VanillaPlus Magazine Q4 2020 by Prestige Media

Q4, 2020, Vol. 22, Issue 4 ISSN 1745-1736

THE GLOBAL VOICE OF TELECOMS IT

TALKING HEADS Amdocs' Ilan Sade explains why digital-to-network automation is critical for the era of 5G and cloud PLUS: Why CSPs can be the shape-shifters of the digital age ■ Inside the anatomy of a 5G network that can't fail ■ Will we learn to trust voice communications again? ■ How to achieve rapid fibre broadband market entry ■ Where digital service providers are going wrong with 5G investment ■ Why dinosaurs have danced this year ■ News & Features at www.vanillaplus.com T H E

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CONTENTS

IN THIS ISSUE 4

EDITOR’S COMMENT

5 COMPANY NEWS Ericsson completes Cradlepoint purchase. Amdocs announces AWS cloud collaboration. 6 CONTRACT NEWS Comviva inks Ooredoo Kuwait machine learning deal. Airtel Africa extends CSG partnership. 7 CONTRACT NEWS Nokia wins Movistar Colombia digital transformation. DISH selects Hansen for 5G catalogue. 8 MARKET NEWS WBA OpenRoaming gains traction. CSP edge computing investment to exceed US$8bn by 2025. 9 PEOPLE NEWS Who’s on the move. 10 TALKING HEADS Ilan Sade tells George Malim why digital-to-network automation is so critical for service providers’ digital transformation success.

Ilan Sade, Amdocs

14 CASE STUDY How one CSP achieved rapid entry into the fixed broadband market with Amdocs NEO. 16 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION George Malim says CSPs can be the shape-shifters of the digital age. 20 5G ASSURANCE Edoardo Rizzi details the anatomy of a 5G network that can’t fail.

24 5G SERVICE ASSURANCE Tony Savvas pieces together the complex jigsaw of 5G service assurance.

26 TRUSTED COMMUNICATIONS Michael O’Brien explains how CSPs can restore consumer trust in communications.

5G ASSURANCE

28 TRUSTED VOICE Will users ever trust fixed line voice again, asks Tony Savvas? 34 5G INVESTMENT Teresa Cottam explains why digital service providers are undermining their own 5G investments.

26 TRUSTED COMMUNICATIONS

35 SMART CAPITAL

35 SMART CAPITAL The investment burden is enormous so it’s time to think cleverly about funding, says Amy Wettenhall. 38 EVENT DIARY The pick of upcoming virtual and physical (where possible) events.

COVER SPONSOR A key Amdocs objective is to help service providers modernise, consolidate, and transform their service and network management systems to realize a modular, cloud-native management solution approach. Amdocs has evolved its proven capabilities into Amdocs NEO, a unified yet modular service and network automation platform designed to manage and orchestrate hybrid networks, combining traditional service fulfilment functionality with cloud and network functions virtualisation (NFV) orchestration and automation capabilities. Contact networkmarketing@amdocs.com www.amdocs.com

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

C O M M E N T

It’s dinosaurs not digital brands that have let us dance in 2020

EDITORIAL ADVISORS

2020 has seen our hyper-connected world and digital lifestyles rely completely on the agility of communications service providers (CSPs) previously called dinosaurs. They deserve more appreciation than they’re getting for this, writes George Malim

ne day in early April 2020, during the first of what would turn out to be several UK COVID-19 lockdowns, I was in my home office recording a video interview, my wife, a teacher, was providing remote learning to her pupils, one of my children was on Skype having a guitar lesson and my other child was doing something unspeakable to aliens with his friends on the internet. None of this was exceptional and it’s actually what the nebulously-marketed more-than-Infinity service I receive from British Telecom claims to be able to deliver. What really stands out, though, is that it wasn’t just my household slurping up vast swathes of bandwidth. All my neighbours were at it, too. I live in a small city in the west of England that is wellprovisioned with fibre, cable and 4G wireless capacity. It’s not a vast metropolis of offices and, demographically, it has a large proportion of university students and homeworkers. The bandwidth demand can therefore be estimated to be relatively high during normal times. However, the pandemic will have seen huge uplifts in domestic network utilisation during the day. The scale of this changed behaviour and its impact on capacity becomes enormous the more you think about every dormitory town and every near-empty office block. Demand shifted from urban centres overnight and, in addition, spiked because all those in-office meetings happened via videoconferencing instead. The telecoms industry, not usually known for its ability to embrace rapid change, has really risen to the occasion this year. In spite of having its own tens of thousands of

employees to protect and support, it has responded magnificently to overnight changes in demands placed on its networks. Some of this will have been enabled by the systems we have covered in VanillaPlus for the last 20 years which allow the automated, software-enabled scaling up of capacity on-demand but much of it will have been far more complex, utilising traditional inventory management tools to spin up available capacity and systems such as provisioning to add links or light up dark fibre.

Louis Hall, chief executive, Cerillion Technologies

Martin Morgan, VP Marketing at Openet an Amdocs company

George Malim, managing editor

Telecoms has also suffered its own hits. GSMA Intelligence has estimated that in higher income countries, the industry has experienced a negative impact on revenue of 4-8%. That’s about half the comparable drop in general GDP but a still considerable blow, given the low margin nature of telecoms. At the same time, CSPs have had to meet demand for increased data traffic which spiked at 50-100% more than normal levels, according to GSMA Intelligence. There’s very little to celebrate this year but the telecoms industry can be quietly proud of its performance, keeping us all connected and enabling business and life to continue to at least some extent.

