SPECIAL ISSUE MWC 2022

www.mobileeurope.co.uk @mobileeurope

Sponsored by Red Hat

Open hybrid cloud

enables innovation
from agriculture to
smart traffic
Hear from Proximus and Red Hat on new opportunities
for network operators and digital service providers

CTO Interview Telco to techco Final say

When five 9s are not Our annual survey A consumer group
enough: Michaël reveals where says its research
Trabbia, CTO at operators are proves 5G will
Orange Group, talks focusing their widen the digital
about the telco of efforts and progress divide in France
the future

14 22 42
Contents
14
Editor’s choice
07 Predictions for 2022
Veteran industry analyst John
Strand, Founder and CEO of Strand
Consult, looks at what happened
last year and what’s coming next.
14 CTO Interview
When five 9s are not enough:
Michaël Trabbia, CTO at Orange
Group, talks to Annie Turner about
the telco of the future.
17 CTO Interview
Neil McRae, MD Architecture &
Strategy, BT Group Chief Architect,
on Open RAN, public and telco
cloud, and still looking for the edge
with Annie Turner.
22
Insight report:
Building value
around connectivity
22 How is telco to
techco going?
Dawn Bushaus casts an analytical
eye over our annual survey results
and finds 2022 will be a pivotal
year – operators have big plans for
private 5G and 5G Standalone, the
edge and Open RAN
27 Where is fixed wireless
access going?
William Webb, CTO of Cambridge
Broadband Network Group (CBNG)
shares his sense of direction with
Annie Turner
30 Private networks
Is Private 5G out of the AWS box the
end for telco-led private networks
asks Dawn Bushaus?
42
33 Operators are planning Full Spectrum
6G now
Dawn Bushaus investigates why
telecoms is already looking at
40 Tackling telecom fraud
6G and who is working on which after COVID
aspects The pandemic boosted telecom
and cyber fraud which are now
36 Evolution of the SIM bigger and more profitable than the
narcotics trade. What are operators
Kate O’Flaherty asks if operators
are more concerned about making
doing about it, asks Kate O’Flaherty?
churn easier instead of better
customer experience with eSIM 42 Final say
while Nick Booth suggests iSIM A consumer group says its research
could relegate eSIM to the eMuseum proves 5G will widen the digital
before it reaches its full potential divide in France. Nick Booth reports.
 Welcome
Editor: Annie Turner The theme of this year’s MWC in Barcelona is telling: Connectivity Unleashed.
anniet@mobileeurope.co.uk For years connectivity (shiny and new technologies aside) was seen as dull
Contributing Editor: Nick Booth and very much taken for granted. Then COVID struck and we all received a
nickb@mobileeurope.co.uk sharp reminder of just how essential connectivity is, the inter-dependencies
Contributors: of fixed and mobile infrastructure, and the seriousness of the digital divide.
Dawn Bushaus Most of the underserved are in rural areas (although the definition of rural
dbushaus@lexicalcontent.com
varies), which is where almost a third (29.1%) of Europe’s population lives.
Kate O’Flaherty In research published in September 2020, Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
kate.oflaherty@techjournalist.co.uk
estimated that since 2000, the world’s network operators have invested more
Sub-editor: Lisa Hughes than $5 trillion to increase global connectivity, but reckoned it will cost $2.1
lisa.hughes@easynet.co.uk
trillion to halve the digital divide over the next five years. It concludes that
Design and Production: Alex Gold network operators cannot shoulder this burden alone and recommends a
Commercial Director: Fidi Neophytou multi-stake holder approach.
fidin@mobileeurope.co.uk The motivation for reducing the digital divide is immense. BCG’s analysis
Senior Business Development Manager: suggests that back in 2000, the world’s connectivity levels would have been
Simon La Thangue simonlt@mobileeurope.co.uk able to help, at most, 0.2% of the labour force to work remotely compared to
Publisher: Wayne Darroch the 10% of people in the global workforce who were able to work from home
ISSN: 1350 7362 in 2020.
Further, those connectivity levels saved between 150 million and 300
million jobs, safeguarding $8 trillion in global GDP, which is about twice the
size of Germany’s economy in 2019. In the US, this saw online retailing grow
by 15% to 30%, food deliveries rise by 90%, and online grocery shopping
Mobile Europe is published by SJP Business Media
skyrocket by 140% during the first few months of the pandemic.
2nd Floor, St Mary Abchurch House Those sectors alone contributed $4 trillion to global GDP in the first six
123 Cannon Street or seven months of lockdowns, in addition to providing an indirect boost to
London, EC4N 5AU
adjacent businesses. In addition, BCG says at least 100 million schoolchildren
The views expressed in Mobile Europe are not necessarily and 200 million university students worldwide were able to continue their
those of the editor or the publisher. education online despite the pandemic, and telcos were able to provide a
semblance of business as usual in other aspects of life enabling for instance
e-finance, e-health, and e-citizenship transactions, plus online entertainment
and socialising.
In nearly all the countries that BCG studied for a previous World Economic
Forum report, the consultancy found that it can take a decade for operators
to achieve return on investment, especially in sparsely populated and hard
to reach areas. On the other hand, countries typically receive an economic
boost far more quickly – under two years.
This is a major contributory factor to the M&A fest going on in Europe’s tel-
cos right now – by next year’s MWC we might be looking at a very differently
structured industry.

Annie Turner
Editor
Mobile Europe
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6 Sponsored Feature

Private cloud ecosystems

open up innovation and
opportunities
Stefan Bovy, Director Cloud Service Centre at
Proximus, and Johan Fredriksson, VP and Head of
Telecommunications, EMEA at Red Hat, talk about cloud
strategy, the critical importance of open partnerships and
ecosystems, the challenges of becoming Agile, and the
promise of Confidential Computing in public clouds.

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk


SB: Proximus is a provider of digital
services and communication solutions
that mainly operates in Belgium, but
we have worldwide coverage through
affiliates. Our mission is to open up a
digital world so people can live better
and work smarter.
Our four-pillar strategy is: to build the
best open, gigabit-capable network for
Belgium for ourselves, our customers
and other service providers; to oper-
ate as a digital native company, which
means becoming leaner, legacy-free and
fit for the new digital world; to become
more profitable by developing partner-
ships and ecosystems; and to act for a
green as well as digital society.
We can accelerate innovation through
partnerships. For instance, a big priority is
to install as much fibre as fast as we can in
Belgium, but it’s a huge task so we created
two joint ventures to speed up implemen-
tation and cover at least 4.2 Belgian homes
and businesses by 2028. Partnerships also
enable us to bring more relevant content
and innovative services to our customers
– for example, working with Swedish com-
pany, Doktor.se. It puts patients in remote
contact with medical specialists which has
been so important in COVID times.
As for supporting a green and digital
society, in Brussels, one focus is on
helping young people without degrees
to find employment. We support them
with our products and services, and
provide lectures to enrich their coding
and digital marketing skills. We can’t do
this by ourselves; we work with partners.
Another focus is recycling used appli-
ances on a large scale.
We do not have an R&D department
and don’t develop technology ourselves,
so we work closely with partners like
Red Hat to ensure we have the neces-
sary technology to support our business
agility and service innovation.
JF: Is being a digital company providing
digital services for your own operations,
or enabling them for others?
Stefan Bovy, Director Cloud Service Centre at Proximus
Johan Fredriksson, VP and Head of
Telecommunications, EMEA at Red Hat
SB: Both. If a customer says, “Please
automate this type of process flow in a
digital way,” we bring in one of our affili-
ates to transform the applications, create
the APIs, put it in Azure with machine
learning on top and provide the service.
On the other hand, with Doktor.se, the
firm has the core competencies and we
enable the services.
JF: Ecosystems are the foundation of
what Red Hat does and how we work.
Open source fuels working together
and creates positive momentum which
I think Stefan is seeing with how Prox-
imus engages with Red Hat and the
communities. You act faster because
you take out so many of the usual hur-
dles and have more time for innovation
as a result.
Sponsored Feature 7
SB: In effect, open source is developed
by your end customers and the partner
ecosystem; Red Hat adds value to it
and uses it too. Red Hat makes sure it’s
secure as well, which is important, then
you give it back to the community by
leveraging all those use cases.
JF: Many companies want to go into the
digitalised world where Red Hat was
born. Proximus in a way is already there,
but more traditional companies have a
long way to go. Going into the open-
source ecosystem helps change their
culture, which is foundational; otherwise
it doesn’t work in the long run.
SB: Absolutely. For example, there are
questions around how we find 5G and
other use cases. We’re applying the
same philosophy Johan mentioned –
working with customers in open collab-
oration. We installed the 5G Innovation
Lab because it is too costly to set up
your own 5G environments before you
can even test.
Recently we demonstrated a 5G appli-
cation for Saroléa electric motorbikes in
Belgium – with ML6, which specialises
in AI services – that could contribute to
safer traffic. Working with our partners,
we added a dashcam and AI that con-
stantly analyses data to detect potholes
or pedestrians crossing the street and
projects information onto the motorcy-
clist’s screen.
In agriculture, we flew a drone over
the fields sending images to the data
centre via 5G which enabled us to distin-
guish between the crop and weeds. That
data was recomposed and an algorithm
sent to the tractor so it only applies pes-
ticides to weeds, reducing the amount
applied by up to 80%.
JF: We have an Open Innovation Lab too.
Once you get all these companies in the
lab, how do they cooperate? That’s often
a big hurdle, so we have training classes
and consulting around working in an open
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
8 Sponsored Feature
community, using live scenarios.
We need to connect the technology,
people and the contract part. One ven-
dor used to provide a full stack, now it’s
about providing horizontal layers for the
ecosystem. We provide thin layers – Red
Hat OpenStack or Red Hat OpenShift,
and so on – but we can also help them
find that open mind set. That’s why Prox-
imus and Red Hat do so well together:
we have the same thinking.
SB: We co-develop processes with our
customers to make a proposal for them.
We discuss it with them and adapt it and
constantly take feedback from customer
surveys – 40,000 to 50,000 a month –
to embed in our culture that everything
we do, we check with the customer.
It’s not just services, either. Until last
year, we experimented with Agile and
took two approaches. The first one, for
example, is in my cloud team where they
all use the scrum and the daily stand-up
– things we are familiar with.
The second variation was mainly used
for customer service. We created Agile
circles, putting representatives from
different disciplines or technological
areas to work as one team and serve the
customer with a single voice.
This year, we’re implementing that
Agile approach at scale – large groups
of employees across the organisation
are moving to support coordinators and
need to get used to working in multi-
disciplinary teams. That’s a big transfor-
mation – supported by training and our
human resources department – but it’s
what we want for our customers.
JF: Proximus is a frontrunner. Often
when we talk to customers about Agile,
it’s only the IT or development depart-
ment that work that way. When we sug-
gest doing a project around Agile, they
volunteer IT and development people,
but then we ask, “Where are your law-
yers, all your procurement people, your
product owners – because they need
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
to be part of the tribe that develops the
product?”. You can’t just have the lawyer
writing the Ts & Cs for that service or
product; they need to prepare for it.
There are so many different cultures
within a company that you need to
align through Agile work. We see top
management wanting more Agile and
faster, and the people on the ground
too because it empowers them. Middle
management used to control the flow
of information in both directions. Now
they need to be facilitators much more
than managers, because often they see
less information than colleagues on the
ground and their bosses.
SB: We’ve learned exactly that. In
traditional organisations, you’re re-
sponsible for people and their results.
Now you’re responsible for the people
whose results you might not be ac-
countable for and in other contexts,
you could be responsible for results
but not the people, who sit elsewhere.
You need to “hire” those people for
your own tribe. It creates tension but
forces you to work together.
Today we have almost everything
on-premise although, like about 80% of
our customers, our strategy is hybrid,
secure multi-cloud, meaning we have
different platforms on different private
and public clouds. If you look at the
recent political and regulatory context in
Europe, especially related to private and
sensitive data, our private clouds are by
far the most important environments, be-
cause most of our applications contain
private data.
We have many private clouds, includ-
ing the major one we created with Red
Hat, because regulation is even more
stringent when you talk about using
public clouds for telecoms services – the
critical infrastructure we provide is cov-
ered by supplementary regulations.
We have tried to develop a private
cloud with the functionalities of public
cloud, which is easier said than done.
Cloud is a worldwide market and we are
big in Belgium, but small in the world,
so we could not develop it ourselves.
We recently formed a partnership with
HCL Technologies and, working with
our team, they will manage our private
clouds using different technologies.
We will cloudify as much of our
applications as we can, moving towards
on-premise, cloud-native environments.
That’s why there has been 40% growth
over last year with the microservices
we’re putting on Red Hat’s OpenStack,
OpenShift, etc.
We’re ready to move workloads to
public clouds, in a very controlled way
and always in line with regulation. One
day, we will find the magic trick so we
can move more into the public clouds.
Look at what the Confidential Comput-
ing Consortium [part of the Linux Foun-
dation] is working on. At the moment, to
apply machine learning or AI on public
clouds, you have to decrypt the data.
Confidential Computing was set up to
find a way of encrypting data all the
time on the public clouds, not just in
transit or when stored but even during
processing.
When this is realised, public cloud will
become an encrypted enclave. Users
will keep their own private key so that
even if data is stolen or transferred
beyond Europe, thieves cannot do any-
thing with it.
JF: To add to that, I was talking to
customers who are not only concerned
about data privacy, but afraid their
business model could be stolen if they
put everything on the public cloud,
because their processes for handling
customers and operations can be spied
on and business models copied. They
break down business processes to have
step one on this cloud and step two on
another and step three sitting internally.
I believe the trusted enclaves, which are
coming, will help with so many things
around security – not only data.

