VanillaPlus Magazine Q4 2020

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.

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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.

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

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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

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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

O

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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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

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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.

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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.

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M A R K E T

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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

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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

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

“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.”

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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.

SPONSORED INTERVIEW 10

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

Ilan Sade Amdocs

resources you have. Your access to technical people is a major factor and you have to make sure you are able to move in the direction you have chosen. There will be multiple directions chosen by different CSPs. Having said that, it is no secret that CSPs have historically trailed on basic customer relationship metrics relative to other industries, and therefore there is a generalised focus on improving customer engagement capabilities, including digital support channels, as well as in analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), to make the channels more intelligent with chatbot capabilities, for example.

The number one challenge is a CSP’s legacy. They may have many siloed pieces to consider but they may also have legacy in terms of their people.

Transformation brings a set of complexities that need to be addressed holistically in a top-down management approach. However, service providers recognise that as communications technology dependency deepens and demand for new experiences grows, they will need to more fully automate and digitalise their service delivery processes, including service ordering, fulfilment, orchestration, activation and assurance.

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GM: What are some of the specific OSS challenges that need be addressed to better automate service management processes?

IS: The prevalence of siloed IT systems for each network and/or service domain is a major issue.

Services are increasingly being supported by chaining capabilities across a hybrid network that span multiple technologies and capabilities, for example, a mix of

The number one challenge is a CSP’s legacy physical, virtual and cloud functions. So, the current systems environment of ‘islands’ makes it extremely hard to control and run operational processes efficiently.

CSPs are therefore looking at these islands holistically and seeing if their processes can flow from end-toend. Often they don’t. With network functions ▲

The advent of 5G and the telco cloud is also now motivating many service providers to transform their

operations support systems (OSS) and related processes in order to handle the size and complexity of new networks and technology. Finding a specific use case and making sure that’s pragmatic and then choosing the right technology to enable you to fully automate is the key and 5G and telco cloud are triggers for this.

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TALKING HEADS

virtualisation (NFV), for example, it’s still one piece of the overall network but it’s highly siloed. There is a need for an end-to-end system to look across all of these different islands.

it’s clear CSPs have to go further than ever before and systems need to be kept open in order to enable the services Secondly, due to the prevalence of closed and monolithic legacy systems, we continue to have fragmented fulfilment and orchestration processes, comprising a multitude of unintegrated touch points with manual steps along the way. This leads to many service delivery inaccuracies and significant order fallout.

In addition, there is a lack of real-time contextual integration and connection between orchestration and assurance systems, which limits the ability to implement proactive, assurance and operations, thereby leading to dependence on reactive problem-solving approaches only.

If you look at future services, it’s clear CSPs have to go further than ever before and systems need to be kept open in order to enable the services. If you have a key performance indicator (KPI) on latency for a high demand service like a connected factory, it’s not enough to provision the service, you have to keep measuring and assuring. Today it’s different CSP organisations that perform these functions but they need to come together to support the service proposition.

You don’t need to boil the ocean in one day to achieve this, you can do it step-by-step, but it does need to happen.

GM: How does Amdocs help service providers address these challenges and what is your approach for modernising and transforming the OSS? IS: We are doing a number of things to help service providers consolidate, modernise and transform their operations support systems, which will all help accelerate the digital-to-network automation journey for service providers.

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Amdocs has evolved its proven OSS capabilities into Amdocs NEO, a unified service and network automation platform designed to manage and orchestrate hybrid networks, combining traditional service management

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VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

functionality with cloud and NFV orchestration and automation capabilities. NEO is a cloud-native, microservices offering which embraces a modular, open, standards-based approach in providing service and network automation capabilities. And, we have incorporated policy and AI and machine learning driven operations capabilities into the platform to support the move towards more autonomous operations.

Putting all these worlds into one fully cloud-based, microservices platform is not obvious and there aren’t many independent providers in this ecosystem.

Network equipment providers, for example, find it’s in their own interest to combine this capability in their own siloed systems but this doesn’t help CSPs have open systems.

We’re totally open and it doesn’t matter if you’re operating a hybrid network of multiple vendors, we’ll enable your business with end-to-end capabilities.

GM: How should service providers navigate the digital-to-network automation journey?

IS: It’s important to first recognise that such a transformation cannot happen in one shot overnight, and indeed it’s a journey. To start with, service providers need to adopt an OSS platform that can support automation in an incremental manner, be it by specific business process or service type. Explore how new capabilities can start getting incorporated in either ‘side-by-side’ and ‘over-the-top’ implementations through federation and loosely coupled integration. Advanced and flexible technology underpinnings using industry-standard APIs, microservices architecture, embedded AI, CI/CD tools and testing automation help take this approach.

The service provider should clearly identify and prioritise the key processes to automate, taking into consideration their desired future state. The objective may be to have a unified order handling process and single catalogue across the BSS and OSS layers; or on-demand, adaptive, contextual orchestration with real-time notification to billing and charging for efficient monetisation. Other objectives include closed-loop operations with contextual notifications and alerts through inventory as well as back to the order and service orchestrators and real-time active and federated inventory for full visibility of hybrid network services and resources.

