Banking, chocolate, cuckcoo clocks, the Hadron Collider, Toblerone, watches, the web, and now AI
Swisscom announces the Swiss AI Platform allowing third parties to develop “trustworthy AI applications. The modular platform offers guaranteed data storage in Switzerland. From autumn 2024, it will give customers flexible access to NVIDIA supercomputers, generative AI services, an AI Work Hub for developing AI solutions and a library of models.
In other words, its ambition is to be a one-stop shop for AI solutions, “providing everything from advice to operation”. The platform is the next step in its collaboration with NVIDIA which it announced at the start of 2024 and encompasses AI infrastructure, platform and application services. According to Swisscom, the modular design “gives customers the flexibility to select and combine components according to their requirements”.
GPU Rental provides access to Switzerland’s first NVIDIA SuperPOD system which can process huge volumes of data; for instance, to training, fine tuning and run models.
The GenAI Studio gives customers access to generative AI services via APIs so they can create their own AI solutions.
The AI Work Hub is for data scientists who analyse and process large data volumes and develop and train models. It supports the collaborative development of customer-specific AI applications.
Swisscom’s model catalogue offers a curated library of open-source models. Models to be licensed or those developed by Swisscom in collaboration with third parties will be available later.
The operator says the NVIDIA infrastructure enhances Swisscom’s products with infrastructure and applications that offer maximum “Swissness” – that is particularly suitable for use cases involving sensitive data that must be stored and processed in Switzerland.
The operator adds that the close collaboration with NVIDIA enhances Swisscom’s partnerships with global public cloud providers, independent software companies and universities. Together with Swisscom’s 400 AI and data specialists, they constitute “a unique Swiss Center of Excellence”.
Urs Lehner, Head of Swisscom Enterprise Customers, said, “Understanding our customers’ needs is our top priority. We can then support them in setting up their AI projects and customising them accordingly. Sensitive data is in good hands thanks to our powerful, trustworthy Swiss infrastructure. It is a Swiss solution for the Swiss economy.”
2Africa is the world’s largest fibre cable system, connecting three continents and delivering more internet capacity to Africa than all the others that connect it today
Vodafone Group has landed 2Africa, the world’s largest subsea cable system in the UK, which will bring better internet connections to billions of people globally. The landing site is at the UK cable hub in Bude, Cornwall. Vodafone has been the partner for 11 landings of the subsea cable so far.
2Africa will improve connectivity between Africa and the rest of the world, and support the continent’s expected demand for services like mobile and fixed broadband. The landing in Cornwall will facilitate connectivity for UK businesses wanting to deliver digital services to Africa, and vice versa.
The cable has capacity of 180Tbps and will be the first system to provide continuous capacity around the African continent, connecting 33 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia.
It was launched in May 2020 and when completed, it will be over 45,000km long; that is, long enough to span the Earth’s circumference.
As the lead partner for the UK landing, Vodafone will be responsible for managing the physical cable coming ashore, burial on the beach and installation into a new, purpose built beach manhole where 2Africa will connect to terrestrial cable routing back to the existing Vodafone Cable Landing Station.
Vodafone will also provide 2Africa with onward connectivity via two diverse terrestrial infrastructure and fibre routes linking to the London area.
The 2Africa consortium is made up of eight international partners: Bayobab; Center3; China Mobile International; Meta; Orange; Telecom Egypt; Vodafone Group; and WIOCC. Alcatel Submarine Networks is responsible for the manufacture and installation of the 2Africa cable.
Vodafone owns dual fibre cables that have a lifespan of 25 years within the subsea infrastructure and recently started carrying customers’ traffic on them. They twin fibre pairs are named after Vodafone Group’s Head of Subsea Partnerships, Rick Perry and referred to as SHARP (the System Honouring the Achievements of Rick Perry).
Perry has been involved in the cable project since the beginning and the naming of the Vodafone cable recognises his 50 years in international communications. He attended the Cable & Wireless training college in nearby Porthcurno and is now a trustee for the PK Porthcurno Museum of Global Communications (pictured – and highly recommended by the editor, you enter via a bombproof, underground tunnel dug with the help of Welsh miners in World War II) which sits on the site of the college.
Vodafone’s experience in subsea cables can be traced back, through its ancestors, to the landing of its first telegraph cable in Porthcurno, Cornwall in 1870. The company continues to be one of the largest investors in subsea cable systems with capacity on around 80 systems that reach 100 countries.
