Telecom Review March 2019 by tracemedia

T HE T E L E CO M S I ND U S T RY ME D I A P L ATFORM

MATRIXX Software:

The key enabler for telecom transformation Huawei: Lighting the way forward

Europe set to be left lagging behind in race for 5G

Will foldable phones save the smartphones market?

CONTENTS

MARCH 2019

TH E TE L E CO M S INDUST RY MEDI A P L AT FO R M

MATRIXX Software: The key enabler for telecom transformation

Biometrics technology: What is at stake for MNOs?

24 26

Apigate CEO on enabling businesses achieve monetization

“We need to determine the best use cases, we can’t just focus on technology” – Marwan Bindalmook

Huawei: Lighting the way forward

Invigo leads the MENA region with its eSIM Manager solution

Europe set to be left lagging behind in race for 5G

Corning focused on investing in innovation designed to solve network challenges

World Government Summit serves as a catalyst for sustainable development

EDCH brings new SIM card and messaging solutions for mobile network operators and enterprises

F5 networks highlight the importance of network slicing in the 5G era

Will foldable phones save the smartphones market?

EDITORIAL

MARCH 2019

Editor in Chief & Senior ICT Analyst Toni Eid toni.eid@tracemedia.info

Toni Eid, founder editor in chief Telecom Review International

Senior Journalists Mark Forker mark@tracemedia.info Christine Ziadeh christine@tracemedia.info Editorial Team Christine Ziadeh (Lebanon), Jeff Seal (USA), Jennifer Saade (Lebanon), Lacinan Ouattara (Ivory Coast), Mark Forker (UAE), Martha Kassouf (Lebanon), Shelley Beyak (Canada), Tala Issa (UAE), Toni Eid (UAE) Copy Editor Shelley Beyak Advertising Enquiries Mohammed Ershad ershad@tracemedia.info Graphic Designer Tatiana Issa Responsible Manager Joseph Bou Daher News Provided in cooperation with AFP, the global news agency Published by

Trace Media Ltd. Zouk Mikael, Lebanon Kaslik Sea Side Road, Badawi Group Building, 4th Floor, P.O. Box 90-2113, Jdeidet el Metn Tel. +961 9 211741 M. +961 70 519 666 Trace Media FZ.LLC. Dubai Media City, UAE Building 7, 3rd Floor, Office 341 P.O. Box 502498, Dubai, UAE Tel. +971 4 4474890 M. +971 55 639 7080 Printing Arab Printing Press © All rights reserved Publication of any of the contents is prohibited - Year 14 - Issue 147 -

Tackling 5G in March with the Telecom Review Global edition

G is here - right now - and deployment has started. 5G chipsets are undergoing the last stages of manufacturing, and 5G devices are already available for testing. Everyone agrees that 5G will create a massive data transaction on telcos’ networks due to the ultrahigh speed, extra capacity and low latency provided by these networks, and will increase connected devices in all categories from transport to any other service such as banking, health, etc. However, the most important thing is that transactions and data are secured in a way so that systems don’t crash and personal information isn’t hacked. Data privacy must be preserved. Telecom Review is publishing the 5G and cybersecurity issue in a global edition featuring exclusive interviews with over six of the most influencing CTOs of the industry in North America, Europe and Asia, along with independent opinion features from technology vendors, research labs and universities. The edition will be distributed digitally in North America, Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and anyone can download a copy through online registration on our websites.

MARCH 2019

US operator suffers drop in its revenue as it prepares for 5G Sprint has posted a disappointing performance in its financial returns for Q4 in 2018. Revenue was up by 4.4% year on year to $8.6m, but Sprint still came away from the fiscal quarter with a net loss of $141m. That represented a sobering drop from a profit of $7.2bn just over 12 months ago, which included a one-time benefit of $7.1bn from changes to the US tax code. Despite the dramatic decline in its overall profits, the operator disclosed that it had reduced its overall costs by $300m over the past three quarters and is on track to deliver more than $1bn in gross cuts for the full year. Sprint CEO Michael Combes remained upbeat despite the flagging results and stressed that the metrics merely reflect the operator’s strategy which is to balance growth and profitability as they continue to put the final touches together for their merger with T-Mobile US which is currently under review from the FCC. But the operator isn’t standing still while it waits for the green light for regulators. It has more than doubled its network capex from $696 million in fiscal Q3 2017 to $1.4 billion in the recent quarter, dramatically boosting investments as it prepares to launch 5G in the first half of 2019. CTO John Saw said the operator is deploying hundreds of massive MIMO radios in nine of the cities Sprint plan to launch 5G, but added the equipment, which will carry both 4G and 5G traffic, is also being rolled out elsewhere. Saw also noted Sprint has deployed 2.5GHz spectrum on 75% of its macro sites and will be “substantially done” with the rollout in another quarter. LTE-Advanced upgrades will be completed in a similar timeframe.

GLOBAL NEWS

Pakistan hails the role Huawei has played in its ICT development Pakistan’s Minister of ITT (Information Technology & Telecommunications) H.E. Khalid Maqbool Sidiqui has praised the significant role Chinese telecommunications vendor Huawei has played in its ICT development. The Minister was speaking at a special ceremony in Islamabad to mark Huawei’s 20th anniversary in the region. The event was attended by a number of senior executives from the country’s leading operators such as PTCL and Jazz. Huawei has been the victim of a politically motivated campaign by the United States and has been subjected to intense scrutiny in relations to its business practices.

However, Pakistan’s communications Minister moved swiftly to dispel any security fears it may have by highlighting how Huawei has been a key enabler in developing their ICT infrastructure, and described the Chinese telecommunications vendor as a global leader in 5G. Sidiqui said, “Since their introduction to the market here in Pakistan over 20 years ago, Huawei has undoubtedly played a hugely significant role in our ICT development. Huawei are the undisputed global leaders in terms of 5G technology. Innovation is at the core of the company’s DNA - and in Pakistan we have benefited greatly from their incredible knowledge, expertise, innovations and technologies.”

Nokia selected to build new mobile network in Japan Nokia announced it is working with Rakuten to build a new mobile network in Japan. Nokia will provide full turnkey services to plan, manage, deploy and integrate cloud RAN, AirGile cloudnative core network technology and several Nokia software functions. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, the Rakuten Group offers more than 70 services in e-commerce, fintech, digital content and communications to more than 1.2 billion members across the globe. Rakuten will leverage its experience as an IT company and its membership base of more than 100 million users in Japan as it enters the market as a Greenfield mobile operator and digital service provider. Rakuten’s distributed cloud network, along with Nokia and Rakuten’s work to automate the network build and deployment process, will help reduce network operation costs and enhance operational efficiencies. Nokia will provide turnkey deployment and integration of the new radio network leveraging a ‘zero footprint’

site approach with remote radio heads connected to cloud RAN software on the edge cloud, to speed deployment and network scalability. Nokia is working with Rakuten on several underlying core functions to maximize automation, AI and machine learning to reduce the cost of operations to a fraction of legacy networks. The network will be deployed across Japan - including Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya - and use Nokia Cloud RAN, AirScale radios (remote radio heads) and the Nokia AirGile cloud-native core, incorporating technologies such as Nokia IP Multimedia Subsystem, Session Border Controller and Telco Application Server for the fast rollout of services such as Voice over LTE. Rakuten and Nokia are completely aligned on the Future X network vision and it is being implemented in Rakuten’s brand new mobile network operation in Japan. The building of the network is underway and user trials in Tokyo have already begun.

MARCH 2019

GLOBAL NEWS

India has world’s cheapest mobile data rates The global average cost of mobile data is $8.53 per 1GB. The cheapest data cost is offered in India which amounts to $0.26 per 1GB and the highest average cost being Zimbabwe’s which is $75.20- around 290 times India’s rate.

“A country whose young population has a particularly high technological awareness, India offers a vibrant smartphone market, with strong adoption and many competitors. Data, therefore, is quite staggeringly cheap,” the report mentioned.

Cable.co.uk analyzed 6,313 mobile data plans from 230 different countries from October to November 2018.

India is home to more than 430 million smartphone users and is the second largest smartphone market in the world, with China being the first.

For India’s market, 57 mobile data plans were analysed and found that the lowest rate per 1GB in the country was 1.41 Rupees ($0.02) while the highest was at 98.83 Rupees ($1.41).

Other countries with cheap mobile data packages include Kyrgyzstan at $0.27, Kazakhstan at $0.49, Ukraine at $0.51, and Rwanda at $0.56.

Hong Kong releases spectrum roadmap for 5G Hong Kong’s Office of the Communications Authority (OFCA) has finally released a spectrum roadmap for 2019-2021. Hong Kong is recognized as being most of the most ‘connected’ and ‘smartest’ regions in the world and it wants to become a global leader in relation to the development and subsequent deployment of 5G networks. Hong Kong’s OFCA also disclosed that it plans to allocate additional 5G airwaves in two lower bands in 2021. In addition to previously announced plans to assign nearly 4,500MHz of 5G spectrum across five frequency ranges this year, OFCA said it will allocate 160MHz of spectrum in the 600MHz and 700MHz bands from July 2021. The agency has stated that it aims to hold a consultation this year, but conceded that the target date and timing of the earliest release and assignment are ultimately subject to progress in switching off analogue television broadcasting services. The outcome of frequency coordination with China on the use of the two bands

to avoid radio interference across the border is another factor. The regulator was on the receiving end of strong criticism over the past two years for its 5G spectrum policy, particularly from market leader HKT, which often complained about the slow release of the airwaves. Chan Chi Keung, head of group communications at HKT, “We welcome the release of additional spectrum for mobile use which is consistent with what the industry has been asking for. We await further details on how this spectrum will be assigned in the consultation process.” He said it would be useful if the government could maintain a planning horizon of at least three years on the release of new spectrum so mobile operators can have sufficient time to make investment decisions for network deployments. OFCA noted the release plan is subject to annual review and may be amended “as and when it is considered necessary in the light of latest developments.”

South Korea’s Supreme Court now reviewing $243m Qualcomm fine South Korea’s Supreme Court has announced that it is currently reviewing a fine that Qualcomm received from the Fair Trade Commission in 2009 due to the way one of the customers had interpreted its market share. The US chipmaker was fined a whopping $243m due to subsidies paid to Samsung and LG Electronics on the condition that only Qualcomm’s silicon was used in the some device models. The Fair Trade Commission instigated a comprehensive review of the business agreement in place and concluded that the demands from Qualcomm effectively forced the smartphone manufacturers to refrain from exploring other deals. The verdict by the FTC was upheld during a previous review conducted by the Seoul High Court in 2013. In addition to this, it was highlighted that some incentives paid only to LG were deemed unlawful, and categorically undermined fair competition. However, in a surprising turn of events the Supreme Court in South Korea has now ruled that because LG’s market share during the 2006-2008 period was below 40 per cent, it did not count as a majority player, thus limiting the impact of Qualcomm’s actions on the market. Yonhap News Agency has reported that this is not the only case Qualcomm is currently engaged in with the Korean regulators. It is also involved in a separate – and much bigger – suit related to a 2016 fine covering chip supply and patent licensing.

MARCH 2019

Irish operator rejects European concerns and vows to stick by Huawei Ireland telecommunications incumbent Eir has rejected the growing skepticism surrounding the security practices of Huawei by vowing to stick with the embattled Chinese vendor. The mobile network operator confirmed that it plans to continue to use radio access equipment supplied by Huawei in the rollout of its 4G and 5G networks. The company’s CEO Carolan Lennon made the remarks regarding Hauwei at the launch of a new €500m FTTH rollout that aims to reach 1.4m premises with a network capable of speeds of up to 10Gbps. Last November, Eir revealed a €150m plan to deliver 4G connectivity to 99pc geographic coverage. The two-year project will transform the entire Eir cellular network, expanding it by hundreds of additional sites. Huawei will provide the radio access network equipment while Swedish telecoms equipment player Ericsson will deploy the core network linked by fiber. The CEO of Eir also confirmed that the first Irish cities will also start to see 5G deployed this year, with handsets likely to be in stores by the second half of 2019. In addition to this, she also confirmed that voice over LTE (VoLTE) services will be rolled out. When asked if Eir had any plans to follow in the footsteps of BT or Vodafone in curbing the use the Chinese company’s equipment, Lennon said Eir will continue to work with the company. Lennon said: “In our RFP [request for proposal] for the network, Ericsson was successful on the core network bid and Huawei was successful for the radio access part. We are confident in Huawei as a partner and we have no plans to change. Around 48% of telco’s in Europe have Huawei as a partner.”

GLOBAL NEWS

Japanese operator deploys new ultrabroadband solution from Nokia KDDI, a leading telecommunications operator in Japan, is deploying Nokia’s G.fast solution to apartments and multidwelling units (MDU) buildings to deliver ultra-broadband services to customers. Reducing the need to install new fiber, Nokia’s technology will enable KDDI to use existing copper lines in MDU buildings to deliver 830Mbps combined uplink and downlink speeds to customers. To support customers’ ultra-broadband needs, Japanese operators are using fiber where possible along with new technologies like G.fast for a large number of MDU locations where copper is already installed.

Developed by Nokia Bell Labs, G.fast uses vectoring technology to effectively reduce cross-talk interference that typically impacts data speeds over copper networks. Providing support for Japan’s VDSL2 specifications, Nokia’s G.fast solution will minimize the impact to existing VDSL systems and enable operators to quickly upgrade their high speed internet service to gigabit class through a simple CPE (customer premises equipment) replacement. KDDI has been deploying Nokia’s G.fast solution and has started its rollout of ‘au Hikari MDU Type G’.

Ooredoo technology connecting millions of people in Myanmar and Maldives Ooredoo, one of the world’s leading ICT providers, is bringing the immense benefits of digital technology to millions of previously unconnected people in Myanmar and Maldives through its cutting-edge Supernet, innovative apps, and partnerships with public and private organisations, in line with the GSMA’s commitment to deliver digital inclusion for all. In Myanmar, a country of more than 53 million people, Ooredoo is revolutionising 800,000 customers’ worlds through its My Ooredoo app. The one-stop mobile app offers everything from live streaming platforms, to account information, purchase packs, value added services, rewards programs and world class content. As 65% of Myanmar’s population is rural, Ooredoo Myanmar has launched the “rural IVR” service, especially designed to provide farmers and the rural population with a digital solution that can help them on a daily basis. With this service, farmers can call a number (456) for free to get all the information that is relevant to their work, like the weather forecast, daily crop prices and others. And to keep them engaged and entertained, the farmers can listen to music and daily astrology

news as an add-on via IVR. The service is currently seeing huge pick up, with more that 1.4 million customers already using it. Ooredoo is creating a sustainable partner model with women entrepreneurs and rural digital experts to help spread the benefits of digital inclusion throughout Myanmar. Ooredoo has rolled out 450 rural kiosks in remote villages nationwide, opening up a world of digital experiences while also boosting employment and entrepreneurship at the local level. Ooredoo Maldives is spreading digital inclusion and the Digital Economy in a country with a population of 436,000 people spread across almost 200 tropical islands. Ooredoo Maldives has launched Evee (“Snap of a Finger” in Maldivian), Ooredoo’s digital care assistant, which uses AI and deep learning to personalise the multiple digital channels that customers use. Ooredoo Maldives is also using digital technology to benefit business and e-commerce. Ooredoo launched Moolee (“Make a connection and strong growth” in Maldivian), an innovative e-commerce market which integrates into Ooredoo’s mobile app with loyalty programs, paying for goods and services and ordering deliveries.