Finally, it’s important to factor in the impact of new network technologies and service architectures, even

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

if the adoption is still in progress or further out. This includes things like 5G network slicing and edge services, the transition to cloud-based services and applications, the acceleration of IoT, ecosystempowered innovation and more.

The service provider should clearly identify and prioritise the key processes to automate, taking into consideration their desired future state GM: Please can you give some examples of service providers that are successfully digitalising and automating service and network operations?

IS: We have many examples but I can highlight one of our recent deployments in Europe where a customer took a strategic decision to grow its revenue and expand its broadband offering with fibre to the home (FTTH). In order to enter the market quickly and do so with lower capex, the service provider is taking advantage of unbundled local fibre access. To execute its strategy on that kind of infrastructure, the customer knew it needed an advanced OSS solution that would enable automation of the service activation process over a complex mix of third party and organic network infrastructure. This includes seamless interaction with systems of the third-party fibre infrastructure providers for accurate feasibility checks, reservation of partner fibre infrastructure, automatic service activation and closed-loop service assurance.

To achieve this, the customer selected our Service and Network Automation platform, Amdocs NEO, which is deployed on the cloud and operated by us as a managed service which enabled it to accelerate the project timeline and minimise its investment. Our platform is responsible for automatic end-to-end service lifecycle management which includes inventory management, order fulfilment, configuration and activation of the customer premises equipment (CPE), as well as automatic fault detection and resolution. In short: full-stack OSS on the cloud.

The bottom line is that this is a good example of a service provider that expanded its business quickly by utilising our service and network automation solutions to accomplish digital-to-network automation of their services management processes.

www.amdocs.com/D2N

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CASE STUDY

CSP’s rapid entry into fixed broadband market enabled by Amdocs NEO A new entrant into the EMEA fixed-line broadband market made a strategic decision to move rapidly into this market by selecting Amdocs Next-generation OSS (NEO) to enable its business.

The plan centred on taking advantage of a virtual unbundled local access (VULA) initiative in the target country. This would enable quick entry into the local market while minimising capex and enabling a very competitively priced broadband offering to consumers The communications service provider (CSP) signed an agreement with multiple wholesalers, to offer broadband services over its existing last-mile fibreto-the-home (FTTH) infrastructure. With wholesale agreements in place, the service provider embarked on a rapid journey to deploy its core network infrastructure and go live.

The need for highly advanced OSS To execute its strategy, the customer knew it needed to deploy an advanced OSS that would provide automated order to activation (O2A), including seamless, lights-out interaction with the OSS of multiple third-party, last-mile fibre infrastructure providers. The solution would need to perform accurate feasibility checks, reservation of partner fibre infrastructure, automatic service activation, and closed-loop service assurance.

Amdocs was chosen to provide and deploy the OSS, including the interfaces with fibre infrastructure providers.

The deployed OSS includes Amdocs inventory management which provides comprehensive resource management of the physical and logical network underlay and comprehensive service management of the service overlay. The solution also includes Amdocs Inventory Workflow Manager for network change execution and management, Amdocs service management, and Amdocs activation for service fulfillment automation, as well as TEOCO’s Helix Fault Management for closedloop service assurance. Amdocs also delivered critical interfaces between the service provider’s OSS and the OSS of each fibre infrastructure provider.

A deep resource model Amdocs resource inventory describes the supporting logical and physical network underlays, including the switches, network gateways, network address translation (NAT) appliances, aggregation, residential gateway customer premise equipment (CPE), as well as the fibre and plain old telephony service (POTS) terminations that make up the end-to-end subscriber

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The service provider chose the Amdocs softwareas-a-service (SaaS) OSS deployment model, together with Amdocs Managed Services. The service provider’s OSS is hosted on a private cloud

in Amdocs datacentres, and is operated by Amdocs as a managed service. This enabled accelerated project delivery, with a very high level of agility and quality, while minimising opex and capex.

connections. Amdocs service inventory describes the end-to-end subscriber service connection with pointers to the supporting network infrastructure.

Amdocs service fulfillment utilises the detailed inventory data to automatically provision subscriber services including automatic selection and activation of the relevant third-party fibre infrastructure.

Amdocs deployed highly efficient and automated order to activation processes that automatically fulfill broadband service orders over the third-party fibre infrastructure at the edge.

The OSS deployment included integration of the service provider’s gateway software to the OSS. The CPE functionality is cloud-based, and the OSS has been fully integrated with the gateway to enable end-to-end fulfillment including CPE configuration, activation, as well as automatic fault detection and resolution.

Project highlights 100% reuse of third-party fibre access infrastructure enabled by unbundled local fibre access

multi-layer data about the end-to-end physical network underlay and service overlay

Tight integration with third-party OSS, cloud-based CPE gateways and domain controllers, enables end-to-end automation of order feasibility check, fulfilment, activation, and service assurance

Plug and play: interface to third-party fibre infrastructure providers is totally modular so new fiber suppliers can be onboarded as needed

Zero-touch CPE: automated, closedloop service assurance resolves most CPE faults automatically Automatic generation of a work order to the infrastructure provider when a new subscriber connection is required The network inventory system enables automated fulfilment and assurance by providing comprehensive, accurate

Cloud-based OSS delivered as SaaS: the OSS is hosted in Amdocs datacentres, and operated by Amdocs as a managed service for unprecedented scalability, flexibility and reliability Fully scalable: OSS solution built to handle high subscriber growth rate Future-proof: OSS ability to manage both physical and virtual network functions, as well as 5G, enables roll-out of innovative service offerings

Accelerated service assurance When service faults or degradations occur, the service assurance system extracts end-to-end service and network infrastructure data from the inventory system, enabling accelerated root-cause analysis and fault resolution.

