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20 February, 2020
TM Forum, the industry association driving digital transformation through collaboration, has announced that SoftBank Corp. has joined the organisation in order to benefit from TM Forum’s Collaboration program, Open APIs, Open Digital Architecture and Frameworx best practices and standards, including the Business Process Framework (eTOM) and Information Framework (SID). (more…)
13 December, 2019
Communications service providers (CSPs) the world over are striving to transform their businesses to ensure success in the digital world. They understand the need to evolve from being ‘dumb pipes’ simply delivering connectivity to being part of a multi-dimensional ecosystem and creating new value for customers and partners. (more…)
13 December, 2019
Estimates suggest that 5G will require up to five times as many base stations as 4G. Operating costs will also rise as each 5G base station is expected to consume three times as much power as its 4G counterpart. These, alongside limited space, are among the key reasons why infrastructure-sharing is a growing trend among CSPs. This means multiple operators delivering 5G services via the same 5G base station, with resources allocated based on user and service requirements.
Chinese CSPs, for example, are expected to invest up to $184 billion (€165 billion) by 2025 collectively to achieve nationwide 5G coverage. Earlier this year, China Unicom and China Telecom struck a deal to co-build networks to get there cost-effectively.
Now, these two telcos are working together through a TM Forum proof-of-concept Catalyst project to lead the way on ironing out some of the finer points of infrastructure-sharing. They are also going beyond the basics to explore how such infrastructure-sharing initiatives can attract third-party investment to scale 5G faster.
The Blockchain-based 5G Collaborative Economy Catalyst team estimates that the work could save China Unicom and China Telecom a combined 320 billion RMB ($45.5 billion) (€40.8 billion) in 5G infrastructure investment costs.
With China Telecom and China Unicom as the Catalyst Champions who set the challenge, the participants collaborating around the solution are IBM, Whale Cloud and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).
They have developed a proposed solution to address some of the key outstanding questions and challenges around infrastructure-sharing:
Looking at the issues they faced, the team quickly realised that blockchain’s core features of decentralisation, transparency and immutability could be the answer.
The project follows on from a previous phase of the Catalyst in which the team looked at how to use blockchain to help CSPs succeed with data monetisation.
In the latest iteration, the team has developed an architecture for a platform which supports:
The solution was showcased at TM Forum’s recent Digital Transformation Asia event in Kuala Lumpur.
Bella Chan, Whale Cloud, explained how the work goes beyond traditional partnerships: “The CSP would plan resource to be built and then publish this requirement on the blockchain so that third-party vendors and MVNOs can meet this tender. The highest bidder will be the final investor.” Smart contracts support everyone in this ecosystem approach being paid fairly and automatically.
IBM provides solution design, Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) and smart contracts; Whale Cloud contributes solution design, UX/UI design and application development; and CAICT acts as a business consultant.
They deployed their application on TM Forum’s Open Digital Lab, a shared environment to develop and test collaborative solutions. They used and will extend TM Forum’s resource of telecom blockchain use cases. The Partnership Revenue Models asset also acted as a guideline for partnership revenue management.The team used a number of TM Forum assets to design the solution.
“Our team decided to contribute the demo implementation to kick-start continuous innovation of blockchain for telco applications within TM Forum,” said Chan.
The solution the team developed in the previous iteration of this Catalyst is now being commercialised so the signs are promising for infrastructure-sharing to get a whole lot easier soon – which is good news for 5G roll-out and ROI.
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02 December, 2019
For the last two decades, independent software vendors have been able to serve operators with operational support systems (OSS) that have continually improved processes. OSS vendors have managed to stay ahead of the curve, says Tim McElligott, senior analyst at TM Forum, because the underlying fundamentals of networking have remained intact. (more…)
13 November, 2019
A new survey by the TM Forum, the industry association driving digital transformation through collaboration, confirms that both sides of the communications industry are making progress in using Open APIs. But it also reveals that vendors’ native Open API support lags behind the demand from CSPs.
27 September, 2019
Earlier this year during a CXO Summit at Digital Transformation World in Nice, we asked a room of telecoms C-levels which animal they would choose to describe the telecoms industry today. Their answers included elephant, sloth, whale and hippopotamus – all large, slow-moving animals. When asked which animal the telecoms industry should be, the same executives chose tigers, cheetahs and foxes – all agile creatures known for speed. (more…)
19 September, 2019
The TM Forum recently released the 2019 edition of the TM Forum Fraud Survey, which set up to assess how fraud management (FM) practices are being implemented. Surveying 54 communications service providers from across the globe, the survey aimed to assess the impact of current fraud management processes, understand emerging risks and how CSPs are responding to new challenges related to the digital ecosystem. (more…)
05 June, 2019
Jacqueline Teo is the chief digital officer of HGC Global Communications, the fixed line and ICT service provider that is extending from its roots serving the Hong Kong market to address international markets via its pan-Asian network capacity, including cable into China. Speaking at the TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World event in Nice, France, last month she tells George Malim how the company is innovating on all fronts to compete in the mature Hong Kong market, to develop further its newly acquired operations in Myanmar and to harness software defined network (SDN) technology to enable a more agile mode of operation.
30 May, 2019
With 5G at the centre of mobile operators’ strategies, the challenge is to avoid another cycle of intense infrastructure investment which enables the business cases of other organisations. Instead, operators need to take up a new role that monetises the enablement they provide and places them in the connected ecosystem as more than the providers of connectivity.
29 May, 2019
Etiya, the leading software vendor providing AI-driven Digital BSS, comprehensive telco CRM , AI solutions, as well as customer analytics to CSPs, today announced that it was selected as a winner in the TM Forum Excellence Awards 2019. Etiya received the “Disruptive Innovation Award” for its work with Fizz, a completely digital mobile and internet sub-brand that provides an online customer experience for do-it-yourself smart digital consumers.
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