MARCH 2019

COVER STORY

he origins of MATRIXX Software can be traced to the 2007 launch of the iPhone. Labuda and fellow cofounder Jennifer Kyriakakis, herself a Portal Software veteran, both instantly recognized that the new device was a game-changer that would upend the telecoms industry. Steeped as they were in the complexities of rating, charging and billing, the two immediately recognized a gap in the market. Two years later, in 2009, MATRIXX Software hired its first employees and began its journey to reinvent global business. The company has seen tremendous gains in the past two years, with annual contract value growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 70 percent, spurred by new telco and IoT customers across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific Rim.

MATRIXX Software: The key enabler for telecom transformation Telecom Review secured an exclusive interview with MATRIXX Software CEO and co-founder, Dave Labuda, during his recent visit to their regional offices in Dubai. Labuda rose to prominence following the success of his company, Portal Software, in the late 90s. He later sold the company to Oracle in 2006.

In 2018, MATRIXX launched the first full stack, digital business support systems (BSS) deployment in the public cloud working with Google Cloud Platform and a Tier-One North American operator. To support ongoing customer growth, while continuing to grow the footprint of its market-leading MATRIXX Digital Commerce Platform, the company expanded its employee base by more than 50 percent. MATRIXX operator customers cite the software company’s engineering mindset, their solution’s seamless integration with the network, application-led design for digital services, and complex out of the box monetization use cases as key to addressing and overcoming the challenges they’re encountering from a technological perspective. In an expansive interview, Labuda highlighted how MATRIXX initially faced considerable resistance from operators in the face of digital disruption. More recently, however, the CEO noted that continued pressure on operator finances has forced an awakening amongst many and a concession that if they didn’t change,

MARCH 2019

they risked irrelevance, or worse, extinction. In short, embracing digital commerce was no longer seen as an area of interest; rather, it was accepted as critical to survival. In addition to this, Labuda outlined what differentiates MATRIXX from other solutions on the market, its strategy for the future and the vital role he believes the company plays in the overall ecosystem of the ICT industry. What do you think is the key role MATRIXX Software plays in the global ecosystem of telecommunications? To understand the role that MATRIXX Software plays today, you have to accept that the entire generation of technology from end-to-end, from the network to the subscriber experience back to the ERP, was all designed around a set of expectations that is now antiquated. People made 30 calls a day back when these systems were designed, but theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re probably making zero now. Fundamentally, the complexity and chaos were limited by what a human could do with a feature phone. As a result, though they were built to be very rugged and reliable, with all respect to those platforms, they solved a problem that has now changed dramatically with the introduction of the smartphone. That dramatic change, of course, was that consumers suddenly had the power to tap their phone and have things happen instantly. The consumer may not know or care what happens behind the scenes when they tap that little icon on their phone. But, they care a lot that their car or their pizza or their whatever finds them instantly and seamlessly. This is how the on-demand economy was born. This is exactly the opposite of the experience operators had been giving their customers. Because their technology was still grounded in the flip phone era, there was nothing instant or seamless or on-demand in the market.

COVER STORY

MARCH 2019

COVER STORY

people, is the best way to reduce the cost of running a call center. CEOs understand this is much more than just an IT issue. What do you think it is that differentiates MATRIXX Software from its competitors? I think there are three real differences that define how we are different, and, to my mind, explain the success we’ve been able to enjoy.

And for us, that was the opening. Because we saw that if we could empower operators to be more creative with their businesses, and enable them with greater creativity and control over every aspect of their operations, they could offer that same transformed experience to their customers - a win-win that leads to a much more enduring commercial model. And that, of course, would be the foundation upon which our customers could completely reinvent their businesses. So, what we’ve done is build a platform that essentially addresses digital commerce in today’s world while laying the foundation for monetizing 5G, the internet of things, mass adoption of self-care through the mobile app, and a marketplace type interaction with consumers. Who is driving digital transformation? Is it coming from C-Suite? In all of our conversations, digital transformation is absolutely being driven by the C-Suite – oftentimes, it’s even a board-level initiative. It’s actually been very interesting for us because we started the company assuming transformation would be viewed as more of an IT or network type of a relationship. But, as more and more industries embrace transformation, what C-Suite

executives understand is that this isn’t just about the hardware and software; rather, it’s about complete reinvention of the business to digital. We see three key drivers coming out of the C-Suite. One is positioning their companies for the future of digital commerce so that they can unlock new opportunities – either through better monetization of existing products; or, more likely, positioning themselves so that they can expand into new products and services as they rollout new 5G networks. The second is about increasing competitiveness. Operators have seen their balance sheets under assault for some time now and CEOs are looking at their businesses and seeing that digital can be a powerful weapon to help them better compete and win in the market. Whether that’s through product innovation or greater agility or some combination of both, setting their businesses up to better respond to changing market conditions is a big driver for a lot of our customers. Lastly, it’s about efficiency of operations. That can mean moving IT to the cloud, for example. Or, just running an optimized hardware stack. But efficiency also means improving customer experience as a way of eliminating customer complaints, which, I always like to remind

First, from a technology standpoint, we stepped back and we recognized that where the industry was going with the smartphone and that the entire approach with existing BSS solutions just wasn’t going to work. So rather than building on something that was fundamentally unable to perform to new standards, we designed the MATRIXX Digital Commerce Platform entirely from scratch, and we’re the only vendor that has done that. It’s been a huge investment for us, and we spent almost five years building the first version of the product to bring to the

MARCH 2019

COVER STORY

market. That was a big risk to start from scratch. But, with 5G and the push to cloud-native deployments and so many other technological innovations, our customers are consistently telling us that we are the only solution that can meet their performance specs at scale. The second thing we do very differently is our business model. The industry has faded into a business model where there are a lot of change requests and a lot of projectorientated development, but that runs directly contrary to business agility. If I want to attack the market, and my marketing person wakes up one morning with this brilliant idea, then I want to be in the market two days later and be ready to go. If it takes six months to program it, then you’re done. You can’t respond to competitors, you can’t do things that are orientated around a World Cup or an Olympic Games, for example, so you really need that business agility. We’ve built a model around having a powerful, highly-configurable product rather than trying to force you to hire us to keep programming for you all the time. In a market dominated by heavy customization, this is just fundamentally a different approach to business. The third thing is our people. We have been so fortunate to build an amazing team that really cares about the success of our customers. As a CEO, I cannot tell you how humbling it is to hear our customers talk about why they love our company and hear them mention the integrity of our people as a key reason we are so successful. For us, across the entire organization, there’s a belief that if our customers don’t succeed, we don’t succeed. I know our people all believe it, and our customers can feel it. Do you think 5G is driving a new urgency for transformation? Absolutely. It’s been fascinating to see how attitudes towards transformation have evolved and I think that’s really been driven by operators feeling like they need to move now. Which, if you think about it, is really true. You’ve got all this investment being poured into

Digital transformation is absolutely being driven by the C-Suite

5G network capabilities on the one hand, and a connected devices market that is growing atan exponential rate. Operators are looking at both of these and they’re urgently trying to sort out their monetization capabilities now or risk being caught flat-footed. Learning from previous technology leaps, where telcos unfortunately viewed monetization capabilities as something to be figured out later, has resulted in this incredible sense of urgency to establish those capabilities now, so that they can be ready to fully compete in the fastapproaching future.

The cloud is growing in importance across industries. Is the telecoms industry finally going to embrace it as well? Of course, telcos have been operating in private clouds for years. What we’re really seeing change now is that operators are following other industries to embrace public clouds. The appeal of public clouds is that they offer operators much greater flexibility in terms of scaling their operations. We actually have several public cloud deployments right now. One is in the US where Verizon has launched its Visible brand on the

COVER STORY

MARCH 2019

a regional office now in Dubai, and we’ve more than tripled the number of employees we have working in the region. I think it’s a very young population in the Middle East. I’ve got kids from 18-26 years old, and if I tried to force them to use the old school telco experience, they would laugh at me. They would never imagine paying $80 per month for a bundle and things like that. So, I think anywhere that has a high population of youth is going to push the market quicker, which makes the market very exciting for us. Across the region, there are numerous innovation initiatives that are sponsored by the governments themselves. These are driving investment, of course, but they’re also stoking an appetite for digital disruption by creating a mindset of change and modernization. As a result, we’re seeing operators across the region really pushing themselves and each other to become digital leaders.

We are the only solution that can meet our customers’ performance specs at scale

Google Cloud Platform. The other is an operator in APAC who will be launching a new digital brand later in the spring. And, for IoT, it makes a lot of sense to go public cloud given the elasticity of resources required. Increasingly, as operators become more comfortable with the cloud, we

see this trend accelerating, especially with 5G and its emphasis on edge computing. How important is the Middle East market for you? The Middle East has driven tremendous growth for us. We have

We’ve certainly seen this within the Ooredoo Group where we announced, just recently, some really compelling digital initiatives in Oman and Kuwait. Where, again, the goal is to establish digital leadership today as a way of positioning for 5G and beyond tomorrow. Of course, we’re seeing disruption in other parts of the world, but I think the Middle East region has some very visionary CEOs who are at the forefront of digital, globally. It’s a very exciting market and we have a lot of very exciting announcements in the region coming up! You mentioned a couple of customers in Asia-Pacific? The economies of the APAC region are extremely dynamic. Similar to the Middle East region, these countries have comparatively young populations that are very digitally savvy. This has driven substantial disruption across the region, and we’re seeing operators take very different approaches to how they are leveraging that change. We have customers like Three in Hong Kong, that have taken a more traditional transformation approach with MATRIXX as a core component of their infrastructure. Then you

MARCH 2019

COVER STORY

have operators like Celcom with their Yoodo brand, which they launched on MATRIXX in under six months. I think both speak to the fact that although our customers are taking different approaches to the market, they’re putting substantial investment into their transformation efforts. What can we expect to see from MATRIXX Software in 2019? I think fundamentally we’re going to keep scaling very, very aggressively. I think the domino effect is starting to occur in that we’ve stood up many successful projects across regions with a diverse set of operators. These operators have been large, small, some primarily prepaid, other postpaid and a few who have dared to blend the two. Some focused primarily on IoT and others on MVNOs. So, the track record now speaks for itself. Going forward, we’re also getting out and making sure that we’re the thought leaders for 5G and Internet of Things monetization. If you look at most of the vendors who can play in the real-time space, it’s the network equipment guys. But when they look at 5G, they’re looking at networking equipment and software worth billions. They’re not focused on the monetization side, and that’s our bread and butter; this is all we do. We’re going to continue to build out and harden our MATRIXX Digital Commerce architecture for more and more varied cloud deployments, taking advantage of our technology’s design to really leverage the cloud in new and innovative ways. We’re committed to empowering operators around the globe to realize their visions of business reinvention, and you can expect to see and hear a lot of very exciting customer announcements from us across every region over the coming year. Ooredoo transformation success story Ooredoo Kuwait, Ooredoo Oman Transformation timeline: 6 months Business Objective: Enriching customers’ digital lives Transformation milestone: Both Ooredoo Kuwait and Ooredoo Oman are the first operators in their markets to launch such services, which provides an all-digital, individually customized

Ooredoo Kuwait & Ooredoo Oman celebrating the launch of new digital services at Mobile World Congess 2019

mobile product that gives customers complete control of their mobile plans and digital worlds, and makes it easier to buy, use and pay for Ooredoo services directly from their mobile phones. Innovation imperative: Driven by changing customer expectations for better and more compelling digital experiences, Ooredoo is committed to building future-ready capabilities as a way for people to enjoy the internet while enhancing their digital experience and creating new benchmarks for the digital market. Path to market: Ooredoo Kuwait and Ooredoo Oman both launched a new

MATRIXX Digital Commerce poweredstack. Building on the strength of their flagship brands, new capabilities are being launched as new digital offerings within the Ooredoo mobile app. “Our new digital mobile services in Kuwait and Oman enrich our customers’ digital experiences with the freedom to choose and customize the digital package that fits their needs through features like eSIM, roaming and booster packs. We are proud to push the digital experience boundaries for our customers, bringing the best of Silicon Valley through our partnership with Matrixx.” - Sheikh Saud Bin Nasser Al Thani, Group Chief Executive Officer, Ooredoo.

MARCH 2019

REGIONAL NEWS

SES announces new satellite covering the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions all-electric satellite will replace and augment the services currently being provided on SES’s NSS-6 satellite.

SES announced that its newest satellite, SES-12, is now ready to serve its video, fixed data, mobility and government customers across Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. The powerful satellite, which is designed with state-of-the-art wide beams and high throughput beams, will join SES-8 at 95 degrees East. SES12 is the latest satellite that SES has launched to that orbital position where it will operate under the authority of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The

SES-12 is SES’s third hybrid satellite with both wide beams and high throughput payload. Like SES-14 and SES-15 which serve the Americas, the SES-12 high throughput payload is SES’s solution for enhancing costeffective connectivity solutions for aeronautical and maritime customers across Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. SES-12 will also be pivotal in enabling governments to provide connectivity programs to bridge the digital divide, and in allowing telcos, mobile network operators and internet service providers to deliver reliable and enhanced cellular backhaul and faster broadband services. Together with

SES-8, SES-12 will reach key direct-tohome neighborhoods. The satellites will provide pay-TV operators the reliability and scalability to improve viewing experiences by enhancing their content offerings, including delivering higherquality picture quality to address the audience’s burgeoning demand for High Definition (HD) and Ultra HD content. SES-12 has six wide beams and 72 high throughput user spot beams, and also has a Digital Transparent Processor (DTP) to increase payload flexibility to provide much more customizable bandwidth solutions to SES customers. The all-electric SES-12 spacecraft was built by Airbus Defence and Space, and launched by SpaceX. It will join SES’s network of seven geostationary satellites and 16 MEO satellites across Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

RIPE NCC highlights internet opportunities and challenges in the Middle East Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) - the independent, not-for-profit membership organization that supports the infrastructure of the internet through technical coordination in Europe, Middle East and Central Asia – published its first country report on opportunities and challenges for the internet in Saudi Arabia and the GCC countries. This report comes during a period of strong growth for the internet in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East more generally. Trends in the global economy and the business environment more generally have many governments and business leaders concerned about challenges that could affect further growth and development. In this context, the RIPE NCC has a range of tools and services – including RIPEstat, RIPE Atlas and RIPE Labs statistics – that provide access to information about internet number resource holdings, routing, connectivity, IPv6 readiness and other useful metrics on internet development. Drawing on

data and measurements available through these services, the RIPE NCC provided its perspective on challenges, trends and opportunities for Saudi Arabia and the GCC countries. The report shows that one of the main challenges faced by GCC countries is that mobile operators are currently not ready to deploy IPv6 to their mobile customers. In fact, none of the mobile operators in the Levant region have made the transition to IPv6 yet, though some have started experimenting. Current routing and traffic management practices are also hindering the efficient operation of networks in many countries throughout the region. Chris Buckridge, external relations manager at RIPE NCC, said, “The internet may be a global network of networks, but for many stakeholders, understanding what is happening with the internet in their own country is fundamental to helping them contribute to its economic development and improvement. This country report is part of our contribution to an ongoing collaboration with all

stakeholders, including those from both the public and private sectors, aimed at developing effective solutions to the challenges posed by internet growth.” The report mentioned that operators in the GCC countries tend to see IPv6 deployment as the solution to IPv4 exhaustion, yet deployment levels remain below the expected figure. While many networks have IPv6 configured to their upstream providers, the key component still missing is deployment to customers and end users. Despite being released in 1998, Google saw the percentage of users accessing its services over IPv6 pass the 1% threshold in 2013. Although the current figure is now around 26%, we are committed to ensuring it become much higher. The RIPE NCC will continue to work for a more stable and resilient internet by ensuring the reliable allocation of internet number resources, the continued security of the processes associated with coordinating these resources, and by helping to guarantee the security of the internet’s routing system as a whole.