Laurent Leboucher, VP Customer Relations Solutions, Orange

Chris Yeadon, director of Product Marketing, Ericsson

Let’s hope that 2021 is an easier year! George Malim

MANAGING EDITOR George Malim Tel: +44 (0) 1225 319566 george@vanillaplus.com

DIGITAL SERVICES DIRECTOR Nathalie Millar Tel: +44 (0) 1732 808690 n.millar@wkm-global.com

DESIGN Jason Appleby Ark Design Consultancy Ltd Tel: +44 (0) 1787 881623

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR & PUBLISHER Jeremy Cowan Tel: +44 (0) 1420 588638 j.cowan@wkm-global.com

SALES CONSULTANT Cherisse Jameson Tel: +44 (0) 1732 807410 c.jameson@wkm-global.com

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PUBLISHED BY Prestige Media Ltd. Suite 138, 80 Churchill Square, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent ME19 4YU, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1732 807410

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VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

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Palo Alto Networks claims first 5G-native security offering

Asa Tamsons, Ericsson

Ericsson completes acquisition of Cradlepoint Ericsson has completed its acquisition of Cradlepoint, the US-based provider of wireless wide area network (WAN) edge, 4G and 5G solutions for the enterprise market. The US$1bn deal is part of Ericsson’s ongoing strategy to capture market share in the 5G enterprise market. However, Ericsson’s operating margins are expected to be negatively impacted by approximately 1% in 2021 and 2022 with half the impact related to amortisation of intangible assets arising from the acquisition. Cradlepoint is expected to contribute to operating cashflow starting in 2022. Through Cradlepoint’s solutions, companies can connect sites, vehicles, mobile workforces, and IoT devices in a simple and secure way using cellular technology. By combining the companies’ offerings, Ericsson expects to create new revenue streams for its customers by supporting 5G-enabled services for enterprise, and boost returns on investments in the network. Ericsson’s global presence and long-standing relationships with the world’s leading communications service providers (CSPs) will also help accelerate

Cradlepoint’s international expansion. Cradlepoint will operate as a standalone subsidiary within Ericsson and continue to build on its current market momentum as 5G is speeding up digital transformation and increasing the need for advanced connectivity services for enterprises. Cradlepoint will be part of Ericsson’s Business Area Technologies & New Businesses. Asa Tamsons, senior vice president and head of business area technologies & new businesses, said: “I am very excited to welcome Cradlepoint to the Ericsson family. With Cradlepoint’s solutions, we are strengthening our enterprise offering and taking an important step to lead the next wave of enterprise network transformation. Together, we will power solutions to the customer edge that help improve productivity and deliver real-time services, enabling us to drive faster adoption of 5G in enterprise segments. This is good news for our customers as it helps them to accelerate their returns on 5G investments.”

Amdocs collaborates with AWS to accelerate telco cloud Amdocs has announced a new multi-year, strategic agreement with Amazon Web Services, (AWS) to deliver integrated, cloudnative business support systems (BSS) offerings for the world’s communications service providers (CSPs). Amdocs and AWS will offer CSPs access to a cloud-native, open and dynamic portfolio of digital services that gives them faster time to market and higher agility to meet the evolving needs of customers. As part of the deal, AWS will be Amdocs’ preferred cloud provider for Amdocs’ internal IT transformation to enable new operating models, reduced operating costs, and help transform its business in the cloud. “AWS and Amdocs are focused on accelerating the journey to the cloud for CSPs around the world. With our combined global scale, cloud capabilities and industry leading VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

products, we have created a unique carriergrade cloud portfolio that addresses the needs of every customer,” said Shuky Sheffer, president and chief executive officer of Amdocs Management. “As we see the increased adoption of 5G, IoT and edge technologies powering and monetising both consumer and enterprise experiences, we are excited to collaborate with AWS to drive industry growth through innovation and business agility on the cloud.” Andy Jassy, the chief executive officer of AWS, added: “By integrating AWS and Amdocs’ business operations and cloudnative solutions, CSPs now have the ability to create new revenue streams, speed up the introduction of new cloud-based services and enhance the customer experience through machine learning.”

Palo Alto Networks has introduced what it says is the industry’s first 5Gnative security offering, to secure networks, clouds and devices in the 5G world. This new offering reportedly enables service providers and enterprises to turn 5G networks into highly secure networks by enabling containerised 5G security, real-time threat visibility and 5G network slice security. “For 5G to live up to its promise of transforming industries, companies need the confidence that 5G networks and services have enterprise-grade security,” said Anand Oswal, the senior vice president and general manager for Firewall as a Platform at Palo Alto Networks. “We created 5G-native security in order to give enterprises the confidence they need to harness 5G for business transformation and to help service providers secure the new enterprise services they are creating.” “Palo Alto Networks has already made significant strides in 5G innovation such as containerised 5G next-generation firewalls, which enables deploying firewalls automatically through a central cloudnative orchestrator,” said Jeremy Capell, the director of Information Security at Dish Network. “From my personal experience over the years, I can also say that Palo Alto Networks has the deep expertise and skills to support their security products and ensure success.” Chong Siew Loong, the chief technology officer of Singapore communications service provider (CSP) StarHub, added: “To help us bring greater security protections to the new 5G infrastructure and the services that will be delivered, we are happy to work with Palo Alto Networks to integrate their 5G security capabilities into our network. Not only does this help us build a secure 5G network, it also enables us to launch new and innovative services.” Anand Oswal, Palo Alto Networks

C O N T R A C T

Orange Morocco chooses Neural Technologies fraud system Neural Technologies is to deliver its Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management solution to Orange Morocco. The new deal will help Orange Morocco to detect and prevent fraud in the African and Middle Eastern markets, where it serves its 22 million customers. With nearly three decades of experience in the risk and revenue management fields, Neural Technologies was selected as the solution provider of choice. Yassine Belidri, the IT manager for Mediation & Provisioning at Orange Morocco, said: “Neural’s background and references in the market, very good knowledge of the end users’ needs, and flexible and intuitive interfaces are what put it above its competitors.” Ang Liang, the chief operating officer of Neural Technologies, added: “It is a challenging time for telecoms providers who are at the forefront of dealing with an increasing number of risks and threats. Dealing with high volumes of new threats requires an automated and intelligent solution that offers the maximum protection to financial systems.”

