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MWC25 – Video Interview with Dr. Sibel Tombaz, Head of Product Line Cloud & Purpose-built 5G RAN, Ericsson

Marcin Piechowski
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MWC25 – Video Interview with Dr. Sibel Tombaz, Head of Product Line Cloud & Purpose-built 5G RAN, Ericsson

How Ericsson 5G Advanced has become the key to unlocking high-performing programmable networks

In this interview from Mobile Europe, Michelle Donagan asks Dr Sibel Tombaz, Head of Product Line Cloud & Purpose-built 5G RAN at Ericsson, about how high-performing programmable networks achieve differentiated connectivity at scale and new business models and how operators can monetize this.

Dr Tombaz also explains why Ericsson holds the view that high-performing programmable networks is now the way to build networks and how Ericsson 5G Advanced and AI fit into these high-performing programable networks.

High-performing programmable networks will enable a new business paradigm by facilitating the journey towards achieving differentiated connectivity at scale.

Additional information:

How Ericsson connect high-performing programmable networks and differentiated connectivity:
www.ericsson.com/en/5g/5g-for-service-providers/5g-advanced/solutions

Mobile Europe’s latest 5G Advanced report with Ericsson:
www.mobileeurope.co.uk/5g-advanced-research-report-feb2025

A1 Austria’s Exoscale migrates 21TB of data in a week 

Simon Dux
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A1 Austria’s Exoscale migrates 21TB of data in a week 


Now, just two A1 Austria engineers manage the large 30 node-cluster of 21TB storage as the telco moves systems to the cloud

A1 Austria, which is responsible for more than 50% of the €5.3bn revenue generated by parent A1 Group, has migrated its Elasticsearch clusters to the cloud as part of its underlying IT infrastructure transformation. The clusters used predominantly by the telco division at A1 Austria for advanced data analytics and run the largest and most business-critical workloads that were considered for migration.

When the cloud transition began, A1 Austria was running on-premises clusters of Elasticsearch and using Grafana dashboards to visualise the data and provide insights into the network. But the system was becoming increasingly complex, siloed and inefficient to manage. Perhaps more importantly, when Elasticsearch switched from a free, open-source model to a licensing model, A1 needed to head off any cost blowouts.

“Creating efficient dashboards that truly benefited the business could take weeks,” said A1 Austria core observability engineer Alexander Köstenbaumer. “Just because it’s a dashboard, it doesn’t mean it’s helpful – and we saw growing rates of exhaustion and confusion among our colleagues who were spending too much time trying to understand the information being presented to them.”

Move to OpenSearch

To do this, the telco used OpenSearch by Exoscale – the European cloud provider it acquired in 2017. At the time, A1 Group was leveraging Exoscale’s IT services, including compute, storage, Kubernetes and container solutions. The cloud provider was the obvious partner. All Exoscale’s database services are delivered exclusively by Helsinki-based AI platform company Aiven, including OpenSearch, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache Kafka and Grafana. A1 Austria opted for OpenSearch, a managed open-source Elasticsearch alternative.

The telco and Exoscale kicked off a proof-of-concept and in the end it took just one week to get everything up and running. A1 Austria now has a highly-scalable central observability infrastructure, based on a 30-node OpenSearch cluster with 21TB of storage – Exoscale’s largest deployment. It is growing at a rate of 10GB of data per day, or 300 GB of data each month, as data analysis and visualisation requirements of the A1 Austria telco team increase. Logstash is in place for data ingestion and Grafana dashboards remain for visualisation.

“We’ll need to add another cluster soon as we’re nearing capacity,” said Köstenbaumer. “To manage storage costs, we’ve adjusted our data retention policies and increased index rollover frequency. Fortunately, Exoscale cloud’s flexible nature allows us to add a small cluster and scale it as our data volume grows.”

Accelerating cloud adoption

OpenSearch has become an indispensable tool, with more than 100 technical users among the core network team relying on it daily to gain insights, and many more have access. “With OpenSearch, our data visualisation dashboards are running much faster. When we make a big data query, it’s at least double the speed,” said A1 VoLTE and VoWif acceptance expert Christoph Reiss. “It helps us identify network issues and fix them before they become major problems.”

The team has implemented custom alerts to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) from mobile voice and data core networks, including logins, active users, data usage and call failures. When a failure is detected, the responsible service team is immediately notified to investigate and resolve the issue. This dashboard, as well as others, are used by senior management to get an immediate view of how services are performing.