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MARCH 2019

OPINIONS

Huawei: Lighting the way forward

As Huawei reflects on 2018, the challenges around us today and our goals for 2019, we see one thread linking the past, present and future: our unshakeable commitment to bringing digital to every home, person and organization, for a fully-connected and intelligent world. We are global, regional and local pioneers in transformative ICT, connecting the world on a historically unprecedented scale.

he greatest validation a business can receive is continued growth and success, and this we had in spades in 2018, with sales revenue expected to reach 108.5 billion US dollars, up around 21 percent YOY. Yet despite our successes, we have faced challenges in the past months, challenges which we are determined to meet head-on as we close the second decade of the millennium. As 5G gains momentum and the Fourth Industrial Revolution takes off, we turn to the year ahead and focus our energy towards laying the groundwork for a more robust business structure to ensure that all people and organizations benefit from new ICT, and reap the harvest of our extensive R&D investments. 2018: Building on past success Huawei is and always will be a customer-centric organization,

and as such nothing gives us deeper gratification than seeing organizations across the world openly and collaboratively align themselves with us: 160 cities and 211 Fortune 500 Global companies have picked Huawei as their preferred partners for digital transformation. Shipping more than 200 million smartphones and making remarkable breakthroughs in PC business and IoT ecosystems for smart homes only reinforce our position of strength. As 5G continued to garner competitive momentum, we continued our steady 5G development work in partnership with our strategic partners, customers and the world’s leading carriers. In addition to signing commercial 5G contracts and shipping 5G basestations worldwide, we launched 140 cloud services in 18 categories, and worked with partners to serve 37 availability zones across 22 regions with the launch of Huawei Cloud. Announcing our AI strategy was another milestone, as we launched a full-stack, all-scenario portfolio of AI solutions and the world’s first all-scenario AI chipset at Huawei Connect in Shanghai. The Middle East digitalization journey The Middle East has not bucked Huawei’s global trend of strong growth and performance. We are committed to working with local governments to realize their

national plans and visions to become diversified, knowledgebased economies, and over the past year we have furthered this aim by collaborating with public and private entities to strengthen the region’s digital ecosystem and nurture the local ICT talent pool. We were proud to be among the first regions worldwide to import Huawei’s groundbreaking AI chipsets and solutions. We have also conducted a research paper in partnership with Analysys Mason, which found that 5G could provide cumulative revenue of $269 billion for the GCC alone over the next decade – and we look forward to working with our local partners and customers to seize this opportunity. 2019: The year of resilience While we celebrate our successes, we know there is still much to achieve. 2019 will be the year we invest our attention to building a more resilient business structure and expanding our leading 5G deployment strategy. To achieve these aims, we are calling for greater collaboration with all our partners and customers in the region. In this age, no man – or organization – is an island. We are living in a world of information, where interdependence is deeply embedded into the fabric of society and industry. And it is these interdependencies that drive human society to progress even faster. Progress calls for the concerted efforts of thousands or even tens of thousands of companies

MARCH 2019

working together. With extensive 5G deployment underway, we are leading the way in collaborating with government globally to launch these new networks. We have the best equipment in the market and intend on remaining at the forefront of 5G development and infrastructure for the next 12 to 18 months and beyond. Very recently, we officially launched our 5G multi-mode chipset Balong 5000 – along with the first commercial 5G device powered by it, the Huawei 5G CPE Pro. Together, these two new products provide the world’s fastest wireless connections for smartphones, homes, offices and on the go. The race to 5G is truly underway, and we are positioned to pioneer its commercialization for regional customers. We are dedicated to our partners and aim to drive operator growth alongside our own. Equipping the region’s countries with 5G capabilities will enable more B2C, B2H and B2B scenarios such as cloud gaming, cloud AR and VR, and IoT for smart cities. In order to materialize the promise of 5G, cloud and AI are needed to maximize the technology’s potential and deliver a superior user experience. The launch of commercial 5G services in the GCC will be crucial to enabling automation and leveraging the power of AI, both of which are firmly embedded in plans to develop smart governments in the region. Addressing the security concerns Amidst momentous progress we have also faced challenges. Security has come to the forefront repeatedly and concerns surrounding the Huawei brand have been raised. To our detractors, we stress that security is our highest priority and remains a vital principle in all of our operations. In Huawei’s 30-year history, there has never been any evidence of a security threat originating from the company. There is no evidence to indicate that Huawei equipment is linked to or poses a security threats. Our record is clear. One must also consider how speculation and unfounded claims around security accusations could

OPINIONS halt important progress and drive up costs. Our rotating CEO Mr. Ken Hu said it best: “Security concerns disingenuously raised as an excuse to block market competition would slow adoption of new technology, increase costs for network deployment, and raise prices for consumers.” Yet, these questions have offered us an opportunity to look deeper into our offering and reiterate our dedication to cybersecurity. As a company we have made the executive decision to invest an initial special budget of $2 billion US dollars in the next five years to comprehensively improve our software engineering proficiencies. This will keep us competitive and ensure our products and systems are robust enough to fight of any potential attacks. In the face of concerns from the West, we remain committed to continuing to build our competitiveness in 5G. Ultimately customers make their own decisions, and our role is to offer them the best selection to choose from. Our unmatched portfolio of products and solutions gives us confidence that organizations will continue to choose us. To give an example, Huawei is the only company in the world that can integrate 5G basestations with the most advanced microwave technology. With that capability, Huawei’s 5G basestations do not require fiber connections. Instead, they can use superfast microwave to support ultrawide bandwidth backhauls. This is a compelling solution that makes a lot of economic sense for regions around the globe, and no other competitor offers it. We are innovation-driven Innovation will continue to drive us forward in 2019 and beyond. We are confident leaders, and have an unparalleled team of experts and pioneers in each field to realize our vision. Our products are the result of the collaborative efforts of thousands of dedicated explorers, including 700 mathematicians, over 800 physicists, over 120 chemists and more than 60,000 engineers. Our credentials speak for themselves. We are a member of more than 380 industry

organizations where we serve in over 300 key positions and submit 6,000 proposals per year. As a result, we are giants in the wireless, optical, data communications and smart device domains. We are world leaders in 5G. We have landed 30-plus commercial contracts as of today, and shipped 25,000 5G basestations, in addition to possessing ownership of 2,570 5G patents. Over the next five years, we have pledged to invest a total of more than 100 billion US dollars into R&D. We are optimistic about our prospects: as long as we develop compelling products, there will be customers to buy them. Our biggest competitor is ourselves. Continuing to pioneer transformative technology will require us to keep persevering in the face of obstacles, lighting the way forward for those behind us. We are confident that 2019 will see us set new benchmarks in ICT, while we remain faithful to our consumers’ security and wellbeing first and foremost. By Charles Yang, president of Huawei Middle East

We are committed to working with local governments to realize their national plans

MARCH 2019

OPINIONS

ow, the eSIM revolution is coming and with it the possibility for customers to activate the service by themselves. How will this affect the ability to comply with the regulatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s demand? Biometrics can both solve the issue and generate new revenue streams at the same time. Biometrics and KYC collection, what are we talking about? The KYC process is a procedure imposed by telecom regulators to collect the identity of the customer who owns the MSISDN (a number uniquely identifying a subscription in a mobile network). According to the GSMA, mobile users in at least 147 countries are required to prove their identity in order to register and/ or activate their prepaid SIM cards. The process within mobile national operators (MNOs) is widespread. In most cases, proof of identity required is limited to showing an authorized identity document (ID) to an accredited sales representative.

Biometrics technology: What is at stake for MNOs?

For some years, telecom and bank regulators have demanded a 100% reliable verification of customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; identity, also known as KYC (know your customer), in order to prevent identity theft fraud, money laundering and terrorist financing. Unfortunately, traditional KYC methods are both cumbersome and error-prone.

The majority of KYC collection processes are human-based and done manually. As a result, collected data can be typed-in wrongly by mistake or intentionally. More importantly, the process relies on a human action: to visually check that the person presenting the ID is the actual owner of the ID, a possible source of fraud. KYC collection processes, as they get stricter, are also a possible source of friction with customers. We all know customer experience is key so a lengthy enrollment process requiring multiple checks and numerous documents is not the best way to start a relationship with a customer. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where biometrics come into the picture. Biometric data are finger, faces, iris prints and voice recognition. Always available, they are unique to each individual and very difficult to forge. At the beginning of 2018, only 11 countries were imposing the collection of biometric data within the KYC processes, notably in India, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.

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Biometrics for a 100% reliability of the KYC collection process Telecom regulators impose more and more constraints on MNOs in terms of KYC management. It started with requesting the collection of text information and a picture of the shown ID at the point of sales. Nowadays, MNOs are often asked to count and/or limit the number of SIMs per customer (physical person), introducing de facto a new customer identity key for the MNO: the individual, and not his MSISDN. Using the individual as an identity key is also required for mobile money services. These financial services must abide by the regulations of the banking sector and bank regulators demand the traceability and the count of any transaction per individual. Regulators do not hesitate to impose huge penalties or the deactivation of users whose identity was not fully and appropriately collected. For example, after imposing a fine of 10 million CFA Francs to all operators in Cameroon for failing to comply with the identity collection requirements, the Cameroonian regulator asked Nextel to deactivate 700K SIM cards in late 2018. For similar reasons, MTN in Cameroon has had to remove 2.4 million users from its base in just six months in 2017. Such actions obviously generate massive losses for the operator impacted. To prevent such harsh measures, the telecommunications and banking regulators push mobile operators to make sure they identify the customer through a physical proof of the identity: the fingerprints or the face in most cases. Investing in biometric KYC collection processes would help operators get rid of the risk of huge penalties. Biometrics collection for a seamless customer experience: Self-KYC A new era of sales processes is happening now: self-enrolment of the customers. Again, let’s take the same two examples: the SIM activation and the mobile money service activation. MNOs have sold billions of physical SIMs in their retail networks for over

OPINIONS 25 years and they will continue to do so for quite a while. However, a revolution called eSIM has emerged: it means that there no longer is a physical SIM to send or to handover to the customer, and that activation of the contract can be performed by the customer himself on his smartphone. Activation by the customer himself on his phone and strict KYC check compliancy: are these compatible processes? Yes, thanks to biometric technology. In the self-activation steps, MNOs can ask customers to capture the picture of the ID and to capture a selfie. Comparing both pictures via facial recognition technology, the KYC system can detect whether the customer is the actual owner of the ID. This in effect can lead to replacing the sales representative doing this check now. The mobile money service (like any other service requiring KYC collections) can equally benefit from a self-KYC process. With the growing penetration of smartphones in emerging countries, mobile money applications download grow too. In these mobile money apps, the operator can introduce a selfenrolment process to the service, with a self-KYC procedure, again, with facial recognition. Biometrics collection for new revenues: Digital identity According to the World Bank, nearly one billion individuals lack an official ID. Half of them are in the Sub-Saharan African countries. Digital identity (also called E-identity or eID) is a key enabler of an e-government and inclusion strategy. It is a way for governments to better manage their populations in order to improve the efficiency and reach of public services to ensure secure access to online services and to ensure electronic transactions are carried out in a safer way. In emerging countries, the MNOs have a unique position to contribute to the delivery of a digital identity to the citizens: population trust, thousands of points of sales and staff trained to collect customers’ KYC. An MNO could potentially sell its services to ministries to collect citizens’

details – including biometrics – in its retail channels. In that perspective, the MNO is able to turn the constraint (KYC collection) into a new revenue stream with less effort than any other player in the country. Last but not least, the MNO would thus play a major role in the social and economic development of its country. MNOs can perceive investing in biometric collection as a constraint in a short term. However, investing in biometrics will not only become a mandatory step in the future (as regulators in more countries impose stricter KYC processes), it is also a way to improve customer experience and generate additional revenues. In that respect, an early investment in biometrics is a smart move that can support an MNO’s differentiation strategy in a competitive mobile or mobile money market. By Clery Tonneau, head of Products Department and head of Mobile Financial Services, Sofrecom

Digital identity is a key enabler of an e-government and inclusion strategy

MARCH 2019

INTERVIEW

Apigate CEO on enabling businesses achieve monetization

pigate was originally born out of telco and an internal business unit of Axiata, the second largest operator in AsiaPacific region. It was in fact built as an internal API business unit to digitize the six operators of Axiata Group. “The last couple of years, we have extracted the company as an independent API business that is now a global company serving over 110 operators worldwide and connecting over 300 revenue-generating merchants into an ecosystem built on the premise of helping to speed up the digitization into monetization. This is what Apigate is all about,” said Apigate CEO to introduce the company. One of the important objectives of Apigate is to enable businesses across the globe to achieve rapid growth and monetization. How? Zoran Vasiljev explains: “Having been born out of telco, we have learned that there are speeds to digitization and to monetization. We realized that it is necessary to remove quite a bit of friction that exists in the process of digitization and then monetization.

Apigate is a new-breed Application Programming Interface (API) platform that connects a world class ecosystem to enable businesses to transform digitally. To know more about the company’s background and the platform it offers, Telecom Review conducted an exclusive interview with Apigate CEO Zoran Vasiljev during the Mobile World Congress 2019. This has allowed us to understand the pain points in customers’ journeys or anybody consuming digital today. By understanding what is happening in the process, the platform has been built and the APIs have been enabled so that a single contract and one single integration takes no longer than three weeks. Anybody can already be connected to a set of operators in order to start monetizing, consuming, transacting, extracting or doing whatever the business case requires. That is the value that Apigate brings.” Vasiljev stressed that the platform should not be compared only with API manager layer or a point of payment solution because it is much more than that. “It’s an end-toend integrated monetization and amplification platform,” he said. From mobile payment to identity management, omni-channel communications and beyond, Apigate enables connectivity and monetization with one seamless integration. “The main focus of the next-gen API platform is to expose and develop as many APIs as the entire ecosystem is

willing toconsumes. It benefits either one of sides being third parties that are connecting into the system or the operators that are willing to connect and have access to the ecosystem. Furthermore, the platform is built on an open-source that is affordable for anybody to first adopt, experiment and build on top of it without complex contracts and expensive deals. At the same time, when we look at other elements of the monetization platform, it covers everything which is critical in today’s digital world such as acquisition API, fraud protection, seamless authentication, direct carrier billing, wallet aggregation, vouchers, microlending, in addition to a suite of communication APIs.” According to the Vasiljev, in order to add value to the end user, it is very important to connect as many mobile operators as possible to the platform because the end user will have the direct benefit and the operator will make money out of any transaction or consumption. “We have been very successful in doing this outside Axiata regionally. This is one part of the strategy and the ecosystem that is very important and continues to grow,” he said.