A key element of the successful project implementation was the creation and dissemination of bestpractice workflows, tight process governance, and service level agreements (SLAs) spanning across the service provider organisation and third party fibre infrastructure providers. The OSS is cloud-based and delivered as SaaS: the OSS is hosted in Amdocs datacentres, and operated by Amdocs as a managed service to provide unprecedented scalability, flexibility and reliability.

Driving automation for the era of hybrid and open cloud networks with digital, open, cloud-native, ecosystem solutions and services

Dramatic business value The service provider was able to launch its FTTH service in record time with reduced capex and opex. With dedicated teamwork by Amdocs and internal service provider teams, the project was deployed on schedule, with minimal impact from COVID-19.

Amdocs OSS is modular, and positions the service provider with a flexible, scalable, and upgradeable platform that supports new technologies and business opportunities such as network virtualisation, 5G fixed wireless access and 5G network slicing.

About Amdocs NEO A key Amdocs objective is to help service providers modernise, consolidate, and transform their service and network management systems to realize a modular, cloudnative 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

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

CSPs can be the shapeshifters of the digital age Digital transformation of telecoms has now outlived Brexit and the Trump administration and it’s likely to continue well beyond the current pandemic. This is no surprise, it was never styled as an overnight change, writes George Malim. However, what began as an upgrade of telecoms IT and network infrastructure is now, more than ever, a business transformation

Shape-shifters are mythical beasts that can change form or identity at will. Nothing seems further away from a traditional telecoms operator but over the last decade new technologies, market dynamics and processes have emerged that mean telecoms has a potentially far larger addressable market.

Communications service providers (CSPs) will simply need to change shape depending on whom they are addressing and what their needs are.

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It is now well understood that change is happening and high capacity networks, distributed computing resources and the growing number of interconnected devices that make up the Internet of Things are the foundational elements. Data now flows continuously in streams that are analysed live to create new business outcomes and mobile network operators are the vital enablers of this hyper-connected, digital world. The key questions are can they continue to rise to the challenge of meeting needs for connectivity and whether they can sustainably make money out of doing so.

The telecoms industry, and communications service providers (CSPs) in particular, receive a lot of negative press but the COVID-19 pandemic has proven that this apparently slow-moving industry has been able to

â–˛

The time taken to digitally transform by CSPs is a consequence of the complexity involved. Digital transformation encompasses so many different technologies, processes, skills and market dynamics that it has become an amorphous blob, a catch-all term, used as the handiest descriptive for almost any activity. In addition to the operational, networking and IT transformations that it accommodates we also have new technologies, such as edge computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), new techniques, such as analysis of streaming data or network slicing, and new networks, such as 5G, low power wide area (LPWA) networks and narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT). And all of these come even before we consider new

services and business models enabled by digital transformation.

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That radical resetting of the CSP cost base will rely on moving to the same economics as webscale companies by deploying networks entirely in the cloud

However, it’s not just the enhanced mobile broadband capacity of 5G that CSPs need. They recognise that a very different network architecture will be required to deliver on the targets that they have for 5G. Analysys Mason conducted a survey of 60 mobile operators and found that almost one-third are aiming to reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO) by 20% or more within three years of deploying a new network. rapidly adapt to changes in user profile. Huge network loads shifted from well-provisioned offices in urban centres to workers’ homes, often in secondary locations. While many noticed a drop in service quality, few experienced service interruptions, suggesting that CSPs are more fleet of foot and more versatile than popular opinion suggests.

Network infrastructure remains at the heart of the CSP business and also as the fundamental enabler of the digital world. The network itself is becoming a software-based, cloud-hosted digital being and this is essential to extend flexibility and support profitability for CSPs.

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The cloud-native message is getting through because the twin benefits of greater flexibility and lower cost are being proven with increasing regularity. ABI Research has uncovered that CSPs recognise the promise cloud-native platforms hold for them. The firms projects the market for cloudified 4G and 5G network elements will reach US$20bn by 2024. In addition, 65% of respondents to the Analysys Mason survey consider cloud-native architecture to be an essential or important part of making their next â–˛

The numbers continue to be enormous when it comes to network capacity demand. Analyst firm, Analysys Mason has forecast there will be five times as much data traffic in 2024 as there was in 2018 and 5G is needed to meet this demand. Billions of new devices and computing resources will become interconnected at hyperscale and 5G will be a key enabler because of the bandwidth, low latency and high connection density it supports.