N E W S

Comviva and Ooredoo Kuwait partner for machine learning customer value campaigns Comviva has entered into a strategic partnership with network operator Ooredoo Kuwait. As part of this data science and managed customer value management (CVM) engagement, Comviva will support Ooredoo Kuwait to deliver contextual customer campaigns with MobiLytix Real-Time Marketing, a machine learning-driven digital omnichannel marketing automation platform. The system uses advanced analytics and real-time technology that enables communications service providers (CSPs) to take advantage of micro-moments of engagement with their customers to build customer life-time value. The machine learning models improve decisioning quality to drive customer experience, reduce churn and boost the operator’s revenue. Tapan Tripathi, the chief marketing officer

of Ooredoo Kuwait, said: “A key focus area for us is the convergence of digital and analytics. We are looking forward to build this capability with Comviva, by using its data science and managed CVM capabilities. This will help us differentiate from the competition.” Manoranjan (Mao) Mohapatra, the chief executive of Comviva, added: “Globally, to keep pace with demands of customers, organisations are increasingly using digital technologies to offer seamless and omnichannel experience to their customers. CVM, coupled with advanced analytics, is fast evolving and our industry experience, along with services that complement technology solutions sets us apart. This strategic partnership will enable Ooredoo Kuwait to provide an optimal experience for existing customers, while driving business opportunities.”

Netcracker scores Vivo transformation deal Netcracker Technology has announced that Vivo, the Brazilian subsidiary of Telefonica Group, has extended its B2B transformation programme to include ecommerce support in order to facilitate ordering and purchasing of products and services, generate new revenue through convergent offerings and deliver an enhanced customer experience. The e-commerce channel will be enabled through an existing deployment of Netcracker’s Product Catalog and Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) solutions. This phase of Vivo’s ongoing large-scale B2B transformation programme continues Netcracker’s delivery of the cloud-based Netcracker Digital BSS platform and the cloud-native Netcracker Customer Engagement solution which enable a digital first omnichannel experience and expands it to include an integrated e-commerce layer that is supported by critical logic on the back end and a robust set of e-commerce application programme interfaces (APIs). In addition, Netcracker will provide Vivo with consulting and other professional services to address how best to implement the e-commerce solution, which will be delivered using agile methodologies.

Manoranjan Mohapatra, Comviva

Airtel Africa extends partnership with CSG Airtel Africa and CSG have enhanced their existing agreement so CSG will provide the communications service provider (CSP) with managed services, including customer relationship management (CRM) and convergent charging and billing solutions to support the growth the company is experiencing across its 14-country footprint in Africa.

of products and services our customers have come to expect.”

“Airtel Africa actively seeks solutions that support a holistic and seamless IT landscape so that we can benefit from reduced operational overhead, streamlined business operations, and scalable growth models,” said Neelesh Pratap Singh, the group CIO of Airtel Africa. “We continue to partner with CSG to help drive differentiation and innovation in our strategic markets and support robust business transformation that enables us to offer the next-generation

“Airtel Africa’s leadership and industry innovation is reflected in the company’s growth in voice, data and mobile money across Africa,” added Ian Watterson, head of CSG’s Asia-Pacific business. “Our complete solution stack gives Airtel Africa the market-leading flexibility necessary to deliver an enhanced customer experience, reduce the amount of time it takes to bring new offerings to market, and deliver longterm revenue growth.”

CSG managed services will help bring consistency and scalability across Airtel Africa’s business operations to support its growth across Africa, bring new services to market quickly, boost operational efficiencies and reduce costs.

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Nokia supports digital transformation of Movistar Colombia Nokia has announced that Telefonica Colombia affiliate, Movistar, has completed another stage of deployment in its digital transformation, simplifying operational complexities and improving service launch times. With Nokia’s Digital Operations software, Movistar has modernised its operations support systems (OSS) to facilitate the provisioning of mobile and fixed services for all subscriber products. The activation and provisioning of Nokia’s Digital Operations software provides Movistar Colombia with a catalogue-based compliance solution executed through an open application programme interface (API). This eliminates silo-based network management and allows agile product launches by simplifying workflows, harmonising and optimising Movistar’s platforms and processes, ultimately reducing costs and implementation time. Nokia’s solution is supporting Movistar Colombia’s voice, mobile data, value-added and over-the-top services for 3G and 4G, as well as portability requests and VoLTE provisioning for the operator’s 19 million mobile subscriber and three million fixed subscribers and TV users. Nokia says more than 110 communication service providers worldwide rely on its catalogue-driven fulfilment solution. Roberto Puche, the CIO of Movistar Colombia, said “Nokia’s Digital Operations solution unlocks key time savings that will allow us to deploy

ZTE has supported Ncell in its completion of preventive network maintenance at the southern slope of Everest Base Camp (EBC) at an altitude of 5,363 metres, further ensuring the network coverage quality of a 2,000-meter range around the EBC. The landmark base station is the only one on the southern slope and, since commissioning in 2010, it has provided high-quality network services for local people and climbers.

Bhaskar Gorti, Nokia

“Hansen’s unified catalogue is a key component within DISH’s 5G platform, enabling the timely introduction and management of products and services, and to rapidly

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

The landmark base station is mainly powered by solar energy and stand-by batteries. As it is located at a high altitude with severe environmental characteristics, the maintenance of the base station is highly challenging. As a trusted and important partner of Ncell, ZTE has cooperated with the CSP for more than ten years to provide wireless, core network and transport network services in Nepal, meeting more than 60% of Ncell’s wireless network business needs.

multiple solutions from various vendors and open the door to new revenue-generating services more rapidly than before with the automation and servicing requirements that are critical to meeting our customers’ needs.” Bhaskar Gorti, the president of Nokia Software and the chief digital officer of the company, added: “By modernising its OSS with Nokia Software solutions, Movistar Colombia is better equipped to deliver new customer-centric products and services and to manage these with extreme automation. Through our Common Software Foundation, Nokia Software solutions, like Digital Operations, are designed to give operators wide operational flexibility. We are pleased to be helping Movistar Colombia through its digital transformation.”