More information on Vodafone global infrastructure activity is available here.
The two have launched a new technology hub, at the OGR Tech, is dedicated to developing and experimenting with the Cloud and AI
Long-term partners TIM and Google Cloud have built their first customer innovation centre at the OGR Tech – OGR Turin innovation hub that will be home to an intelligent laboratory dedicated to developing and experimenting with cloud technologies and AI to demonstrate the technologies’ potential when applied to different segments such as smart cities, tourism, manufacturing, retail and finance. It joins the existing centre, where TIM Enterprise and Google Cloud continue to operate at the Opening Future Hub in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo.
The move comes as Italy positions itself to lead the AI debate in Europe. Last month the government earmarked an initial investment of up to €1 bn to promote AI projects and startups, which will be backed by state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni recently said AI will be among the key issues of Italy’s presidency of the G7, which lasts until the end of this year.
This week Accenture published a study that concluded Italian companies could increase the added value they create by about €50 billion euros by 2030 with the generalised use of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), according to Reuters.
In for the long-haul
The collaboration between TIM and Google Cloud dates back to 2020. TIM Group built new data centres to be the backbone infrastructure for two new Google Cloud regions in Italy. The Piedmontese capital is already home to one of the two Google Cloud regions, inaugurated in March last year. The Turin Region is housed in one of TIM Enterprise’s 16 data centres.
TIM’s cloud company Noovle is a key Google Cloud partner in Italy and was responsible for migrating just over a quarter (26%) of TIM’s private cloud solutions from on-premises data centers to Google Cloud, using Compute Engine to create and run virtual machines.
In 2020, TIM and Google Cloud launched of the first platform in Italy that enabled smart mobility on TIM’s Edge Cloud 5G technology. The platform combines the Google Distributed Cloud Virtual software with TIM’s Telco Cloud infrastructure and 5G mobile network. That project used TIM’s 5G network in the Bologna and Modena area to allow MASA (Modena Automotive Smart Area) and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia test new solutions for self-driving and assisted cars, as well as applications for Advanced Cloud Mobility.
TIM knows which way the wind is blowing
Recent research carried out by the TIM Study Centre in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center shows that the AI market is developing strongly in Italy, as elsewhere, with an estimated value of €1.9bn in 2023, growing by 37% per year to around €6.6bn in 2027. This will be supported mainly by investments in the finance, ICT, TLC, manufacturing and retail sectors, with further growth potential in the healthcare, public administration and agriculture segments.
From 2022 to 2026, the cumulative contribution of AI to Italy’s GDP could reach up to €195bn, corresponding to an average annual value of almost 40 billion euros, or about 2% of GDP. The market is beginning to show increasing demand for automation and AI systems, and growth in that demand is estimated to increase by 52%, with both predictive analytics and production optimisation solutions accounting for a significant share: 60% of large companies across various sectors already use AI, according to Politecnico di Milano.
TIM Enterprise and Google Cloud intend to use the innovation centre to translate research into real use cases applicable to the market. There will be a focus on disruptive technologies such as Generative and Predictive Artificial Intelligence, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Machine Learning and the Internet of Things, offering smart solutions capable of developing the competitiveness and business of companies and public bodies against a constantly evolving backdrop.
“We want to simplify the technology choices of companies and public bodies that are now operating in an increasingly fast-paced market where the Cloud and AI are among the main accelerators of digital transformation,” said TIM chief enterprise and innovative solutions officer Elio Schiavo (above). “We are leading players in these sectors – so much so that in 2023 we recorded cloud revenues of €1bn, with a strong growth trend that continued in the first quarter of this year.”
“The new Customer Innovation Center strengthens our relationship with companies, the public administration and our partners, such as Google Cloud, making us increasingly a standard bearer for innovation,” he added.
“Through collaboration and hands-on learning, the centre will equip companies and institutions with the tools to develop innovative solutions that address their specific challenges and place them at the heart of the digital transformation,” said Google Cloud customer engineering director, Italy, Paolo Spreafico.
The operator said demo areas are available in the centre to demonstrate the potential of the applications: these range from TIM Urban Genius, a platform for managing smart cities, and virtual and augmented reality solutions for the immersive enjoyment of content drawn from artistic and cultural attractions to services dedicated to enhancing entertainment, sustainable data centres and the various areas of use for generative and predictive AI.