Rising telecoms trends in 2021
– and predictions for 2022
Veteran industry analyst, John Strand, Founder and CEO of Strand Consult,
looks at what happened last year and what’s coming next.
T
elecoms are the founda-
tion of modern society,
as Strand Consult has
long argued, and their
critical importance is
now widely acknowl-
edged. This was further reinforced in
2021, because 2021 was not so different
from 2020, the year in which COVID-19
changed so much – and many of those
changes have become the new normal.
Big Streamers dent telco profits
Last year Strand Consult’s ground-break-
ing broadband middle-mile study looked
at the challenges rural providers face
delivering broadband to disparate
customers across large areas. The study
was designed to bring transparency to
policymakers about the cost, level and
source of internet traffic, and showed
that typically the five Big Streamers –
Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, Disney+ and
Microsoft – account for a disproportion-
ate share of downstream traffic.
For every dollar earned by the Big
Streamers, rural broadband providers
incurred $0.48 in middle-mile costs (that
is, equipment, electricity and labour),
which they cannot recover from stream-
er services, end users or government
reimbursement programmes. The five
ignore broadband providers’ requests
to negotiate cost recovery – rather, the
‘free’ caching solutions they proffer add
to the networks’ costs.
The pervasive problem of unrecov-
ered cost at the local, national and inter-
national levels threatens the networks’
sustainability and undermines attempts
to close the digital divide.
Much OpenRAN talk, but
CSPs still want RAN
For the last two years, we have studied
OpenRAN in detail and published exten-
sively about what the technology requires
to become a commercial success. It is one
of the most overhyped technical solutions
since the launch of 3G in 2000, promising
to cut RAN CapEx by up to half.
Last August Nokia paused its work in
the O-RAN Alliance, fearing it could violate
US restrictions by working with the 44
Chinese companies that participate in it.
We are yet to find an OpenRAN propo-
nent who can explain how their preva-
lence does not compromise OpenRAN,
which is promoted by industry and gov-
ernments from the US, Japan, Germany,
the UK and even Russia as trade policy
and enterprise enhancements, although
the OpenRAN market itself appears to
be growing minimally.
Predictions 9
If OpenRAN achieves the success its pro-
ponents predict, it will account for less than
1% percent of 5G mobile sites in 2025 and
not more than 3% in 2030. Operators are
deploying 10,000 classic 5G sites a month.
Predicted growth of OpenRAN
1% 3%
2025 2030
Further, mobile operators’ job is to
deliver a great network experience to
customers: OpenRAN offers limited
features compared to the 200 GSMA-
compliant 5G networks launched
globally by the end of 2021. There is no
comparison between the functionality of
Rakuten´s 4G/5G network in Japan and
those of an American 4G/5G network, and
the US will upgrade from 3GPP’s Release
15 to Releases 16 and 17. Claims about
OpenRAN are further distorted when
hailed as a way for Europe to catch up
with the US, China and South Korea in 5G.
“
There is no
comparison between
the functionality of
Rakuten´s 4G/5G
network in Japan and
those of an American
4G/5G network
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
10 Predictions
Another hard year for China
and Huawei
When Joe Biden became President in
January 2020, we thought the bipar-
tisan stance would not change and, if
anything, it has become tougher towards
China and especially Huawei. The
company still faces significant financial
pressure and public opinion has not
changed either – corporate customers
rightly do not want their sensitive, valua-
ble data to be vulnerable to the Chinese
government.
Many operators experience increased
reputational and regulatory risk by using
Huawei equipment in telecoms networks.
On the upside, it need not be expen-
sive to rip and replace Chinese firms’
equipment, because operators will have
planned for 5G upgrade costs already
and there are competitively priced alter-
natives to Huawei.
Cybersecurity is getting
even bigger
In 2021, there was great concern around
the world about serious problems such
as illicit finance, human trafficking and
ransomware from rogue nations and
crime cartels. Secure networks and prac-
tices to defend them will become even
more important in 2022.
The US and EU have rolled out new
policies and regulations to improve
network security, including 5G. This
includes the EU’s Toolbox and the US
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
Secure Equipment Act.
As mentioned, Strand Consult finds
the push for greater security incom-
patible with the influence of Chinese
players on OpenRAN technologies.
Big Tech mutates faster
than Coronavirus
There’s good and the bad news around
Big Tech – Amazon, Facebook, Google
and Microsoft. Just as health authorities
think they have the virus under control,
only for a new variant to emerge, so it is
for governments trying to regulate Big
Tech. The companies evolve, with a new
name or practice or public-private part-
nership, faster than regulatory efforts.
If anything, regulations so far, like the
European Union’s General Data Protection
“
Data portability
between clouds is
already complex
and difficult, and
companies might
find it impossible –
which should ring
anti-trust alarm bells
Regulation (GDPR), have strengthened
Big Tech. Their revenue, market share and
earnings have increased compared to the
time before GDPR, but governments have
made it harder for small and medium sized
companies to compete.
Attempts to regulate Big Tech have
failed and instead they should pay a fair
price for their use of resources rather than
ride free on networks and public airwaves.
As policymakers look at the cloud market,
these are important lessons to recognise.
The cloud explodes in 2022
Policymakers are turning their attention to
public clouds – AWS, Azure and Google
Cloud – which hold increasing amounts of
citizens’ and enterprises’ data. There are
more and more questions as awareness
of the presence, practices and power of
clouds grows.
As mobile networks are increasingly
integrated with clouds, and individuals
and firms are ever more embedded into
Big Tech, there is no hope of turning Big
Tech off or opting not to use it. Indeed,
regulators need to understand that it
is far easier to switch 5G equipment ven-
dors than cloud providers.
Data portability between clouds is
already complex and difficult, and com-
panies might find it impossible – which
should ring anti-trust alarm bells. The
technical reality is that cloud services from
the big three are not comparable like for
like. Users will not achieve the same result
if they use the three platforms’ AI solutions
to analyse data. One big question for
2022 is which has the best AI?
Mobile phones and services
are boring
‘New’ versions of the iPhone look nearly iden-
tical to the one before and it is a testament

to the company’s marketing that it has been
able to navigate inevitable device fatigue.
There’s not much excitement about new
versions of mobile apps either: the key de-
velopment in 2021 was using mobile apps
to manage COVID-19, which will continue
in 2022. Additionally, governments entered
the mobile app market in a big way with
vaccine passports, which for many coun-
tries have become or will be de rigueur.
Tower companies spread the
value chain
Tower companies are key to efforts
to find profitability in an increasingly
difficult telecom market. In Europe alone,
they have contributed some €36 billion
to the mobile industry and around the
world we see tower companies starting
to spread across the value chain.
In Brazil, towercos have invested in
fibre too, while others mull whether to
enter the spectrum market. We will see
much more expansion activity in 2022.
Denmark’s TDC is a case in point: three
Danish pension funds, PFA, PKA and ATP,
plus Macquarie Infrastructure and Real
Assets, have split the telecom operator
into an infrastructure firm and a service
company – TDC Net and Nuday respec-
tively. We follow the process closely and
would describe it as “financial acrobatics”,
but expect the trend to grow in 2022.
“
Denmark’s
regulator colluded
with energy
companies to fix the
wholesale price of
fibre access
Private 5G networks – hot
and crowded
Much was written about private 5G
networks in 2021, especially regard-
ing who will build and run them. Many
parties are keen to get into the market,
from mobile operators to IT companies,
system integrators and infrastructure
equipment suppliers. OpenRAN play-
ers also want to enter, although they
have yet to prove they can handle the
demands of a classic mobile network.
Expect fierce competition, very low
margins and a shakeout.
Around the world –
US, Brazil and Asia
Overall, we’re going to see big markets
set agendas for other markets, but
political goodwill is needed to allow the
evolution. This is problematic when polit-
ical systems rarely grasp the importance
of events.
The US’ C-band spectrum auction
raised a record $90+ billion. Mobile
operators were set to launch 5G in this
band on 5 December, but were hijacked
by the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA), which posted a dubious advisory
about 5G transmissions’ potential inter-
ference with altimeters.
US planes fly to more than 50 coun-
tries where some 200 5G networks
operate without any reports of such
interference. The FAA has known
about 5G for years, but appears to be
Predictions 11
protecting small aircraft and maybe
helicopter fleets that haven’t upgraded
their safety equipment.
In Asia, Telenor and Axiata are in the
process of major consolidation. After
decades of study, we believe most
policymakers do not understand the
process of consolidation and its benefits,
so we have published an exhaustive,
evidence-based report, Understanding 4
to 3 Mobile Mergers, to remedy this.
Similarly, in Brazil, many of the ailing
operator Oi’s assets were distributed
between the three major players, Vivo,
Claro and TIM.
It will be interesting to see how the
three – and new, smaller players – will
fare now the 5G auctions have taken
place, most likely using it to extend ex-
isting and new broadband infrastructure
with 5G/FWA.
2022 will show rising prices
Mobile and broadband prices have
stalled or fallen in recent year, but
we expect price rises around the world
in 2022.
In 2021, Denmark’s telecom regulator
colluded with energy companies to fix
the wholesale price of fibre access at
above what the market offers, guaran-
teeing a price rise. If the regulated price
of fibre increases so will broadband
prices on private networks.
Another driver is that operators have
long struggled to create value for share-
holders through organic growth, but
given the high value of broadband, as
underlined so spectacularly the pan-
demic era, price rises seem inevitable in
2022. It’s the law of supply and demand:
no price increases, no money to invest
in network upgrades.
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
12 Sponsored Feature

Network exposure
function will be the key
to realising 5G’s full value
Niall Norton, General Manager of Amdocs for 5G and Networks
and CEO of Openet, explores the evolution of 5G and how the
pressure to respond to the evolution of cloud and monetization
opportunities will continue to grow

C
ommunication service providers (CSPs)
are facing more pressure than ever to
start generating new revenue streams and
monetising their network assets. With rising
demand for real-time, data-rich services,
telcos have had to invest in upgrading their
networks, both in the core and increasingly at the edge, while
simultaneously seeing their traditional revenue streams erod-
ed thanks to the dominance of OTTs in messaging, voice and
conferencing applications.
However, competition is not now just from OTTs. The hyper-
scalers – AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft – also have global
network backbones that could, hypothetically, enable them
to deliver connectivity services that would put them in direct
competition with traditional CSPs. But – importantly - our view
is that the future will be enhanced commercial relationships
rather than marketplace warfare.
In practical terms, the telcos’ position as the primary provid-
ers of connectivity is unlikely to change any time soon. But the
network world is changing, and the operators must find a way

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk

 Sponsored Feature 13

to deliver more value beyond the basic connectivity pipe and

start generating new revenue streams.