DISH selects Hansen catalogue software for 5G DISH has chosen Hansen Technologies’ catalogue-driven software for its cloud-native, Open RAN-compliant 5G network. The systems include a product and service catalogue, built from open application programme interfaces (APIs), that will integrate with DISH’s customer and network systems.

ZTE supports Ncell in completing preventive network maintenance at Everest Base Camp

prototype and launch innovative offers to the market,” said Atilla Tinic, the chief information officer of DISH. Andrew Hansen, the global chief executive officer of Hansen Technologies, added: “This agreement with DISH is a testament to the value of our Create-DeliverEngage suite that will enable a true catalogue-driven approach, from the creation of new 5G services all the way to the order and activation of those services on DISH’s virtualised 5G network.”

Visitors to Everest are assured network coverage

Ericsson mobile money deployed by TMCEL Mozambique Ericsson’s Wallet Platform is aimed at empowering financial management, including for people who don’t have access to traditional banking services. It will deliver easy-to-use financial services to TMCEL Mozambique customers through the ability to store, transfer and withdraw money, pay merchants and utility providers, use financial services such as savings and loans. TMCEL customers are also set to enjoy the benefits of improved operational efficiency in the network as a result of BSS solutions digitalisation. In addition, Ericsson Dynamic Activation will address TMCEL’s service activation needs with a single, flexible platform.

M A R K E T

N E W S

5G core fuels growth

Survey reveals 79% plan to adopt WBA OpenRoaming

Dell’Oro Group has reported revenues for the 5G core (5GC) market are accelerating the rate of growth for mobile core network (MCN) market. Chinese service providers are leading the charge commanding the largest share of 5G core deployments to date. The firm reports deployments are accelerating 35% quarter-on-quarter.

A Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) cross-industry survey of service providers, equipment manufacturers and enterprises, has found that almost four out of five (79%) have adopted or plan to adopt the WBA OpenRoaming standard. As the Wi-Fi roaming standard was only introduced in late May 2020, this demonstrates a very rapid and widespread acceptance of WBA OpenRoaming in less than six months. The vision for WBA OpenRoaming is that the world will become a single, giant Wi-Fi network, allowing billions of people and their devices to connect automatically and securely to millions of Wi-Fi networks around the world.

“5GC revenues again came in surprisingly strong. Huawei and ZTE led the charge, making them the first and second-ranked vendors for 5GC in 3Q 2020, being the primary 5GC suppliers to the Chinese service providers,” said David Bolan, research director at Dell’Oro Group. “We have seen an industry-wide focus on the enterprise for private networking and multi-access edge computing, and coupled with the accelerated 5G core deployments we expect a very robust 4Q 2020 and 2021.”

Edge computing investment by network operators to hit $8.3bn by 2025 A new study by Juniper Research has found that network operator spend on multiaccess edge computing (MEC) will grow from US$2.7bn in 2020, to US$8.3bn in 2025, as communications service providers (CSPs) invest heavily in upgrading network capacities and infrastructure to support the increasing data generated by 5G networks.

Users will be able to roam from location to location without the need for log-ins, registrations or passwords. High-profile backers of WBA OpenRoaming include AT&T, Boingo, Broadcom, Cisco, Commscope, Google, Intel and Samsung. This survey finding is one of many insights explained in the the Annual Industry Report from the Wireless Broadband Association, the worldwide industry body dedicated to improving WiFi standards and services.

“There was a time, not so long ago, that when we discussed the potential for Wi-Fi roaming or the convergence of Wi-Fi 6 and 5G, we were met with blank stares,” said Tiago Rodrigues, the chief executive of Wireless Broadband Alliance. “Now, it’s the complete opposite. Across the comms industry, we’re seeing excitement building around these trends. 2020 has been a difficult year for everyone and this reinforces the role of Wi-Fi during the pandemic to keep everyone connected.”

CBRS RAN infrastructure to hit US$1bn, says SNS Telecom & IT

The study also revealed that by 2025, the number of deployed MEC nodes will reach two million globally in 2025, up from 230,000 in 2020. These devices, which take the form of access points, base stations, and routers, will play a vital role in managing the vast quantities of data generated by connected vehicles, smart city systems and other emerging data-intensive services.

Research from SNS Telecom & IT has indicated that annual investments in LTE and 5G New Radio (NR)-based radio access network (RAN) infrastructure for Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) networks will surpass US$1bn by 2023 in spite of the ongoing economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new report, ‘Edge Computing: Use Cases, Innovation Opportunities & Market Forecasts 2020-2025’, notes that this increase in investment is a result of network operators enhancing key network functions, by moving infrastructure used for processing data from core network locations, to base stations at the edge of their networks. It anticipates that the capabilities of 5G technologies, such as high throughput, low latencies and high device densities, will necessitate roll-outs of MEC nodes in urban areas.

After many years of regulatory, standardisation and technical implementation activities, the US dynamic, three-tiered, hierarchical framework to coordinate shared use of 150 MHz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz CBRS band has finally become a commercial reality. Although the shared spectrum arrangement is access technology neutral, the 3GPP cellular wireless ecosystem is at the forefront of

Tiago Rodrigues, Wireless Broadband Alliance

CBRS adoption given the desirability of mid-band spectrum for both LTE and 5G NR network buildouts due its optimal blend of propagation characteristics and capacity. In the coming years, SNS also anticipates the rollout of 5G NR network equipment operating in the CBRS band, which will lay the foundations for advanced application scenarios with more demanding performance requirements in terms of throughput, latency, reliability, availability and connection density – for example, industrial IoT applications such as connected production machinery, mobile robotics, automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and augmented reality (AR)-assisted troubleshooting.

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holds an MBA from the University of Maryland and a BS degree from Georgetown University.