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INTERVIEW

“On top of that, our platform is very interesting for gaming companies, video on demand, OTT players, fintech companies that are looking for a platform where they can integrate only once, negotiate the contract only once, and then choose where they would like to send their services – this could be in a region, or in a country, or for a specific operator, depending on what their partner wants. We are making this available and seamless for anybody to integrate and to even have a sandbox to test it out before it goes live.” Apigate’s platform is a telco-grade platform built to benefit the telco environment that has been disrupted over the last years significantly. Operators can remain relevant because they should benefit from the revenue that is being generated in digital. It is also interesting for the third parties and digital companies willing to offer their services to consumers. Vasiljev thinks that the company is ready to help the latecomers realize the importance of the platform business. “We know that 81 percent of the executives in the telco space said that the platform business is on their roadmap over the next three years. We believe it’s two years too late. Unless you have a platform strategy already, you might be too late and obsolete very quickly. You don’t have to invent and do the hard work all over again yourself, we can take care of it.” Every business is faced with certain challenges that it has to overcome in order to progress. For Apigate, one major challenge is to ensure that everything the company launches gets to market timely. Another challenge is to meet the high demand on the company’s service. When asked about his main objective and plans for 2019, Zoran Vasiljev confirmed that the company will expand its presence in the world in order to boost growth.

You don’t have to invent and do the hard work all over again yourself, we can take care of it

“We are still in a rapid growth phase. We recently opened an office and built a presence in the US that I think is going to grow. We believe that these digital spice routes, as we call them, are now open and there is a lot of US-based companies and digital entities that would like to monetize and transact in Asia, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa where we’re already connected, so we are going to strengthen our presence there. It is inevitable for us to grow in China because key digital relationships are going to be there. We are also keen

on making sure that our R&D and engineering are always up to speed and are looking forward to innovation.” Most importantly, Vasiljev emphasized that he aspires to make a difference in 2019 from the platform’s technological aspect. According to him, transacting and extracting is the easiest task, but “trying to stay relevant and creating the distance between Apigate and anybody that intends to do something similar to us is our main mission for 2019 as we grow.”

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INTERVIEW

he charismatic du executive delivered a compelling keynote presentation during the recent IoT Middle East event which was held at the Armani Hotel, Burj Khalifa. Telecom Review managed to secure an exclusive interview with Bindalmook onsite at the event in an effort to further examine in more detail some of the points he had developed and highlighted throughout his presentation. In a brilliant interview, the executive who is tasked with leading the UAE operator’s ‘smart city’ operations, outlined how he feels some focus too quickly on technology and lose sight of the actual use cases or challenge they’re aiming to resolve. In addition to this, he discussed the phenomenal success of its Dubai Pulse platform partnership with the Smart Dubai Office, and explained why he thinks 5G will be a key driver in the acceleration of smart cities on a global scale.

“We need to determine the best use cases, we can’t just focus on technology” –Marwan Bindalmook Marwan Bindalmook, SVP ICT Solutions & Smart City Operations, du, has reemphasized the importance of identifying use cases and building the correct business model around them, instead of focusing exclusively on technology in order to address real challenges that we encounter day to day.

The launch of the Dubai Pulse platform between EITC and the Smart Dubai Office has been an incredible success. In your opinion, why has this resonated with so many enterprises, and what is so unique about this platform? The fundamental idea behind the creation of the Dubai Pulse was to build a big data platform. We wanted to create a solution that enabled us to bring all the open data and shared data that was being generated onto one platform, which ultimately provided analytics that would relay critical information to key decisionmakers. In addition to this, the Dubai Pulse platform also has a lot of innovation. We have built on top of it a cloud services platform and internet of things as a service and all of these are built within the same stack. If government entities and enterprises want to build an application to build a specific service, they can utilize the same platform to connect all of this in a big data platform and

MARCH 2019

INTERVIEW

INVIGO IS AWARDED GSMA SAS-SM ACCREDITATION FOR ITS ESIM MANAGER SOLUTION

Invigo, the leading Device and SIM management provider, has received GSMA accreditation for its eSIM Manager solution. Invigo is the first provider in the Middle East and Africa region to be awarded the GSMA Security Accreditation Scheme for Subscription Management (SAS-SM). The GSMA accreditation scheme provides a high security review of operations and a strict approach to security audits. The SAS-SM process ensures certified eSIM Provisioning services are delivered with the utmost level of security. The new generation eSIM is believed to be industry transforming and essential for the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. Invigo eSIM Manager facilitates the seamless activation of connected devices and offers operators a suitable subscription management solution to remotely provision and manage embedded SIM cards, be it in Machine-to-Machine devices such as industrial sensors or in Consumer Devices such as Smartphones, wearables, and tablets. It allows to seamlessly deploy SIM profiles into connected devices while meeting highest industry security standards.

www.invigo.com | www.linkedin.com/company/invigo

INTERVIEW

MARCH 2019

extract the knowledge back into their own dashboard where they can easily access all of the information provided. Telecom operators were successful because they built one platform that was shared for many. The business model was smart. What we’ve done with the Smart Dubai Office is build that one platform which can be utilized by everyone. This type of business model was attractive for the government, and attractive for us as EITC (du) to invest in this environment. I’ve been stressing that people need to stop focusing solely on the technology side, and firstly determine what the business model is. What is the use case and what is the service you’re providing? We need to harness technology. You don’t build the technology by yourself alone incurring high costs of maintenance and integration along the way, that isn’t practical. For example, why is Amazon such a successful company? It is a phenomenal success because it is a cloud-based services company that is built to serve one-to-many. The scale is there, and that is why telecoms were very strong because the scale was there. Can you tell me about the role EITC are playing in the creation of the Dubai Silicon Park which has a strong emphasis on ‘smart technology’? This is another project that we view as city-scale, and we like to invest in something where we can really make services scalable. As telecommunication operators, we’re managing mega projects, and we’re investing in a nationwide backbone and that is a huge project to be undertaking.

When a city comes to us and tells us they want to build everything from scratch, they need to understand that this involves managing all the partners that are involved in that ecosystem such as contractors, project managers and system integrators, and they quickly realize how difficult this is. However, this is an area in which we can assist and where we can play a pivotal role by telling them we can manage all the different partners participating in the project in an effort to help you deliver what you desire. So the business model here is a little bit different. They’re asking us to basically be their technology arm and want to determine what the best technologies are to use. However, we’re bringing the same idea to the table, which is one single platform. We’re managing the ICT partners and we’re deploying LoRa networks because 5G is not there yet, and it is a technology that enables you to adapt solutions earlier. Who can implement this type of business model, where you can move sensors from a network in the scale of thousands of sensors from place to place? The answer is operators, it is communication service providers that can come in and do this type of scaling. This is the natural DNA of a telecommunications operator, this is their natural case. We have been affected somewhat by the emergence and impact of OTTs, but if you look at it OTTs have no scale, and they don’t have the ability, knowledge or expertise to create the right business models.

5G is expected to become a reality in 2019. How much will the deployment of next generation networks accelerate the development of smart cities? Let me take augmented reality as a use case and example. Augmented reality requires a lot of connectivity and latency. You want to equip someone with augmented reality where he can come to a certain place and has the ability to make decisions, and maybe these can be reconstructed in a way for manufacturing, for example. To do this with our current network system, which is 4G, it will not give that level of connectivity and latency that is required to deliver a satisfactory experience. With 5G, you’ll have the ability to slice the network which is a new revolution, and therefore adopting any of these emerging new technologies today will be much faster. Take another example in the form of autonomous cars. If there is the slightest latency issue then that could have devastating consequences. 5G is going to become a commodity. I’ve been asking whether or not we’re going to focus more on the technology or the use cases. We need to review what are the challenges we face that urgently need to be addressed. We need to change the mindset that says, I just want to build it and I want to be first. This is not the way to do it. We need to determine what problem the technology will resolve and then develop the technology around the use case.

Telecom operators were successful because they built one platform that was shared for many

MARCH 2019

INTERVIEW

Invigo leads the MENA region with its eSIM Manager solution Invigo, leading device and SIM management provider, has announced recently that it has received GSMA accreditation for its eSIM Manager solution. Telecom Review spoke to Fouad Ghoraieb, managing director at Invigo, on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress 2019 to know more about how the company received the accreditation and why the eSIM Manager solution is important in the era of IoT.

he GSMA accreditation scheme provides a high security review of operations and a strict approach to security audits. The SAS-SM process ensures certified eSIM provisioning services are delivered with the utmost level of security. Invigo’s managing partner explained the long and complex process the whole team had to go through to receive this high level security accreditation. “eSIM provisioning has to be compliant with GSMA specifications. In order for us to be able to provide this service, the application and the hosting environment where the application will reside have to be also compliant, notably at the level of data security which is a key requirement in this field because we are dealing with SIM card profiles,” he said. To highlight the importance of security, Ghoraieb explained the difference between the traditional SIM card and the eSIM, and why the latter has to be highly secure. “In traditional SIM cards, vendors engrave the profiles in the CPUS of

the SIM and then sends them to the operators that in turn have to put these SIM cards in a vault because they have to be in a secure environment. When talking about eSIM, the profiles are virtual so they need to reside in a secure datacenterthat cannot be accessed easily. The access to the server where the profile resides has to be compliant with GSMA specifications that are very complex. The application has to reside also on the same server and has to encrypt the profiles and send them over the air to the embedded SIM that is being activated. Invigo had to comply with the GSMA specifications related to the security of a datacenter and the eSIM solution. It needed investment, time and the know-how of engineers, and we were able to meet all three conditions. Nine months ago, we initiated the process. The GSMA sent auditors to monitor that everything was done by the book. We got the certification a month ago and we are very proud of the Invigo team who did marvelous work and we are very grateful to Cirrus datacenter, located in Lebanon, which we used during the whole process.” Invigo is today the first company in the MENA region and the fifth worldwide, along with global leading SIM vendors, to receive the GSMA SAS-SM accreditation for its eSIM Manager solution. In fact, the company realized the importance to keep pace with the technology trends and that is why it decided to launch this solution now in order to address the needs of users

that are looking to activate their eSIM slots. Moreover, Fouad Ghoraieb noted that eSIM is highly crucial in the era of IoT because with the increase of wearables and M2M devices, any connected object will be easily connected through eSIM provisioning. In fact, the new generation of eSIM is believed to be industry transforming and essential for the development of the internet of things (IoT) ecosystem. Invigo eSIM Manager facilitates the seamless activation of connected devices and offers operators a suitable subscription management solution to remotely provision and manage embedded SIM cards, be it in machine to machine devices such as industrial sensors or in consumer devices such as smartphones, wearables and tablets. It allows to seamlessly deploy SIM profiles into connected devices while meeting highest industry security standards. However, Invigo doesn’t only offer eSIM solutions but rather has a very wide portfolio that revolves around remote configuration and provisioning. “We offer device management and SIM management. As a technology company, the natural evolution for us is to go into eSIM provisioning and IoT. We are affirming the fact that we are an important player in that field. Hopefully, we will expand the market for Invigo and every customer in need of activating eSIM on its network,” he concluded.

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MARCH 2019

INTERVIEW

Corning focused on investing in innovation designed to solve network challenges

olina has shown dynamic leadership and vision since assuming the role of regional sales director for Corning Optical Communications in the Middle East, and has helped

Corning Optical Communications will be a key enabler in facilitating not only the existing demand from communication service providers to have higher data speeds, but also for their future fiber demands, as telecommunications operators continue their preparations for the commercialization of 5G networks. That was the view expressed by Juan Colina, regional sales director of Corning Optical Communications, during an exclusive interview with Telecom Review. solidify its position as the No.1 supplier of FTTH products. In a brilliant interview, Colina outlines what differentiates Corning from its competitors and how it aims to play a key role in helping Saudi Arabia achieve its national transformation objectives. In addition to this, he

highlights how Corning will continue to invest in new technologies to create cutting-edge innovations designed to address specific telecommunications network challenges. You were appointed last year as president of the FTTH Council

MARCH 2019

MENA. Can you tell us how much of an honor it is for you to be elected president of the FTTH Council and what does the role entail? The FTTH Council is a body that has been established to ultimately improve the adoption of fiber across all the various different types of applications. I now get the opportunity in my role as president to really shape the vision of the FTTH Council MENA to foster that adoption into 5G, wireless applications and smart cities. The council’s mission over the next two years is not going away from FTTH, but essentially making sure that fiber is adopted as the preferred medium of choice in FTTH, 5G and smart cities in an effort to ensure that fiber really becomes the medium to deliver the bandwidth capacity that is required in the Middle East. FTTH as a technology is wellestablished. For example, the UAE has the highest penetration of optical fiber in access networks globally. In addition to this, Saudi Arabia is also currently undergoing a vast amount of FTTH deployments too. So FTTH is already there, but we do also want to use the benefits of fiber being utilized across the different applications, as we believe that fiber is future proof and enables all the capacity and latency required for next-generation networks. If you look at the FTTH Councils globally, a lot of the sister councils have rebranded and unveiled a new strategic mission. For example, the FTTH Council in the United States has been renamed as the Fiber Broadband Association. The FTTH Council in Africa is now called FTTX Africa. So it’s not just FTTH MENA, but in fact all sister councils under the Fiber Council Global Alliance are proactively trying to ensure that fiber gets adopted not only for FTTH, but across all the fiber to the X type of applications. The growth of FTTH coverage has rocketed in the GCC region over the last number of years, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. What role is Corning playing in terms of serving both the FTTH demand and