Liquid’s C2 cloud unit claims to be the first provider in Africa to support hybrid network connections to Google Cloud
Pan African service provider Liquid Intelligent Technologies (LIT) has announced that its cloud and security services Liquid C2, has become the first Google Cloud Interconnect provider on the continent. The move comes only one week after Google announced it was partnering LIT to build the terrestrial section of its new Umoja cable that will link Africa to Australia for the first time. The pan-African network operator and techco has a presence in 21 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.
The strategic partnership with Google Cloud adds significant capacity to the cloud solutions that Liquid C2 already offers its customers across Africa through its Cloud Connect portfolio. The two companies signed their first MoU in November 2023 around cybersecurity and cloud offerings and in March Liquid C2 announced collaborations with Google Cloud and Anthropic (pictured above) to deliver advanced cloud and generative AI capabilities to African businesses across the continent.
Cloud Interconnect extends organisations’ external networks directly to the Google Cloud network through a private, high-availability, low-latency connection. As a Google Cloud Interconnect provider, Liquid C2 can offer its customers direct access to Google Cloud services.
“Being the first Google Cloud Interconnect provider on the continent is a significant milestone on our journey to becoming the leading provider of cloud solutions in Africa,” said Liquid C2 chief executive officer Oswald Jumira. “By partnering with Google Cloud, we can leverage the strengths of both organisations to offer solutions that address the needs of the African market. Direct access to the Google Cloud network will bring about the enhanced security and operating efficiencies that our customers in wholesale, enterprise, and government are seeking.”
“This collaboration demonstrates the value of strategic partnerships in enabling a more connected and digitally inclusive continent, as well as our mutual goal of providing access to the technology that drives business growth,” said Google Cloud managing director Turkey, Middle East & Africa Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban.
Orange partnership in Morocco
C2’s parent Liquid Intelligent Technologies has partnered with Medi Telecom, part of the Orange Group in Morocco to bring extended network coverage and enhanced services to Liquid Dataport clients in the region. The partnership positions Liquid as a single supplier of its full range of digital services in Morocco, eliminating the need for multiple supplier networks.
Medi Telecom, which offers its customers telecommunications and digital services under the Orange brand, gains access to Liquid’s connectivity network, making it a preferred supplier able to support high availability that can be passed on to customers.
“This strategic partnership with Medi Telecom will enable easier access to connectivity for our international customers, along with access to Liquid’s full portfolio of services, including our extensive pan-African fibre network, LEO/MEO/GEO satellite solutions and Liquid C2’s innovative cloud and cyber security solutions,” said LIT chief executive Ahmed El Beheiry.
“The choice of Medi Telecom as a preferred partner in Morocco builds on our longstanding relationship with Orange in several African countries, solidifying the existing business relationship and unlocking new possibilities for both to expand their network reach,” he added.
Subsidiary United Fiber will build new terrestrial cable between Athens and Thessaloniki as its parent United Group attracts the interest of Saudi’s stc
European telecom and pay-tv operator United Group has announced its subsidiary United Fiber will build a terrestrial cable between Athens and Thessaloniki, which will be part of a wider regional backbone aiming to enhance United Group’s infrastructure footprint in the Southeastern Europe. The new terrestrial cable will kick off in September 2024 and to be completed by the end of 2025 and will connect Greece further to UG points of presence in Sofia and Belgrade and, through crossing all Balkan region, will reach West Europe’s main hubs.
The announcement comes after Reuters broke the news that Saudi Arabia’s stc Group was in the early stages of considering an offer for United Group, currently owned by UK investment firm BC Partners, which acquired United Group in 2019 from KKR. While said deal is reportedly at an early stage, stc does understand the assets at play as its towerco subsidiary TAWAL, began operations in Europe last September having completed the acquisition of United Group’s telecom tower assets. They gained 4,800 sites spread across Bulgaria, Croatia, and Slovenia. The deal was announced in April.
Attractive proposition
Curiously, after the pending deal was revealed, United Group issued a news release that didn’t really have a lot of news in it but did have a veritable shopping list of the telco’s fibre assets. The company said United Fiber now owns 60,000km of backbone and metro network spanning across 4 EU markets Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia – reaching 3.6 million homes.