That radical resetting of the CSP cost base will rely on moving to the same economics as webscale companies by deploying networks entirely in the cloud. These cloud-native networks will need to be based on open standards to support multi-vendor implementations and be able to respond to increased competition and innovation. The Analysys Mason survey found that mobile operators consider such open platforms to be an essential or important part of their business strategies and this figure increased to 92% of respondents among mobile operators planning to implement a fully cloud-based network.

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

greater flexibility. In fact, the number of CSPs planning to move workloads, such as revenue management and network management, to the public cloud was projected to double in 2019, according to the Omdia research.

This is borne out by a 2019 survey by the Technology Innovation Council (TIC) which found that 97% of telecoms operators anticipate moving their B/OSS functions to the cloud.

If cloud is one pillar of CSP digital transformation, 5G is another because it illustrates how the networks of the future will operate

generation end-to-end networks technically and commercially successful.

Cost reduction drives CSP transformation.

Vodafone, for example, aims to achieve reduction in operating expenses in its European business and within its common functions of at least US$1.36bn in its 2021 financial year. Adoption of digital technologies for customer care and acquisition will be central to the bid to achieve this reduction.

A walk in the clouds As a consequence of the urgency to reduce costs CSPs are more accepting of cloud computing than ever before. They’ve seen customers embrace cloud for even their most sensitive systems and have also observed the moves of hyperscale web companies such as AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

These are all building network capacity because connectivity is fundamental to their compute propositions. CSPs don’t want to get left behind and are increasingly looking to network-as-a-service models which resemble cloud models in which capacity can be spun up or down according to demand.

The digital transformations of other industries show a light to guide the way for the telecoms industry but it’s also true that telecoms is enabling the path for other sectors. Simply put, without the network, digital doesn’t work.

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Public cloud provides one cost saving lever, more efficient networks provide the next and, with the arrival of 5G, we are seeing software-enabled, virtualised networks come to market that can flexibly meet the peaks and troughs of user demand. Don’t forget that users aren’t necessarily people anymore. The user could be a factory robot, an autonomous car, or another edge computing device.

Not just another generation If cloud is one pillar of CSP digital transformation, 5G is another because it illustrates how the networks of the future will operate. This is a far more agile network infrastructure that is far simpler to maintain and manage than previous cellular networks and principles here will be applied to other network technologies, alongside radical refinement of fixed fibre network management.

Nevertheless, new networks of all types are huge infrastructure investments and the challenge will be to extract value from these investments to enable sustainable and attractive returns. Many of the prizes for operators still remain years away. 5G roll-out is making progress and the Global Suppliers Association reports there are 92 commercial networks operating in 38 countries and 7% of the world’s population is covered by 5G. This is only the start. Meanwhile, 5G will account for 20% of global connections by 2025, says GSMA. ▲

This is partly why analyst firm Omdia has predicted that CSPs will be among the fastest-growing adopters of public cloud. There has been traditional reluctance to go this route because of the heritage CSPs have in building their own IT and running highly complex and specialised OSS/BSS systems. This is changing under the burden of cost reduction and the requirement for

Tim McElligott, a senior analyst at TM Forum, has also reported that: "A 2019 survey revealed that a full 84% of attendees at Digital Transformation World 2019 said CSPs need to be investing in cloud-native technologies … However, operators will not reap the full benefit without putting more workloads into the public cloud where the total cost of ownership and operation are lowest. They should begin evaluating individual workloads now to determine, even hypothetically, which are suitable for cloud. Whenever possible, they should choose public cloud because the economics are undeniable."

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Automotive Health

5G strictly required

Figure 1: Use cases are emerging that strictly rely on 5G

Media Smart cities

Relative opportunity (volume, communication/ equipment spend)

Alternative technologies available

Farming

5G a strong enabler1

Manufacturing

Use cases to become mainstream

15G

Use cases in prototype or POC stages

Still major R&D to be done

or alternative wireless technology with features similar to 5G

Source: Kearney analysis

This is far from total coverage and public 5G will take several more years to achieve ubiquitous coverage. However, CSPs and their enterprise customers don’t have to wait. Private 5G or 5G standalone (SA) networks are being rolled out at manufacturing sites, mining locations and large campuses.

These can either be owned by enterprises themselves of provided by suppliers, including mobile operators.

These islands of SA 5G will eventually connect further and involve moving object that move from one private 5G network to another. There will also be many devices that need to access public networks to perform their functions and therefore 5G roaming will be required. Sometimes, devices will fall back onto LTE but ultimately, latencysensitive apps at the top right of Figure 1 will need the power of 5G. This is why 5G has attracted so much interest and is being seen as an enabler for a wide variety of new use cases as well as a new source of revenue for CSPs. Analyst firm IoT Analytics estimates that the global base of 5G connected devices, both IoT and non-IoT, will reach 1.2 billion by 2025, rising from around 11 million devices in 2020. If CSPs can not only sell 5G capacity but also provide other support to these devices, the revenue per device could be increased far beyond the simple sale of capacity and transform the economics of the CSP business. Adjacent services such as data handling or processing could become part of CSP service portfolios as their transformations continue and this may not be such a giant leap as previously expected.

such as digital twins will need the ultra-low latency connections of 5G in order to maintain a centralised data record. In addition, low latency will be a fundamental requirement to connect the edge computing capacity with terminals, sensors, apps and devices of all types.