INTERVIEW the push from network operators to have higher data speeds? The UAE is very, very advanced in terms of FTTH deployment. Saudi Arabia, obviously because of the dimension of the country, doesn’t have the same level of concentration, but is embarking upon a lot of projects and has invested significantly in FTTH. The latest metric we have at the FTTH Council MENA indicates that 94.3 percent of the UAE has FTTH coverage. If you compare this to other countries, especially those countries that people view as the early adopters of FTTH like South Korea and Japan, then the penetration rates are even more impressive. South Korea has 90 percent and Japan has 81 percent, so the UAE is really driving FTTH adoption globally. Corning has been a key player on both rollouts as the leading supplier of FTTH products. One of the important things that we’re expressing to our customers in the region is that Corning has over 45 million homes passed with FTTH technology globally. So we’re very, very proud of those numbers. In addition to this, we do help operators, not only to cope with existing demand, but also to be ready for future demands of fiber. Overall, 5G has become a bit of a catalyst to make sure you have the FTTH infrastructure ready, because it will be needed for the deployment of 5G networks. Corning has announced that it will invest $10bn in growth opportunities in an effort to solidify its position as the market leader globally. How much of that investment will be spent in the Middle East? The announcement by Corning regarding its investment in growth opportunities was part of a Strategy and Capital Allocation Framework it unveiled in 2015. Under this framework, Corning is investing $10bn in growth opportunities across its various businesses – including optical communications. The investments include a combination

of research and development, capital spending, and strategic acquisitions. We don’t really break down the investment per region. We’ve already discussed the transition between FTTH and 5G during the course of this interview. However, what impact do you think the commercialization of 5G is going to have on the entire ICT ecosystem? A lot of the ongoing debate about 5G is related to standardization. We need to realize that the standard for 5G has not been fully finalized - and there are still a number of discussions ongoing about 5G. However, I think one really healthy debate the ICT sector is having is in relation to the underlying technologies of what 5G is really going to look like at the end. My personal opinion is that it’s going to be something that doesn’t happen from one day to the next. 4G was

Corning has over 45 million homes passed with FTTH technology globally

MARCH 2019

an evolution of 3G, but it took some time. There was a lot of hype and people thought that all operators were going to move to 4G, but you still see some operators upgrading their 3G networks to provide 4G services. The latency requirements and the capacity requirements for 5G are not going to happen overnight, it’s going to take time. Operators such as Etisalat and STC have announced that they’ve conducted 5G trials. They’re doing these 5G trials at the backhaul macro cell level, but there are still no mobile devices actually available to utilize the benefits of 5G. We’re still at the early stages of 5G, but if there is a region globally where 5G will be adopted first, and by adoption, I mean driven deeper and deeper into the networks and closer and closer to the end users, then I think the Middle East will certainly be one of the first regions. The density Dubai and Abu Dhabi have is very, very high in terms of population per square kilometer or mile; not many cities in Europe have that density. So to get 5G services and KPIs in terms of capacity and latency to the end users, the 5G antennas will have to be very close to the end user, which basically means fiber will have to go deeper. So that type of environment is right here in the Middle East, and that’s why I think the Middle East will be one of the first regions globally where 5G will be adopted first. Corning is a global leader and market incumbent in terms of its fiber production and has phenomenal manufacturing and engineering capabilities. In your expert opinion, what is it that differentiates Corning from its competitors? One of the key things that we’re most proud of and it’s something I mentioned earlier is the fact we’ve been producing low-loss optical fiber since the 1970s. In addition to this, we have 1 billion kilometers of optical fiber sold, which pretty much represents around a third of all the optical fiber globally.

INTERVIEW However, if I had to pick one aspect which I believe fundamentally differentiates us from our competitors, then it would be the fact we’re the only true end-toend supplier of integrated optical solutions. If you look at the fact that Corning is a manufacturer of optical fiber, we have the know-how around optical fiber and we know how to cable that optical fiber. I think there are a lot of important processes within building that solution that Corning has a lot of knowledge in and that is one of the things that really, really differentiates us from our rivals. Can you tell us about some of the exciting new projects Corning will be undertaking in 2019? The whole region is undergoing a lot of investment in optical fiber infrastructure. The Saudi government has announced its national transformation plan entitled Saudi Vision 2030 and their ambitious aspirations for Saudi Arabia are a fantastic catalyst for innovation. Corning aims to play a key role in helping Saudi Arabia build its infrastructure to achieve their transformational goals. In the UAE, next year’s EXPO 2020 has attracted significant investments in terms of creating new infrastructure, so there’s a lot of exciting opportunities in the region. In North Africa, we’re seeing huge investment taking place in an effort to get the infrastructure ready for the next evolution of optical networks. So our aim over the next 12 months is to ensure we provide our technology to all our customers in the region and we will also work with our customers closely to provide them with assistance in making the transition from their current optical network to a future proof 5G network. Can you outline to us what your primary roles and responsibilities are as regional director of Corning Optical Communications Middle East? I’ve been in the region since 2015. I was lucky enough to get the

opportunity to come here when Corning asked me would I relocate to Dubai from Berlin. I really enjoy working in the Middle East, and I really want to make sure that we’re working together with our customers in giving everyone access to the latest state-of-the-art technology that Corning is currently innovating. So, my objective is really getting the team ready to start sharing with the customers all the advantages that Corning has when we provide endto-end integrated optical solutions. I think there is a lot of value in that for end users, and we want to make sure that we’re out there with the customers to ensure that their rollouts are successful and that they’ll able to get the fiber into the ground as much as they want and as soon as they can.

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MARCH 2019

INTERVIEW

EDCH brings new SIM card and messaging solutions for mobile network operators and enterprises

Nasser Salim, general manager, EDCH

Established in 1994, Emirates Data Clearing House (EDCH) has come a long way as the only data clearing house in the Middle East with customers from across the globe. They have enabled mobile operators and enterprises to enhance their revenues while reducing operating cost, offering comprehensive solutions including data and financial clearing, revenue assurance, messaging, value added services, SIM and eSIM among others. EDCH participated in Mobile World Congress this year to engage in discussions on potential opportunities and at the same time explore new areas for future growth of the company.

MARCH 2019

asser Salim, general manager, EDCH shares his insights in an interview with Telecom Review on the current trends, new initiatives and services planned this year. What was the focus for EDCH at MWC this year in terms of new services and solutions for all your customers and visitors? SIM cards are a critical element in the value chain of mobile network operators (MNOs), and their security is non-negotiable. The eSIM is an important evolution in network access technology, allowing for increased mobility and simplified access to mobile networks eSIM profile provisioning services and SIM card solutions were a major focus for EDCH at MWC this year. We were able to highlight how we are reshaping the SIM business by showcasing the latest trends in terms of eSIM provisioning as well as our customized SIM card solutions. It cannot be stressed enough that reliable, high quality SIM cards help to minimize both the revenue loss and subscriber dissatisfaction caused by difficulties in connecting to the mobile network. And for machine to machine (M2M) applications, the eSIM is already bringing substantial benefits to operators and business customers. Designed as per GSMA standards, EDCH’s innovative suite of products enables mobile operators and enterprises to offer seamless customer experience to their end users. By investing in SIM cards with appropriate memory capacities, operators can benefit from installing applications on SIM cards using over-the-air (OTA) technology. Some of the most popular apps include the SIM application toolkit and interactive messaging, while OTA steering of roaming, or preferred roaming, is also possible. From its SAS-certified factory in the UAE, we offer SIM cards to suit any operators’ requirements, with short

INTERVIEW delivery times within the Middle East and Africa region. EDCH is offering memory capacities from 32KB to 1MB; support for both Java and native applications; SIM, USIM and ISIM cards for access to networks from 2G to 5G, standard, micro and nano SIM card plug sizes and M2M SIMs. EDCH is also active in messaging solutions. What is new for mobile network operators on this front? Application to person (A2P) offerings is a key focus area for EDCH: two messaging products – Smart-Protect and E-Message - offer network security and revenue assurance to mobile network operators and diverse business messaging solutions to the enterprises spanning across various scales and verticals. Our continuous efforts and commitment to innovation have enabled us to provide our MNO partners with a complete and fully managed A2P messaging end-toend solution to serve their needs. By incorporating our smart protect solution, MNOs are assured of full visibility and control over the A2P SMS traffic being terminated into their networks due to near real-time updates and security rules. EDCH’s business messaging solution E-Message will help MNOs capitalize on the enormous market potential by reaching out to targeted market segments with focused marketing campaigns. With our bespoke messaging solutions, corporates can monetize latent market opportunities and convert them into enduring sources of revenue. Smart-Protect filters and monitors A2P traffic for network security and checks revenue leakage and enhances revenue. EDCH’s state-of-the-art end-to-end managed messaging service supported by the constant monitoring and vigilance of a team of experts give it a competitive edge over others. Other benefits include bespoke solutions, zero risk, zero CAPEX and zero OPEX, flexible commercial models to suit clients’ needs, and an easy endto-end integration with zero network disruption.

Our business messaging solution E-Message helps enterprises capitalize on the enormous market potential by reaching out to a targeted market segment with focused marketing campaigns. It also empowers all types of enterprises to automate their workflow with our unique messaging capabilities. With EDCH’s bespoke messaging solutions, corporates can monetize latent market opportunities and convert them into enduring sources of revenue without spending on CAPEX, OPEX or management/ maintenance of the solution. What are the future plans for EDCH? As most operators are focused on achieving efficiency and adopting advanced technologies in their network, EDCH will continue to evolve and enrich its portfolio of products and services. In 2019, we will look at including advanced analytics and tools that will enable them to be upcoming requirements as well as manage their roaming needs in a hassle-free environment. Can you give us an insight into your global operations, and how do you plan to expand EDCH business this year? EDCH focuses on serving more than 62 operators in over 30 countries across four continents. We are looking at expanding our portfolio and footprint where we see the need for our services and solutions. At MWC, we have met a lot of new potential customers and foresee immense opportunities for 2019. What is EDCH’s vision and strategy for this year? EDCH has served as a mobility solutions partner for MNOs for two decades due to our long-term vision to lead in driving innovation and technological advancement. This has helped our customers access the best in technology enabling them to focus on their core business objectives to provide superior customer service and enhance shareholder value. We will continue to invest in launching reliable and robust solutions for MNOs across our markets. This will enable our clients to provide their customers quality services and solutions.

MARCH 2019

OPERATORS’ NEWS

Alfa Sports has now its own channel on leading TV network Alfa, managed by Orascom TMT, announced that the Alfa Sports app, the exclusive broadcaster of the Alfa Basketball and Volleyball Championships as well as other sports activities, is now available on the Cablevision network following an agreement signed between Alfa CEO and chairman, Marwan Hayek and Cablevision’s CEO, Samar Khalil. Under the agreement, all Cablevision subscribers in Lebanon will be able to watch Alfa Sports’s premium content in HD for a $20 subscription until the end of the 2018-2019 season. The agreement is part of Alfa’s plan to promote the app as a visionary and modern product, gradually from smartphone to smart TV and now on the widely-spread Cablevision network.

REDEFINING POWER SOLUTIONS

It also comes in the context of Alfa’s strategy aimed at offering solutions for

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“With this agreement, Alfa enters the world of the big screen, confirming our digital transformation and transition from a traditional operator to a content and multi-services provider,” Hayek said. “Through Alfa Sports, we have fundamentally changed the content world and introduced a main pillar in the framework of the integration in the world of 5G and the internet of things, which will enormously change our lives.” He pointed out that “the launch of Alfa Sports in October 2018 was a project aiming to rescue Lebanese sports. Since the start, we have developed an integrated strategy for the app to embrace the Lebanese sports and be accessible to all sports lovers. This step comes in the context of achieving this strategy.”

Etisalat Group net profit registers a 2.4% increase Etisalat Group announced its consolidated financial statements for the 12 months ending December 31, 2018, marking another successful year for the Group and its subsidiaries.

Hybrid Solutions Guaranteeing OPEX Reduction

rescuing national sport and contributing to its development.

Twelve month consolidated revenues reached AED 52.4 billion, an increase of 1% compared to same period last year. Twelve month consolidated net profit after Federal Royalty amounted to AED 8.6 billion which marks an increase of 2.4% compared to same period last year. Aggregate subscriber base reached 141 million; representing year over year increase of 1%. Proposed dividend payout of 40 fils per share for the second half of 2018, representing a total dividend payout of 80 fils for the full year and a dividend payout ratio of 81% Some of the major achievements made by Etisalat were the launch of the first commercial 5G network on C-band in

the MENA region in May 2018, Expo 2020 Dubai became the first 5G major commercial customer in MEASA through partnership with Etisalat. In addition, Etisalat was the first Middle East telecom to offer eSIM services for latest Apple products. Moreover, Etisalat was named ‘Most Valuable Telecoms Brand’ in MENA region in 2018 by Brand Finance. In the UAE, the subscriber base reached 12.6 million subscribers, while Etisalat Group aggregate subscribers reached 141 million subscribers representing a year on year increase of 1%. Etisalat Group’s consolidated revenue for Q4 of 2018 amounted to AED 13.0 billion, while consolidated net profit after Federal Royalty in Q4 amounted to AED 2.0 billion representing an increase of 2.4% in comparison to the same period last year resulting in a net profit margin of 16%.

MARCH 2019

OPERATORS’ NEWS

touch announces first NB-IoT application in Lebanon Touch, the leading mobile telecommunications and data operator in Lebanon, managed by Zain Group, has announced a partnership with IOTree, Lebanon’s first wireless network of smart traps for harmful pests, at the Agri-Food Innovation Day held at New Biel on February 5. IOTree is a smart wireless network of smart traps that are developed using a deep learning algorithm and machine vision designed for the early detection, classification and counting of different types of harmful pests. Farmers can benefit from the IOTree app by receiving real-time reports and updates on the best agricultural practices to deal with pest invasions. IOTree will be the first organization in Lebanon to deploy Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), in partnership with touch. In its first trial project, IOTree will connect twenty smart traps to basestations located

in Der Tamich (Awkar) and Rabweh utilizing NB-IoT technology. Commenting on the partnership, touch chief commercial officer, Nadim Khater, said, “Today, connectivity and technological innovation play a pivotal role in developing the agriculture industry. Touch is providing leading edge connectivity to IOTree’s sensors delivering reliability, scale and very long battery life using the powerful 3GPP NB-IoT standard. We are very proud of this relevant IoT use case debut.” During the agri-food innovation day event, touch also granted the startup company IOTree a golden pass to join touch’s innovation program (TIP) cycle 3 that starts in April 2019. TIP is touch’s innovation program that on-boards six startups every six months for acceleration in a telecom environment.

New CEO to lead Telecom Egypt Telecom Egypt, owned by the government of Egypt with a share of 80%, announced changes in its board of directors by a decree from the Egyptian Prime Minister with immediate effect and for the remaining period of board of directors. The board of directors appointed Eng. Adel Hamed as the new managing director and chief executive officer. The decision comes in line with the Egyptian government’s plan to speed up the national digital transformation initiative, where Telecom Egypt has a strategic role in facilitating and accelerating such transformation for the country. In addition, the new revenue streams from the project are expected to boost the company’s organic growth potential. Hamed’s appointment comes as a result of the trust in Telecom Egypt’s internally developed caliber and their execution ability as the next phase of growth requires

REINVENTING TELECOM INFRASTRUCTURE

the complete awareness of the company’s operational details. Adel Hamed, managing director and chief executive officer, thanked the chairman and the board of directors for the faith they have placed in him and said, “I look forward to dedicating all my energy to drive this already successful company to its potential. “This is an important time in the evolution of the telecom sector and I shall be relying on a great team at Telecom Egypt to make sure that we seize the opportunities and build on our strength. I would also like to thank the executive management of Telecom Egypt and all former CEOs, in particular Mr. Ahmed El Beheiry, who has made great efforts to develop the company across its business units. This puts a great responsibility on my shoulders to continue on the efforts of others in light of Telecom Egypt’s long-standing strategy.”