United Fiber’s overall investment pipeline is €450 million (2024-2028) and while infrastructure wholesale activities are managed by UGI, the actual fibre assets are now segmented into a single asset portfolio. The company is forecasting adding a further 475,000 FTTH homes in 2024 with a similar pace in the following years.
Beginning with the registration of the newly established company in Slovenia in March 2024, which will be followed by Bulgaria and Croatia by the end of this year, the Group said it is focused on further accelerating and strengthening its investments.
United Fiber Greece has been able to accelerate its impact with 20% FTTH penetration on its own network (versus 8% national), according to the company. In Bulgaria the United said it has the largest FTTH network in the country reaching 50% of all households with the plan to expand to 67% by 2028. In Croatia around 80,000 households are added per year with the telco’s plan to reach 40% of all households by 2028. In Slovenia, United owns the second largest gigabit-enabled network covering around 50% of the total households in the country.
The Greece project
The Athens – Thessaloniki terrestrial cable will cover 548km of network, passing through eight key cities of Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki Volos, Lamia, Larissa, Livadeia, Katerini, Thebes). From Thessaloniki, the new route will connect Sofia and Belgrade and, through crossing all Balkan region, will reach West Europe’s main hubs through Ljubljana.
To the East, it will be able to reinforce the existing interconnections with Turkey and the Middle East, strengthening the existing interconnection with Bulgaria. To the West and South, the new route will be part of the current backbone linking Athens with existing submarine cable to Italy and Crete.
“By creating this completely new route, United Group tangibly demonstrates its commitment to be the largest fiber network provider in Southeastern Europe, enhancing competitiveness, creating new investment opportunities and accelerating the digital transformation of all countries involved,” said UGI wholesale CEO Paolo Ficini. “The project meets the increasing demand coming from the significant investment in new data centers in the region, as well as in new submarine cables landing in Greece in the Southern border.”
The launch of HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G will help enterprises and even telcos accelerate and simplify the deployment and management of private 5G networks
Hewlett Packard Enterprise surprised financial analysts this week after demand for its AI-optimised servers blew away their estimates at the company’s earnings call. The company forecast third-quarter revenue of $7.4 billion to $7.8 billion, compared with analysts’ estimate of $7.46 billion. The current AI boom helped its server revenue rise 18% YoY, to $3.9 billion in Q2 ended 30 April – more than doubling sequentially to $900 million, and with an order backlog in the billions.
However, beyond the AI excitement, during the earnings call CEO Antonio Neri also pointedly highlighted how its HPE Aruba Networking unit’s latest Enterprise Private 5G launch this week could be the final piece of the 5G and wi-fi co-existence jigsaw for enterprises.
“We announced significant new innovations during the quarter to align with HPE’s broader AI strategy. These solutions include generative AI capabilities to improve AIOps, and Wi-Fi 7 access points that capture edge data for AI inferencing,” he said. “In addition, last month we launched new security and AI observability tools to help fight AI cyber risks. And just yesterday, we expanded the most complete private 5G and wi-fi portfolio in the market with the launch of HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G. All of this will be delivered through our HPE GreenLake cloud platform.”
It is difficult to gauge exactly how big the private 5G opportunity may grow to, particularly as definitions vary widely. However, analysts are still prepared to take a stab. For example, SNS Telecom & IT’s “Private 5G Networks: 2024 – 2030” report predicts that annual investments in private 5G networks for vertical industries will grow at a CAGR of approximately 42% between 2024 and 2027, eventually accounting for nearly $3.5 billion by the end of 2027.
HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G, simplifies the deployment and management of private 5G networks. More importantly, the solution integrates wi-fi and private 5G – with a coherent management roadmap – addressing connectivity challenges in large and remote environments such as manufacturing, healthcare, public venues and education.
The platform includes a 4G/5G core, HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers, SIM/eSIM cards, 4G/5G small cells, and a dashboard. It provides cloud-native management, expanded AI data capabilities, and interoperability with shared spectrum. The system, built on the expertise from HPE’s acquisition of Athonet, delivers rapid deployment and configuration.
Unifying private 5G and wi-fi management
At first glance it looks like HPE has taken a big step to integrating the management of the private 5G infrastructure with HPE Aruba’s wi-fi management and if the company cracks that, enterprises will have a unified client experience when roaming between wi-fi and mobile.