Big shift to cloud native

The emergence of 5G Standalone (SA) – which introduces a
new 5G core – signifies also the first complete shift in tele-
coms towards cloud-native networks. This new 5G network is
software-centric and designed to be run on both public and
private cloud. 5G networks technology industry standards
require that these networks can be open in architecture – so
that CSPs can offer Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) and Private
Enterprise Networks (PEN) can to their enterprise customers.
These enterprises will be able to design their own experi-
ences on the 5G networks and monetise these unique experi-
ences that they can design and control themselves.
So, how do CSPs open up their networks to enterprise and
OTT services? And, crucially, how can they monetise these Network Exposure Function (NEF) will be key to realising
third-party relationships to drive growth? The key here lies 5G’s value. The NEF facilitates secure, developer-friendly
in the ease at which telcos can integrate third parties into access to exposed network services. Through the NEF and
their networks. With 4G networks, CSPs had to guarantee its open APIs, CSPs can open networks up to third parties to
high levels of scalability before opening up their network to generate revenue opportunities.
others – this, in turn, was both expensive and slow to achieve

critical mass, cutting off telcos from opportunities with smaller
businesses and consequently cutting off the CSP from being a
platform for innovation.
Thanks to 5G’s cloud-native architecture, the barrier to set
up is much lower. The practice of building new service from
microservice means a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) can be
launched and scaled up at a fraction of the cost and effort of
how new third-party services were traditionally rolled out on
4G. This interoperability and scalability of cloud native 5G ser-
vices will enable CSPs to unlock new revenue streams. Central
to all of this is the Business Support System (BSS).
New network, new functions
5G introduces a range of new functions and network attributes
that can be exposed and managed through the BSS. This pack-
aging of network functions such as policy, real-time convergent
charging and service catalogues bridges 5G business and IT
functions, and analytics within the 5G network, making it much
easier to “open up” and subsequently monetise the network.
Network and IT teams will need to work more closely as
policy and charging become more closely integrated with core
network functions, as 5G can enable policy to be positioned at
the heart of 5G monetisation.
This enables CSPs to adapt the network for individual
services, allowing the different network characteristics such
as ultra-low latency, high-bandwidth and network slicing use
cases to have different pricing, charging rules and service
level agreements.
“
Network and IT teams will
need to work more closely as
policy and charging become
more closely integrated with core
network functions, as 5G can
enable policy to be positioned at
the heart of 5G monetisation.
A higher intelligence
The Network Data and Analytics Function (NWDAF), a new 5G
function introduces a higher level of intelligence and makes
the networks smarter through real-time data management
and analysis. With this new depth of insight, CSPs can unlock
further opportunities for monetisation and make a proposition
which relies on Quality of Service as a reality.
But the question arises on how and who will roll out these
new services. In the first instance I believe it will be through
private networks provided to enterprises by telcos with con-
nectivity capabilities as value added upsell. Later edge will be
included to make networks pervasive for IoT devices. I believe
that 2022 will be made up of PEN – sold to enterprises via
telcos or via the enterprises’ systems integrators (SIs).

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk

14 CTO
???????
Interview

M
When five 9s are ichaël Trabbia joined Orange Group’s Exec-
utive Committee as Chief Technology and

not enough, AI is
Innovation Officer on 1 September 2020.
He oversees the group’s Technology &
Global Innovation division, with the main
needed to extend ambition of strengthening data and AI at
the heart of the operator’s innovation. He

automation was formerly CEO of Orange Belgium.

Michaël Trabbia, CTO at Orange
Group, talks to Annie Turner about
the telco of the future.
Orange Group has made much of its determination to grow beyond
connectivity and build innovation on and around its connectivity
solution. To quote Trabbia’s outgoing colleague, the CEO of Orange
Business Services, Helmut Reisinger, Orange is a network-native
digital services company. In line with its Engage2025 strategy to drive
new growth, in 2021, 41% of the group’s revenue and activities came
from digital, IT and integration services, and it is on track for this to
rise to 55% by 2025.

Telco of the future

Trabbia begins the interview by saying, “We’re building to become
telco of the future, which indeed will be a cloud-based infrastructure.”
He explains that the company is doing that via PIKEO, which was
announced by Orange in summer 2021 and will answer two impor-
tant needs: “The first is for on-demand connectivity that adapts to
various services with the right QoS depending on what you need. For
instance, it might be bandwidth, or latency or reliability.
“The second topic is a zero-touch network for better resilience of
network services, because we see how telcos are becoming more
vital for the country, for the economy, and we need to move to the
next level of resilience – and we can only do that leveraging AI for
self-adapting networks.
“Basically, we [will] move from people supervising networks and
tickets to people managing algorithms, which will manage the net-
work in real time. Both are really big evolutions for our industry. They
will change how we build and operate a network and a big change in
skills – many more skills in integration, AI and security too, and they
will be cloud-based.”

Cloud native
In the Orange universe are cloud-based and cloud-native the
same thing (as opposed to lifting and shifting legacy applications
and systems into the cloud)? “Yes,” says Trabbia, “cloud-native
networks. We’re starting with the core network. We’re separating
the software and the hardware, and we’re moving out to the RAN,
where we are supporting Open RAN with Deutsche Telekom,
Vodafone, Telefonica and TIM to bring these cloud-native elements
to the radio part of the network.”
This is, he insists, “absolutely needed if we want to have this
zero-touch network and this self-adapting network, and we need to
be much more agile in the way we operate the network and have AI
managing that, and to have real-time adaption and not just after one

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk


Michaël Trabbia, CTO at Orange Group
week or one day, change the parameters; we need to move to
[a] real-time, self-adapting network.”
How much of these ambitions are down to 5G? He acknowl-
edges, “When I talk about zero touch, this is clearly about
massive automation and AI to manage the network, [and] 5G is
very important for that, but it’s not only 5G, it’s also the move
towards cloud-native networks and changing the network su-
pervision by leveraging AI – a number of things in parallel.”
He elaborates, “At Orange, we mutualise network super-
vision for the core function and this is something we have
in my team, in Poland and Romania; they do this network
supervision globally for several affiliates in Europe; most of
them I would say.”
Trabbia notes that the use of more AI enables greater
automation. He gives the example of a large number of
people in a street because of, say, a demonstration. Today
this resulting saturation in traffic triggers many tickets and
alarms on the network, creating huge data sets to which Or-
ange must respond. Today we are too slow to react and the
demo moves on, but, “Tomorrow, this will be automatically
CTO Interview 15
analysed and dealt with because the AI would have learned
how to handle this efficiently and deal with it, and you won’t
need human intervention.”
Progressing AI
“This is a change of mindset and paradigm,” says Trabbia, but
how far away are he and his team from this vision of tomorrow?
He explains, “With AI you start with some use cases and try to
pick the more relevant ones. Then you implement them, then
you do them at scale, running in the network.”
Orange launched a three-year programme in 2021 with the
aim of bringing big benefits from automating the network at
scale. He says, “This year we started to bring automation at
scale in the network. We will continue with 5G Standalone
(SA) with network capabilities, and with Open RAN, to bring
more opportunities and become even more efficient in the
way we do it.”
What does he mean by big benefits? “What we follow is
availability of the network. It’s one of the KPIs that’s impor-
tant to understand. Globally the network is really good and
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
16 CTO Interview
now we are talking about the number of nines that you put
in your availability.
“We used to see the five nines – 99.999 – availability as a
target, but we believe we will go further. Each time you add
a nine it becomes more difficult, because it means that you
divide by ten the length of the outages or the issue with the
network. Clearly this is the KPI we want to improve for this
programme and we believe it’s critical to get there.”
He adds, “I don’t want to give a figure for the moment be-
cause it’s under development and we need to make sure we
are able to reach our targets, but definitely the target is to add
more nines to the equation!”
The PIKEO effect
How is PIKEO going to affect progress? Also is it primarily lab-
based at Orange’s R&D facility at Lannion, in Brittany, France,
or will it also run in the real world? Trabbia replies, “It’s really a
greenfield operation. That means we test everything that we
believe is going to be part of the telco in the future.
“In real life, we will be moving from legacy to this target
infrastructure, but what is important in PIKEO is that, first,
we make sure that we can integrate different players and
partners. [This is] because in this future world we will have
more fragmented networks, which will be leveraged thanks
to virtualisation, different hardware and software, but also the
RAN, which will be split between the distributed and central-
ised units, so we need to integrate that equipment and make
sure it can all work together. “
He explains, “That’s why interoperability is key and that’s
what we’re working on at PIKEO, to make sure it all works
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
together. The second one is skills, and for us it’s about learning
and developing skills to build and operate the networks of
tomorrow. This is a fantastic opportunity to develop our skills.”
“
We used to see the five
nines – 99.999 – availability as
a target, but we believe we will
go further. Each time you add a
nine it becomes more difficult,
because it means that you divide
by ten the length of the outages
or the issue with the network
How important are APIs in all of this and what is Orange’s
approach to it? “This is absolutely part of the telco of the
future,” says Trabbia. “When we are virtualising this network, it
will be based on software cloud native, so it means we need to
add APIs and integration at scale – but it also means that we
need to standardise as much as we can on those APIs and the
orchestration part.
“We support ONAP [Open Network Automation Platform], for
instance, to bring [about] this orchestration, which is funda-
mental. It’s absolutely critical to have it [for] this softwarised
network, with standardised APIs and integration.”

