«THE NEW FRONTIER»: CHAMPIONING INNOVATION AT SUNRISE
‘THE NEW FRONTIER’: CHAMPIONING INNOV AT SUNRISE
Fabrizio Campanale, VP of One Assurance, Entertainment & In-Home Connectivity at Sunrise on how the company is using new technologies to become the most innovative and customerfriendly telecommunications provider across Switzerland.
FRONTIER’: INNOVATION
AS THE FIRST OPERATOR IN EUROPE TO TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROVIDER SUNRISE
LOOKING FOR NEW WAYS TO DEPLOY INNOVATIONS TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER
oday's Sunrise was created from the merger of Sunrise Communications and UPC Switzerland in 2021 and has become the largest private telecommunications provider in Switzerland. Sunrise provides awardwinning mobile voice and data, landline voice, landline internet and IPTV (internet protocol television) services to residential customers, and offers business customers a 360° portfolio from a single source, with outstanding end-to-end services and solutions optimally tailored to their needs for the digital, mobile and secure world of work, through an integrated nationwide landline network and mobile network across Switzerland.
Speaking to us today about Sunrise’s strategic approach to implementing emerging technologies is Fabrizio Campanale, Vice President of One Assurance, Entertainment & In-Home Connectivity at the company.
“Sunrise serves over 1.5 million TV users across Switzerland, and my team leads the deployment of new products in the entertainment and inhome connectivity and wifi domains,”
says Fabrizio. “We’re aiming to offer the best-connected entertainment customer experience across several verticals. Furthermore, for every service we offer, we have an intense network infrastructure operation, through which we constantly intervene – to innovate, to adjust, to expand and to troubleshoot.
“This is a massive machine, and it requires dedicated quality assurance to ensure that operational standards align, that hundreds of engineers are coordinated, and that customers get the best experience.”
This is achieved, Fabrizio explains, through the adoption of emerging technologies.
“Sunrise has always been synonymous with innovation – through our mindset and the way we approach every aspect of our business,” says Fabrizio.
“We are committed to continuously introducing innovations in our technology infrastructure and across all organisations.
“We are part of the Liberty Global group, and this allows us to leverage on the group scale when it comes
TO INTRODUCE 5G, SWISS
SUNRISE IS CONSTANTLY
DEPLOY TECHNOLOGICAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.
TV set-top-box and architecture or broadband technology for home gateway, independently from which access is the customer connected: fibre, cable or mobile.
“Being a large telecom operator also gives us access to industry leaders as partners, who would otherwise be difficult to come across. By being able to work with leading companies, we have access to specific technologies and collaborate on innovative projects.”
One such industry leader is Nokia, who Sunrise has worked with to explore their Fixed Network Automation solution. Fabrizio emphasises this partnership, highlighting the importance of collaboration to foster innovation.
“In my area, Nokia is supporting us in the advanced analytics of the
“IN MY AREA, NOKIA IS SUPPORTING ANALYTICS OF THE IN-HOME PRECISE UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER CONNECTIVITY
Fabrizio Campanale, VP of One Assurance, Entertainment
in-home wifi to obtain a more precise understanding of how to optimise the customer connectivity experience,” explains Fabrizio. “As we are constantly improving in this area, it made sense to work with Nokia because their Fixed Network Automation tool provides innovative ways to identify anomalies in the customer home network. We’re working closely with them to pilot this solution.”
However, Sunrise is not just focusing on specific technological innovations such as these – rather, the company’s aim is to encourage a broader culture of innovation, spearheaded by two fundamental principles: providing the best service possible to customers, and operating these services in the most efficient way.
“When you see the world from this lens, you are driven to constantly push the boundaries,” says Fabrizio. “This maintains our competitive edge as well as long-term customer loyalty, because we’re remaining the best choice for the customers.
“Another example of innovation is in the entertainment product development: with the latest TV technologies and the most advanced
SUPPORTING US IN THE ADVANCED IN-HOME WIFI TO OBTAIN A MORE OF HOW TO OPTIMISE THE
EXPERIENCE”
Entertainment & In-Home Connectivity
user interfaces for the entertainment experience with recommendation engines that select the content based on your preferences or provide content highlights from all the streaming Apps now aggregated within the set-top-box.
“A further instance of innovation where we are very active at the moment is in the NW operations: introducing and increasing the automation, to monitor and detect
autonomously the anomalies and possibly self-healing the infrastructure. This is not only pushing the boundaries of efficiency but also reducing the time to solve service interruptions, again in favour of the best customer experience.
“Our infrastructure goes from the home premises to cable and fibre network to data centres and antennas across a huge network. So, it’s crucial for us to quickly identify anomalies and trigger an intervention. Our priority is to adopt emerging technologies that will help us better monitor performances and facilitate the needed fixes in the field. While these processes have been in the works for a while now, we’re entering a new phase of development with the advent of machine learning and artificial intelligence. There is an opportunity here, and it’s one that we need to take advantage of.
“The more advanced we can be in this area, the faster we can address problems and our services can be
as seamless as possible for our customers.”
Alongside machine learning and AI, Fabrizio highlights the company’s innovation in what Sunrise calls the connected entertainment experience.
“In the home, we manage the TV and broadband service,” says Fabrizio. “We have the ability to provide customers with the highest broadband speed, but if the layout of a user’s home is complex, the modem has been placed incorrectly or there is interference from neighbours, then we lose control of the service and the customer will be unsatisfied. To fight this, we invest in cloud-based managed service, so we can pull anonymised telemetry parameters from the customer’s home to understand what is happening in specific cases, and provide the best possible quality of services.
“Pulling into the cloud regularly the technical parameters from the devices we correlate them with the
optimal value they should have for the use cases and remotely improve users’ in-home network setup (wifi channels, band etc), without them even having to talk to us – everything is done automatically, bridging the socalled quality of experience with the quality of service.”
With these systems in place, Fabrizio is now looking to the future of Sunrise.
“We are now three years into the merger between Sunrise and UPC, so we have completed the integration,” says Fabrizio. “This has been a massive undertaking – from product to technology to culture. Now we are entering the next phase of growth. For us, this is all about keeping our promises to our clients and positioning ourselves as the national FMC (Fix Mobile Convergence) champion of Switzerland.
“We’ve used these three years to underpin the value of our offer, which makes us one of the stronger players in the telco market. We have the most advanced mobile technology, and we are continuously investing in it, we have the largest national broadband network and keep developing the fixed access technology. I believe that we currently have the best products on the market, and we can continue growing and improving our services.”
ADDED VALUE
Connect with Fabrizio
THE FUTURE OF AI
“Artificial intelligence and machine learning are very relevant within my role, but I’m also interested in looking at it from a human and societal point of view,” says Fabrizio. “I’m fascinated by how they will impact our society, the new generations, the consumers and dayto-day life. I truly believe we need to talk about it, and learn from the conversations being had, because while no one can know for sure what the future of AI and machine learning will look like, we can better understand the direction things are heading in.”
A NEW GENERATION OF BUSINESS LEADERS
“I have two sons,” says Fabrizio. “One is a teenager, and the other is at university. My wife and I have very intense discussions with them about their education and future considering the society evolution and the impact of technology on this. It's interesting and enriching the confrontation with the young generation on innovation and technology’s impact on life, while remaining open to their doubts and positive on the opportunities.”
Learn more about Sunrise here.