The impending EU roaming legislation will likely affect operators from 2015

Starting this week, European operators are looking at the development of a coherent strategy to prepare for the arrival of roaming MVNOs in 2014. From May 14 to June 3, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) is holding a public consultation on draft guidelines in relation to regulated retail roaming services.

The latest set of regulation proposals, if implemented, will bring fundamental change to the structure of the European roaming market, requiring European mobile network operators to open their networks to providers of voice and data roaming services acting as MVNOs, from July 2014.

The new Roaming Regulation includes a provision to allow retail customers to request roaming services from a separate roaming provider than the one providing their domestic mobile services – a process known as decoupling. In particular, domestic providers are required to enable their customers to access regulated voice, SMS and data roaming services provided as a bundle from any alternative roaming provider. Domestic and alternative roaming providers must also allow their retail customers to access local data roaming services provided directly on a visited network – known as decoupling in the visited country.

Two types of decoupling models are considered in the regulation. For the first type of decoupling, where regulated voice, SMS and data roaming services are provided as a bundle, the Single-IMSI solution has been chosen. Under the Single-IMSI proposal the separate sale of roaming services is technically still provided by the domestic provider , which serves as the host mobile network operator to the alternative roaming provider. The separate sale of roaming services is provided on a wholesale basis to the alternative roaming provider, which resells the services to the roaming customer at the retail level. This basic option of resale of retail roaming services does not allow the alternative roaming provider to control which visited networks are to be used in preference to others.

For the second type of decoupling – data roaming services provided directly on a visited network – the basic requirements are the implementation and activation of the processing of data roaming traffic in the visited network and the requirement not to prevent the manual or automatic selection of a visited network.

Paul Lambert, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, said that based on past experience with roaming-regulation proposals, operators should expect the roaming market to change as of July 2014 in the ways described.

But he notes that although the proposals lay the foundation for an intensifying of competition in the European roaming market, there is at present little appetite – if any – among telecoms and non-telecoms firms to enter the market as roaming MVNOs. “Although this is likely to change as July 2014 nears – presuming the regulation in its current form comes into effect – European operators’ roaming revenues don’t look set to be eroded by new roaming MVNOs until 2015 at the earliest,” he said.

The main strategic choice operators face is whether to actively recruit roaming MVNOs for voice and/or data services, or simply comply with the bare-minimum requirements of the regulation.

“Operators have to decide if they see a benefit in extending their reach into other European markets by setting up their own roaming MVNOs.
“Given the strong likelihood that the regulation will come into effect in its current form, operators should seriously consider whether their roaming interests will be best served by actively pursuing agreements with the companies that would most benefit from entering the European roaming market as MVNOs,” Lambert added.

Vodafone will piggyback on Deutsche Telekom’s network

Vodafone Germany on Thursday announced a deal with local fixed line operator Deutsche Telekom that will see Vodafone offering high speed fixed line broadband and IPTV nationwide.

The next generation network access contract will see Vodafone initially use DT’s VDSL network under a bespoke Layer 3 IP bitstream agreement. Vodafone will be able to offer its customers connection speeds of up to 50Mbps from the outset, rising to 100Mbps once DT has deployed vectoring technology. Vodafone’s will also offer on-demand and broadcast IPTV services.

Going forward, the two companies have agreed that a more advanced Layer 2 (Ethernet-based) bitstream product will be made available from 2016, which will allow an even greater level of differentiation and control over the design and delivery of the services that Vodafone offers to consumers and enterprise customers.

Vodafone Group Chief Executive for Northern and Central Europe, Philipp Humm, said: “Our agreement with Deutsche Telekom will greatly enhance our ability to offer our German customers a range of competitive, high-speed broadband and TV services, in addition to our industry-leading mobile services, in line with our broader Europe-wide strategy.”

Michele Zarri, head of international standardisation and IP management, Deutsche Telekom, UK

Michele Zarri, head of international standardisation and IP management, Deutsche Telekom, UK, is speaking on VoLTE vs OTT Voice on Day Two of the LTE World Summit, taking place on the 24th-26th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Speaking ahead of the show, Zarri explains why he feels the operator provided voice services will still offer benefits to consumers over OTT VoIP applications.

What is your timeline for VoLTE and what benefits will it bring?