Building, Renovating & Maintaining Telecom Infrastructure

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OPERATORS’ NEWS

MARCH 2019

EITC launches new NB-IoT network with trio of partners

"LEADING T-ESCO GLOBALLY"

UAE-based telco, du, from Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), along with Nokia, Affirmed Networks and MediaTek, announced the launch of next generation narrow bandinternet of things (NB-IoT) network in the United Arab Emirates based on the latest 3GPP Release 14 standard.

For this project, MediaTek used an NB-IoT Release 14 enabled System-ona-Chip (SoC) for ultra-low power and cost-effective IoT devices. It enabled extended coverage for applications, such as smart trackers, wearables, IoT security, smart metering and other industrial applications.

The NB-IoT will leverage the purposebuilt IoT platform built by du, to enable devices to deliver a wealth of smart city applications ranging from smart metering, smart parking, trackers, smart health, industrial and agriculture use cases.

The MediaTek chip’s highly integrated design incorporated an NB-IoT modem, antenna RF and base-band analogue front-end among many other components, in order to simplify the product design process for partners. Its miniscule package size and low pin-count yields cost and size effective designs for many applications.

As part of this collaboration, du, Nokia, Affirmed Networks and MediaTek recently successfully demonstrated an electricity and water smart metering use case and its associated benefits, wherein NB-IoT 3GPP Rel 14 provided deep coverage extensions of 10dB - better than LTE in band 20 (800MHz), device power saving for longer battery life and maintaining significantly better data rate and low latencies compared to erstwhile Release 13. NB1.

Affirmed Networks’ NB-IoT solution is currently deployed on du’s fully virtualized native cloud open-stack environment. The ststate-of-the-art deployment is 5G-ready with network slicing capability to support du’s vision of a fully virtualized and software defined native cloud core network.

AT&T joins global cybersecurity alliance formed by Etisalat formed by Etisalat The Global Telco Security Alliance announced the addition of global telecommunications leader AT&T as an equal member in the group which was launched in April 2018 by Etisalat, Singtel, SoftBank and Telefónica.

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The Global Telco Security Alliance brings together leading telecommunications operators from around the world that offer enterprises comprehensive cybersecurity insights to help them address the growing threat of cyber-attacks and the evolving threat landscape. AT&T’s addition represents a significant step up in resources and insights offered by the Alliance as a whole. AT&T has established extensive cybersecurity capabilities and technologies. These were recently reinforced with the acquisition of

AlienVault, which has enabled AT&T to accelerate delivering on its vision of enabling organisations of all sizes with effective cybersecurity solutions. The inclusion of AT&T heightens the Alliance’s ability to share insights and best practices for customers globally by harnessing the expertise of more than 6,000 security experts and a global network of more than 28 Security Operations Centres. Combined, the members of the Alliance now cover more than 1.2 billion customers in more than 60 countries across Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. The Global Telco Security Alliance plans to expand its scope of activities and global footprint over time and is open to adding new members in the future.

MARCH 2019

OPERATORS’ NEWS

Etisalat launches new app as part of UAE innovation month Etisalat Information Services, a subsidiary of Etisalat Services Holding, announced the next generation application of the aggregator’s model through its enhanced Connect.ae mobile app, taking its hyperlocal search engine to the next level by bringing together businesses and consumers in the UAE through exclusive deals and special discounts. The launch of the UAE’s first aggregator app is part of Etisalat’s key activities to mark the UAE Innovation Month, in line with UAE’s Innovation Strategy that sets out the country’s ambition to become the most innovative nation in the world. Rashid Al Naqbi, general manager, Etisalat Information Services, said: “Etisalat Information Services is continuously investing across its multichannel to enable digital transformation. The launch of the connect.ae app supported by innovative technology will give customers and businesses a unique and seamless experience of the wide array of services, discounts and deals. Connect.ae has collaborated with the world’s leading aggregators such as

Booking.com for hotels bookings; ridehailing app Careem; food delivery app Zomato; and Shopinc.com for grocery shopping, among others. Customers can easily book a cab, make hotel or restaurant reservations, and get exclusive discounts with the enhanced app. With its innovative features and services, this digital platform is seen to further boost customer loyalty as well as promote brand exposure.” Connect.ae, which first launched in March 2015, is a hyper-local search engine to find companies, products, services within one’s city in the UAE. The tool collects, filters, classifieds and presents local business information to the market, offers routing guidance, booking services and posts enquiries with companies. The app, available for free from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store, offers users with discount vouchers and deals at 1,000 partners, ranging from restaurants to clinics, spas, cinemas, car rentals, travel and tours, and other services. Customers can also redeem the vouchers and avail of discounts on the Connect.ae website.

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Telecom Egypt seals new partnership on high-speed bitstream services Telecom Egypt and Orange Data announced the signing of a new agreement on bitstream access services. Orange Data is the first operator to sign this agreement aiming to provide its customers with higher speed internet services. The agreement avails the use of new technologies including fiber to the home (FTTH) and VDSL raising the maximum speed to 100Mbps from 16Mbps previously. Adel Hamed, managing director and chief executive officer, Telecom Egypt, said, “The signing of these agreements with Orange supports our long-term relationship with the company as a strategic partner across several

dimensions of our services. The new bitstream framework is a testament of our continuous strive to avail the best quality services to the local market and allows Telecom Egypt to monetize its growing infrastructure investments.” Commenting on the announcement, Yasser Shaker, Orange Egypt chief executive officer, said, “Reaching an agreement with Telecom Egypt, the main provider of infrastructure services in Egypt, is an important step to provide higher speed internet services to our customers. The agreement enables Orange Data to maintain its leading position in the Egyptian market offering its customers high quality telecom services.”

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MARCH 2019

ICT FEATURE

Europe set to be left lagging behind in race for 5G There are growing concerns in Europe that if the regulatory environment doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t change, the continent will be left behind in relation to the commercialization and subsequent deployment of 5G networks. That was the general consensus which was shared amongst a number of high-profile and prominent figures from the ICT industry during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

he US and countries in East Asia such as China, Japan and South Korea are already establishing a strong market position in relation to the development of next generation technologies. The Middle East has also adopted an aggressive and ambitious approach to 5G, with many of its major

operators such as Etisalat in the UAE, and Saudi Telecom Company in Saudi Arabia already agreeing to enter into commercial 5G contracts with European telecommunications vendor Ericsson. Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm took the opportunity during his keynote presentation at Mobile World Congress to take aim at the current ICT climate in Europe, and expressed his fears that the continent is going

to repeat the same mistake as it did with 4G. However, according to Ericssonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s CEO, when you consider the revolutionary benefits and lucrative opportunities that are being promised with the advent of 5G technology, any hesitation in terms of creating the correct framework and ecosystem in Europe for 5G would have a significantly greater economic impact than the same hesitation did with 4G.

MARCH 2019

Ekholm was addressing some concerns that were expressed from many European operators that a blanket ban on Chinese telecommunications behemoth Huawei would significantly hamper their ability to commercially deploy 5G networks. Although Ericsson’s CEO didn’t directly name Huawei, it was clear he was referring to it when he was dismissing the fears that had been expressed from operators and stated that they already have access in Europe to 5G technology. He stressed that the biggest challenge facing operators wasn’t access to 5G technologies, but instead the combination of high-spectrum prices and heavy regulation. Ekholm said, “There has been a lot of discussions and conversations taking place in Europe recently regarding the security of networks. This is a very important topic because 5G is going to become a national infrastructure so the security of 5G networks naturally enough will be absolutely critical. 5G will be the backbone in the future of our society. However, operators shouldn’t be concerned that they’re going to fall behind in 5G deployments because they already have access to 5G technology. Undoubtedly, the biggest challenges facing operators is the combination of high-spectrum prices and heavy regulation. These barriers need to be removed in order to foster an environment which is more investor friendly. If operators can’t invest properly in 5G then the continent will fall behind, and that will have a severe effect on its economy.” Market fragmentation Chafic Traboulsi, vice president and head of Networks at Ericsson MEA, also conceded that high spectrum prices and heavy regulation were huge stumbling blocks in Europe’s ability to deploy 5G networks, but also pointed to fragmentation in the market as a huge obstacle. Traboulsi told Telecom Review, “Regulators are there for the people

ICT FEATURE at the end of the day to make sure the business and competition is fair. However, it’s become very evident that there needs to be a balance and Europe needs to move quickly. They need to ensure that they secure frequencies at a very affordable rate for the communication service providers so that they can give those advanced services to their customers.” The Ericsson executive added that the cost of spectrum in Europe was just far too high. “Operators in such a competitive industry as Europe just simply don’t have the additional CAPEX to spend on buying high spectrum. As I said, the regulators are there to protect consumers but at the end of the day, there are far too many operators in the same markets. That market fragmentation restricts investment and results in operators not being able to invest properly. We were working with one operator in Romania, and there were eight other operators in the market. It’s just not sustainable.” CEO of Telefonica, Jose Maria Alvarez Pallete, urged European governments to resist the temptation to artificially inflate spectrum pricing in an effort to accelerate the rollout of 5G mobile networks. According to Pallete, European telecoms regulators need to adopt a more pragmatic approach to market consolidation in a bid to help telecommunications operators bare the cost of 5G rollout. During his opening address at MWC 2019 in Barcelona, the charismatic CEO questioned whether the European Commission’s preference for four players in each of the markets it regulates was in the industry’s best interest, particularly as it looks to pump billions of euros into its 5G network rollout. “Does competition theory say that Europe needs one mobile operator for every 1 million citizens in Europe? Governments are using 5G auctions as short-term cash

generators rather than fostering the digital transformation that societies and economies require. Spectrum needs to be awarded for longer durations, and we hope that the new commission and parliament in the European Union make the creation of a level playing field their number one priority.” Nokia’s CEO Rajeev Suri also expressed his expert view on 5G progression in Europe, and was wholly unequivocal in his assessment that Europe’s 5G implementation program will be undoubtedly delayed. He shared the sentiments expressed by his Ericsson counterparts and pointed to a combination of high spectrum prices and regulatory hurdles as the main factors preventing Europe from the leading the way on the commercial deployment of 5G networks. Suri suggested that Europe’s execution of the new technology destined to fundamentally reshape major industries and our society as a whole would lag behind peers like the United States and China, which are making major strides in their development of 5G. Suri said, “The main reason European telecommunications players are falling is a lack of spectrum as well as many regulatory hurdles. Spectrum is available in some countries, not all, and the market was completely ‘overregulated’ and that consolidation is not permitted.” There was no better example in Europe to exemplify the issue of high spectrum than in Italy, with the Italian government hauling a record $7.6 billion in a spectrum auction it held in October. Whether or not European regulators heed the calls from the continent’s major operators and telecommunication vendors remain to be seen, but one thing is for sure, if they don’t move fast then they will definitely be left behind the rest of the world in terms of deploying 5G networks.

MARCH 2019

COVERAGE

have entered the telecommunications market as a result of technological advancements. However, one must admit that the telecommunications industry was not good in terms of its reaction and adaptability to new disruptive business models. The disruption is happening at various trends and dimensions. Take quantum, for example, in just one minute of internet usage in 2018, you had 266,000 hours of Netflix consumption. In 2017, this number was 70,000, so it grew by more than three times in twelve months.”

World Government Summit serves as a catalyst for sustainable development Global political leaders and key business decisionmakers, NGOs and philanthropists all descended on Dubai for the seventh installment of the World Government Summit (WGS 2019).

he mantra and theme of the event was to create a new vision for a brighter, more sustainable future. During three days of robust discourse, presentations and panel discussions, some of the world’s most prominent figures from the world of business and politics shared their thoughts on how we can work together to address the biggest challenges currently facing our society. Influencing leaders from the ICT and telecommunications sector were also present at the conference to highlight the revolutionary changes that have had a major impact on the industry. Telecom Review was in attendance on day 1 and day 2 of the World Government Summit and covered a

brilliant panel discussion which was entitled ‘The Upcoming Revolution in the Telecom Sector’. The panel consisted of Osman Sultan, CEO EITC, Houlin Zhao, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and H.E. Hamad Al Mansoori, Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA). The CEO of EITC (du) Osman Sultan has said that the biggest threat facing operators is a failure to adapt quickly and embrace change and not the rise of OTTs or new disruptive business models entering the ICT ecosystem. Sultan highlighted how in the past, the telecommunications industry was very, very slow to react to changes within the ICT ecosystem. He said, “There have been a number of serious disruption models that

In addition to this, Sultan illustrated how things can now be achieved at lightning speed due to technological advancement and highlighted this by comparing the airline industry with an app. Sultan said, “The speed in how we get things done has also been phenomenal. It took the aviation industry 68 years to reach 50 million customers, but it took the application Pokemon Go just 19 days! So these are the realities to which you have to adapt.” Sultan concluded by highlighting that the biggest threat facing communication service providers was the threat from within and again reinforced his point that operators need to have the capability to adapt and react quickly to the emergence of new disruptive business models. ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao rejected the claim that technology leaders like Google pose a threat to the role the telecommunications industry will play in shaping the future of connectivity. Zhao was on the same panel as Osman Sultan which was moderated by CNN’s Samuel Burke. When pressed by Burke as to whether Google represented a very real risk to the role telecommunication operators and the industry will play in shaping the future, Zhao immediately dismissed the notion and said he viewed Google as a very important partner in the ICT ecosystem. Zhao said, “Google has given us a lot of applications that have undoubtedly added value to our ICT

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MARCH 2019

COVERAGE to have the first 5G service in Africa. However, I went to the countryside less than an hour from this city and none of the schools or homes in this mountainous village had any internet connectivity. This is one of the biggest challenges as an industry that we face.”

ecosystem. So I refute the idea that the telecommunications industry will be replaced by Google. I think that the telecommunications sector and Google will continue to work side by side as partners in a collective effort to continue to shape the future together. In addition to this, Zhao added that the ITU as an organization is actively pursuing participation from major ICT players like Google to join its membership in a bid to foster a better telecommunications environment that benefits all stakeholders. Zhao added, “The membership of the ITU isn’t exclusively for governments. We have got a lot of players from the ICT industry as members. Two years ago, Google joined the ITU as a member and we have relationships with other major ICT players like Facebook and Alibaba and we actively encourage them to all work together.” Zhao believes that the biggest competition for operators may be from entities that can provide infrastructure that connects people that are currently ‘unconnected’. Zhao said, “We still have billions of people in the world that remain underserved and unconnected. This represents a huge opportunity for ICT players to tap into these markets to provide coverage to these people. It is the responsibility of the ITU and telecommunication operators to address this in the future. For example, last year I visited a country in Africa and visited one of their cities in which they were conducting 5G trials. They wanted

Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD), the leading national entity for international development aid, expressed its support for the World Government Summit (WGS 2019) by becoming a strategic partner of the event and participated in several crucial sessions and meetings. At WGS 2019, the Fund was recognized by the Global Council for Sustainable Development Goals for its efforts in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). His Excellency Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, Director General of ADFD, participated in an open session entitled ‘Investing in digital economy: New approach for development funds’. Moderated by His Excellency Dr .Abdulrahman Al Hamidy, DirectorGeneral and Chairman of the Board of the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF), distinguished panelists headlining the session included Dr. Fahad Abdullah Al Mubarak, Minister of State, and Secretary General of the G20 Saudi Secretariat, Abdul Hakim Elwaer, Advisor to the President at Islamic Development Bank (IDB), Jin Liqun, President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and Ferid Belhaj, Vice President, MENA Region at the World Bank Group. The session highlighted that within the prevailing digital era, development funds play a crucial role as key partners in supporting sustainable development and in advancing the process through the financing and management of development projects and digital infrastructure. In strengthening national economies, development funds reduce the financial burdens on the state budget, and improve key sectors needed to achieve sustainable development. The panelists concluded that the right digital infrastructure investments act as the backbone of better functioning

economies and more inclusive societies. Speaking at Investing in Digital Economy: New Approach for Development Funds’ session, His Excellency Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi said: “Development funds design their policies to meet the outlined national priorities of beneficiary countries. We work to enhance government capacity and bring the national plans of beneficiary countries to fruition, through supporting them in building their institutions and financing infrastructure projects. Digitalized economies are today crucial to achieving the challenging sustainable global agenda and therefore financial institutions have begun to invest in financing information, technology, and communication (ICT) projects.” His Excellency Al Suwaidi added: “In order to shape an enabling ecosystem for a digital economy, countries need to implement innovative policies and strategies to strengthen education systems, build capacities, ensure a solid and reliable electricity supply, instill good governance mechanisms, and strengthen big data infrastructure. Strong ICT infrastructure is the building block for a digital economy. ADFD’s funding operations help in achieving that by creating an enabling environment, building capacities and funding major development projects in all key sectors including education and electricity.” Commenting on the importance of collaboration, His Excellency Al Suwaidi concluded: “The Arab Coordination Group is a perfect example of coordination in optimizing co-financing and sharing best practices. At ADFD we fund up to 50 percent of the total project cost thus creating an opportunity for joint financing either from governments or the private sector.” Speaking on ADFD’s participation at WGS 2019, His Excellency Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi said: “As a strategic partner, ADFD is proud to attend the seventh edition of the World Government Summit. As a leading national institution driving sustainable and economic development, we are keen to join key stakeholders in discussing best practices and contribute to building a roadmap for the rapidly changing global socio-economic landscape.”