Dell’Oro Group research projects the MEC market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 169% between 2019 and 2024. Meanwhile, a Heavy Reading survey has also uncovered that CSPs see MEC as an opportunity.

Almost 85% of network operator professionals polled believed that edge computing would be critical or important to their network evolution strategy.

CSPs therefore have a chance to add value to customers here by bringing new offerings to market both in terms of the network but also supporting services. New technologies and new ways of interworking will be required but strategically, operators are in a good place to participate strongly and even lead, thanks to their networking expertise. This ultimately is the promise of digital transformation in telecoms.

The prize was never to keep doing the same thing but with more bandwidth and greater operational efficiency. These are important outcomes for CSPs and the world, but CSPs can transform and go further, becoming part of the digital value chain rather than isolated within the telecoms value chain. The true promise of digital transformation involves network transformation but also business transformation that is seeing CSPs move from the business of selling bandwidth into the business of enabling connected outcomes.

Closer to the edge The deployment of both public and private networks alongside increased intelligence in edge devices enabled via edge computing is moving architectures away from the traditional hub and spoke with all processing performed at the centre. The future is about more being done at the edge via multi-access edge computing (MEC) but applications

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No one said it would be easy and this is why it is taking so long but the pieces of the jigsaw in terms of 5G, MEC, cloud, IoT and data intelligence are starting to reveal an attractive picture of the future in which the C of CSP becomes only one part of the services they provide.

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5G ASSURANCE

The anatomy of a 5G network that can’t fail 5G holds a great deal of promise, but as with any new undertaking, there are many risks and unknowns, writes Edoardo Rizzi, the senior vice president of global product management and marketing at Empirix. What was acceptable on 3G networks became unacceptable by 4G standards, and the same will be true of 5G. It is, after all, human nature to want and expect more. But when the consequences of failing to deliver as promised are more than a temporary nuisance, precautionary measures are no longer optional – they become the new imperative authentication or attach issues, or as a result of interoperability or incompatibility between the network, the services and applications that run on it, or end user devices.

Why is failure acceptable?

The benefits of zero failure would not deliver enough value to warrant a cost increase

Traditional communication services can help provide some context. Most of us rely heavily on our cellphones to communicate with others and to stay in touch with pop culture. Phone calls, text messages, social media, and streaming video services keep us connected to the outside world. This connectivity is especially important during times of physical isolation, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. But even with our deep reliance on these services, we’ve become tolerant of the failures that commonly occur – a dropped call, an undeliverable text message, or emails not synching to our device. We can usually manage these failures with simple strategies like moving out of a dead zone, resending a message, or rebooting our device. In some cases, we are able to ignore them completely without any disruption or meaningful impact to us.

Not surprisingly, service and network providers have a similar perspective. The financial investment required to achieve zero failure would not only be significant but would fail to deliver a high enough ROI to justify the business case. It would have little impact on churn and would not offer enough incentive to lure consumers away from the competition.

Furthermore, ownership of the issue may not be clear. There are a number of vendors and technologies interoperating and reliant on each other to deliver the service. It’s not always easy to determine what triggered the issue, its root cause, or where it occurred. Partners may not even have access to the right data to perform a proper triage or to derive actionable conclusions.

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The issues that are causing these failures usually originate from within the network, such as

So the question is why have we, as consumers, come to accept this? There are at least two perspectives worth considering. From the end users’ vantage point, is zero failure really their expectation?

Are they willing to pay the price for zero failure? Do the benefits justify that price increase? Probably not.

Mobile services are a commodity and consumers have become extremely sensitive to price. The benefits of zero failure would not deliver enough value to warrant a cost increase.

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In summary, when it comes to traditional communication services, consumers have come to accept a certain level of failure. While there would be some benefits for both parties, the business case for making the necessary investments to attain zero failure cannot be rationalised.

The future engine of our daily lives 5G holds a lot of promise for consumers and providers alike. For traditional services, consumers will appreciate improvements in reliability and performance while operators anticipate reduced delivery costs and improved average revenue per user (ARPU). Those improvements will no doubt be valuable, but the true value and promise of 5G stems from the new services and use cases that it enables.

Those new use cases will transform every industry and aspect of the economy and are the motivation for building 5G in the first place.

type communication (mMTC), mobile broadband (MBB) are enabled to support a diverse set of services that run on the same network in parallel. The most critical services require flawless performance from both the 5G network and its ecosystem. Any failure, large or small, could put human safety or business health at great risk. Think about the impact that the following examples could have on trust.

The promise of 5G is such that we will all come to depend on it, expect accurate outcomes, and, ultimately, trust it. In most cases, we won’t even be aware that 5G is the engine enabling us to do what we do each day. But we will come to understand the gravity of consequences should failure occur.

• Factory downtime would impact revenue and could result in layoffs or have a downstream impact on the supply chain.

• A self-driving car that does not detect traffic congestion could result in an accident or loss of life.

• Loss of connectivity during surgery would be catastrophic.

