Mobile Europe will announce its CTO of the Year 2016 on 6 April. Over the next few weeks, we will profile each of the shortlisted nominees. First is Deutsche Telekom’s Bruno Jacobfeuerborn.
Deutsche Telekom’s CTO wears two hats, handling the technology strategy for his German homeland, as well as overseeing that of the wider Group. He is also Chairman of the NGMN Alliance.
Jacobfeuerborn has managed to balance these different roles effectively, with Deutsche Telekom standing out for its technology achievements during the past 12 months.
Its plans to set up a pan-European network saw Croatia and Montenegro go all IP last year, joining Macedonia and Slovakia, which made the leap in 2014.
In Germany, almost 10 million connections have made the shift, accounting for almost a quarter of the operator’s connections.
Given his working with NGMN, it is no surprise that Jacobfeuerborn has moved to grow Germany’s own reputation for 5G. In March last year, the operator opened its 5G:haus with the aim to develop architecture, innovate and contribute to standardisation.
It has worked with vendors including Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, ZTE, Qualcomm and Huawei. One highlight of the haus’ work was its full-duplex trial, which demonstrated how signals could be sent across a network at the same time through the same wireless channel.
Jacobfeuerborn has also been key in Deutsche Telekom’s participation in the European Union’s 5GPPP initiative and the architecture focused 5G NORMA scheme.
The operator also developed inter sector MIMO with Samsung, to try and overcome limited throughput at the cell edge. Further work between the two companies achieved carrier aggregation across an IS-MIMO network.
Jacobfeuerborn has also led projects aimed at showing how cellular can transform transport networks.
A test-bed on Germany’s A9 motorway reduced signal transport times between two vehicles to less than 20 milliseconds. It is hoped the technology can be used to transmit hazard information.
The second project is a European aviation network, which will use a combination of LTE and a satellite network to give passengers in-flight internet access.
However, Jacobfeuerborn’s focus has not just been on the networks of the future. LTE coverage across all of its markets has reached 71 percent of the population, up from 47 percent at the end of 2014. In Germany, 4G can now be accessed by 90 percent of the population.
The CTO of the Year award will be announced on 6 April. Candidates were judged by an independent panel and rated according to operational excellence, innovation, customer experience and impact.