“HPE’s vision is one of unified connectivity,” HPE Aruba Networking head of wireless product marketing Gayle Levin (above) told Mobile Europe. “We are creating a unified management system in HPE Aruba Networking Central that supports common wi-fi and private 5G services and can be managed using a single pane of glass.”
“The first step is to modify the Athonet cloud management dashboard to include radio management and to deliver a look and feel common to HPE Aruba Networking Central,” she said. “We’re also developing the intelligence based on Passpoint and our work with Air Pass to allow devices that can run on both private 5G and wi-fi to use SIM identity for both so that they have the same level of access to resources on wi-fi and private 5G.”
Another issue to resolve in deployments is whether the SIM or wi-fi certificate would be the primary identity for the device. “For devices that support both wi-fi and private cellular, the SIM will be the primary identity and that identity will be shared across wi-fi,” said Levin. “We’ve been working on seamless handoffs for some time, using Air Pass and the Passpoint standard to coordinate shared identity, access to resources, and more.”
Management system integration
She explained how the mobile management system and the HPE Aruba Central management system work together. We’re integrating at the management level – HPE Aruba Networking Central will be the unifying function and single pane of glass across wi-fi, private 5G, wired and SD-WAN and it will also be supported in HPE GreenLake for financial and consumption flexibility with NaaS,” said Levin.
“The small cells and wi-fi APs will remain physically separate since combining the small cell and AP would be cost prohibitive, complicate deployment and purchasing decisions, and constrain product development and life cycles,” she said. “However, we believe that the value is in integrating the Day 0 to Day N management and making it simple enough for network admins to manage without requiring deep cellular expertise. The same AI capabilities that we use for wi-fi will be extended to private 5G networks.”
Not either-or technologies
Levin emphasises that despite the work HPE Aruba has done to make the 5G and wi-fi as seamless as possible, the company sees the two technologies as complementary. “For example, at the 2023 Ryder Cup, wi-fi was used at the clubhouse for fan access while private 5G was used for wider area coverage at the far fairways to support video streaming and for wi-fi backhaul.”
She added that to date, most of the adoption of private 5G has been in manufacturing, energy, and transportation to take advantage of its deterministic access, wider area coverage, traffic segmentation and high-speed mobility. “As private 5G becomes easier to deploy and manage, we believe that the market will grow and we’ll see more use in other areas such as mission-critical, back-of-office applications at public venues where wi-fi is used to deliver the ultimate fan experience and private 5G is used for optical ticket scanners or universities where private 5G complements wi-fi to backhaul safety video or provide connectivity for pop-up events,” she said.
The deployment will be part of an initiative to foster the ecosystem for open 5G campus networks and Germany in Europe, CampusOS
The Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut (HHI – pictured), which researches and develops mobile and optical communication networks and systems, has chosen IS-Wireless to deploy a private 5G network. Fraunhofer HHI co-coordinates the CampusOS flagship project, which supports the development of an ecosystem for 5G campus networks in Germany and Europe.
The project’s consortium includes Bosch, Siemens, Rohde & Schwarz and Deutsche Telekom. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).
The IS-Wireless installation is intended to contribute to designing high-demand, 5G-based campus networks that will be later be deployed commercially in the German market. The networks will support applications such as Industry 4.0, including the coordination of automated guided vehicle fleets (AGVs) and 3D mapping of storage areas to improve in-house transport processes.
Other potential use cases include connected construction sites and construction logistics. According to IS-Wireless the “near real-time coordination of distributed and partially mobile work processes is essential, based on digital twins of construction sites”. How did we ever build those pyramids?
It continues, “[In] such applications, the optimal placement of the data processing infrastructure, as well as mechanisms ensuring that unwanted interferences do not lead to a disruption of the existing sensors, are essential. IS-Wireless, with its Private 5G, addresses these issues.”
IS-Wirless will deliver its Open RAN Distributed Unit and Centralized Unit, and and near real-time RAN Intelligent Controller for indoor and outdoor installations at a Fraunhofer HHI site at Berlin’s Lanolinfabrik.
“In considering industrial applications, handling very large data volumes and ensuring very low latencies for communication and data processing are mandatory. We also focus on interference, either by preventing them from occurring or by using them to our advantage, thanks to the scheduler we’ve designed,” says Artur Chmielewski, Head of Sales at IS-Wireless.