John Giere, Optiva

Optiva, a specialist in providing communications service providers (CSPs) with cloudnative revenue management software on the private and public cloud, has appointed John Giere as president and chief executive officer of the company. Giere will also join the company’s board of directors. He has more than 25 years’ experience of telecoms industry leadership, building customer relationships and delivering innovative products to the market. “John has a proven track record as a CEO leading and building successful global telecom software businesses,” said Robert Stabile, chairman of the board of Optiva. “John is a highly respected industry leader who shares Optiva’s commitment to customer success and will guide Optiva in the next phase of focusing our cloud-native products to address emerging 5G market opportunities that encompass new SaaS business models supporting a rapidly expanding monetisation ecosystem.” Prior to joining Optiva, Giere served as CEO of Openwave Mobility and general manager of the mobility business unit for Openwave Systems. He also served as chief marketing officer for Alcatel-Lucent and Lucent Technologies and held vice president roles in sales, marketing and business development at Ericsson. Giere

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“I look forward to leading Optiva’s outstanding team to drive a compelling company vision aligned with a market leader strategy and vibrant company culture,” added Giere. “My achievements are the result of building talented teams who work with agility, innovation and a full focus on partnering with our customers to achieve success. That is how Optiva will dominate the cloud-native BSS category and drive profitable growth.”

Bruce McClelland, Ribbon Communications

Ribbon Communications, a provider of real-time communications software and packet and optical transport solutions to service providers, enterprises, and critical infrastructure sectors, has appointed Sean Matthews as executive vice president of corporate development and strategy, reporting directly to chief executive officer, Bruce McClelland. In his new role, Matthews will be responsible for leading Ribbon’s business development and strategy efforts. “I am very excited to welcome Sean to the Ribbon leadership team,” said McClelland. “His strong track record of successfully executing multibillion-dollar mergers, acquisitions and partnerships,

combined with his industry knowledge and extensive experience in innovation, technology and finance, make him the perfect fit to help us execute on Ribbon’s ambitious growth strategy. Sean’s unique skill sets and impeccable reputation will be a great addition to the team.” Prior to joining Ribbon, Matthews served as chief transformation officer and executive vice president, strategy and corporate development at TiVo. Before joining TiVo, he served as senior vice president of strategy and corporate development for ARRIS Group, after ARRIS acquired Motorola Mobility’s Home business from Google. “I am extremely pleased to join Ribbon and look forward to helping Bruce and the rest of the team continue to execute the company’s aggressive growth plans, while continually evolving the business to meet the complex challenges of today’s cloud-based connected world,” said Matthews. “I am excited to be a part of such a world-class leadership team and even more excited about the opportunity to help Ribbon solidify its position as a global leader in the communications industry.” Axell Wireless, an international provider of wireless solutions, has appointed Simon Cosgrove as its new chief executive. Cosgrove will spearhead the company’s international growth and development into new markets. The appointment follows the acquisition of Axell Wireless by Rcapital in June 2020. Andrew Littlejohns, Rcapital operating partner, formerly of Vodafone, also joins as chairman to work closely with Cosgrove and the management team. Having held various senior executive roles, Cosgrove joins

Axell Wireless from private equity backed start-up Stratto, an infrastructure-as-a-service business. Here he co-founded and brought innovative inbuilding mobile technology and services to market. Simon also brings a blend of commercial, technical, and leadership skills for growing technology companies, including Ubiquisys and StrattoOpencell.

Dave Labuda, MATRIXX Software

MATRIXX Software, a specialist in 5G monetisation, has named Cliff Johnson as chief operating officer, Bill Highstreet as chief customer officer, and co-founder Dave Labuda as chief scientist. With these strategic additions to its c-suite, MATRIXX says it has reinforced its investments in global customer success and its cloud native converged charging system. “As our customers are transforming their businesses and evolving to 5G, MATRIXX remains relentless in empowering them to offer highly differentiated services and experiences,” said Glo Gordon, the chief executive of MATRIXX. “Network operators around the world choose MATRIXX based upon the strength of our technology and business innovation, and we are committed to validating that choice with rock-solid execution and customer operations.”

TALKING HEADS

CSPs look to open systems to accelerate digital-to-network automation It is almost ironic that the network services used by consumers and enterprises to support their own digital lifestyles and business transformation are themselves sold, ordered, processed and assured in a high-touch, mostly manual, manner. While service providers have mainly focused on digitalising the front-end customer sales and care experience, in order to better meet the new demands of our connected society, service providers must also fully automate and digitalise their end-to-end service operations and assurance processes. In this interview, Ilan Sade, the general manager of Amdocs Open Network, tells VanillaPlus managing editor George Malim why digital-to-network automation is so critical for service provider digital transformation success and how it will enable the continuous delivery of uninterrupted experiences to consumers and enterprises

George Malim: How would you describe the state of play in terms of digitalisation and automation in the telecoms industry? Ilan Sade: Over the past few years, there has been an acceleration into digital-first and everyone wants to be connected fast. Consumers and businesses are moving into a connectivity-centric ecosystem which has been even further accelerated by Covid-19. The pandemic has brought in a greater sense of urgency and service providers need to respond to this.

The human glue is needed because there are too many manual steps

In addition, the manual steps have huge impacts on efficiency and service providers’ abilities to operate with the right cost structure. This is also preventing service providers from fully enabling their revenue potential because the scalability is not in place. GM: Why is there this lag when it comes to automation of service and network operations relative to other areas for service providers? IS: There has never been a single answer to address digital transformation and each service provider will have to plot its own journey based on business priorities. It depends on what the CSP has and what the CSP plans to do. That informs the direction taken and what the journey will look like. There is no magic answer. You have got to pick a journey that starts from the use case and the ▲

Although service providers have been making steady progress in certain areas of their digital transformation journeys, the focus has been on customers’ and businesses’ experiences across the different channels and on ensuring net promoter score (NPS) improvements. However, it’s more clear now than ever before that we can’t afford gaps and broken areas within service operations and network infrastructure that are still being addressed with ‘human glue’ or dealt with as checkmarks on a maintenance roadmap. The number one issue is that processes aren’t automated end-to-end.