Early versions of VoLTE have already been launched in some markets such as Korea and Hong Kong. Operators are currently focussing on deploying LTE, but deployment of IMS platforms, accelerated by the desire to launch Joyn, is taking place simultaneously. Additionally, given the availability of devices compliant to the GSMA’s IR.92 standard, expected during the course of 2013, there is no technical impediment to launching VoLTE. As a consequence I expect to see commercial services rolled out by the end of this year (2013) in most developed markets with international roaming launched within two years after that.

From an operator point of view, the main benefit of VoLTE is being able to provide the voice service natively over the packet switched access, while avoiding disruption to back-office processes. This removes the last constraint justifying the running of circuit-switched networks; therefore achieving the objective of moving fully to the more efficient packet-switched access.

What appeal will VoLTE have to consumers over and above their favourite OTT apps?

Today customers are already replacing the mobile operators offered voice service with their favourite OTT application. The reasons why OTT apps have not been adopted in large scale therefore is not the availability of broadband mobile access, but due rather to the benefits offered by operator-supplied voice. Such advantages will not be lost in the migration to VoLTE. What I am thinking of is reach (call and be called by anyone), security (a trusted relationship with the operator and strong encryption), privacy (user data is safe with an operator), familiar interface (voice client is natively integrated in the handset), seamless user experience (use of phone numbers, set of supplementary services), predictability (well-known charging scheme) and, last but not least, quality, as the network is configured to prioritise voice traffic over other types of traffic.

The LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, is taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a brochure for the event.

Will VoLTE sound significantly better than current voice calls?

Calls between two VoLTE users will use the HD voice codec, resulting in a far superior experience. In fact HD Voice is already available over 3G networks, therefore in time the vast majority of the mobile to mobile calls will enjoy the benefits of such a codec. Fast forwarding a few years, as IMS allows the device of the caller and of the called party to negotiate the codec used, it is imaginable that new and more powerful codecs will be introduced and used for Voice over IMS calls.

Why was VoLTE not baked into LTE from initial launch of the technology?

The goal of 3GPP when developing LTE was primarily to create a radio technology that could meet the IMT‑advanced requirements issued by ITU, therefore the service layer was not in focus. Furthermore, in 2008, when the LTE specifications were released, IMS was already a three-year old technology and earmarked as the means to create voice services over a packet switched access. In fact, you will notice that no service except connectivity was, to use your expression, baked into LTE, though the low-latency target and support for guaranteed bit-rate were evidently tailored for the support of voice and other multimedia services.

Is any kind of VoLTE launch practical without SRVCC widely implemented?  (In a network without SRVCC implemented, please explain what happens when a VoLTE call is made to a handset that goes out of LTE coverage?)

Indeed SRVCC will be important functionality in the early days of VoLTE due to the expected patchy LTE coverage. However, when operators start rolling out voice over HSPA, which has also been profiled in GSMA, the occurrence of SRVCC events will become much less frequent, since the far more efficient packet switched handover will be used instead to move from LTE to 3G. Other positive aspects are that field tests by Deutsche Telekom have shown that the predicted long interruption of the service in case of SRVCC have been overestimated.

As a VoLTE call would fail when the handset goes out of coverage, operators are unlikely to deploy VoLTE until SRVCC is available and will instead rely on CS Fallback, whereby the handset moves to a legacy access technology prior setting up a call.

Do you believe that RCS services can genuinely help the industry compete with OTT?

Contrary to this widespread misconception, competing with OTT is not the goal of Deutsche Telekom. Arrogant as it may sound, Deutsche Telekom will not lower its standards to those of some of the OTT offers currently available to consumers. The goal of RCSe is instead to offer an integrated and secure service for which there is demand in the market, adding all the benefits described above for VoLTE as well as other specific ones. RCS will also show that even traditional mobile operators can offer innovative services. For example, Joyn is a product based on the RCS-e standard and provided by the mobile operator community. The next version of RCS will be fully supported by IMS, bringing additional benefits for the consumer.

TeliaSonera has announced that its Spanish subsidiary Yoigo will launch LTE services in July

Swedish operator group TeliaSonera has announced that its Spanish subsidiary Yoigo will launch LTE services in July. In doing so, it will become the first in Spain to offer 4G services.