The former CTO of Vodafone Group says, “I am confident that my experience can help the company achieve its ambitious goals”
Johan Wibergh, the esteemed former CTO of Vodafone Group, has joined AST SpaceMobile’s board of directors. Wibergh has more than 35 years’ experience in the telecoms sector and retired from Vodafone in 2022. He was succeeded by Scott Petty who became group CTIO.
Wibergh formerly held several roles at Ericsson and sits on boards at technology companies including Bell Canada and Cohere Technologies. Wibergh will also chair AST SpaceMobile’s new network planning and spectrum committee for its satellite constellation.
AST SpaceMobile’s Founder, Chairman and CEO, Abel Avellan, said, “[Wibergh’s] extensive experience in building and operating large-scale networks, coupled with his proven track record of success in driving innovation and growth, will be invaluable to us as we progress towards commercialization of our space-based cellular broadband network.”
Wibergh said, “AST SpaceMobile’s technology has the potential to eliminate connectivity gaps and bridge the digital divide, making the world a more equitable place, and I am confident that my experience can help the company achieve its ambitious goals.”
Partner content: The central issue for CSPs is that telecom technology has evolved more quickly than telco operations
The 5G revolution is well under way, though with more bumps in the road and progressing more slowly than most communication service providers (CSPs) had hoped. Ask CSP leaders why, and they’ll point to the lack of a “killer app” to monetize 5G investments as the biggest reason.
Next biggest: high ongoing operational costs, followed by painfully slow time-to-value for new services, with most CSPs still needing months to update their offerings. Look beneath the surface, however, and you’ll find a common problem underlying all these pain points: telco technology has evolved more quickly than telco operations.
Unlike with 4G/LTE, the true promise of 5G was never just about higher data rates. It was meant to catalyze telco transformation. Arguably, the real value was to enable new capabilities like API-driven service frameworks, network slicing, ultra-low latencies, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), and more, so that CSPs could create new differentiated services and rapidly bring them to customers. In that sense, 5G is less a solution than a next-generation toolkit for building new solutions.
So why aren’t we seeing those new solutions in production? With few exceptions, CSPs have moved quickly in adopting next-gen technologies, but they haven’t yet adopted the next-gen operations needed to fully capitalize on them. The result is a growing number of 5G networks that have the potential to do amazing things but still mostly don’t, because network teams are struggling to operationalize them at scale.
There’s an important lesson here: CSPs can’t truly innovate without simplifying operations. In a software-driven, on-demand marketplace, this requires an automated services delivery framework that exists independent of any specific services or networks—with zero-touch provisioning, orchestration, CI/CD pipelines, and critically, observability and assurance. In short, effective telco transformation requires an automation-first approach.
Barriers to Innovation
Most CSP leaders recognize the need to adopt agile and cloud-native software practices such as infrastructure as code (IaC), Git repositories, CI/CD toolchains, and others from the world of IT. Indeed, many view these modern software approaches as central to making telco services as flexible and on-demand as other cloud services. So far though, very few CSPs have actually implemented them. We can point to several reasons why:
Short-term focus – Like all organizations, telcos have a tendency to focus on addressing immediate operational pain points. Sometimes though, short-term solutions end up delaying more substantive and necessary change. Consider network function virtualization (NFV). Most CSPs approached virtualization piecemeal, focusing first on NF deployment, then standing up infrastructure, and so on for each operational task. Very few took the opportunity to fundamentally rethink their operational approach—even though swapping dedicated appliances for dynamic software NFs absolutely warranted it.
Need for “carrier-grade” practices – While CSP operations can certainly benefit from IT methodologies, telco infrastructures are not the same as enterprise networks. In addition to being more heavily regulated (with stiff penalties for downtime), CSP networks must comply with a broad range of standards that are alien to enterprise IT. Specifications from 3GPP, European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), TM Forum, and others demand stringent compliance. The challenge then is not just to bring IT methodologies to telecom, but to synthesize best practices from both worlds into a unified operating environment.
Lack of effective automation tools – Along the same lines, many of the most widely used IT automation tools are open-source. But while open-source software has its virtues, it can be a poor fit for the performance, security, and scalability requirements of CSP infrastructures. Too often, automation that’s good enough for web environments breaks down under the stringent demands of real-time communication services at scale. Given the complexity inherent in building and maintaining open-source automation, even many enterprises are beginning to pull back on this model.