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MARCH 2019

VENDORS’ NEWS

Chinese vendor determines the best 5G architecture ZTE Corporation has jointly released a white paper entitled “5G Best Choice Architecture” along with IHS. Based on a comparative analysis of 5G SA and NSA, the white paper concludes that SA architecture is the better path to the target network in 5G era from the perspectives of long-term investment, business capability and network performance. From the perspective of network investment, in spite of low initial investment of NSA architecture, NSA architecture’s long-term cumulative investment cost is relatively higher than that of SA architecture, considering the upgrade cost of existing LTE network equipment and the evolution cost to SA architecture. Furthermore, the initial deployment cost of SA architecture can be significantly reduced by virtue of an appropriate 5G deployment strategy. For instance, selective 5G coverage

in hot spots, 4G and 5G co-site, deploying 5G Core Network on the existing datacenter, and starting with fundamental 5G Core functions only, opening the interfaces and introducing service features step by step. From the perspective of service capability, SA architecture not only improves the access bandwidth, but also supports applications such as URLLC and mMTC. SA architecture can deliver customized network capabilities to different applications through flexible network slicing. Therefore, the introduction of SA architecture in the early stage can launch differentiated innovative services and business models in the vertical industry market as soon as possible, and bring more revenue sources for operators. From the perspective of network performance, SA architecture can

make full use of the dual antenna transmit diversity and high power transmitter of 5G devices, achieving better network coverage, system capacity and other KPI, significantly reducing the complexity and cost of devices and thereby enhancing the end user experience. In addition to the analysis of 5G network architectures, the white paper also elaborates the maturity of 5G core network and devices, one of the operators’ major concerns, to eliminate their worries for a better network architecture. In recognition of the capabilities of commercial 5G networking for both NSA and SA architectures, ZTE actively promotes 5G commercialization, completes network verification and tests of NSA and SA architecture with multiple partners. In the white paper, IHS uses ZTE’s SA application cases and commercial field test data as a supplement.

Etisalat Misr and Ericsson prepare for 5G with two new partnership agreements

Ericsson announced the signing of two new contracts with Etisalat Misr to expand the latter’s 4G network capabilities and extend the managed services deal. These contracts are part of Etisalat and Ericsson’s strategic partnership to ensure the best network availability in Egypt. The first agreement entails expansion of current 4G capabilities, advanced features deployment all over Cairo as well as deploying 5G-ready Ericsson radio systems, which will boost Etisalat’s network capacity in greater Cairo. This will lead to an enhanced end user experience and delivering best in class services, which will serve

the growing demand and expectations of Etisalat’s valuable customers.

operations, using automation and artificial intelligence.

Khalid Murshed, chief technology officer at Etisalat Misr, said, “We continue to be committed to bringing the best network to Etisalat Misr customers. At Etisalat Misr, we managed to maintain technology leadership that serves millions of customers across Egypt with the latest and best quality of products and services. Working with Ericsson allows us to deploy the latest technologies on our 4G network, which will be an important component of our rapid transition to 5G.”

Rafiah Ibrahim, head of Ericsson Middle East & Africa, said, “The recent partnerships with Etisalat Misr highlight our joint commitment to continue providing measurable improvements to secure network quality and performance. Going forward, Ericsson will continue to invest in automation to further increase network quality and shorten lead times while also implementing analytics to measure and enhance the subscribers’ experience.”

Moreover, the second contract is an extension of the current managed services contract for a further five years. Ericsson helps to create sustainable differentiation for its managed services customers by evolving from network-centric operations to user experience-centric

To assist operators in the preparation of 5G, Ericsson will continue in 2019 to rollout its 5G RAN software, giving front-runner operators the ability to turn on 5G in their existing LTE commercial networks. Further enhancements are expected as the 5G ecosystem evolves. For customers, the result will be higher data speeds and more capacity for a growing device ecosystem.

MARCH 2019

VENDORS’ NEWS

European vendor joins O-RAN Alliance operating cost and improve end user performance. Ericsson will also focus on the upperlayer function as specified in 3GPP to provide interoperable multivendor profiles for specified interfaces between central RAN functions, resulting in faster deployment of 5G networks on a global scale. Ericsson has joined the O-RAN Alliance, a group of leading telecom service providers and suppliers with the commitment to evolving radio access network (RAN) architecture and orchestration built on openness, intelligence, flexibility and performance. As a member, the company will focus on the open interworking between RAN and network orchestration and automation, with emphasis on AI-enabled closed-loop automation and end-to-end optimization to lower

Erik Ekudden, senior vice president and chief technology officer, Ericsson, says: “Ericsson is a strong supporter of openness in the industry, and the benefits this has on global ecosystems and innovations. Our ambition is to actively support and drive discussions and developments around future RAN architectures and open interfaces. The O-RAN Alliance is an important coalition that creates an arena for these discussions, complementing other standardization and open-source initiatives in the industry which we are already active in.”

Ericsson has driven, and continues to drive, the industry towards open interfaces as part of its standardization work. The company is recognized as leaders in 3GPP and is actively contributing to several open-source communities including Linux, ONAP and OpenStack to secure open platforms useful for mobile networks. The company’s engagement with the O-RAN Alliance is based on the future needs of mobile network service providers, and how networks must evolve to enable broad range of services with strong focus on quality, performance and security. The O-RAN Alliance was formally formed at Mobile World Congress Shanghai on June 27 2018, as a network operator-led effort to drive openness and intelligence in the RAN of next generation wireless systems. At the end of 2018, the O-RAN Alliance was opened also for non-service providers to join.

Qualcomm secures new licensing agreement with Huawei brokered between the pair means that Qualcomm has now resolved one of two major disputes with its top customers.

US chipmaker Qualcomm has managed to settle a lengthy dispute with Chinese telecommunications behemoth Huawei by announcing that it has agreed a short-term licensing agreement with the vendor. The deal is a welcome reprieve for Qualcomm who posted disappointing financial results for Q4 in 2018, and it is also currently embroiled in an antitrust legal battle with Apple and the US Federal Trade Commission. Qualcomm’s CFO George Davis made the announcement regarding the Huawei deal during an earnings call which detailed the chipmakers performance in the final fiscal quarter of 2018. The agreement

Huawei has agreed to pay quarterly instalments of $150m until the end of June to cover a portion of royalties that are owed. An initial payment was made during Qualcomm’s fiscal Q1, though negotiations for a long-term settlement continue. In January 2018, it inked an amended patent deal with Samsung which included the latter’s withdrawal from a Korea Fair Trade Commission probe into the chip giant’s licensing practices. However, the powerful US chipmaker remains entrenched in a number of other high-profile rows, most notably with Apple remain. However, CEO Steve Mollenkopf believes that dispute will reach its conclusion very soon.

The Qualcomm CEO said, “We continue to believe that over the course of 2019, we will reach a resolution on the key outstanding issues in our disputes with Apple through settlement or litigation, and we are prepared for both outcomes.” Mollenkopf added that the company remains engaged in settlement talks with the US Federal Trade Commission: this week both parties presented closing arguments in a court case relating to Qualcomm’s business practices. While the company believes it made strong case at trial, the CEO said Qualcomm would be willing to accept a deal to “remove this risk from the table”. Weakness in the smartphone market was reflected in a 22 percent year on year decline in chip shipments to 186 million units. In addition to this, revenue plummeted dramatically by 20 percent to $4.8 billion. Net income of $1.1 billion compared with a loss of $6 billion in fiscal Q1 2018.

MARCH 2019

VENDORS’ NEWS

STC and Huawei announce the “Aspiration Project” at MWC 2019 At Mobile World Congress 2019, Saudi Telecom Company (STC) signed the “Aspiration Project” contract with Huawei, which contains wireless network modernization and 5G network construction. This contract aims at driving Saudi ICT industry development and ultimately supporting the Kingdom’s 2030 Vision and the National Transformation Program 2020. In the 5G era, user experience demand will increase to “Gbps Class” with more than 10x faster than 4G user experience. To ensure the smooth user experience upgrading from 4G to 5G, STC initiated the Aspiration Project for large scale commercial 5G network and 4G network upgrading. More importantly, 5G creates the strong ICT capability foundation for Saudi Arabia’s industrial digital transformation. As a strategic partner, Huawei has been supporting STC in introducing latest 5G and LTE Advanced Pro technology. Huawei helped STC to build first E2E 5G network (core, transmission, wireless and CPE) in 2018. STC will provide larger 5G

outdoor and indoor coverage in Aspiration project. For current LTE user experience upgrading, STC will modernize LTE network through latest technologies, such as Massive MIMO, 15-band antenna and multiband technology. Based on network capability, Huawei will support STC to introduce global partners to KSA for 5G ecosystem, and deliver high quality services to Saudi citizens and enterprises, and ultimately to support National Transformation Program 2020 and to maximize investment efficiency in term of capital and operations spend.

pledged “fully digitized society” in KSA. We have already put ourselves on the road to pioneer and shape the future of 5G services in KSA and beyond. Our collaborations with our international partners will only enhance and push forward the boundaries for our 5G ambitions. Our customer deserves all the capabilities and distinguishing services that the 5G network will offer in the near future. We are very excited by the endless opportunities and the bright future that the 5G network promises to deliver to all our worthy customers.”

As we move forward to the next generation of 5G networks and new service roll-out, STC is determined to keep innovating. This will drive network evolution towards a new and exciting 5G era, providing best customer service experience, and building a progressive and flourishing Saudi ICT industry.

Charles Yang, president of Huawei Middle East, said, “STC and Huawei share common understanding of industry trends and National Vision. Nowadays, ICT industry is undergoing digital transformation, and operator will be more and more important role in this transformation period. Meanwhile 5G, AI, cloud and IoT technology are the key techs of ICT infrastructure. As the strategic partner of STC, Huawei is confident to support STC to enable KSA digital services and redefine the ICT boundaries through partnership.”

Eng. Nasser Al Nasser, chief executive officer, STC, said, “STC is committed to pioneering the 5G Network development and deployment in order to deliver the

Huawei launches the world’s fastest 5G foldable phone Huawei Mate X will be compatible with the new fifth-generation wireless networks which are starting to be installed around the world, said Richard Yu, head of Huawei’s consumer business group. “Our engineers worked on this screen for over three years,” he said at an event to present the new phone in Barcelona ahead of the start of the four-day Mobile World Congress trade fair in the Spanish city. In the framework of the Mobile World Congress 2019 edition, Chinese telecoms giant Huawei unveiled the world’s fastest foldable 5G phone, just four days after rival Samsung became the first major handset maker to offer the feature.

The phone will be available in mid2019 and has a price tag of 2,299 euros ($2,600). Yu acknowledged the price was “very expensive” but said the company was working to lower it. The Mate X’s display can fold back on itself to become a 6.6-inch display,

slightly bigger than the screen on the foldable phone which Samsung unveiled in San Francisco. Several other smaller companies are rumored to present their first foldable phones at the trade fair in Barcelona this week. Handset makers are looking to folding screens to reverse falling smartphone sales as consumers hold on to their devices longer due to a lack of innovations, but analysts predict the market for the feature will be limited, at least in the early days. Huawei, the world’s second biggest smartphone maker ahead of Apple, sold 206 million smartphones in 2018, compared to just over 150 million in the previous year, Yu said.

MARCH 2019

VENDORS’ NEWS

Telecom Egypt and Ericsson forge a bilateral partnership at MWC 2019 Telecom Egypt and Ericsson have announced their collaboration at the Mobile World Congress 2019 on the upgrade of Telecom Egypt’s Cloud Core Network and the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). Telecom Egypt and Ericsson completed the successful deployment of AI to its full-stack telco cloud infrastructure. The objective is to operate telco cloud environment intelligently and efficiently to enable cloud automation and orchestration. The telecom industry is moving into cloud automation especially with introduction of cloud native in 5G. AI assets provide an efficient method for cloud visualization with ability to monitor internal traffic between NFVI layers, in addition to providing a fast way to identify faults and generate suggestions for resolution. A key benefit in the case of cloud is that the software is divided into smaller components. This means Telecom Egypt can be selective about what it chooses to upgrade in terms of software and manage these upgrades more easily on a live network with minimal disruption.

The two companies will now begin to onboard other services to address further market segments and opportunities, while ensuring business continuity management and automation process evolution of live solutions. On another note, the two companies announced as well the upgrade of Telecom Egypt’s Cloud Core Network to be 5G ready. Telecom Egypt had gone live in September 2017 with Ericsson virtual Evolved Packet Core deployed on Ericsson’s proven Network Functions Virtualization infrastructure (NFVI). The solution is prepared for 5G and enables Telecom Egypt to improve speed, efficiency and agility both for operations of current business and when addressing new opportunities. The introduction of 5G is expected to result in many new services for consumers and enterprises, typically related to the internet of things. Using Ericsson’s solution Telecom Egypt will be able to scale more easily the network differently for various services, as well as bring innovative

services to market faster in response to changing consumer and enterprise demands. Ericsson has delivered a wide range of its market leading telecom applications including IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Unified Data Consolidation (UDC), Signaling Routing (DSC/IPSTP), a complete virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) and virtual Service-Aware Policy Controller. The applications will be managed by the Ericsson Network Manager (ENM) while Ericsson Orchestrator and OpenStack based Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment are key components of the NFVi solution. Ericsson’s system-verified NFVI solution follows ETSI architectural principles and consists of software and hardware products as well support and system integration services forming a pre-integrated solution for telecom operators. Live deployment of Ericsson NFVI signifies an important step for Telecom Egypt to transform its network in light of the digital transformation that is taking place in the Middle East.