Focus on
customers is how
to benefit from
new technology
Neil McRae, MD Architecture
& Strategy, BT Group Chief
Architect, on Open RAN, public
and telco cloud, network as code,
partnerships and searching for the
edge with Annie Turner.
CTO Interview 17
B
T’s Neil McRae opened by reiterating that the oper-
ator’s Open RAN development and deployment is
geared to its own needs, at its own pace. He also
famously tweeted, “Still want to put your network
core into the public cloud? #suckers”, after the AWS
meltdown in December took down services from
companies including Netflix, Slack, Amazon’s Ring
and DoorDash.
He started by addressing the Open RAN question – BT was
conspicuous by its absence when other operator groups in Europe
– Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, TIM and Vodafone – collec-
tively pledged their support for Open RAN early in 2021.
McRae commented, “We’ve been a contributor to and a part of
Open RAN since it started. We’re doing trials of what we call Ultra
MIMO which we’re developing at Adastral Park. We’re committed
to the best in innovation and technology. We will deploy Open RAN
where we think it makes sense. There’s no religion about it. Open-
ness is essential [but] open technologies must work and be mature
enough for us to deploy in the network.”
In January, BT announced an Open RAN trial in the UK city of Hull
with Nokia, saying in a statement, this “underlined its ongoing com-
mitment to the development and deployment of Open RAN technol-
ogy”. The operator will install Nokia’s RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC)
across several sites to optimise network performance for customers
on its mobile network, EE.
What about cloud strategy?
The operator has built its own telco cloud – BT Network Cloud –
which he describes as “an always-on, cloud-native platform that is
highly available and highly resilient” and enables BT to put workloads
wherever customers need them, according to McRae: “For con-
sumers, edge is probably mostly around video and gaming…but for
enterprise, it’s about reliability and super-high bandwidth applications
such as using very high-resolution video and analytics to monitor a
production line or to manage a crowd entering a stadium.”
What is BT approach to the edge? McRae said, “Many people have
sent their pet beagles out searching for the edge. For me, the edge is
where we engage with customers [which] can be in the middle of our
network, in one of our exchanges or on a customer site or handset.
It will be all of those things, dependent on the use case. For a video
distribution use case we’ve got about 20 edge locations today but
as demand grows, that could be 40 or 50 exchange points. For AR,
it could be deployed in many more of our exchanges to lower the
latency, especially for business use.”
The UK is largely a knowledge economy so he expects to see edge
compute used for digital twins use cases as diverse as packaged
goods or a transportation or new drainage system. He stated, “You
want compute power to be portable so that as you move it moves
with you, but you want it to be responsive and to feel like it’s part of
the computer on your desk.”
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
18 CTO Interview
Neil McRae, MD Architecture & Strategy, BT Group Chief Architect
Working in partnerships
BT announced it would work with Intel to expands its cloud
engineering expertise. McRae stressed that it also works with
other chip firms, but “Probably 99% of cloud platforms are
powered by Intel technology,” he said. “All the uses cases we
talk about not are not just technology, but people’s skills. We
need a cloud- builders type programme… to expand our num-
ber of people and skills in that space.”
He said BT has gained great insight and knowledge from
Intel, from the key elements and desing in data centres “into
the hypervisor and operating system, be it bare metal, or
infrastructure-as-a-service or platform-as-a-service,” McRae ex-
plained. “We talked about the layers and things you need to do
to stand up a platform around all that: a lot of people haven’t
thought about how important it is and developing those skills
in a more advanced way.
“Public clouds run courses on how to use them but there’s not
much about how to build cloud which we felt was one of the big-
gest barriers and challenges in telco. I want to say we’ve got the
best cloud and the only way I can do that is by ensuring I’ve got
the best engineers – that’s the driver for [the Intel programme].
“Our strategy for [providing customer-centric solutions] is to
think of the network as code and create network APIs and net-
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
work capabilities so that as you’re building your solution, you
can just think of the network as another part of the code.”
Beyond connectivity
McRae has said BT’s goals are to be a solutions provider to
key customers by 2030 and to connect “for good”. These are
commonly stated goals by European operators, but the first part
seems to be progressing at a glacial pace. McRae acknowledged
the pandemic caused a slowdown in some areas and accelera-
tion in others, such as retail, where firms “are pushing to be able
to offer services and capability outside of the storefront”.
He again underlined the importance of partnerships in
meeting customers’ need and added, “We’ve all got to make
money out of it – that’s crucially important. We’re not going
to be here if we [continue to] just sell connectivity, we’ve got
to step forward, selling many more services and much more
value than we do today if we want to invest in 6G or the next
big telecommunications thing we need, because we’ve got to
make money to invest.
In 2021, the hefty investments BT made in 5G and fibre
highlights that point. McRae said, “We’ve got a very strong
plan – COVID made it a bit more difficult for us all – but we see
momentum in all these spaces. Organisations that focus on
customers as we do, will be the ones that that benefit from all
this new technology.”
“
Many people have sent
their pet beagles out searching
for the edge. For me, the edge is
where we engage with customers
[which] can be in the middle
of our network, in one of our
exchanges or on a customer site
or handset
He reckons a big stumbling block is some customers are not
yet ready to move to new solutions, but others are. One such
is boiler maker Worcester Bosch. BT deployed the UK’s first
private enterprise 5G network as part of the Worcestershire 5G
Testbed – a government initiative, partly funded by the public
purse. It is working with the boiler firm to boost productivity
using robotics, IoT, data analytics, edge computing and aug-
mented reality (AR) to see how it can make engineers’ visits to
homes shorter by providing in-situ help.

BT and Associated British Ports (ABP) trial IoT
and sensor technology to speed movement and
processing of cargo goods at Port of Ipswich
BT also works with Associated British Ports to improve health
and safety, among other things, which includes tracking the
movement of containers on and off ships and around the port.
McRae noted, “It’s almost like a two-way dance because we’re not
experts in running a port or making boilers and they’re not experts
in what telecommunications technology and 5G can do for them.
We work with them and collaborate to build solutions. Often we
bring in another partner: we’re working with people like Microsoft,
Nokia and Ericsson to bring solutions to customers.”
McRae also said BT has a 5G Standalone platform up and
running in the lab, has done some trials with it and will launch a
much bigger trial “around the end of Q1”. He described it as “a
key requirement that is well on the way for clients, also in pri-
vate networks. A lot of people think private networks are just
a few radios in a building, but they include the core network:
the Standalone requirements for [them] are almost independ-
ent of our mobile network. We’re developing them as a set of
products, working with Nokia and Ericsson”.
Will private networks primarily be a section or slice of the
macro network or dedicated infrastructure? McRae replied, “I
think anyone who gives you an answer that question is guess-
ing. We will see some element of slicing off the macro network
and you’ll see almost independent networks. The key is how
you build, manage and operate it.”
McRae said BT Network Cloud can create a standalone
network separate from main network, although it uses all the
same tooling, network management and analytical systems. He
states, “We can do that really easily and deploy it in our data
centres or customers’ data centres or our central offices as an
edge solution. That’s what’s important about private networks
– the flexibility to spin up the core, the control plane, all those
CTO Interview 19
things you need in a network, on demand. To be able to react
to customers’ needs as they as they build out their require-
ments or 5G programmes.”
Contradictory drivers
McRae notes that in all these scenarios, BT is trying to do two
apparently contradictory things at once: “On the one hand,
we need scale provided economically – enough capacity and
capability. On the other hand, we need to progress on a case-
by-case basis.” Is achieving this about network automation or
softwarisation, and running workloads in the best location?
He said that network automation is part of it, “But it’s also
making the key control play of the network be cloud native. We
build common standard infrastructure across our network and
can bring different workloads to it, maybe running billing for BT
one night and another tracking an ambulance through a town
centre to give a doctor early diagnosis information.
“The cloud native element is what gives you the ability to
scale use cases, but it’s fair to say there’ll be there are things
we will need to think more about, such as mobile or nomadic
edge compute, perhaps on the back of a lorry.”
“
A lot of people think private
networks are just a few radios in
a building, but they include the
core network: the Standalone
requirements for [them] are
almost independent of our mobile
network. We’re developing them
as a set of products
Doing good
He concluded, “My mission is to [make] people’s dependence on
the network greater than today. I want the network to bring us
more at work and rest and play, [bringing] automation that makes
it easier to do our jobs so we can focus on other things in life.
“If we were able to double the network’s influence in health
care, manufacturing and transportation, the outcome would
be huge…in manufacturing we have massive supply chal-
lenges across every industry and if we leverage the network
to control supply chains, predictability improves and the
experience of building, buying or selling products becomes a
better one. We need to think differently about greater value
the network brings.”
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
“It’s revolution not evolution. Evolution
you can buy; revolution you have to do”
Philippe Ensarguet, CTO, Orange Business Services &
Winner of the Mobile Europe CTO of the Year: Trailblazer Award 2021

For many operators, disaggregation and integration is the name of the game
from end to end of their infrastructure. The abundance of new capabilities and
technologies is turning them into techcos, looking to differentiate their services and
products on top of common, standardised foundations. From network automation to
AI and analytics, from IoT to network slicing, and from going cloud native to exploring
the edge there are so many opportunities and challenges.

Join the leading thinkers – and executors – in our industry to debate what we are
doing and what we need to do to arrive at the techco destination.

www.telecomseuropeevents.com/telco-to-techco
Platinum Sponsors

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BUILDING VALUE AROUND CONNECTIVITY

Insight report:
Building value
around connectivity

22 How is telco to
techco going?
Dawn Bushaus casts an analytical eye over
our annual survey results and finds 2022
will be a pivotal year – operators have big
plans for private 5G and 5G Standalone,
the edge and Open RAN

27 Where is fixed wireless

access going?
William Webb, CTO of Cambridge
Broadband Network Group (CBNG) shares
his sense of direction with Annie Turner

30 Private networks
Is Private 5G out of the AWS box the end
for telco-led private networks asks Dawn
Bushaus?

33 Operators are planning 6G now

Dawn Bushaus investigates why telecoms
is already looking at 6G and who is
working on which aspects

36 Evolution of the SIM

Kate O’Flaherty asks if operators are more
concerned about making churn easier
instead of better customer experience
with eSIM while Nick Booth suggests
iSIM could relegate eSIM to the eMuseum
before it reaches its full potential
22 Telco to techco

Mobile operators eye a bigger

role in private 5G, embrace the
edge and commit to Open RAN
This year’s state-of-the-industry reader survey finds that while deployment of
public 5G networks is accelerating, mobile operators are also pushing harder for
a role in private 5G. In addition, they are more committed to deploying their own
edge computing networks and remain committed to deploying Open Radio Access
Network (RAN) technology. Operators also are continuing their march to the cloud
with operational and business support systems (OSS/BSS). By Dawn Bushaus.

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk

 Telco to techco 23

I
n January we surveyed readers about technology, digital As network operators are now beginning to deploy standalone
transformation and trends for the coming year. More than 5G, we added it as an option to our question about critical suc-
half of respondents are employed by communications ser- cess factors over the next five years. About a third of respondents
vice providers (CSPs) or companies supporting them such rated it as critical. Standalone 5G will pave the way for network
as systems integrators or consultants. Most other respond- slicing, a capability that is necessary to support the most exciting
ents work for hardware and software companies that supply and promising use cases – and is perhaps the best chance for
telcos (for full details, see end of article). CSPs to find revenue beyond connectivity.
In December 2021, the Global mobile Suppliers Association
(GSA) predicted that by April 2022 mobile operators will have
High-priority technologies deployed more than 200 5G networks. The group is also track-
Backhaul 19% ing 98 operators that are investing in standalone 5G networks,
47 of them actively deploying the technology.
Network automation 12%
TM Forum’s chief analyst, Mark Newman, believes 2022
Artificial intelligence (including machine learning) 16% will be a pivotal year for 5G. “For the first time in cellular
network development we are seeing divergence in how op-
Cloud native/containerisation 16%
erators are going about building their new core networks,” he
Increasing LTE speeds and density 23% writes in a recent report.
5G fixed wireless access 28% “Some operators will continue to turn to their existing net-
work vendors (principally Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei). Oth-
Network virtualisation 35%
ers are bringing in new vendors to fulfill specific core network
Mobile 5G 60% functions. A few are partnering with hyperscalers.”
Newman adds, “For the time being, most operators are
focused on exploiting network slicing and low-latency services
enabled by edge computing. But it is not at all clear how they
Critical success factors 2022
will go about monetizing these capabilities. It may well be the
over the next 5 years 2021 case that their best bet is to commit to the cloud, commit to
openness, and create capabilities that allow them to exploit new
16%
Enabling greater capacity/densification of 4G and 4G+ opportunities that come their way – whatever they may be.”
27%
28%
Support from and engagement by operators’ C-suite execs
19% A private affair
Fibre infrastructure 30% Interest in private 5G is growing, with increasing numbers of
39% respondents providing connectivity and other services either in
30% trials or deployments. In addition, more respondents said they
Deploying 5G Standalone
N/A
are planning to provide private 5G, while fewer said they do
35%
Online self-service and self-help for customers not intend to.
28%
40%
Deploying edge compute to reduce latency and network congestion
48%
Participation in mobile private network trials
42%
Better customer experience of the network
53% 7%
We are providing hybrid public-private connectivity plus other services 2022
49% 2%
Leveraging analytics, AI and automation 2021
41%
9.5%
63% No, and we do not intend to
Rapid time to market with new services 23.5%
55%
14%
We are running trials for private connectivity
16%
5G deployment accelerates We are providing hybrid public-private connectivity 16.5%
Mobile 5G is by far the highest priority for respondents, with 13%
60% putting it in their top two. This is not surprising, and it’s We are running pilots for private connectivity and other services 19%
a trend that has been consistent. In 2021 an even higher per- 23.5%
centage of respondents (78%) ranked deployment of mobile No, but we are planning to 35%
5G at the top of the list of priorities. 22%