Finally, CSP leaders tell us that it can sometimes be hard to get buy-in from internal teams due to fears that “operational transformation” is just a codeword for reducing headcount. Vendors share responsibility for this misconception, given our tendency to highlight cost savings as a benefit of automation. Advanced automation tooling does make individual tasks less expensive to perform, but it almost never reduces jobs. Typically, it creates new ones – just higher-level jobs.
In practice, automation simplifies more repetitive and redundant tasks, freeing network teams to spend more of their time engaged in higher-value work, such as advanced network optimization and performance tuning. In this sense, the biggest long-term economic benefit of automation is that it empowers teams to operationalize new technologies more quickly—a prerequisite for monetizing them. By automating, CSPs lay the foundation for ongoing innovation. Now, they can move more quickly, delivering software and services with more flexibility and consistency. Ultimately, they can experiment and iterate faster, exploring more ideas at a lower cost, with less risk.
Unlock true transformation
When telco operations evolve alongside telco technology—instead of trying to catch up after the fact —CSPs can do some amazing things. They can:
Capitalize on AI – Seemingly every business is currently investing in artificial intelligence (AI), including CSPs. For telcos, the biggest value of AI is its potential to take closed-loop actions in the network—accelerating deployments, optimizing capacity, detecting and fixing performance issues, even identifying new services that haven’t occurred to humans. But even the world’s smartest AI models can’t do those things in telco networks today, because too many network operations are still manual.
Improve sustainability – Automation, especially paired with AI, can enable greener operations. Forward-looking CSPs are already exploring new solutions to power down network elements when not in use, reducing power consumption and carbon footprint. Future CSP networks will be able to do things like dynamically land workloads in locations with the most available energy from renewables.
Overcome skills shortages – Even CSPs that prioritize automation have struggled to acquire network engineers with the requisite skillsets. By implementing automation using familiar IT models for CI/CD pipelines, cloud architectures, and agile software practices, telco operations now “speak the same language” as enterprise IT organizations worldwide. So there’s a much larger pool of talent with the relevant skills that CSPs can hire from.
Innovate with agility – Developing new telco services the traditional way takes months or years, often costing millions. With software-driven automation, CSPs can take ideas from conception to real-world trials in a fraction of the time. They can “fail fast,” identify what’s working and what isn’t, and change direction much more quickly and inexpensively.
When CSPs automate, they can begin to treat their infrastructures like other modern software applications, with all the agility and flexibility that implies. They can take the aspects of their business that no other player can duplicate – vast network footprints, proven quality and reliability, unmatched RF engineering expertise – and continually assemble differentiated, high-value offerings. This is the foundation for true telco transformation.
Preparing for the next Killer App
CSPs are actively investing in enabling new business use cases to drive monetization of 5G. It’s time to recognize that in the modern digital services landscape, monetization must be built on a foundation of customer centricity, innovation, and effective risk management. If you’re part of a CSP organization, how should you prioritize your transformation and automation goals to maximize ROI, while managing the inherent risks of product and service innovation?
We believe there’s a clear answer: building a foundation for rapid innovation that will enable CSP teams to iterate faster. This starts with breaking down operational silos and building a foundation for modern software development. A horizontal platform approach obviates the need to maintain a patchwork of legacy tools, processes, and skillsets that often hamper innovation and slow teams down. Additionally, a horizontal approach simplifies end-to-end observability and assurance, which are prerequisites for successful 5G monetization and an essential foundation for 6G.
Wherever you begin, it’s worth investing in this agile services foundation even before you’ve identified the next killer app. Indeed, it’s only by embracing transformation on its own terms—building an operational model explicitly to facilitate ongoing change—that you gain the baseline for business agility. When you have that framework in place, and the next killer app does emerge, you can quickly pivot to exploit it, even as others are still beginning their own transformations.
Is there risk in investing in agile automation? Potentially, but there’s even greater risk in playing it safe. If and when new 5G/6G use cases emerge as true gamechangers, opening a path to transform from traditional telco to modern “tech-co,” it’s the leaders in the new software space who will be ready to help. Hang onto the old ways, and the partners invested in perpetuating them, at your peril.
About the authors
Moshe Lavi is Product Manager, Software-Defined Edge, VMware by Broadcom
Michael McGroarty, Business Development, Software-Defined Edge, VMware by Broadcom
Robert McIntyre, Business Development, Software-Defined Edge, VMware by Broadcom
Francesco Sorrentino, Business Development, Software-Defined Edge, VMware by Broadcom