Yoigo is Spain’s smallest mobile network operator in terms of subscriber numbers, according to Informa’s WCIS service.  However, parent TeliaSonera has a considerable experience in launching 4G networks. In 2009 it became the first operator to launch 4G services in Sweden and Norway, and has since launched LTE services  in all of its Nordic and Baltic markets.

Madrid will be the first city to be served by Yoigo’s 4G and the rest of Spain’s largest cities will be connected by the end of the year,  covering 37 per cent of the population. By the end of 2014, 75 per cent of the population is expected to be able to use the technology,  TeliaSonera added.

”We are in the lead of the industry and are answering upon the customers increasing demand of mobile surf by offering the latest technology to our customers, now also as the first operator in Spain”, said Per-Arne Blomqvist, acting CEO of TeliaSonera.

”Our customers shall have the best possible experience of mobile services, the highest speed of mobile surf and also the best mobile coverage”.

The service uses the 1800MHz spectrum band and will offer users a speeds of up to 100Mbps. Orange Spain, Telefonica and Vodafone only had GSM and W-CDMA offerings on the market as of March 2013, according to Informa’s WCIS service.

LTE World Summit 2013 will take place on 24-26 June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands 

Telefónica has signed a Europe-wide M2M deal with PC maker Dell

Spanish operator group Telefónica has signed a Europe-wide M2M deal with PC maker Dell, as the two set out to deliver pay-as-you-go mobile broadband services for notebooks and tablets.

Dell NetReady is a pay-as-you-go connectivity service powered by Telefónica. It uses an M2M SIM-card and an application that allows the customer to choose their own connectivity bundle.

The service is aimed primarily at enterprises, according to Telefónica, which are demanding mobile connectivity solutions that allow their users to connect to the web  easily while on the go.

Once registered, pay-as-you-go bundles are available immediately, with plans available for just 30 minutes up to one month. Telefónica has created two separate tariff structures for long term and short term access.

Bundles also move with the user while travelling overseas, the operator said  adding that this will ensure transparent and clear pricing at all times.

Arqiva already has a UK wifi network

UK-based telecoms and broadcast infrastructure firm Arqiva has acquired location based media firm Selective Media, which provides targeted advertising campaigns over Arqiva’s wifi network.

Arqiva acquired a 50 per cent share in the business as part of its acquisition of Spectrum Interactive last year, but has now acquired the remaining 50 per cent.

Selective offers on-line display, pre-roll and video on demand opportunities in high footfall areas around the UK, using targeting methods based on location, age, gender, and time.

Nicolas Ott, managing director of Arqiva’s Government, Mobile and Enterprise business unit said: “The acquisition of Selective Media strengthens our media and wifi position and provides us with the leverage to become a major player in the media space along with further differentiation of our wifi offer against the competition.  Our wifi network already spans high-footfall sites including almost every UK airport and major hotel and retail chains, and this acquisition provides a fantastic opportunity for our clients and customers to connect with audiences on the move.”

Arqiva took an interest in Spectrum Interactive last year, striking a deal to enhance its indoor coverage activity by acquiring the wifi portfolio.

Ott said that the firm has been offering indoor wifi coverage on a wholesale basis to landlords and mobile operators for the past ten years, but in recent months, an increasing number of landlords and MNOs have been asking the firm to do more in terms of indoor wifi coverage, due to the fast pace of growth of mobile data usage indoors, particularly in dense urban areas.

“Landlords have been asking us to install indoor mobile coverage solutions in big business centres and we have done that, and MNOs have asked us to do it because it’s sometimes better for them to use that infrastructure for activating their own network,” he said.

“We wanted to do more, but we lacked scale do it. It was a a challenge to grow organically to be at the level we were asked to be, so that’s why the Spectrum Interactive acquisition makes a lot of sense because we’re acquiring a technology that has a significant wifi portfolio already, but also a good management team, staff and operations,” said Ott.

Ericsson has agreed to divest its power cable operation to Danish cable manufacturer NKT Cables for SEK250m ($38.4m).

Swedish kit vendor Ericsson has agreed to divest its power cable operation to Danish cable manufacturer NKT Cables for SEK250m ($38.4m).

However, Ericsson believes the transaction will generate a net loss of approximately SEK100m and negatively impact the operating income of its Networks business unit in 3Q13.