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk

24 Telco to techco
The latest data from Analysys Mason, which tracks mobile pri-
vate networks (MPNs) worldwide, found that mobile operators are
gaining MPN market share. The firm reported in November that
there were 256 publicly announced private LTE or 5G networks
deployed or planned at the end of September 2021, up from 156
the previous year. Mobile operators were leading about a third
of deals, up from just 22% in 2020, and they appear to be doing
especially well in 5G deals. Indeed, they acted as the main con-
tractor in 44% of 104 5G MPN announced in 2021.
Still, mobile operators are playing catch-up as large enterpris-
es build their own MPNs or have turned to network equipment
providers, systems integrators and cloud providers to build them.
In December, AWS lit a fire in the market by launching its own
private 5G service developed with technology deployed in its
own fulfilment centres (see page 30). It’s unclear how the service
might impact CSPs’ efforts to target enterprises, but some large
operators believe AWS will target smaller enterprises and will not
be a competitive threat, at least initially.
Moving to the edge
Our survey shows that CSPs are also beginning to solidify
their edge strategies. While only a quarter of respondents
last year said they intend to deploy their own edge com-
puting capabilities, this time almost half said they will. The
percentage planning to offer edge services to enterprise
customers also grew.
Plans for edge computing
2022
We/our customers don’t intend to deploy edge 9% 2021
infrastructure or use a partner 8%
23%
Don’t
know 27%
26%
We/our customers will work with a partner or
partners to host our edge infrastructure 39%
We/our customers will deliver edge on-premises 40%
services to enterprise customers 28%
We/our customers will deploy our own edge at
the network edge 23%
Many CSPs are partnering hyperscale cloud providers to build
edge capabilities. Even so, edge computing has not taken off as
some observers believed it would. Neither telcos nor hyperscal-
ers have committed to significant investments, and this is perhaps
because there is no “killer app” to spur interest.
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
Roy Chua, Founder of the US-based consultancy AvidThink,
believes that for now, the winning strategy for CSPs is one that
includes building their own capabilities and partnering.
“There’s no clear dominant strategy, so hedging allows CSPs
to buy time to learn more about the edge market,” he writes.
“Ironically, just a few years ago, CSPs were pushing back
against partnerships with hyperscalers on the edge, concerned
that hyperscalers would further erode CSP revenue streams.
Today, partnering with multiple hyperscalers is acceptable and
even necessary.”
Mixed results on open RAN
Respondents are still planning to deploy open RAN technol-
ogy with about 58% saying they are either already deploying
or plan to deploy the technology. However, the percentage
of respondents indicating that they or their customers will not
deploy open RANs increased slightly this time.
Planned deployment of Open RANs
2022 2021
37% 37% 29% 40%
5% 13%
21% 18%
We/our customers plan to deploy Open RANs
We/our customers are already running trials
We/our customers will begin live deployments this year
We/our customers do not plan to use Open RANs
47% Worldwide, regulators are supporting Open RAN to en-
courage diversity and competition in the supply chain for 5G
hardware and software. The UK, for example, has set a goal
of having 35% of telecom networks using open RAN by 2030,
while Germany has committed to investing €300 million over
several years to support open RAN development.
CSPs are committed to the technology as well. For exam-
ple, in a recent interview with Mobile Europe, Enrique Blanco,
Telefónica’s Global CTIO, said the company is deploying 200
Open RAN base stations in Germany now and will deploy
 Telco to techco 25

between 2,500 and 5,000 this year and next. Once reliability is
deemed sufficient, the company will expand deployment to the
UK and Spain.
“This is the natural evolution,” Blanco said. “It is not a matter
of Telefónica deciding to lead. We are cooperating with and
we signed an MoU with our colleagues at Deutsche Telekom,
Vodafone, Orange and Telecom Italia [in January and February
2021]. This is an industry necessity. Maybe there is a question
about will it happen in 2022 or which quarter of 2022, but it
with those provided by digital native companies like Ama-
zon and Google.
OSS transformation is much harder because of the huge
number of siloed legacy systems. Most large operators are
implementing or considering adoption of open digital architec-
tures and standard APIs to transform OSS, but this can be a
long and drawn-out process.

“
will happen.”
So far incumbent equipment providers like Ericsson and
Huawei have understandably shown little support for Open
Most large operators are
RAN. Nokia is a member of the O-RAN Alliance and says it implementing or considering
is working on the technology, but the company has been adoption of open digital
criticised recently for developing what amounts to a closed
version of Open RAN.
architectures and standard APIs
The ‘Big Three’ vendors may have no choice but to support to transform OSS, but this can be
it, however, if their customers demand that they must be able
a long and drawn-out process
to integrate with other Open RAN ecosystem components.
Some doubt the size of the market (see page 7).

Transforming OSS/BSS Cloudy outlook for network apps

In this survey, we asked respondents about the status of digital
transformation programs and found that almost half of compa-
nies have projects underway. A quarter are planning projects
but haven’t started them yet.
As part of their transformation programs, many CSPs are mov-
ing OSS/BSS applications to the cloud. They are also moving
network applications, although the percentage of companies
saying they will not move any network apps to the cloud is
much higher this year.
It’s not clear why skepticism about moving network applica-
tions has increased, but it could be the result of Amazon Web
Services’ (AWS’) major service outage in December. At the

44%
of companies have digital
Operators’ migration
to public cloud 2022
2021
transformation projects underway
We/our customers will move all network 5%

23%
applications to the public cloud 8%
We/our customers will move all support 5%
are planning transformation applications to the public cloud 5%
projects but have not yet started We/our customers have already moved a
large majority of network applications to the 9%
public cloud 11%
We/our customers will not move any support 9%
applications to the public cloud 15%
We/our customers have already moved a large 19%
majority of our support applications to the 11%
public cloud
35%
We/our customers will not move any network 12%
applications to the public cloud
Most respondents said they or their CSP customers are
We/our customers will move some network 44%
focusing on BSS transformation first, which is not surpris- components to the public cloud 39%
ing. This is typically the first step for telcos because they We/our customers will move some support 44%
need to deliver digital experiences that are more on par applications to the public cloud 37%

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk

26 Telco to techco
time, BT’s Chief Architect, Neil McRae (see page 16), came out
strongly against the practice.  for talent heats up.
“Still want to put your network core into the public cloud?
#suckers,” he tweeted.
Neville Ray, T-Mobile’s president of technology, agreed with
McRae: “The phone isn’t going to ring, the data session is not
going to happen unless that core service is up and running,”
Ray said, according to the investor web site Seeking Alpha.
“I’m not at the point yet where I would put that in the hands of
a third party.”
He added that the mobile operator needs to “own that
experience as much as we can ourselves because that’s pretty
critical in the nature of the business.”
US operators AT&T and Dish Network don’t seem to share
the concerns about public cloud providers. Dish is building
a completely cloud native 5G network in the AWS public
cloud, while AT&T has announced that it will move its 5G core
network operations to the Microsoft Azure cloud over the next
three years.
How is culture changing?
We/our customers are merging CTO and CIO 9%
functions and teams 26%
We/our customers are adopting AI and phasing 14%
out jobs 10%
We/our customers are boosting our in-house 26%
expertise on AI
The culture of our company/our customers’ 28%
companies is not changing 19%
We/our customers are adopting APIs and hiring
more software developers
We/our customers are using Agile methodology
and DevOps practices for network operations
We/our customers are 23%
retraining many staff N/A
We/our customers are actively
embracing diversity N/A
Telcos need to increase diversity
In many of our surveys we ask about how or whether
culture is changing with CSP organisations. This year’s
responses are similar to last year’s, with about half of
respondents confirming that their companies are adopting
Agile DevOps practices, and a third saying they are hiring
more software developers.
However, we asked about two additional cultural changes
this time: diversity and retraining. Both are becoming an in-
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
creasingly important focus in the telecoms industry as the war
How to measure diversity
TM Forum recently completed a successful trial of a new
Inclusion and Diversity Score (IDS) that CSPs will be able to
use to measure progress in developing diversity, equality and
inclusion within their organisations.
“We must include it in our operational reviews; we must
start measuring what matters. After all, we do this with
everything else: NPS [net promoter score], churn, profita-
bility,” says Keri Gilder, CEO of Colt & Chair of TM Forum’s
Diversity & Inclusion Council. “We need an industry-adopted
benchmark, much like NPS for customer experience, but this
time for our people.”
Gilder sees a disconnect between the lip service that the
industry pays to diversity and the reality that is evident across
teams within telco and supplier organisations. She points to the
industry’s dismal track record promoting women as evidence.
“Only five CEOs in our industry are female,” she says. “Only
60 of the top 330 executives are female, and of those one
third are in traditional female roles like HR and don’t own a
2022
P&L... Real change is not happening.”
2021
Focus on talent
Telcos are also losing talent to digital native companies like
Amazon and Google. In its 2021 Technology Report Bain and
Company found that from 2010 to 2019 the number of soft-
37% ware engineers and developers hired in the US increased at a
compound annual growth rate of 58% in technology start-ups
and 20% in hyperscale companies. But the number fell by 9%
40% in “heritage tech” companies, including telcos.
34% Bain recommends that telcos think beyond technical skills
49% and look for creativity and the ability to problem-solve when
52% hiring. In addition, it’s important to offer existing employees
coaching and development.
“Millennial and Gen Z workers tend to value this kind of
37% investment, but it’s also critical to ‘growing’ talented employ-
ees who have the right capabilities, but not necessarily the
experience,” Bain explains. “This effort also reinforces inclu-
sion by providing real sponsorship of employees with diverse
backgrounds.”
Mobile Europe conducted this survey of 48 readers in Jan-
uary 2022. Respondents comprise 28% network operators,
28% systems integrators or consultants working for CSPs,
23% network equipment suppliers, 5% software vendors, and
a handful of others including cloud providers, academics and
regulators. Nearly 75% of respondents are from Europe, while
11% hail from North America and 11% from the Asia-Pacific re-
gion. The remainder are from the Middle East and Africa.
 Fixed Wireless Access 27

Where are we going

with fixed wireless access?
The tech guru William Webb, who became CTO of Cambridge Broadband Network
Group (CBNG) in 2021, shares his sense of direction with Annie Turner.

P
reviously, Webb was one
William Webb, CTO of Cambridge
of the youngest ever Broadband Network Group (CBNG)
Presidents of the IEEE, has
been Director of Tech-
nology Resources at the
UK’s regulator Ofcom and
before that was Director of Corporate
Strategy at Motorola. He is also an author.
The 5G Myth: When Vision Decoupled
From Reality was published in 2018 and
Our Digital Future: Smart Analysis of
Smart Rechnology in 2017.

AT: Where are we now with fixed wire-

less access (FWA)?
WW: Most operators are focusing very
much on 5G deployments for mobile –
it’s their core business. We’ve seen a
few operators trying to offer FWA on the
back of their mobile service as a kind
of, ‘Well, we might all do this as well,
because it’s not much extra effort.’
So that’s FWA at 3.5GHz, the 5G
mobile bands, but that’s just an interim
measure while they haven’t got much
5G traffic from their mobile users,
because it’s not very lucrative and it’s
going to suck a lot of capacity out of
their mobile 5G network. Most mobile
operators will not use their standard 5G
to deliver FWA.
Some are looking at doing 5G in the
millimetre waves – typically frequency
bands 24-30 GHz. In the US, there’s
a few other bands where’s it starting,
because of the quirks of US spectrum
licensing, and we’ve seen both Verizon
and AT&T look at delivering FWA in cities
using their millimetre wave 5G frequen-
cies. The details are pretty sketchy –
they’re not giving us a lot of insight into
how that’s gone – which normally means
it’s not doing brilliantly.
By and large, we’ve not seen much
FWA from 5G mobile operators. As they
say, they’re not fixed operators although
they can try to turn their hands to fixed,
but it’s not what they’re primarily good at
or where they’re going to get 95-98% of
their revenue from.
Others will do the bulk of FWA
deployments: either the fixed opera-
tors who might be deploying fibre, but
they use wireless in areas where it’s
not economic to put the fibre down,
or new operators they call altnets [for
alternative network providers] in the
UK. Those kinds of entities are focused
on providing service to the home and
that’s where the bulk of FWA deploy-
ments will be taking place over the
coming years.
AT: How much have spectrum auctions
and allocations had a bearing on the
FWA question in Europe?
WW: They do have an effect and,
in particular, the 5G element of the
millimetre wave band has not been
consistently allocated globally, even in
those countries that have allocated it so
far. The US has been towards the upper
end of the frequency band, Europe
towards the lower end, but individual