A1 Austria plans to move its instance of Grafana to Managed Grafana on Exoscale and is exploring Managed Apache Kafka on Exoscale, both powered by Aiven. “The triumph of the transition to OpenSearch has ignited a wave of cloud adoption across other parts of A1 Group,” said A1 Group IT services director, Momtchil Ivanov. He added that cloud adoption at A1 Group has since started to accelerate. It is migrating between 10 and 20 applications a month, and that rate is increasing.

Google shrugs off antitrust worries with $32bn Wiz acquisition

Simon Dux
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Google shrugs off antitrust worries with $32bn Wiz acquisition


The proposed deal is Google’s largest ever and eclipses the $23bn offer it made for the cybersecurity company under a year ago

Google LLC announced it is acquire New York-based cloud security platform Wiz for $32 billion, in an all-cash transaction. The deal comes less than a year since Google attempted to acquire the company – which fell apart after Wiz weighed antitrust and investor concerns as reasons for abandoning the potential deal.

However, the new US administration has already signalled a light-touch on AI regulation and despite still engaging in some antitrust initiatives, it is expected this light touch will carry over to the biggest tech companies. The deal will also be a major boon for the VC industry which has not seen windfalls since 2022 – and which predominately supports the new administration. The atmosphere around such deals – and Europe keenly knows – has shifted in favour of the deal.

For its part, Google will be pointing to the fact it still lags AWS and Microsoft on the cloud front – Wiz will join Google Cloud – and it stressed it wants to exploit Wiz’s multicloud capabilities. Wiz delivers an easy-to-use security platform that connects to all major clouds and code environments to help prevent cybersecurity incidents. Organisations of all sizes — from start-ups and large enterprises to governments and public sector organisations — can use Wiz to protect everything they build and run in the cloud. 

Wiz’s products will continue to work and be available across all major clouds, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud platforms, and will be offered to customers through an array of partner security solutions. Google Cloud will also continue to offer customers wide choice through a variety of partner security solutions available in the Google Cloud Marketplace.

Google Cloud wants to use Wiz to build a unified security platform that combines Wiz’s Cloud Security Platform with Google Security Operations, securing cloud-native applications at every stage of development, protecting code, CI/CD systems, and infrastructure. It will also use Wiz to provide precise threat intelligence that gives customers visibility into their own systems through the eyes of their adversaries. 

This can be done by the way Wiz’s solution scans a customer’s environment, constructing a comprehensive graph of code, cloud resources, services, and applications – along with the connections between them. It identifies potential attack paths, prioritises the most critical risks based on their impact.

MWC25 – Video Interview with Oleg Volpin, President, Europe, Telefonica Global and Network Offering Division, Amdocs

Marcin Piechowski
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MWC25 – Video Interview with Oleg Volpin, President, Europe, Telefonica Global and Network Offering Division, Amdocs

Mobile Europe’s Michelle Donegan speaks with Oleg Volpin, President, Europe, Telefonica Global and Network Offering Division, Amdocs

To learn more about Amdocs, please visit www.amdocs.com

Orange Polska upgrades IMS to boost call capacity

Simon Dux
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Orange Polska upgrades IMS to boost call capacity


The operator has been building 4G services based on IMS for a decade but it needed to handle more connections to better support VoLTE

Orange Polska revealed it has just expanded and modernised its IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), the network platform used to provide multimedia services over its IP network. The operator’s call management platform was last upgraded around 2016 but the number of services it offers and subscribers it has has grown since then necessitating a better platform to provide the interaction between different types of communication, such as voice, video and text – all with a higher service availability and security. 

Services that rely on this platform include voice calls in VoLTE and VoWiFi technology, video calls ViLTE , SMS in Wi-Fi Calling , and emergency calls. Orange set about the upgrade by adding an additional infrastructure node to the new IMS platform, essentially to boost capacity. Now it can simultaneously handle more connections, users and devices. Higher availability of services also translates into improved network security and resilience.

In a blog post, the operator said the last point was very important aspect also in the context of increasingly popular VoLTE voice calls. These use the IMS platform and the operator needs more network resources for them. In February, calls in this technology accounted for over 70% of all voice traffic in the Orange network. Some of this was driven by the 3G switch-off driving traffic onto VoLTE. 

Virtual world

Network functions are fully virtualised on the new platform. An example given is setting up a voice connection between two people, authorising a user and allowing them to access the network, redirecting a call or setting call priority. Virtualisation allows for more flexible management of the platform and faster response to potential failures. Virtualisation included partial migration to the cloud

The launch of the new IMS platform and its modernisation was accompanied by the migration of services. Orange transferred a dozen or so of them – among them, Business IP Telephony and consumer VoIP telephony. IMS also allows Orange to provide a substitute service for landline telephony. The user can transfer a landline number to a SIM card and use it in a specified area. Prepaid has already been migrated but Orange is still working on making call waiting work in all configurations. 