Ericsson said that its power cable operation has the potential to realise greater leverage and scale within NKT Cables, where it will be a core business. The move sees 320 Ericsson staff, primarily based in Sweden, transferred to the Danish firm. NKT Cables will also take over one of Ericsson’s factories in Sweden.

The transaction is subject to relevant regulatory approvals and is expected to close during the beginning of the third quarter of 2013.

Telekom Austria has deployed a converged voice network using technology provided by Chinese kit vendor ZTE. The group has also built a commercial 100G transport network in Central and Eastern Europe

Operator group Telekom Austria has deployed a converged voice network to replace its existing mobile core for its northern operational markets in Austria, Slovenia and Liechtenstein.

Chinese kit vendor ZTE supplied Telekom with a circuit switched/IP multimedia subsystem (CS/IMS) converged voice network, which was implemented by local system integrator Kapsch CarrierCom.

The converged voice solutions provided to Telekom Austria Group are based on a cloud solution to help the operator reduce total cost of ownership. The IMS network will support various scenarios including RCSe and VoLTE and will help Telekom Austria to increase its network capacity and enable rapid growth of the operator’s customer base, according to ZTE.

“The new ZTE CS/IMS network opens up the future for Telekom Austria Group,” said Hans Pichler, CTO of Telekom Austria Group. “It will enable us to easily expand our business while giving our customers the best possible experience of the latest fixed and mobile communication services.”

The group has also built a commercial 100 gigabit transport network in Central and Eastern Europe, the first section of which, from Zagreb to Osijek and Ilok in Croatia, is already in operation. The network is being built to satisfy the ever increasing demand for high-speed services in Central and Eastern Europe and to meet customer demands even more effectively in the region.

“With this important technology upgrade the Telekom Austria Group will be able to offer redundant high speed data highways to all major cities in the CEE area,” said Darko Parun, project leader and director of group access and transport at Telekom Austria Group.

Vipnet, the Croatian subsidiary of the Telekom Austria Group, has already implemented a 100G transmission capacity by upgrading the transmission capacities, based on the existing Alcatel-Lucent 100G platform. The group said that the upgrade allows a tenfold increase in capacity on its Croatian network. It added that throughout its entire network footprint, capacities will be expanded to 100G.

By the end of the 2Q13, the route between Frankfurt, Germany and Sofia, Bulgaria will see the first 100G services operational. Throughout the remainder of 2013 Vienna, Belgrade, Zagreb, Bucharest, Budapest, Ivancice and Salzburg will also be connected with 100G networks.

The WDM and Next Generation Optical Networking event takes place in Monaco, 17th – 20th June. For more information click here.

Amazone is using Germany as a platform for European operations

Online powerhouse Amazon is stepping up its European cloud presence with the creation of a development centre in Germany. The new entity, based in Berlin and Dresden, will create 70 new engineering jobs and will focus on developing technologies to support the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing business, including hypervisors, operating systems, management tools and other applications as well as the development of machine learning technologies for use across all of Amazon’s platforms.

The cloud services pioneer will build its development centre out over the next 12 months and will use the operation as a jumping off point to help European businesses move to the cloud.

Amazon already has support for German companies in the form of account managers, solutions architects and technical support engineers. The development centre will add software development engineers who help create the building blocks of the cloud.

“We have always known that there is a wealth of technology talent across Germany and are looking for the most creative minds in the country to work on the next generation of technology behind our fast growing cloud computing business. Locating the development of key parts of the Amazon Web Services cloud in Germany speaks to the broad set of talent here and the investment we are making in the country,” said Ralf Herbrich managing co-director, Amazon Development Center Germany.

Copper remains dominant in the UK’s broadband network

The UK has passed 9 million unbundled broadband lines, according to new figures from watchdog Ofcom.

This figure represents a 70-fold increase in the number of unbundled lines since 2005, when incumbent BT agreed to provide local loop unbundling services to rivals on its copper phone network.

Super-fast broadband services also continue to grow in popularity, with around 13 per cent of all residential connections super-fast by November 2012 – more than double the 5 per cent reported one year earlier.

Ofcom reports that it expects fibre deployment and investment to increase rapidly in the UK over the coming months.

Despite this rise in unbundled connections however, BT does remain the UK’s dominant broadband provider by far, with a 29 per cent share of the country’s 18 million subscribers, followed by cableco Virgin Media with 20 per cent.