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk

28 Fixed Wireless Access
countries in Europe have been quite
slow at assigning it. A number are still
holding back. They can’t see the de-
mand and that’s adding uncertainty to
the process in many countries.
AT: There is also some unlicensed spec-
trum up to 60GHz. Won’t higher fre-
quencies mean many more antennas?
WW: You want them quite big for
FWA. It gives you more directivity, be-
cause you’ve got a stronger beam. It’s
like if you make a spotlight much big-
ger, the beam goes further, because
you’ve got a wider piece of glass on
which to focus the light. You often
want to do that for FWA: as the range
is over short distances, it lends itself
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
to a solution in really in dense urban
areas, and there are a few companies
interested in that.
Facebook has long had an initiative
called Terragraph, which is effectively
a sort of standard for 60GHz FWA, and
there have been a few trial deployments
in cities. So that’s one option for FWA,
but you don’t need much FWA in cities,
because, for the most part, it has reason-
able fixed solutions in terms of fibre or
cable, or at least reasonable copper.
So yes, there is an issue with frequen-
cy bands and licensing, and I think that
will mean we’ll see millimetre wave FWA
happening first in countries like the US,
which have fairly good availability of
some of these bands.
AT: What economics are at play here?
WW: If you’ve got a dense community,
then fibre generally makes more sense
and is typically not that much more
expensive than FWA for very densely
clustered homes. If you’re looking at
rural deployments, fibre can become
prohibitively expensive very quickly,
because of the distance you have to dig
your trench.
The US has quite a lot of those kind of
rural entities, which is recognised by the
pretty big chunk of money that the gov-
ernment has set aside – the Opportunity
Fund – which is trying to incentivise
deployment of high-speed broadband in
rural areas.
That’s helpful for everyone trying to

deploy into that space, including for
FWA, because it makes the economics
of that kind of deployment even more
viable for operators and pulls through
equipment into that marketplace.
AT: Is FWA for developed or develop-
ing markets or both? How big is the
market?
WW: It’s going to be the rural areas of de-
veloped markets, but while CBNG is ex-
pecting something like 75% growth over
the next five years, it will only amount to
4% of the overall market. Most homes
in developed countries are going to be
connected by fibre, but it’s always difficult
to get the right balance between market
forces and government incentives. That’s
the problem. For lots of broadband
deployment, fibre is not immediately
obviously economic. I have 60Mbps on
my copper line right now, so why bother
getting the fibre to the home?
I think they will sometimes use FWA in
the areas where they don’t think they’re
going to ever get the fibre to, but any-
where they think they’ll get fibre at some
point, operators are not inclined to put
in an interim solution – that’s just adding
to their costs. We have to look at how far
fibre is likely to go, then we could use
FWA to fill in the gaps.
In developing countries it may be dif-
ferent, but at the moment there is less of
a need for them, generally, to have really
high-speed broadband. That could come,
of course, over time, but now they tend
to have less fibre and less investment in
fibre. Eventually, FWA plays a strong role
in those countries, but typically you tend
to see them lagging behind the developed
world in terms of deploying any new tech-
nology, because essentially they need to
wait for it to come down the cost curve to
the point where it’s much more cost-effec-
tive for them to deploy.
AT: Can you see anything knocking
fibre off its pedestal as the access
technology?
WW: No, I don’t think so… it has im-
mense capability. Once you’ve got that
fibre in there, you can upgrade the
equipment at both ends to make it faster
and faster and faster. I can’t realistically
see why any homeowner would ever ex-
ceed the capacity of a piece of fibre that
can deliver 10Gbps or more if you have
the right equipment on either end of it.
“
Anywhere
they think they’ll
get fibre at some
point, operators
are not inclined to
put in an interim
solution – that’s
just adding to
their costs
AT: Has the market for FWA not panned
out as expected in the heady days of
drawing up 5G standards?
WW: The whole 5G standards processing
and the development of 5G has been an
overhyped and insufficiently scientific
thing [Editor’s note: see the titles of the
books Webb has authored above]. It
depends who you talk to as to how much
FWA was a key element, but I don’t think
most people saw FWA is the driver for
5G, it was a bit of icing on the cake.
AT: Is the sector too small to support
specialist FWA providers – is it more
likely to be in an operator’s portfolio of
solutions?
WW: I don’t think that’s necessarily
true. Some FWA operators in Italy
have something like 10% of the overall
market share: there is a decent sized
rural community and a lot of mountains.
Fixed Wireless Access 29
That’s also true of parts of France and
Spain, so it’s not completely clear to
me why Italy is slightly different. If a
service provider decided to link up the
communities where FWA makes sense
– maybe in the UK that could would be
about a million homes, which is about
5% of the market – that would be plenty
big enough for a specialist operator to
be successful.
Alternatively, the likes of AT&T could
get their act together and bundle it into
the other stuff they are doing to make it
happen. I think we’ll see different strat-
egies in different countries, depending
on what happens with the incumbents
and what happens with the spectrum.
Also, what happens with funding from
governments might stimulate certain
directions and the availability of fund-
ing needed to get companies off the
ground. If that’s easy, then it’s easier for
new entrants to emerge.
All kinds of different strategies might
happen, but we might well see FWA-only
operators in places, buying equipment
from companies like CBNG. The market
is big enough to support that, [but] we
aren’t going to see a company the size
of Ericsson rise from just FWA or of AT&T
only doing FWA.
AT: Do you think FWA equipment
makers will be tempted to be service
providers too?
WW: The two disciplines are quite differ-
ent and if you start to mix them together,
then you can get all sorts of conflicts
of interest that aren’t very helpful. It
becomes hard to sell your equipment
to someone if you’re competing against
them as an operator too.
Likewise, operators always buy
the best kit for their purposes: as an
equipment provider and operator, you’re
going to buy from the company you’re
inherently tied to. It’s not unheard of, but
my general view is it’s not a great idea.
To my mind, it smacks of desperation
rather than success.
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
30 Private Networks

Is Private 5G out of the AWS box the

end for telco-led private networks?
Amazon’s ‘productisation’ of its own technology late last year is the latest example
of its innovative genius, writes Dawn Bushaus.

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk


U
sing its own internal 5G
tech to develop a private
5G service for enterpris-
es is also yet another
example of communica-
tions service providers
(CSPs) being forced to take the back seat
in 5G projects that many observers think
they should be leading.
But there could be some advantages
to being the passenger – like access to
customers those operators might not
otherwise reach. “Telcos can look at this
[Amazon’s announcement] as competi-
tive, because it competes for the same
dollars, but they can also look at this as
additional investment from a partner in
simplifying the deployment of private
5G,” writes Roy Chua, Founder and
Principal at AvidThink, a US-based inde-
pendent research and advisory service.
Simplifying is the key
The crucial word in Chua’s comment is
“simplifying” and it’s what Amazon does
best. Indeed, Amazon created Amazon
Web Services (AWS), which is now a
half-trillion-dollar business, by simplifying
and productising its own IT environment
using APIs (which, incidentally, were
cited by AWS for the outage it suffered
at the end of last year).
This time, AWS has turned the 5G net-
work used in Amazon fulfilment centres
into a managed service for enterprises
that automates set-up and deployment
of a 5G RAN and core network, scaling
capacity on demand.
AWS’ CEO Adam Selipsky unveiled
the private 5G service at the AWS
re:Invent show in late November, calling
it “shockingly easy” to use. The service,
which is available to preview in the US
using Citizens Broadband Radio Service
(CBRS) shared spectrum, is already be-
ing used by DISH Network, Koch Global
Services and Amazon Fulfillment.
Muddying competitive waters
The announcement could, indeed,
spell trouble for CSPs, because it puts
them in the all-too-familiar position of
competing with their own supplier to
deliver mobile private networks (MPNs)
to enterprises. Operators already must
compete with their network equipment
vendors, including Ericsson, Huawei,
Nokia and Samsung.
“In my view this is a big threat for
operators, because it shows the am-
bition, scale and capacity that AWS
brings into this emerging market,”
Pablo Tomasi, Principal Analyst – Private
Networks, Omdia, writes in an email to
Mobile Europe. “There could be some
partnership opportunities, though this
announcement is significant as it puts
AWS plus partners (for instance, Athonet
and others) directly in competition with
operators plus large network vendors.”
“
Despite growing
competition, there is
some evidence that
CSPs are gaining
ground in delivering
private LTE and 5G
networks worldwide
Dean Ramsay, Principal Analyst, TM
Forum, agrees that AWS is likely to
compete with CSPs. “I don’t think that
operators are moving fast enough on
MPNs and if we keep seeing more
announcements like this with direct
competitors…” he says during this recent
podcast. “Ericsson, for many years, re-
fused to sell MPNs, because it puts them
in direct competition with their biggest
customers, but that’s over…and they’re
going full steam ahead.”
Speaking during the same pod-
cast, TM Forum’s Chief Analyst, Mark
Newman, echoes Ramsay’s worries
Private Networks 31
that CSPs are being edged out of
MPNs. He thinks that some operators
see MPNs as “a bit of a sideshow”,
believing that it’s more important to
offer enterprise 5G services on their
macro-cellular networks.
“I think that’s the wrong way of looking
at it,” Newman says. “I think in terms of
the innovation around new services and
new capabilities, that’s all going to start
with MPNs. And if you’re not playing in the
MPN space now, I think you’ll find it very
hard to develop a 5G enterprise business
from scratch just on the macro network.”
Making progress
However, despite growing competition
there is some evidence that CSPs are
gaining ground in delivering private LTE
and 5G networks. The latest research
from consultancy Analysys Mason,
which tracks MPN deployments world-
wide, finds that mobile operators have
increased their share of MPN deals
significantly during the past year, from
just 22% at the end of 2020 to 32% in
Q3 2021.
Analysys Mason reported that there
were 256 publicly announced private
LTE or 5G networks worldwide in Q3
of last year. In 5G networks (versus
LTE), operators are particularly strong.
“There were 104 announcements in
total for 5G networks [in 2021] and…
operators acted as the main contractor
in 44% of these 5G networks,” says
Analyst Ibraheem Kasujee, speaking
during a podcast.
The reason operators’ share is in-
creasing is because there are more 5G
networks being deployed, he adds, “and
operators are more likely to be the main
contractor in a 5G network.”
Silver lining?
Some observers believe AWS Private
5G could benefit CSPs by helping
them reach new enterprise customers.
AvidThink’s Chua believes that AWS
will need to partner with CSPs in many
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
32 Private Networks

Worldwide private LTE/5G networks in the

public domain by main contractor type Q3 2021

Systems integrator 4 2

Enterprise 5 5

Specialist network provider 33 8

Operator 35 46

Network equipment provider 75 36

Number of networks

LTE 5G
Source: Analysys Mason

“
deployments. In an interview with
FierceWireless, he describes the system
that AWS announced in November as a
“starter kit” for experimentation and says
it is unclear how well it can scale.
Chua believes AWS will tap mobile
operator partners to scale beyond small
deployments. He also points out that
while CBRS can be used for private 5G
deployments in the US, regulations in
other countries will likely necessitate
that AWS partners with a mobile opera-
tor to deliver the service.
“AWS’s Private 5G approach gives
AWS a way to rope in telco partners
when more sophistication and scale are
needed – detailed RF planning, large
deployments, spectrum licensing,” he
writes in his blog.
While Omdia’s Tomasi sees the Ama-
AWS’s Private zon announcement as primarily compet-
itive with telcos, he says it is not too late
5G approach for mobile operators to carve out a role
gives AWS a way for themselves in private 5G. “This is
to rope in telco still an early-stage market, so there is an
opportunity for operators to accelerate
partners when in private 5G.”
more sophistication However, they have few challenges
ahead. He writes, “For instance, they are
and scale are
not trusted priority partners, nor [do] they
needed – detailed have in-depth vertical knowledge in many
RF planning, large verticals (for example, manufacturing).
They have been and still are hesitant to
deployments, embrace private networks, and to accel-
spectrum licensing erate they need to invest in a high-poten-
tial yet still modest market.”

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk

 The Next G 33

With 5G deployment barely

underway, operators plan for 6G
Dawn Bushaus investigates why telecoms is already looking at 6G and who is
working on which aspects.