The operator pointed out that not all services have made the migration as yet. For example, ViLTE is excluded from the Ekstra eSIM service. Orange is working on implementing and adapting Ekstra eSIM to the ViLTE technology as the EVS codec is similar. However, while modernising the IMS platform is a step in this direction, it is not the only condition for implementation.

Today, the IMS platform is mainly associated with the LTE network, but its capabilities are greater. In the future, it will allow Orange to implement VoNR (Voice over New Radio) technology, i.e. voice calls made in the 5G network.

Network investments

Orange Polska invested over PLN 2 billion last year, focusing in particular on the development of 5G and the modernisation of its radio access network, as well as fibre investments as part of EU projects. After deducting revenues from the sale of real estate, the eCapex indicator amounted to PLN 1.8 billion.

At the end of December, Orange Światłowód (fire service) was already used by almost 1.6 million individual customers. In the last three months of the year, 72 thousand of them were added, including 26 thousand as a result of Orange’s purchase of local operators. Over the entire year, the number of fiber users increased by over 200,000. The operator is consistently expanding the reach of Orange Światłowód and currently 9 million households in the country can use it. 

Convergent home service packages are already used by nearly 1.8 million customers , which is 85,000 more than a year earlier. The number of mobile subscription customers at the end of the year was nearly 9.2 million , and during the year it increased by over 250,000, and in the fourth quarter alone by 66,000.

Open Fiber extends Intracom FWA partnership

Simon Dux
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Open Fiber extends Intracom FWA partnership


Promising up-to-gigabit speeds for Italy’s National Gigabit to the Home network

Italy’s Open Fiber has extended its cooperation with Greek vendor Intracom Telecom to supply and deploy fixed wireless access (FWA) for Gigabit to the Home across the nation. The two companies said they are committed to deploy reliable gigabit connectivity to thousands of households using 5G mmWave. 

The announcement comes almost a year after the two – as part of the tender for “Italia 1 Giga” plan – completed trials of Intracom’s WiBAS G5 dual-BS hub and G5 GigaConnect terminals operating at 28 GHz, reaching 1Gbps at 5km. Since 2019, Open Fiber has been pioneering in the use of FWA for rural networks in Italy, with an extensive deployment.

Open Fiber selected Intracom Telecom’s WiBAS G5 smart-BS as the key platform for its national rollout plan, bringing quality of service and gigabit speed connection to homes and businesses across Italy. It was chosen after delivering on three things: the ultra-fast speed of connection, the long range and the optimum spectrum utilisation to accommodate the highest possible subscriber density. 

Intracom reckons its FWA platform hosts several technologies, which allow a subscriber to enjoy high download speeds of 1Gbps and an equally high upload speed of 200Mbps. This performance is available at ranges extending to 6km, using 200MHz of spectrum at the 5G mm Wave (26.5-27.5GHz) frequency band. 

The WiBAS G5 smart-BS is a multiuser MIMO platform, with Active Antenna System using hybrid beamforming, consuming less power than conventional cellular mobile systems, achieving what the vendor claims is the highest spectral efficiency in the industry (29bit/s/Hz).

The stats are good but Ericsson for example, may argue differently. Last month the Swedish vendor teamed up with Qualcomm and Australian government-owned wholesaler NBN Co to conduct live field trials of 5G mmWave in parts of the NBN FWA network, achieving wholesale download speeds exceeding 1Gbps and upload speeds over 100Mbps at approximately 14 kilometres – albeit using 400Mhz.

“This collaboration with Intracom Telecom marks a significant step in our mission to provide high-speed connectivity across Italy, including rural and underserved areas,” said Open Fiber head of network engineering and innovation Francesca Parasecolo. “By leveraging Intracom Telecom’s advanced FWA technology, we can extend gigabit services to areas where other technologies are not cost-effective, ensuring fast, reliable, and energy-efficient internet access for both residential and business users. 

She added: “This partnership is instrumental in accelerating the digital transformation of Italy, contributing to our goal of making ultra-broadband accessible to everyone.”

“We are honoured by Open Fiber’s trust in our technology, and we are fully supporting its mission to expand ultra-fast internet connectivity in Italy, bridging the digital divide in rural regions,” said acting CEO of Intracom Kartlos Edilashvili. 

“Our technology plays a pivotal role in enhancing FWA services, delivering Gigabit connectivity where fiber and cellular mobile solutions face major limitations. This extension reinforces our shared commitment to bridging the digital divide and sets a new standard for FWA deployments across Europe,” he said. 