The human glue is needed because there are too many manual steps. Much work remains to be done to automate service and network operations to remove dependencies on time-consuming manual steps and long lead-time break-fix activities. Several urgent steps need to be taken to reduce and eventually eliminate the risk of disjointed experiences, widespread outages and missed growth opportunities.

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makes RBM chatbots an ideal way for businesses to engage consumers. Juniper Research estimates retailers will save US$439m annually in customer service expenses and drive US$112bn in retail sales by 2023.

Legitimate calls also are getting caught in the widening regulatory net. For example, in July 2020, France revised its Postal and Electronic Communications Code to require CSPs to ensure the authenticity of numbers used as caller ID for calls and messages. When they can’t verify a number, service providers must terminate routing of that call or message. Finally, even when legitimate calls manage to get through, many still hit the barrier of consumer distrust. The 76% who let calls from unfamiliar and unidentified numbers drop into voice mail may never hear those messages if they have full mailboxes. And that’s assuming they even set up their voicemail.

Nip chatbot fraud in the bud Fraudsters are always on the hunt for new opportunities, which is why they target emerging technologies. One example is rich business messaging (RBM), the rich communications services (RCS) technology for business-toconsumer (B2C) communications.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

For CSPs, another challenge is that RBM is an open ecosystem for businesses of all types and sizes. As a result, enormous numbers of business chatbots will be active on each service provider network at any given time. These volumes make it challenging for service providers to verify the identity of each business using RBM chatbots. But they must because as with SMS and voice calls, consumer trust is key for RBM to live up to its potential. They also must act fast because as a new technology, RBM/RCS has a window of opportunity to establish a strong foundation of trust.

The 76% who let calls from unfamiliar and unidentified numbers drop into voice mail may never hear those messages if they have full mailboxes

RBM highlights the advantages of centralised verification The good news is that the telecoms ecosystem recognises all of these challenges and is working on solutions that will help restore consumer trust in communications. One common denominator is that service providers shouldn’t mitigate fraud and

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In September 2020, more than 473 million people worldwide were active RCS users, according to the GSMA. That broad, rapidly growing adoption

But as the number of RCS users grows, so does fraudsters’ interest in exploiting them. Fraudsters use CLI spoofing to impersonate government agencies and legitimate businesses in text messages, and similar tactics with social media chatbots. They’ll inevitably apply those proven tactics to RBM chatbots, tricking people into believing that, for instance, their bank needs to confirm their date of birth, or handing over their credit card number to what appears to be a major retailer.

TRUSTED COMMUNICATIONS

illegal robocalls on their own. Instead, it’s much more effective – including in terms of cost – for service providers to utilise solutions created by a coalition of vendors, service providers, regulators and other industry stakeholders. One example is the GSMA’s RCS Verified Sender initiative, which provides a framework that service providers can use to verify the identity of each business using RBM chatbots. A key component is a verification authority, where businesses would register their information. The verification authority will digitally sign that information to mitigate spoofing, and then share that information – including the business’ logos and other enhanced caller ID information – with participating service providers. By providing the sender’s business name and logo with each RBM message, service providers can make consumers feel confident that the business is legitimate and the content is authentic. Each fraud-free interaction also grows consumer trust in RBM as a communications channel.

The verification authority reduces fraud risk by providing a neutral set of eyes to authenticate each business

The alternative to RCS Verified Sender is self-attestation, where service providers trust self-signed certificates from businesses that they already have relationships with – and unfamiliar ones, too. Those service providers also have the cost of implementing and maintaining public key infrastructure (PKI). Meanwhile, businesses will need to work with multiple service providers in order to serve all of their customers. As a result, they’ll have to accommodate a wide variety of service provider policies and procedures. This complexity, cost and other drawbacks are why service providers and the rest of the ecosystem are gravitating toward the centralised approach of RCS Verified Sender. The verification authority reduces fraud risk by providing a neutral set of eyes to authenticate each business. It also provides the kind of comprehensive protection that a service provider can’t achieve with selfsigning. For example, a verification authority has the broad, deep resources necessary to identify fraudsters masquerading as brands that a service provider already works with. Finally, the verification authority frees service providers from the expense of implementing and operating a fully functional PKI and enforcing their own certificate policy.

Mitigate illegal robocalls

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VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

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A centralised, industry-led approach is ideal for restoring consumer trust in voice calls and text messages, too. For example, the secure telephone identity revisited (STIR) and Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs (SHAKEN) framework provides originating and terminating service providers with a framework for weeding out illegal robocalls and

other spam. Service providers use STIR/SHAKEN’s digital signatures to confirm that the business making a call has the legitimate right to use that phone number. The UK is among the countries considering adopting the STIR/SHAKEN model. “We think it has the prospect of making a very significant contribution to providing assurance about the identity of the caller,” Ofcom said in a 2019 report. Canada and the US have mandated STIR/SHAKEN, which are opportunities for the UK and other countries to study the implementation and effectiveness as they seek to restore consumer trust in communications. Another learning opportunity is Validating INtegrity of End-to-End Signalling (VINES), a new GSMA work item in the Fraud and Security Group that’s developing recommendations to prevent internetwork signaling fraud, which includes illegal spoofing, toll bypass and other frauds. VINES is exploring how elements of STIR/SHAKEN could ensure authentic internetwork and crossborder calls. VINES also is an example of industry-led initiatives to ensure that legitimate business calls aren’t mistakenly flagged as spam. Originating service providers don’t always have all the information necessary to give a call the highest level of attestation (A). When calls are signed at lower levels (B or C), some terminating service providers will mark them as spam, while others will block those calls – even when they are from legitimate businesses. Consumers will perceive those B- and C-level calls as less trustworthy and thus not worth answering. These challenges highlight the benefits of a centralised phone number platform, which service providers can use to get independently verified information about each phone number and the business using it. This authenticated data enables voice service providers to correctly treat each call and present caller information that their customers can trust. Service providers also can combine this trusted data with their existing call analytics tools to further ensure that only legitimate calls are reaching their customers.