E
ven though 5G rollouts are
just getting started in most
countries, researchers,
communications service pro-
viders (CSPs) and network
suppliers are already consid-
ering how the next generation of cellular
technology will impact society.
Due to appear around 2030, 6G tech-
nology promises dramatic improvements
in throughput, reliability and reduction of
latency, all of which will make immersive
and extended reality (XR) experiences
the norm.
Massively faster
6G will be able to use terahertz radio
spectrum (from 300 GHz to 3 THz) and
sub-terahertz spectrum (from 100 GHz to
300 GHz), enabling transmission speeds
of hundreds of gigabits to several tera-
bits per second.
Latency will be measured in microsec-
onds, a thousand times faster than 5G’s
millisecond latency. And importantly, arti-
ficial intelligence (AI) will be pervasive in
6G and implemented from the outset.
Edge computing will also be built
in, so we won’t really think in terms of
access, edge and core, or even simple
connectivity. Rather, as Paul Crane,
Converged Network Research Director
at BT, explains, “We’ll be thinking
about a network as a set of distributed
compute resource which is running both
network functionality and application

Promises of
Edge computing is built in

Uses THz spectrum Relies on analytics, AI and high-perfomance

computing to process and manage vast
amounts of data

Supports data rates of

1 terabit per second Zero-energy devices

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces

Microsecond latency promise to extend coverage into
hard-to-reach areas

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk

34 The Next G

Country or region 6G initiatives

China Began research in 2019, intends to introduce 6G in 2029
Launched satellite to test teraherz signal transmission in November 2021
Huawei has 6G research centre in Canada; ZTE has teamed up with China Unicom to
develop 6G
Huawei has urged the Australian government to engage in 6G talks
Europe European Union’s Hexa-X 6G research project began in 2020, and is led by Nokia with
Ericsson, Intel and Telefonica participating
In 2018 the University of Oulu in Finland committed to investing €250 million over
eight years in a 6G flagship programme
UK’s University of Surrey launched a 6G Innovation Centre in 2020
Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance launched a research project in 2020 based
in Germany, whose government is to fund the development of new tech
In 2020 Russia’s Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology said it would create a
device to help the development of 6G system components
Japan Research began in 2020 and it intends to launch 6G by 2030
The government is to set aside $9.6 billion to support the development of new
technologies, including 6G
Sony, NTT and Intel have set up a global platform to work on next-gen communications
South Korea Began research in 2019 and plans to launch 6G in 2026
Planned to invest $11.7 billion in 2021 to develop a more digital economy, including 6G
LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom have each formed 6G
development partnerships
US Started research in 2018
Federal Communications Commission has opened higher frequency spectrum to
support experimentation
Next G Alliance was formed in October 2020 with founder members including Apple,
AT&T and Google

Source: Bloomberg

functionality. The control… and the
automation of the control are going
to be crucially important.” Crane was
speaking during a recent TelecomTV
digital event focusing on 6G innovation.
These improvements will support XR
applications such as holographic telep-
resence, 3D gaming, remote surgery, re-
mote experience assistance in industrial
use cases and multi-sensory experienc-
es using wearables. Other likely 6G use
cases include pervasive connectivity,
unstaffed mobility and lighter-than-air
(LTA) drones.
“Video will evolve,” says Rahim Tafa-
zolli, Regius Professor and Head of the
Institute for Communication Systems
at the University of Surrey in the UK,
who also participated in the TelecomTV
event. Whereas all forms of mobile video
so far have involved only two senses,
seeing and hearing, future applications
will include more.
“We want to add other human senses
like touch, smell and taste to the video
– we call it four-dimensional video,”
Tafazolli explains. “We believe that 6G
can be broadly characterised as the
integration between communication and
sensing, whereas 5G was communica-
tion and automation.”
Who’s working on 6G?
6G research is happening all over the
world. The table above from US media
company Bloomberg shows a regional
breakdown of efforts across Europe,
China, the US, South Korea and Japan.
CSPs are active in many of the research
initiatives. Indeed, BT’s Crane notes that it
is important for mobile operators to start
participating in 6G research now, so that

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk

 The Next G 35

they can plan for how they will roll out the
next generation of network technology
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces in 6G
once standards become available.
“What I don’t want to see is… that
non-backwardly compatible step-change
that the industry has traditionally gone Controller
through,” he says. “We need to look at
not only the technologies that we’ll be
deploying in ten or 20 years’ time, but
equally importantly at how we go about
Reconfigurable
Intelligent Surface
doing that so that we can avoid that step-
change and have a much more evolution-
ary approach, where operators like our-
selves can implement technology when
there’s the market demand, rather than
build before there’s actually demand.”

Revolutionary RIS
Beyond the promise of terahertz spec-
trum, one of the most exciting tech-
nological advances coming with 6G is
reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, or
RIS (see graphic), which ETSI defines as
“a new type of system node leveraging
smart radio surfaces with thousands of
small antennas or metamaterial ele-
ments to dynamically shape and control
radio signals.” In October, the standards
body established a new Industry Specifi-
cation Group to work on the technology.
RIS effectively turns the wireless envi-
ronment into a service and could enable
new applications such as sensing. For
example, ETSI points out, an RIS “can
reconfigure the radio environment to
sense human posture and detect some-
one falling, a very useful application for
elderly care.”
Other advantages of RIS are that it
can be deployed using primarily passive
components, which lowers costs, and
it is sustainable and environmentally
friendly technology because of its low
energy consumption. RIS can be de-
ployed indoors and outdoors, and could
be integrated into objects.
Shorter development cycles
While it may seem early to discuss 6G,
many of the TelecomTV panelists noted
Access Point
that the time between new generations
of telecoms technology is decreas-
ing and will continue to do so, partly
because of network virtualisation and
software-defined networking.
“A lot of the development is being
more and more software defined,” says
Professor Emil Björnson of Linköping
University in Sweden. “So, we can revise
the protocols and we can make a lot of
5G products already future proof… May-
be the only things that won’t be forward
compatible or backward compatible will
be if you need really new hardware, like
going to the terahertz bands.”
David Boswarthick, Director of New
Technologies at ETSI, agrees and thinks
we will eventually stop talking about
next generations of technology. “Do we
need to keep playing the generation
game? I think for the time being the
answer is yes,” he says. “We will move
Device
Source: ETSI
towards 6G; we will probably have a
7G – and then question mark, question
mark. The duration [between genera-
tions of technology] seems to be getting
shorter, so we’re talking about 6G far
earlier than we started talking about 5G
back in the day.”
Interim and evolutionary
Boswarthick believes that we may see
more interim and evolutionary steps in
the standards process, like 5G Ad-
vanced, and that additional functionality
will be added with each new release of
standards. “You don’t have to do a big
upgrade,” he explains. “You’ve got soft-
ware-defined and virtualised networks
now, so you can bring in new features
– you can test them and roll them out
easier. So, I think we’re going to have
generations for a while, but I’ll stop plac-
ing bets at about 7G.”

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk

36 eSIM
Why are operators being
so slow to embrace eSIM?
Kate O’Flaherty asks whether operators are more focused on possible
downsides for them, rather than experience upsides for their customers.
T
oday, there are 1.2 billion
eSIMs installed in con-
nected devices and that
number is set to surge to
3.4 billion over the next
three years, according to
analyst Juniper Research.
Powering smartphones through to
IoT devices, eSIM has multiple bene-
fits, including flexibility, reliability and
security. Many flagship smartphones
support the technology and common
frameworks from mobile giants Apple
and Google are helping to fuel its
growth. So why are operators being so
slow to embrace eSIM?
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
Easy switch
On the surface, mobile operators’ con-
cerns are obvious. eSIM allows custom-
ers and users to easily switch provider,
making it difficult to prevent churn. The
costs for operators can be high and in-
troducing eSIM can be technically com-
plex, especially in the IoT space, where a
need for wireless technology combined
with hardware and management tools
requires specialist vendors.
In the consumer market, eSIM makes it
easier for customers to change provider,
which can bring downward pricing pres-
sure. This makes it a threat to operators,
says Kester Mann, Director of Consumer
and Connectivity at CCS Insight.
In addition, says Mann, “The technical
side can be complicated and difficult,
and device support is an issue: Only a
limited number of devices include sup-
port for eSIM.”
While eSIM has a positive impact on
manufacturing costs, it is being intro-
duced in newer flagship smartphones
first and these are more expensive, says
Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence.
However, he points out, the dynamic will
change as companies such as Apple and
Google introduce cheaper eSIM devices.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been
another obstacle to adoption, slowing eSIM