No stranger

Italy was the first country in Europe to auction 5G mmWave spectrum. The multi-band auction ended in October 2018 with 1000 MHz in the 26GHz band being assigned to five MNOs. The licences are valid until 2037. Italian regulator AGCOM adopted a “club use” model where licensees can share 26GHz spectrum on a geographical basis when frequencies are not being used. 

Since 2014, Intracom Telecom has been working in Italy’s telecom market, with its WiBAS product family deployed in over 50 networks worldwide, including 10 successful implementations across Italy. For example, in 2023, Eolo chose Intracom to upgrade its network, which at the time had more than 4,100 BTS (radio repeaters), connecting 1.6 million people and 116,000 businesses, public administrations and professionals. 

Open Fiber and Eolo have agreed to collaborate by utilising Eolo’s fixed wireless network to enhance ultra-broadband connectivity in underserved areas. This involves Open Fiber connecting Eolo’s towers with fibre, improving the overall network infrastructure. This collaboration extends a partnership that began in 2019 with the marketing of Eolo’s FTTH services on the Open Fiber network, followed by an agreement for Open Fiber to connect Eolo towers with fibre in 2021.

Fastweb also has a partnership with Eolo to accelerate the availability of high-capacity services in areas lacking high-performance fixed connectivity. This collaboration utilises Fastweb’s spectrum in the 26 GHz band, acquired during the 2018 5G auction, and Eolo’s FWA infrastructure to provide connections of up to 1Gbps. 

MWC25 – Video Interview with Patrik Rokyta, CTO, Titan.ium Platform

Marcin Piechowski
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MWC25 – Video Interview with Patrik Rokyta, CTO, Titan.ium Platform

Mobile Europe’s Michelle Donegan speaks with Patrik Rokyta, Chief Technology Officer, Titan.ium Platform on cloud-native transformation, telco security and AI.

To learn more about Titan.ium Platform, please visit https://titaniumplatform.com

Xavier Niel boosts Eir ownership to over 70 percent

Simon Dux
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Xavier Niel boosts Eir ownership to over 70 percent


As US hedge fund Davidson Kempner exits, Niel is making good his promise of owning Irish incumbent Eir shares until the day he dies

French telecom entrepreneur Xavier Niel has tightened his grip on Irish incumbent Eir after a US hedge fund Davidson Kempner sold its 8.9 per cent stake in the business in three tranches between last September and this February to the group’s ultimate holding company, Carraun Telecom. As Mobile Europe reported in October, Niel had started on a trajectory towards full ownership of Eir, as two US hedge funds began to exit their investment in Eir. 

NJJ Boru, a company controlled by Niel and his company Iliad, now owns more than 70 percent of Eir alongside US private equity firm Anchorage Capital. Niel has previously been on record stating it was his intention to buy out Anchorage at some stage. Davidson Kempner is exiting with a smile on its face – according to the Sunday Times, in the two years to the end of 2022, both it and Anchorage shared in €1.22 billion of dividend payments from Carraun on foot of payouts received from Eir. The telco has paid out more than €2 billion in dividends to its owners since Niel led a takeover in April 2018.

Eir last week reported revenues up 2% to €1.33 billion for the full year with EBITDA up 4% to €614 million. The telco said that 1.3 million premises are now passed by its fibre to the home (FTTH) network, up 17% on 2023, while a total of 2.2 million premises are passed by its combined FTTH and FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) networks, or 95% of premises in Ireland.

Eir said it has 886,000 fibre broadband connections, up 2% on 2023 and adding up to 94% of its total broadband base. In its results presentation, it pointed out that 56% of customers have triple or quad-play bundles. The telco also said it has a total of 1.5 million mobile customers, up 6% on the previous year. 1.2 million of these are postpaid customers. According to regulator ComReg, it had a 39 percent market share of the Irish retail and wholesale fixed-line market for the quarter ended 30 September, based on revenue. 

In 2017, Niel announced he was buying 32.9 percent of Eir through NJJ, his private holding company, while Iliad would own 31.6 percent – at the time, valuing the company at around €3.5 billion. As part of the deal, Iliad had the option to take control of the Irish operator through a call option, granted by NJJ, which was exercisable in 2024. Niel now owns telecoms businesses in 23 countries with more than 110 million subscribers. 