VINES is exploring how elements of STIR/SHAKEN could ensure authentic internetwork and cross-border calls

Clearly there are a lot of challenges when it comes to restoring consumer trust in communications. But VINES, STIR/SHAKEN and RCS Verified Sender highlight how the industry is coming together to mitigate fraud and spam. Years from now, we may look back at 2021 as a turning point in trusted communications.

www.iconectiv.com

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

TRUSTED VOICE

Will users ever trust fixed voice again? With sharp increases in scam calls and nuisance calls – potentially fuelled by the pandemic – has fixed voice completely lost its trusted position? Antony Savvas considers what CSPs and their customers are facing and what they can do to mitigate the problems When it comes to studying communications fraud, scam calls are often lumped in with scam emails and mobile texts sent by fraudsters. For instance, UK taxpayers were targeted by a total of 1,524,449 fake emails, calls and text messages purporting to be from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) over the two years of 2018 and 2019. The data was collated by litigation specialist Griffin Law, and showed a total of 254,258 suspected phone scams were reported to HMRC over the two-year period analysed. The data showed a sharp rise from 58,538 scam call reports in 2018 to 195,720 last year – more than trebling. Interestingly, the data showed that attempted email scams had dropped from 841,805 to 333,857 between 2018 and 2019 – a 60% decrease. The data also revealed that there were 94,529 SMS text message phishing scams during the two-year period. Reports in this area rose sharply by 56%, from 36,950 in 2018 to 57,579 in 2019. Taken together, these data sets suggest that either taxpayers are becoming more aware of the threat of email scams and perhaps email filtration systems and cyber defence software have improved – or that cyber criminals have spotted a trend of success in phone scams, says Griffin Law. Whatever the reason for the phone scam increase, the problem has got worse this year. According to official HMRC data obtained by accountancy firm Lanop Outsourcing, the tax authority reported 199,621 cases of phone scams and a further 58,921 reports of SMS scams between January 2020 and September 2020 – both those totals exceeding the figures for the whole of 2019 obtained by Griffin Law.

Billions lost

This involves making calls from compromised phone systems to phone numbers that bill callers. The actor registers a premium call number, often overseas to charge higher rates, where they receive a cut of the charges. They will then have compromised phone systems call these premium numbers, running up charges on the victim's account. With more corporate communications being done remotely as a result of the pandemic, VoIP systems used by workers are also increasingly being targeted by scammers. Comcast in the US reported this May that it had seen VoIP and video conferencing usage up 210-285% since the start of the pandemic. Steven Savoldelli, senior analyst at Mandiant Threat Intelligence, said of the threat: "VoIP systems are vulnerable to many threats including denial-of-service, metadata theft, traffic interception and premium number scams. Despite these vulnerabilities VoIP systems do not typically receive much attention from IT departments. These systems often retain default or shared credentials and they may be overlooked when searching for and fixing vulnerabilities." Mandiant says it often finds adversaries attempting to gain access to VoIP administrator user accounts through stolen or brute-forced credentials. These credential collection tools are widely accessible, meaning actors without sophisticated development expertise can compromise VoIP infrastructure.

number. With illegal robocalls representing nearly half of all unwanted calls in 2019 in the US – according to the US Federal Communications Commission – legislators there have adopted the Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (SHAKEN) system to block them. SHAKEN is a suite of guidelines for public switched telephone networks that show how to deal with calls that come with incorrect or missing identity information. Both the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and the Federal Communications Commission are requiring the use of the protocols by the main service providers by 30 June 2021. But there could be potential problems for legitimate callers from outside the US and Canada as a result of SHAKEN. Overseas service providers need to be fully aware of the process to ensure their calls are properly authenticated and verified, and not inadvertently blocked due to a lack of trust in the authentication information or lack of authentication altogether. Global communications industry services firm iconectiv has released a brief outlining the processes that international service providers need to follow as SHAKEN becomes deployed. It's something that will have to be addressed by communication service providers (CSPs) soon as already it's estimated that in the US, 76% of calls from an unidentified or unfamiliar number are left unanswered.

Sophisticated attacks

That, combined with SHAKEN, could impact multinational enterprises with caller IDs from colleagues overseas and customers or business partners outside the US not being accurately presented as verified.

The sophistication of the attacks is being matched by the ease of which they can now be unleashed through automation. These robocalls can be made in their hundreds at a time, with the attackers concentrating on those that actually still pick up their phone to an unknown

"Ensuring trusted access to information and enabling its seamless exchange is essential in today's connected world," says Richard Jacowleff, CEO and president of iconectiv. "SHAKEN is delivering a strong foundation on which to rebuild trust in

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The potential losses from scam calls can be huge, as demonstrated by just one attack channel. The international Communications Fraud Control Association recently estimated the losses

associated with premium number fraud, or international revenue share fraud (IRSF) to be between US$4bn and US$6.1bn.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

communications. However, we are in a global economy with billions of international calls made daily, and geography cannot and should not be an obstacle that presents a barrier to business engagement." In spite of the security problems faced by landlines, John Yardley, managing director of Threads Software, which helps organisations search and retrieve data from a range of sources including emails and VoIP calls, says we can't do without them. He says: "I think that one issue is that it is increasingly difficult to define what is actually fixed. I recently had a week-long domestic outage from my cable provider and decided to tether my laptop to my mobile in the meantime. However, the mobile masts were all fed from the same fixed cable so I was no better off. Also, as more and more traffic is data, many services – especially IoT and home control systems – rely on consistent fixed connections." Yardley adds: "Unlike public switched telephone networks, mobile networks are proprietary to the service provider. As such they mostly cannot be accessed with anything other than a mobile phone. They are not appropriate for office exchange systems with several extensions, which are sometimes essential in even small businesses." So while the demise of fixed voice has long been predicted since widespread mobile connectivity took a grip globally in the late 1990s, it seems that those pesky scam or unwanted phone calls will continue being around – although perhaps better mitigated.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