Why failure is not an option

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It’s hard to envision these services as part of our daily lives right now, but the takeaway is clear — failure is not an option in any of those scenarios. A public apology would never be enough, nor would we quickly forget what happened. The scenarios above may cause you to wonder:

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While 5G will continue to support the traditional communication services, it has been designed to enable a range of new services - many of them critical in nature. Features like ultra-reliable lowlatency communications (URLLC), massive machine

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MARKET REPORT

New 5G-enabled Services

• How does one build a network that can’t fail?

• How does one build trust (or lose it)?

• With whom should trust be built?

Traditional Communications Services

choose to use the service. What’s more, they have little control over the outcome and cannot mitigate issues the way they can for traditional services. With so many moving parts, failure, at some level, is inevitable. A single glitch can break the chain.

The 5G network is not immune either. In fact, there are more points of potential failure within the network than the ecosystem as a whole. It is, most certainly, a new breed of network comprised of a broad, diverse set of vendors and technologies all combining to deliver unprecedented levels of access, efficiency, robustness, and reliability. But it’s how 5G networks are constructed that truly demonstrates the challenge with building trust.

The higher the stakes, the greater the consequences

Trust - it’s a currency Let’s explore the concept of trust. You may not have thought about trust in this way, but trust is a currency exchanged between people, companies, or both.

Loss of trust in any of these relationships could have an economic or legal consequence or result in their dissolution. The higher the stakes, the greater the consequences. Depending on the circumstances, loss of trust can occur over time or in an instant and may not be repairable by way of an apology, credit for future services, or additional promises, which may be perceived as “disingenuous”.

Trusting 5G

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How to build trust Although seemingly impossible, trust must be established between a host of players. Network and service providers as well as application and device vendors all play critical roles in delivering exemplary quality of service to the end users. Not only must they trust each other, but end users must come to trust

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Let’s consider the 5G ecosystem – it has a high degree of complexity with multiple vendors and technologies. The expectation is that all of them interoperate seamlessly and without failure(s) – a tall order considering how many points of intersection there are. End users or consumers are often unaware of this complexity and may not fully understand the dependency and risk that they accept when they

Just think about the number of technologies and vendors involved in the end-to-end service chain of new, 5G-enabled services. 5G decomposes the core network, access network, and its supporting systems into functions that move freely around and are no longer constrained by the stringent rules of priorgeneration networks. Orchestration capabilities must interact with the infrastructure resources and the network functions that run on top of the infrastructure.

The ecosystem surrounding the network can produce interoperability issues between the network, services, applications, and end devices. And, finally, automation is tasked with correcting human error, optimising performance, and recovering from or preventing failure when risk factors are spotted. Even with these capabilities, things can, and will, go wrong. With so many points of potential failure, pinpointing what went wrong, and where and why errors occurred will be significantly more difficult. Similarly, establishing trust between end users, ecosystem vendors, and the network will be more challenging than ever before.

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them as a collective entity. Failure by one is no better than failure by all, since the outcome remains the same from the perspective of the end user.

Providers of 5G networks, services, applications, and devices must adopt a new mindset if they want to build trust with their ecosystem partners and end users. Visibility has been the industry standard for network and service assurance for many years. It has played an important role in helping network and service providers improve customer experience and the performance of their networks, services, and applications. But, as discussed, the network and the ecosystem are evolving, and the stakes are higher. In the context of the 5G network and the 5G ecosystem, visibility can only tell network and service providers and other players what potentially happened. But it is not capable of identifying and contextualising what exactly was the issue, where the issue truly originated, and why it happened – important aspects of any failure that enable operators and other parties involved to derive actionable conclusions that, when implemented, address the true root cause of the real problems. And it is these actionable conclusions that enable trust to be built, expanded, and reinforced.

Are today’s solutions up for the challenge?

As mentioned, visibility has been the industry standard for network and service assurance solutions, but it fails to provide the contextualisation required for operators and other parties to derive actionable conclusions.

Monitoring and assurance solutions play an important role in building trust – but are they up to the challenge in this new 5G ecosystem?

First, monitoring and assurance solutions will have to cover a larger scope. Networks are no longer one dimensional; there are both horizontal and vertical dimensions. The horizontal dimension includes all of the components, and their interworkings, that make an end-to-end service transaction possible. The vertical dimension includes the interworkings between layers including infrastructure, network, orchestration, service, and application. Onedimensional monitoring solutions are not equipped to see all dimensions and will leave blind spots where issues can unknowingly propagate.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

Another important area that needs to be addressed to ensure zero failure and build trust is the ability to uncover interdependencies. In an environment that generates hundreds of interactions between things and layers in order to execute a transaction, the interdependencies will be many – some of which won’t be known.

Uncovering these interdependencies will be key to identifying the true root cause.

A third challenge for today’s service assurance solutions is contextualisation, or the ability to help define why the issue occurred in the first place and where it originated. This is the single most critical element for enabling automation, a strategic objective for many operators.

Monitoring and assurance solutions will have to bring clarity to what is a very complex picture.

In summary, we have explored three key ideas throughout this article: • Why some failure has been acceptable until now.

• Why the 5G network can’t fail.