ZTE delivers its vision of a ‘connected’ world at MWC 5G summit ZTE Corporation, a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the mobile internet, hosted 5G Summit 2019 to showcase its commitment to embracing 5G Era, at Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona. The summit brings together over 300 executives and representatives from world-renowned telecom operators, chip makers and vertical industries to explore how a smarter, connected world can be built. ZTE’s key global customers and partners, including China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, VEON, Telenor, Telkomsel, Wind Tre, Qualcomm, Intel and Tencent, have attended the summit to share their 5G network deployment

experience and business model innovation. “As the leading pioneer in 5G, ZTE has the full range of end-to-end products and solutions, and will explore 5G development together with all of you,” said Wang Xiyu, ZTE’s CTO in his opening speech for the summit. “Adhering to technology leadership, ZTE will be committed to being the best partner of all of you.” Dr. Chih-Lin I, chief scientist of China Mobile Research Institute, Wireless Technologies, also shared China Mobile’s experience and deployment strategies towards an open and smart 5G RAN. Yogesh Malik, Group CTO of VEON, introduced VEON’s vision for its digitization journey and

shared the company’s impressive experience and strategy on emerging markets in the 5G era. As one of the world’s top 10 mobile operators, VEON focuses on the improvement of network efficiency and virtualization of the core network so as to provide end users with more digital service, utilizing massive data in the network to create values. Furthermore, Dr. Xiang Jiying, chief scientist of ZTE Corporation, delivered a keynote entitled “Get Ready for 5G Commercial Deployment”. He said that as a major vendor that is able to provide 5G end-to-end solutions, ZTE has accumulated many 5G key technologies, including Massive MIMO, NOMA, and mmWave scattering.

MARCH 2019

OPINIONS

F5 networks highlight the importance of network slicing in the 5G era A relentless surge in mobile data is putting unprecedented pressure on service providers to optimize network resources.

o make it all work, they must get better at managing and harnessing GTP traffic, which is rapidly increasing in EMEA, in part due to EU roaming regulations). GTP carries General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) within GSM, UMTS

and LTE networks through a group of IP-based communications protocols. GTP and Proxy Mobile IPv6-based interfaces are specified on various interface points within 3GPP architectures. Originally, GTP was used in GPRS (2.5G networks), later developing a similar role in 3G and 4G networks. For 4G, the key nodes have different names and, to a certain extent, are comparable to nodes used in 3G networks. It is important to note GTP is here to stay, and service providers must grasp how to optimize its capabilities both now and into the 5G era. Indeed, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project recently concluded that network

slicing will be a central feature in a 5G network. Fancy a slice? Everywhere you look, networks are experiencing massive increases in video traffic while still retaining an inherent susceptibility to latency. The same physical network must contend with a virtually infinite number of online devices, largely propelled by the booming internet of things (IoT). Network slicing is central to harnessing the power of GTP for operational benefit. The technique entails isolating network functions that support the requirements of a particular use case, helping to manage new, differentiated services and scale the allocation of high-throughput

MARCH 2019

OPINIONS

traffic bandwidth and control plane communications. Each network slice can be optimized to provide the resources and network topology for a specific service and the traffic within it. Functions such as capacity, connectivity, coverage and speed can therefore be allocated to meet specific use case requirements, while functional components can be shared across different network slices. Tools of the trade Today, many service providers are turning to solutions like a GTP Session Director to deliver mobile core network slicing capabilities based on locally configured policies. Essentially, the solution gives mobile operators better control over how subscriber sessions are distributed over mobile core elements, which is particularly useful for managing IoT and MVNO business solutions. Another key GTP Session Director feature is that it can interrogate the network status to determine when a new data session is required. This can then be combined with details such as subscriber, services, and location, as signaled via the GTP protocol. Notable GTP Director use cases include: • IoT. In this instance, a service provider wants to use its IMS network for both roaming and IoT traffic. The GTP Session Director can select a network slice that uses a dedicated part of the IMS network designed for IoT services. A different slice is possible for each IoT traffic flow. The service provider can also leverage an exclusive, fine-tuned part of the network dedicated to a specific IoT service or group of services. This way, IoT interaction with other traffic flows becomes more manageable. For example, a heavy load caused by IoT activity will not have an adverse impact on other services. • Enterprise. Network slicing is the way ahead if a service provider needs to separate network resources for services offered to a specific enterprise or customer group (i.e. an MVNO). A GTP Session Director can select a network slice, tapping

into a database with information on whether a subscriber (identified by an IMSI) is allocated to a specific enterprise, or belongs to a specific customer group. Smaller numbers of IMSI ranges can be directly configured inside the GTP Session Director without the need to query an external database. The best network slice is further determined by data related to location, type of access, or other information carried via GTP. • Selecting specific network settings. In this case, a service provider wishes to use a network setting optimized for a specific service or type of service. If latency is critical, a GTP Session Director selects a network slice optimized for minimal delays. On the other hand, another service or group of services could be better served by a network optimized for maximum throughput. Elsewhere, other services may demand support for a significant volume of parallel sessions. All these use cases can be orchestrated via real-time configuration to discover the most suitable network slice in seconds. • Policy Enforcement. A GTP Session Director can also reduce bandwidth per customer or service, depending on location type and congestion levels. This entails querying a database, either in general or based on parameters including Radio Access Type, generic location

information and IMSI range. If the database lists congested cells, the service provider uses the information to select the appropriate network slice. This network slice can then be augmented by a policy enforcement solution connected to one or more Packet Data Network Gateways (PGW) to ease throughput congestion. The GTP Session Director switches back to regular network slices once conditions improve. Orchestration of this nature is extremely cost-efficient, with network services only utilized when traffic conditions dictate. The way ahead: GTP is a vital protocol for signaling and transporting mobile data, whether in the initial GRPS networks via 3G and 4G, or the imminent 5G. Clearly, strong mobile user data growth requires better scaling of networks that rely heavily on GTP. It also calls for the flexibility to fine-tune network slices for specific service needs. At the same time, operators must respond to GSMAdriven initiatives for better GTP security risk awareness and vulnerability pre-emption and mitigation. Against this challenging and fast changing backdrop, technology like a GTP Session Director and other GTP security mechanisms will be increasingly in demand. By Peter Nas, Senior Solutions Architect at F5 NetworksW

MARCH 2019

ICT FEATURE

Will foldable phones save the smartphones market?

Global smartphone sales saw their worst contraction ever in 2018, and the outlook for 2019 isn’t much better, new surveys show. Worldwide handset volumes declined 4.1 percent in 2018 to a total of 1.4 billion units shipped for the full year, according to research firm IDC, which sees a potential for further declines this year. “Globally the smartphone market is a mess right now,” said IDC analyst Ryan Reith. “Outside of a handful of high-growth markets like India, Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam, we did not see a lot of positive activity in 2018.”

ccording to Reith, the reason behind this drop is that the market has been hit by consumers waiting longer to replace their phones, due to the high cost of premium devices, and political and economic uncertainty. The Chinese market, for example, which accounts for roughly 30 percent of smartphone sales, was especially hard hit with a 10 percent drop, according to IDC’s survey. The market must find a solution to excite consumers and drive them into buying a new phone and replace their old one. Recently, at the Mobile World Congress that took place in Barcelona, “foldable” was a buzzword. Perhaps, it is the shakeup the market needed to regain its activity. Alongside the big

MARCH 2019

ICT FEATURE

announcements on 5G, the new generation of wireless network, this new phone concept was launched to get the attention of the public and has been conceptualized by Samsung and Huawei with their Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X. Handset makers are looking to folding screens to reverse falling smartphone sales as consumers hold on to their devices longer due to a lack of innovation, but analysts predict the market for the feature will be limited, at least in the early days. Foldable phones signal an evolution in mobile design that could change the future of phones and tablets as device categories, said IHS Markit’s analyst Wayne Lam. In fact, we’ve seen before “foldable” phones, a handset that bends at the middle so the top of the phone can touch the bottom, however, this time, the handset seems much more likely to become an actual device, one that can open up to become a mini tablet. It’s no wonder that after years of phones looking markedly similar, people are excited to see something new. According to CCS Insight analyst Ben Wood, “These folding devices come at an important time for the smartphone industry, when phone makers are struggling to differentiate their products and consumers are indifferent to this homogeneous ‘sea of smartphone sameness’.” The smartphone of the last decade or so has essentially remained “black touch-screen monobloc,” he said. There are at least three good reasons why one might want a foldable phone. First, getting a double-sized screen with a compact look seems ideal. Second, when unfolding its larger display, it unfolds with it various possibilities to use it as well: it helps you browse, watch, connect and multitask simultaneously. The phone can be used just as a single screen, or with both screens operating as one big display, or even use both screens, each with a different app on it - an option presented by ZTE’s

Axon M foldable phone. Third, it offers additional high-quality cameras to the consumer while keeping the same crystal-clear focus, sharp, detailed edges and bokeh blur photos. Even more, not only does a foldable smartphone remove the need to carry two devices (a phone and a tablet), it’s also the friend of any traveler or commuter. You can enjoy entertainment on the train or on an airplane, yet fold it up and stick it in your pocket. However, a folding phone might be for some an awkward phone. We’ve seen phones with screens on either side, with smaller ticker-style screens at the bottom or top, and designs with a touchscreen on the outside and a smaller display (and keyboard) on the inside such as the Kyocera Echo. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out to be a success but it was an instructive one that warns us of the ways dual-screen phones can go wrong really fast. In addition, foldable phones can feel thicker and heavier. Not to forget that more complexity means more ways to go wrong: design and software wise such as the fact that the second

screen becomes useless dead weight most of the time. The more pertinent question is, should you buy a foldable phone now? It rarely pays to be one of the earliest adopters of any tech. You’ll pay extra for the premium of being first, and you’ll miss out on the improvements that come with second and third iterations (and beyond). If you don’t have $2000 to spare, perhaps it’ll be smarter to wait for foldable phone tech to become more common – and a lot cheaper. The day may come when the only type of phone you’ll buy is foldable. The tech we’ve seen so far is definitely a glimpse into the imminent future and a much-needed kick into gear for the smartphones market, which has been stalling of late with incremental upgrades that are far from revolutionary. As Veteran technology blogger Liao A-hui pointed out, the first wave of foldables are not for everyone. “They’re really for those first-wave technology adopters. […] It’s like not everyone will go buy a Lamborghini or Maserati.”

MARCH 2019

GLOSSARY-F-

Fiber channel

A fiber channel (FC) is a computer networking technology that is used to transfer data between one or more computers at very high speeds. It was initially designed for supercomputers but is now commonly implemented in storage networking server environments as a replacement to small computer system interface (SCSI) and other serial storage technologies.

FDDI

Fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) is an optical data communication standard used for long distance networks provides communication with fiber optic lines up to 200 kilometers at a speed of 100 megabit per second (Mbps). FDDI has dual primary and secondary communication rings. The primary ring works alongside the network, and the secondary ring remains idle and available for backup.

Fintech

The term “fintech,” sometimes capitalized “Fintech” or “FinTech,” is a general comprehensive term for financial technologies, many of which are rapidly changing the financial industry. As a portmanteau of the words “finance” and “technology,” fintech is often used by technology journalists and others to describe technologies as diverse as cryptocurrency tools, financial transaction platforms and industry-specific middleware programs.

File encryption software

A program designed to guard the contents of computer files via the use of algorithms and adjoining keys. The software is designed specifically for the purpose of protecting data in documents, applications and operating system (OS) files by scrambling that data with an algorithm before it is transferred. Only a user with the algorithm key can unscramble, or decrypt, the file.

Flat database

A flat database is a simple database system in which each database is represented as a single table in which all of the records are stored as single rows of data, which are separated by delimiters such as tabs or commas. The table is usually stored and physically represented as a simple text file.

EVENTS’ CALENDAR

MARCH 2019

MARCH

CABSAT 2019 The entire content, satellite, broadcast, digital media and entertainment ecosystem will be hosted under 3 key sectors – Content Creation, Content Production & Post-Production and Content Distribution & Delivery. CABSAT 2019 is the place to be to power your growth in the digital economy.

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Telecoms World Asia 2019

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For 20 years, Telecoms World Asia has been an annual platform for leading international carriers, operators, authorities and suppliers to meet, learn and create fruitful business partnerships for the betterment of wholesale revenue and growth.

MARCH

Place: Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai, UAE

MARCH

Place: Centara Grand at Centralworld, Bangkok

Telecom Review Leaders’ Summit Lebanon 2019

The 12th edition of Telecom Review Leaders’ Summit will gather ICT leaders, governments, CEOs and experts from Lebanon and abroad. Interesting topics will be discussed to shed light on the telecoms sector and its most recent trends. Place: Phoenicia Hotel, Beirut, Lebanon

In its 7th edition, GISEC has already grown to one of the world’s largest and easily outstrips other events in footfall, seniority of speakers and variety of exhibitors. With over 7,000 cyber-specific visitors, it is collocated with IoTX and Future Blockchain Summit which collectively deliver over 12,000 visitors. Place: Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai, UAE

Latest updates on: www.telecomreview.com

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APRIL

GISEC 2019

EVENTS’ CALENDAR

MARCH 2019

Decision makers from regional and global ISPs and mobile operators, CDNs, cloud and interconnection service providers, will join together for 2 days of meetings, presentations and networking events. MENOG19 helps drive continued internet development in the Middle East in emphasizing the principles of the Internet: openness and collaboration.

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APRIL

MENOG 2019

Place: Four Seasons Hotel, Beirut, Lebanon

APRIL

Seamless ME Seamless is the region’s leading payments and commerce technology conference and exhibition. The event has separate conference agendas covering the world of Payments, Fintech, Ecommerce, Retail and Identity. With one shared free-to-attend exhibition hosting 350 of the region’s leading technology providers.

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Place: Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Center, Dubai, UAE

Lebanon’s leading international technology exhibition will be back in April. In its last edition, SmartEx attracted thousands of local and regional business executives, presenting a wide range of industries looking for the latest technological innovations for their business

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APRIL

SmartEx 2019

APRIL- MAY

Place: Seaside Arena, Beirut, Lebanon

Ai everything summit

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The Ai Everything Summit is a culmination of the UAE and the world’s mission to promote initiatives, collaborations, partnerships and breakthroughs in the field of AI, and to foster positive impact on governments, businesses, social enterprises and humankind. Place: Dubai World Trade Centre, Dubai, UAE

Latest updates on: www.telecomreview.com