5G INVESTMENT

DSPs are undermining their own 5G investment: Here’s why - and how - to fix it It’s been ten years in the making. It’s cost billions to develop and implement. Millions more have been spent on inspirational advertising campaigns depicting an aspirational 5G lifestyle to encourage customers to upgrade. There’s just one teeny, tiny problem in all of this, says Teresa Cottam, chief analyst at Omnisperience, no-one is listening 5G hasn’t grabbed the attention and imagination of consumers in the way that an iPhone launch once did

5G is the panacea we’ve all been waiting for. It’s transformative; changing communications service providers into digital service providers (DSPs), reshaping the world we live in, and providing a powerful platform for innovation. It’s set to power everything from the Work Anywhere trend, to augmented and virtual reality, the next generation of gaming, connected industrial robots, and self-driving cars. It’s faster, much faster. Very low latency. Exciting. Very exciting. Consumers are not listening 5G hasn’t grabbed the attention and imagination of consumers in the way that an iPhone launch once did. They’re not getting out of bed before dawn to queue round the corner to sign up. In fact, some are worried by 5G and have begun telling their own scare stories to anyone who’ll listen. Meanwhile, business customers are increasingly frustrated, because 5G isn’t happening fast enough for them and is still more hype than reality. All customers are asking one very simple question: What’s in it for me? The irony of the communications industry is that it’s not very good at communicating with its own customers. While it’s brilliant at delivering

technological innovation, it’s never been very good at innovating the customer experience. This has led to a widening gap between what customers expect from 5G and what’s actually being delivered. The entire 5G proposition is now at risk because the industry is delivering a 5G network but a 2G experience. Without urgent action, 5G will struggle to recover from being a huge disappointment. What’s the point of a faster network if customers are still waiting in frustratingly long queues to speak to a customer service rep when things go wrong? Customer communication flaws There are long-standing weaknesses in the way mobile operators communicate with their customers. This has risen to the top of the agenda because unleashing the full potential of 5G is all about effective communication. Having spent billions of euros on new networks, and a decade developing and implementing the technology, the mobile industry risks falling at the final hurdle – successful commercialisation. Making 5G successful and meeting customer expectations requires DSPs to focus on how they communicate 5G to customers, support customers in adopting it and, even more immediately, navigate the complexities of buying it.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

SMART CAPITAL

How smart capital is keeping CSPs ahead of the connectivity curve COVID-19 has supercharged the demand for connectivity and increased the financial challenges for communications service providers (CSPs) and technology partners who need to supply it. With a growing number of people set to continue working remotely, better connectivity for homes is now essential, writes Amy Wettenhall, associate director of the Technology, Media & Telecoms (TMT) team of Macquarie Specialised Asset Finance Countries also need to move quickly to fully exploit the benefits of 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT), as this technology could increasingly drive gross domestic product (GDP) and greatly improve profitability and efficiency for individual businesses and larger enterprises alike. For organisations able to utilise this technology through more advanced connectivity, operational cost is reduced, efficiency improved, data analytics may be scaled in a real-time agile way and customer centricity will be enabled like never before. For instance, by employing IoT, instead of having to wait for a piece of equipment to fail and then have it repaired, that equipment can itself warn about imminent problems and arrange for the necessary overhaul. There is a growing recognition that the only way to deliver the widespread connectivity required, is with cross-industry cooperation, competition in the market, and an end-to-end vision shared by industry and government alike. The various elements of digital infrastructure simply do not work in isolation – their combined capability is not only contingent on one another, but essential to create the network itself.

Finding the investment However, in addition to the necessity of this industrywide coordination and shared mindset, firms are struggling to find the necessary investment. CSPs are constrained with their existing capital commitments and mounting pressure on their balance sheets. Conversely suppliers are saddled with legacy research and development costs, making the ability to offer new ‘capex light’ business models problematic. As well as selling their services to consumers at home for entertainment and, increasingly for business use, they are also having to meet rapidly growing demand from enterprises. Most consumers of technology are used to paying for products and services on a subscription, or opex basis only. Across all sectors, there is a discrepancy between new technology becoming available, the demand for

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

Amy Wettenhall, Macquarie Specialised Asset Finance

it, and the time it takes to achieve a return on the investment required to offer it. For instance, providers need to offer 1Gb bandwidth for domestic customers, but then rely on monthly subscriptions to pay for the large initial capital outlay – thus putting their balance sheet under considerable pressure. In many cases technology suppliers have been forced to offer significant discounts, simply to get to an acceptable price point for their customers. This is where smart capital can help.

In many cases technology suppliers have been forced to offer significant discounts

To roll out 5G, operators need a substantial volume of capital and technology partners need to be paid within a reasonable time frame – almost certainly less than the time it takes for operators to recoup their investment from monthly payment plans.

A quicker route to healthy balance sheets Moreover, the CSPs need these funds allocated as efficiently as possible, in other words employing a smart capital solution. This allows faster access to the latest technology for the operators and a quicker route to maintain healthy balance sheets. The result could be commercial success for them – and more competitive, advanced, and agile economies globally.

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EVENTS

UPCOMING EVENTS While we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this listing, the current COVID-19 pandemic means that many events are changing timing, dates and locations. Therefore please check at the eventsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; websites to ensure details are up-to-date before travelling.

Edge Computing Expo North America 9-10 February 2021

5G Expo 30 March 2021

Virtual Event https://edgecomputing-expo.com/

Virtual Event https://www.5gexpo.net/virtual/

Data Centre Congress 4 March 2021

Edge Computing Expo Europe 16-17 June 2021

Virtual Event https://datacentrecongress.com/

Virtual Event https://edgecomputing-expo.com/europe/

5G Briefing 23-24 March 2021

5G Expo 22-25 June 2021

Frankfurt, Germany http://www.5gbriefing.com/

Miami, USA https://www.5gexpo.com/ east/default.aspx

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

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