• The implications of failure and how monitoring and assurance solutions need to evolve in order to build trust.

Network and service providers and other ecosystem players are building a complex web of vendors and technologies in order to deliver on the promise of 5G. 5G will enable new use cases that require monitoring and assurance solutions to go beyond visibility in order to enable 5G players to ensure zero failure and build trust with their ecosystem and end users.

Visit www.empirix.com to learn more about KLERITY, a solution framework for 5G and IoT monitoring, assurance, and analytics that is cloud-native, open, and flexible by design, with the lowest TCO.

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5G SERVICE ASSURANCE

5G service assurance relies on a complex jigsaw coming together Communication service providers (CSPs) need to be ready to assure new services delivered by 5G. Antony Savvas looks at the challenges they are facing and considers how they can address it effectively The stakes around 5G service assurance are potentially higher because failed connectivity could cause more serious, service-affecting issues, as a result of the plethora of mission-critical services expected to connect via 5G networks. 5G holds the potential to deliver something new to the enterprise market, allowing CSPs to expand their business opportunities by providing lower latency and higher availability services around the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), but these key markets do not come without challenges. CSPs will have to assure that the network they provide understands and meets the business service level objectives of their customers.

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So will 5G service assurance cost CSPs more, or can they offset this by selling assured QoS? Itzigsohn adds: "A smart factory, for example, will have three specific network needs. It will need a low latency, high reliability network to control robotics, and it will need a massive machine-type IoT network for all of its environmental sensors.

It will also need enhanced mobile broadband to enable the sort of video analytics necessary to make sure everything is working as it should."

From a service assurance point of view, says Itzigsohn, a CSP will need to decipher the intent of any service level objective for each of these three service demands, and then roll them into definable key

performance indicators (KPIs) that it can monitor on the network. Each service will come with varying degrees of proactivity, automation, analytics and customer visibility to support that service, and this is where the CSP will be able to demand additional revenue where appropriate.

Assurance for slicing With 5G comes the concept of network slicing to dedicate capacity to services.

The idea of charging for specific network slices can be seen as evolving and will inevitably have an impact on assurance.

Felicien Mathieu, engineering director for EMEA global service providers at World Wide Technology, says: "Network slice assurance is development intensive, both in the standards set by the 3GPP across future releases and also the demands of working with industry bodies and initiatives such as Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and the O-RAN Alliance. This complex level of orchestration means that robust processes need to be in place to deliver slices that

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Danny Itzigsohn, senior director for technology and strategy at CSP software provider TEOCO, says: "When 5G mobile networks are used to support autonomous vehicles, for instance, it is vital that the supply of real-time information not only has zero downtime, but is also supplied without any degradation. This means that CSPs will not only be required to provide

5G network slicing capabilities to meet sub-millisecond response times, but will also need to ensure they have proactive network assurance that autonomously fixes an issue before any service degradation occurs."

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

Ken Gold

Bruce Kelley

EXFO

Netscout

“There will be more services which will require greater visibility and monitoring accuracy, which will come at some incremental cost”

have a high level of assurance, meeting specific service level agreements (SLAs) and KPIs, on a per industry basis."

He adds that the most demanding use cases, those that require 1ms latency or below – such as critical robotics and applications demanding haptic feedback – will require a dedicated, on-premise 5G standalone (SA) private network. However, most use cases can be served by onpremise 5G non-standalone or even LTE mobile private network (MPN) solutions.

Automated assurance Testing and monitoring firm EXFO this year unveiled Nova A|SA, its fully automated network assurance offering designed for the 5G era. Ken Gold, the director of test, monitoring and analytics solutions at the company, says: "Automation is essential to handling the explosive growth 5G SA will enable and adaptive, flexible and scalable service assurance solutions will be a critical piece of the overall framework. To massively scale IoT devices with a density increase of up to one million devices per square km also demands automation, not just for deployment purposes – configuration, provisioning and service turn-up – but also for ongoing monitoring of the health of these devices."

Gold adds that meeting the 1ms round-trip latency challenge for services will require using multi-access edge compute (MEC) locations, which are essentially small data

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centres positioned close to the customer to minimise latency. Monitoring these services, the virtual cloud infrastructure they run on and even the hardware infrastructure will require a cloud-native, adaptive service assurance solution that is orchestrated for the customer.

Such a solution provides the service and domain orchestrators with complete visibility from edge-to-core, and operators' network and service operations centres (NOC/SOC) will have the tools to manage quality of experience issues.

Bruce Kelley, senior vice president and CTO of monitoring firm Netscout, says CSPs must deliver what is needed by their customers when it comes assurance monitoring. "For application vendors and enterprise customers using these services, for assurance, security and compliance reasons, it is important for them to have full visibility covering the behaviour of the network, the infrastructure and their users."

network (RAN), backhaul, core and application capabilities. Instead, the CSPs need to reshape their offering so they are delivering a single, service level view combining all of these parts into one."

Less not more?

Asked whether 5G service assurance will cost more, EXFO's Gold suggested it may even cost less.

"The short answer is 'no'. The longer answer is, it is hard to say,” he adds.