launches in the second half of 2020, GSMA
data shows. According to Jarich, some op-
erators have delayed their eSIM implemen-
tation projects to focus on key priorities,
such as mobile network resilience.
Drivers for eSIM
Adoption has slowed, but eSIM isn’t
going to fade away: vendors operat-
ing in the space say the drivers are in
place for the technology to take off. This
doesn’t have to be complex, because
most operators already have access to
subscription platforms via their existing
SIM vendors which allow them to deliver
consumer eSIM, says Hamish White,
Founder and CEO of eSIM as a service
provider, Mobilise.
He points out that, “All major SIM
vendors – including Thales, Giesecke
& Devrient and IDEMIA – have eSIM
platform offerings”.
In addition, global standards for eSIM
set by the GSMA are already available.
“The common eSIM integration specifi-
cation means there are no barriers for
operators in specific countries,” White
points out.
Taking this into account, White thinks
one reason operators’ uptake is slow is
because, as the technology can facilitate
easier switching to competitors, there
is “a general lack of focus on customer
experience improvements, such as in-
app eSIM provisioning among operators;
prioritising other product implementa-
tions deemed to have a higher business
priority; project backlogs; and lengthy
delivery cycles.”
Challenging certification
There is also a challenging certification
process for operators to navigate and
setting up the customer onboarding
process can be difficult. Onboarding
eSIM customers typically happens in
two ways – using a QR code or a mobile
app, says White. “For a superior custom-
er experience, using an application is by
far the better choice, since customers
can activate their subscription in just one
quick tap.”
However, while launching an app is
simple for customers, it’s complex for
operators. The GSMA has cooperated
with application marketplaces such as
Apple’s App Store and Google Play to
create a regulated process for launching
in-app eSIM offerings. But in-app eSIM
provisioning depends on an API called
a local profile assistant, which operators
can only access once they prove their
compliance with the subscriber manage-
ment system provider.
“
This regulatory
minefield, paired
with a complicated,
lengthy process,
adds to hesitation
to adopt eSIM
technology
The situation is even more complex due
to the differences between Android and
Apple applications. “This regulatory mine-
field, paired with a complicated, lengthy
process, adds to hesitation to adopt eSIM
technology,” says White. He adds that this
complexity means it can typically take up
to a year in normal circumstances to cre-
ate a GSMA-compliant eSIM solution; even
longer since the pandemic.
If operators are to embrace eSIM
soon, especially in large scale IoT,
changes will need to be made. Today
many 3G and 4G mobile operators own
their SIM management platform. If a
user has to switch to a different ser-
vice provider, the ecosystem can deny
moving the IoT device from one wireless
network to another, says Vijay Anand,
Assistant Vice President, Technology,
and Chief IoT Architect, Capgemini
eSIM 37
Engineering. He says it can make the
management of large IoT deployments
“chaotic, complex and potentially costly”.
Taking this into account, Anand thinks
there is a need for every eSIM supplier
to have a common management plat-
form. “The platform can support multiple
operators to keep the connectivity
process as simple as possible.”
Slow adoption is frustrating for
manufacturers, who want operators
to embrace eSIM, but it’s not going to
happen overnight. While 80% of manu-
facturers and 90% of operators say they
will offer eSIM by 2025, operators want
to embrace eSIM as a hybrid model,
according to a recent study by Truphone
and Mobile World Live. This is partly due
to supply chain issues: operators cite
availability as a key barrier to implement-
ing the technology, with 48% claiming it
is a challenge second only to cost.
The churn concern
There are obstacles to adopting eSIM,
but churn should not be operators’ main
concern. In fact, eSIM makes it more
important to differentiate through the
customer experience, which many oper-
ators are already doing.
“Offering a superior customer experi-
ence through eSIM outweighs the risk of
increased churn by providing customers
with a more tailored solution that meets
their digital needs,” says White.
And disruptive operators could even
adopt the technology as a churn-reduc-
ing factor, says Mann. “Or maybe those
that feel they have a premium network
may use eSIM to encourage people onto
their own network,” he suggests.
It won’t happen straightaway and
that’s partly because 80% of consumers
aren’t aware of eSIM, GSMA data found.
“Raising consumer awareness of eSIM
and explaining and promoting its ben-
efits is key to driving market adoption,”
says Jarich, but it’s not just down to mo-
bile operators – the industry as a whole
has an important role to play.
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
38 iSIM
Could iSIM be the end of eSIM
before it reaches its full potential?
iSIM has none of the baggage of eSIM, which could be heading headed for the
eMuseum, claims Nick Booth.
I
n January, Vodafone, Qualcomm
Technologies and Thales an-
nounced they have created a new
integrated SIM (iSIM) which runs the
functions at the speed of a proces-
sor. It could help mobile operators
run better services for end users, simplify
roll-outs and massively extend the scope
and range of devices the services run on,
according to Thales.
iSIM, which complies with GSMA
specifications, embeds SIM functions
into the device’s main processor,
allowing for greater system integration,
higher performance and increased
memory capacity, the inventors claim.
This technology is the latest evolution
of SIM technology and follows close
in the wake of eSIMs, which are also
embedded into devices.
However, while eSIM does empower
the customer, the downside is that it
requires a separate chip. iSIM, on the
other hand, doesn’t have that baggage.
A separate chip is no longer necessary
and there is no need to dedicate space
in devices to SIM services.
Without baggage iSIM flies further
iSIM technology creates the possibility
for new mobile services to be integrated
into devices beyond the mobile phone.
The inventors claim they are extending
the mobile experience to laptops, tab-
lets, virtual reality systems, IoT devic-
es and wearables, and whatever the
metaverse turns out to be.
The benefits include simplifying and
improving both the design and per-
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
formance of each device by releasing
resources, such as processing power
and memory. Consolidation of functions
into the device’s main chipset, alongside
other critical resources such as the two
processing units (GPU and CPU) and the
modem, makes the operating system
more efficient and robust.
“
Our aim is
to create a world
where every device
connects seamlessly
and simply to
each other, and
the customer has
complete control
iSIM finishes before eSIM wakes
An iSIM can be provisioned remotely
by the operator using the old eSIM
infrastructure, but with the power to
add a whole new range of devices that
eSIM technology couldn’t work with.
Qualcomm describes a proof of concept
conducted in Samsung’s R&D labs using
Vodafone’s advanced remote manage-
ment platform.
A Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 5G pow-
ered by a Snapdragon 888 was con-
nected to a Vodafone 5G network. The
device had a built-in Qualcomm secure
processing unit running the Thales iSIM
operating system.
“Our aim is to create a world where
every device connects seamlessly and
simply to each other, and the customer
has complete control,” says Alex Fro-
ment-Curtil, Vodafone’s Chief Commer-
cial Officer. “The iSIM, combined with
our remote management platform, is a
major step in this direction.”
Vodafone customers can enjoy the
ease of multiple accounts on one
device, while operators won’t need sep-
arate SIM cards or the additional plastic
pollution. “We will continue working
closely with Qualcomm Technologies
and Thales to evolve further applications
for this technology and accelerate its
commercialisation,” says Froment-Curtil.
iSIM saves operators time and money
iSIM systems offer great opportunities to
mobile operators. They free-up valuable
space in devices for OEMs, and provide
flexibility for device users to benefit from
the full potential of 5G networks and ex-
periences across a wide range of device
categories, according to Enrico Salva-
tori, Qualcomm Europe’s President for
Europe/MEA. “By engineering the iSIM
technology into the system on a chip,
we create additional support for OEMs in
our Snapdragon platform,” he says.
“With new types of networks and
devices rolling out, innovation in SIM
technology is essential to best serve the
connected world,” concludes Emmanuel
Unguran, SVPP for mobile connectivity
solutions at Thales.
40 Rising telecoms fraud

The pandemic boosted telecoms

fraud – and it’s still rising
Telecom and cyber fraud are bigger and more profitable than the narcotics trade.
So what are operators doing about it, asks Kate O’Flaherty?

E
uropol reckons cyber-tel-
ecoms fraud is bigger and
more profitable than the
illegal narcotics trade,
and the telecom indus-
try agrees. Fraud is an
increasingly complex issue, which can
result in hefty financial losses for mobile
operators. So what are operators doing
about it and what else needs to be done
to tackle the growing problem?
Covid-19 spam
Fraud constantly evolves, so it’s chal-
lenging to keep up with and ahead of
criminals. Fraudsters were quick to
exploit Covid-19, with the topic appear-
ing frequently in spam messages, says
Simeon Coney, Chief Strategy Officer,
Adaptive Mobile Security. His compa-
ny’s Covid-19 spam tracker identified a
spike, starting around February 2020.
SMS fraud in particular surged
throughout the pandemic, says Katia
Gonzalez, Head of Fraud Prevention
and Security at BICS, which offers
fraud prevention services to mobile
operators. In addition, she says, “We
are seeing more omnichannel attacks,
with scams no longer only focusing on
one single telco service, such as SMS.
Instead, they’re spread across services
in an attempt to hit a wider number
of users and increase the fraudsters’

Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk


chances of success.
“Today, fraud attacks often focus on
scamming end users, instead of trying
to directly monetise telco transactions.
We are seeing a new focus on end users
with the goal of obtaining direct pay-
ments or personal data, which can then
be used to perpetrate many other scams
and monetised on the dark web.”
Caller line identification (CLI) spoof-
ing – where an attacker hides their
identity to make it appear as if the call
is coming from elsewhere – is proving
very difficult to address, she adds.
A costly issue
Telecoms fraud is a costly issue for
mobile operators, partly because they
are usually forced to bear the cost
themselves. Europol estimates that this
amounts to €10.6 billion (£9 billion) a
year – and that’s without taking into
account the damage to their brand and
reputation.
Usage-based fraud – where fraud-
ulent traffic is artificially generated or
ordinary, legitimate traffic is manipulat-
ed – continues to be the biggest issue
across mobile data, SMS and voice
globally, according to Finn Kornbo,
Executive Product Director, Digital
Wholesale at CSG.
Usage-based voice fraud is causing
some of the greatest losses in the form
of revenue-share fraud through enter-
prise private branch exchange (PBX)
hacking, which continues to have a high
financial impact across regions, he says.
In tandem, roaming-related fraud,
including zero-rated fraud, is causing
“significant damage” to many mobile
operators, impacting their ability to
drive new revenue, Kornbo says.
Although there are multiple options
to help operators mitigate fraud, the
amount being done by operators
covers a wide spectrum, according to
Coney, “From those doing very little, to
those working to implement the neces-
sary technology to block fraud.”
Tackling telecoms fraud
Across the industry as a whole, a lot
of work is being done to tackle tele-
coms fraud. In October this year, UK
operators committed to a nine-point
fraud charter. Key actions stemming
from the charter include identifying
and implementing techniques to
block scam calls, and sharing data
across the industry, plus plans to
block smishing texts.
The charter also outlines plans to
work with organisations in the financial
services sector to perform strength
checks around SIM-swapping, where
a mobile number is moved to a new
provider to commit fraud.
“
We are seeing
more omnichannel
attacks, with
scams no longer
only focusing on
one single telco
service, such as
SMS. Instead,
they’re spread
across services…
The impetus is there, but execution
may not be as straightforward due to
the complexity of networks and the
protocols that govern them. “While
these are strong aims, implementation
is slow and difficult,” says Matt Ettelaie,
a Senior Manager in KPMG UK’s Cyber
Defence Services practice.
“Telecommunications networks are
complex and interconnected, based
on well-established protocols, such
as SS7. These legacy protocols were
developed with uptime and interopera-
Rising telecoms fraud 41
bility in mind, not necessarily security.”
As the attack landscape continues to
diversify, criminals can exploit critical
weaknesses in signalling protocols
such as SS7 and Diameter to carry out
fraud. Positive Technologies’ research-
ers found vulnerabilities in all the
networks they tested.
UK lags US
In addition, in contrast to the US, which
has already developed improved
protocols, UK operators’ aims will
take much longer to become reality.
“The implementation of techniques
such as caller ID authentication, using
new technical standards such as the
STIR-SHAKEN approach, will take the
UK industry time to test and deploy
before they can be effectively used,”
Ettelaie says.
He points out that some updates are
not scheduled to be completed until
2025, when the UK telephone network
swaps from analogue to all IP. For now,
UK operators are currently focusing
efforts on quick, technical solutions
and intelligence sharing that can begin
to mitigate some, but not all, fraud,
adds Ettelaie.
Making fraud difficult
It’s never going to go away, so fraud
must be addressed with a combination
of technology, such as systems that
can detect and mitigate fraud, and
global collaboration between opera-
tors. For now, as the fraud landscape
continues to diversify beyond Covid-19,
it’s important that the industry works
together to tackle the issue.
Collaboration within the industry has
increased during Covid-19 and this has
been instrumental in fighting some of
the devastating SMS attacks during
the pandemic, says Gonzalez. “Hope-
fully this will encourage all parties to
collaborate further, particularly across
borders, and increase efforts to fight
back against fraud,” she says.
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
42 Final Say
Consumer group says 5G will widen
the digital divide in France
Equality initiative has a mountain to climb as one in three rural users are deprived
of good broadband, says the new UFC-Que Choisir study. Nick Booth reports.
F
rench consumer associa-
tion UFC-Que Choisir has
denounced the “extreme-
ly marked territorial ine-
quality” in the use of 4G
in France, where 32% of
consumers in rural areas
are deprived of “good
broadband”. Inequalities between rural and
urban areas are likely to worsen with the
arrival of 5G, it warns.
As Les Echos reports, 4G is used by
the majority of French people, despite
the recent launch of 5G, but the 4G
network does not allow all consumers
to access broadband. “The analysis of
the real quality of 4G is worrying,” says
UFC-Que Choisir. Some 32% consumers
in rural areas cannot get an internet
Mobile World Congress • www.mobileeurope.co.uk
connection with a speed of more than 8
Mbps, the study found.
Broadband class system
At the end of 2021, UFC Que Choisir
launched a mobile application,
Queldébit, which compiled information
from mobile phone users in order to
identify better indicators on perfor-
mance, and more transparency on the
quality of mobile networks nationally and
in the regions.  In January 2018, the New Mobile Deal
According to its figures, data speeds
in urban areas were 55.3 Mbps on av-
erage – 66% faster than the 33.3 Mbps
average speed in rural areas. In 14.3%
of cases the speeds recorded were
less than 3 Mbps, the speed defined by
UFC-Que Choisir as the minimum level
needed to access basic mobile inter-
net services, such as web browsing, in
“barely decent conditions”.
One in four use cases in the study
were unable to access “good broad-
band”, which the French government
defines as being at least 8 Mbps. High
quality broadband is a mythical beast for
many consumers, the UFC-Que Choisir
said, and it called on the regulator,
Arcep, to demand a minimum quality of
service from operators wherever mobile
coverage is provided.
5G will give more to the 4G rich
There are no figures from the associ-
ation on 5G, as there are not enough
instances to provide a meaningful study.
However, the consumer rights champi-
on did say that 5G technology will only
really benefit users in areas where 4G
is already well established, which will
widen the inequalities between French
residents even further.
In France there have been several in-
itiatives that set out to bridge the digital
divide. In 2013, the France Très Haut
Débit Plan (Very High-Speed French
Broadband Plan) set out to cover the en-
tire French territory with speeds of over
30 Mbit/s by 2022, through a €20 billion
public and private investment scheme.
agreement was signed by the French
government, the telecom regulator and
operators, to eliminate ‘white zones-vil-
lage centres’ – the areas not covered by
last-generation mobile networks such as
4G – by 2022. It looks like yet another
initiative might be necessary.
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