Danes raise telecom security threat levels to “high”

Simon Dux
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Danes raise telecom security threat levels to “high”


Danish cybersecurity agency releases threat assessment warning of increased state-sponsored cyber espionage activities targeting the telecom sector in Europe

In what is technically the first public warning by a European government agency, the Danish Agency for Society Security or Styrelsen for Samfundssikkerhed (SAMSIK) has raised the threat of cyber espionage against the Danish telecoms sector from “medium” to “high” in its latest report. This is due to increased activity from state-sponsored hacker groups against the European telecoms sector. Since the agency’s last cyber threat assessment for the telecoms sector, the threat picture for the telecoms sector has become more serious. As a result, telecoms and ISPs in Denmark must also be aware of attempted cyber attacks from foreign states, according to the agency.

In addition, it said the threat was raised for destructive cyber attacks against Denmark to “medium” in June 2024 and for cyber activism to “high” in January 2023. Both threat levels levels also apply to the telecoms sector. The threat from cybercrime to the telecoms sector also remains “very high”, including from ransomware attacks.

In the past, cyber espionage has mainly targeted telecoms providers in Asia and the Middle East, but now it is also increasingly targeting telecoms providers in Europe. The report highlights China, Russia and Iran as foreign states that “continuously use their cyber capabilities to carry out cyber espionage against the telecoms sector worldwide”. This is mainly because through cyber espionage against telecoms and internet service providers, they can gain access to large amounts of data about customers’ use of the provider’s infrastructure, including call data, internet traffic, customer data and location data.

The report says states are interested in this type of data because it can be used to monitor the communication and travel activities of individuals or groups of people. For example, China continuously attempts to monitor the Chinese diaspora in general and dissidents in particular, including minorities such as Uyghurs and Tibetans.

In addition, states can use stolen customer data from the telecoms sector to launch further espionage against customers they find interesting. This could be, for example, technical interception of telephone numbers belonging to politicians or dissidents abroad that the state may have an interest in following and spying on.

In addition to gaining access to telecoms and ISP customer data, foreign states can also use cyber espionage against the telecoms sector to prepare for destructive cyber attacks or physical sabotage. For example, SAMSIK estimated that some of the cyber espionage by Russian state hackers against critical infrastructure in Denmark is aimed at preparing destructive cyber attacks.

Intellectual property

The agency points out that the Danish telecom sector can also become attractive espionage targets for states if they develop or use modern technology or if they have knowledge and intellectual property that are attractive economically or technologically. SAMSIK pointed to January 2024, when US authorities indicted seven Chinese citizens on charges including economically motivated cyber espionage against US targets on behalf of the Chinese intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security. According to the indictment the espionage was aimed at targets in the telecoms sector, including a leading supplier of 5G network equipment.

SAMSIK said it believes that the use of telecommunications and network equipment and operational services from countries with which Denmark does not have security cooperation may pose a greater security risk than the use of equipment from countries with which Denmark cooperates. This is partly due to the fact that some states have the option of ordering companies to assist the country’s intelligence services – the agency cites China as an example here. 

Destructive attacks

The agency noted Russia has long had the capacity to carry out destructive cyberattacks against Denmark. However, since the beginning of 2024, Russia has shown a greater willingness to take risks in using hybrid means with destructive effects against European NATO countries. SAMSIK believes that this increased risk appetite also includes the use of destructive cyber attacks.

It goes on to say Russian tools for doing so cover methods and capabilities of a political, informational, military and economic nature and, in addition to cyber attacks, also include the ability to jam radio signals and sabotage critical infrastructure. “In general, Russia uses hybrid means more systematically, extensively and aggressively than any other country in the world,” it warns. 

Liberty Global looking to buy Vodafone out of Netherlands JV for more than €2bn

Annie Turner
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Liberty Global looking to buy Vodafone out of Netherlands JV for more than €2bn

Liberty Global’s CEO Mike Fries reportedly said it was “inevitable” that there would be discussions about the future of VodafoneZiggo

Liberty Global has reportedly approached Vodafone Group about buying its share of their Dutch joint venture VodafoneZiggo, which was approved in December 2016. According to Bloomberg, talks have been ongoing for the last few months, with Vodafone’s stake valued at more than €2 billion.

As a number of sources have pointed out, Liberty Global’s CEO, said that disussions about the future of the JV were “inevitable” at Goldman Sachs’ European Communicopia Conference last September. He acknowledged that the JV was performing well but claimed seven years is a long time for such an arrangement to run.

VodafoneZiggo, the 50:50 joint venture, offers fixed, mobile, integrated communication and entertainment services. According to MarketScreener, Liberty Global is the second largest shareholder in Vodafone with a stake of 5.325%, behind UAE’s Emirates Investment Authority which owns 15.73%.

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