPG TELECOM
TPG TELECOM
possible services which 5G is already making a reality,” Lopez explains. “I'm not talking about distant advancements like driverless cars; cloud native, 5G-driven applications for 5G are here already.” Particularly in light of the COVID19 pandemic’s effect on the growth of remote work, cloud migrations, and the consumption of digital services, Lopez argues that “5G is going to be really important when it comes to letting people have a seamless, work from anywhere
experience.” “Our spectrum portfolio is the strongest it has ever been, and was boosted further with recent 5G spectrum acquisitions which will allow us to provide an excellent 5G experience for our mobile and home wireless customers.” In order to expand upon its 5G applications, TPG Telecom is continuing to work with its key partners, including Nokia and the University of Technology Sydney. Recently, TPG Telecom was selected by the Australian Government
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Unleash the full Power of 5G with Samsung networks As a long time innovation powerhouse, Samsung has been inspiring the industry and unleashing the full power of 5G. With our advanced end-to-end solutions, we keep pushing the industry forward for a better tomorrow.
Compact Macro Massive MIMO Radio/Radio Link Cell for roadsides
for rooftops and towers
for indoors
Samsung and TPG: Building the Network of Tomorrow Samsung is enabling TPG Telecom to transcend the limits of conventional mobile connectivity. As the society transitions into the New Normal era after COVID-19, digital technology will continue to play an essential role in our homes, workplaces and beyond. The pandemic highlighted the importance of connectivity and it will become more prominent in our daily lives. The increasing reliance on and usage of digital technology will bring forward a dynamic transformation, reshaping businesses and industries – unleashing new use cases and services. With the emergence of more complex and diverse use cases, network infrastructure will also become more sophisticated. This means that conventional hardware-based network architecture needs to evolve into a more agile and flexible network to support these use cases swiftly and effectively. Samsung believes virtualisation and openness will be fundamental to this network transformation. These next-generation networks will be equipped to power new services with more efficiency and flexibility, while also ensuring network reliability and quality. “The network of tomorrow will be a platform going beyond the limits of conventional mobile connectivity for future use cases, such as smart factories, smart offices, and smart cities,” says Jonathan Ang, Head of Networks for Samsung
Australia. The key to this era of more flexible, powerful, versatile networks, Ang explains, is network virtualisation. Samsung’s cloud native, fully virtualised Radio Access Network (vRAN) solutions effectively liberate network operators from the static, hardware-bound networks that defined telecom infrastructure in the past. “By using Samsung’s vRAN solutions, operators are able to flexibly allocate network resources based on service patterns, and manage networks more effectively by bringing automated operation one step closer, making the entire network life cycle much easier from design and deployment to operation and optimisation,” he adds. Samsung has been working closely with TPG Telecom to bring virtualisation in Australia. According to Ang, “the virtualisation of TPG’s 5G network is a key step on TPG’s journey towards creating the network of tomorrow.” As TPG Telecom’s 5G network continues to grow and evolve, Samsung’s vRAN will support and enhance that network expansion. “Together with TPG, Samsung looks forward to bringing immersive mobile experiences for users in Australia and to reshape the value of 5G for enterprises,” says Ang. “We are ready. TPG is ready. Let’s virtualise the network today.”
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“When you're going through a merger, the key thing is to understand the cultures of the companies that are coming together” YAGO LOPEZ
GENERAL MANAGER, WIRELESS & TRANSMISSION NETWORKS, TPG TELECOM
to use its 5G technology in order to develop a better method of counting sheep - a labour-intensive, mission critical job for farmers throughout the country’s massive agricultural sector. As 2021 draws to a close and companies turn their sights towards 2022 and beyond, Lopez is excited for the next phase in TPG Telecom’s 5G journey. “We're focusing on those top 10 most-populated cities and
regions first, and then plan to move forward with our 5G rollout across other areas of the country in the years to come,” he says. “We’ll continue focusing on our key priorities including going hard on 5G home wireless and other products to migrate customers from the NBN.”
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