“There will be more services which will require greater visibility and monitoring accuracy, which will come at some incremental cost. But, on the other hand, the 5G network will be cloud-based, so the need for hardware appliances is greatly reduced, if not eliminated."

So how can CSPs do this? The first step is to create a holistic view of performance, reliability and security. Currently, each vendor commonly supplies their own network infrastructure monitoring solution to show what is happening in their specific section of the network.

He says the automation aspects of an adaptive, highly scalable service assurance solution, along with the necessary analytics to deliver actionable insight, rather than massive amounts of data and alarms, adds cost. However, the shortening of meantime-to-repair – by as much as 50% – saving the operator in both operations costs as well as penalties and damage to brand image, could mean fewer costs.

Kelley says of this: "This is clearly problematic and over-complicates matters for the customer who is then faced with the challenge of trying to understand the disparate combination of radio access

There are clearly some pieces of the assurance jigsaw to be fully crafted to enable a smooth fit into the 5G picture, but CSPs have a good understanding of what these will look like and how they should be handled.

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TRUSTED COMMUNICATIONS

Michael O’Brien iconectiv

How CSPs can restore consumer trust in communications in 2021 – and beyond Understanding the real perception of consumer trust in communications these days is hard to know exactly because so many factors play into it, writes Michael O’Brien, the chief product officer of iconectiv. We do know that 76% of consumers no longer answer calls from unfamiliar and unidentified numbers, letting them drop into voice mail instead. Some contact centre operators say that outbound call answer rates are down 30% It’s not hard to see why. In the UK, for example, consumers receive five billion nuisance calls each year, according to Ofcom. Meanwhile, US consumers receive 4.5 billion spam text messages annually. Text spam often includes SMS phishing attacks – called smishing – which has tripled worldwide over the past five years.

Calling line identity (CLI) spoofing enables many of those robocalls and other nuisance calls by exploiting consumer trust in caller ID information. “As well as direct harm from scams, the misuse or spoofing of CLI data can also reduce consumer trust in the system as the CLI is no longer effective as an identifier about the source of the call,” UK regulator Ofcom says. “Without this trust, there is a greater risk of harm, as consumers may be reluctant to accept calls undermining the general utility of the phone service.”

This global deluge of illegal robocalls, spam and fraud ripples into the bottom lines of service providers and their enterprise customers, as well as contact centre operators. For example, US service providers spend over US$10 on each customer service call.

Illegal robocalls and text spam also can put lives in jeopardy. For example, COVID-19 contact tracers are struggling to reach people who ignore repeated calls and texts from numbers they don’t recognise. That means people who have been infected don’t know, so they continue to expose even more people to the virus. Even during normal times, this distrust can mean a doctor’s office or hospital can’t reach a patient’s family in a timely manner.

Caught in the net Communications service providers (CSPs), regulators, vendors and other members of the telecoms ecosystem have spent the past several years developing and deploying technologies to mitigate illegal robocallers and SMS fraudsters. One example is use of analytics engines, which look for high volumes of calls originating from a single source.

Voice service providers increasingly rely on analytics engines for guidance about how to treat calls.

Another example is smartphone apps that screen calls.

But sometimes these apps and engines mistakenly label outbound calls from legitimate enterprises and contact centres as spam. In fact, some contact centre experts say this erroneous blocking is a major reason for the 30% drop in outbound call answer rates in 2019.

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Meanwhile, banks, schools, government agencies and other legitimate organisations waste countless hours of productivity playing phone and message tag with people wary of unfamiliar numbers. There’s also the cost of investigating fraud, such as for customers

whose accounts have been hacked after they have clicked on a link in a smishing text.

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VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE Q4 I 2020

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.

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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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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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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THE YEAR IS 2020 WHERE IS IoT NOW?

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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 events’ websites to ensure details are up-to-date before travelling.

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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

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There iss a growing op pportunity to standardise and a integrate IoT Data intto healthcare systems to crreate a more complete view of a patientt.

Director Businesss Development, healthcare IT Solutions.

Through h IoT we are gett g ing betterr insights from m drug delivery systems that are handed out to patientts.

This infor o mation is esssential to und derstanding drug performance an nd patient beh haviours.

Expert for IoT and d Data Science, multination nal pharmaceutical compan ny.

Improving Patient Ou utcomess with Connected e Medical Devices e This new, free e 95 page report exp plores how IoT is making reall im outcomes and dh service perforrm The report ide en segments cover lifecycle of a pa p treatment journ IoT is having the t positive impac ct

www.connect o edmedicalde evices.com Proud to sponsor this important report that seeks to improve the success rate of Healthcare IoT projects:

a real digitall transffo ormattion is much more than a good-lookiing customerfacing user fa e interffa ace Investing in digitizing the front-end customer experience is important.

Yet to reap the full benefitts of digitization, maintain a competitive edge Ye and fully meet the expectations of digital customers, service providers must also digitize their service operations and assurance processes.

Amdocs Digital-to-Nettwork Automation solution, powered by Amdocs Service and Ne N twork Automation platform (NEO), provides an efficient, automated and integrated approach to fulfilling, activating, orchestrating and operating any consumer//e enterprise service – with full-sservice lifecycle management capabilities.

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