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15 May, 2020At the start of the year, the common assumption was that the biggest change and challenge 2020 would bring for communication service providers (CSPs) would be the roll out of 5G. While the world has changed dramatically since then, 5G continues to be at the forefront of the conversation though not always for reasons that CSPs would like. (more…)
04 May, 2020Network and connectivity providers have known for some time that digital transformation is a top priority. All communications service providers (CSPs) know they have to change, and fast, says Mark Newman, chief analyst at TM Forum. (more…)
30 April, 2020TM Forum, the industry association driving digital transformation through collaboration, announced a new addition to its board of directors with the appointment of Jan Karlsson, senior vice president and head of business area digital services at Ericsson. Karlsson brings a wealth of expertise in driving digital business, and network and IT transformation for the world’s largest connectivity service providers. (more…)
24 April, 2020Cerillion has announced the general availability of Cerillion 8.1, the release of its enterprise business / operations support system (BSS/OSS) suite. This is a standards-based monetisation and customer engagement platform for fixed, mobile, cable and multi-service communications services providers (CSPs) worldwide. (more…)
23 March, 2020TM Forum, the industry association driving digital transformation through collaboration, is postponing its flagship Digital Transformation World conference in Copenhagen until October 7-9th, 2020, due to the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak. (more…)
28 February, 2020The need for telecoms operators to digitally transform isn’t just being stressed by outsiders. Telcos themselves are making a significant push toward becoming more nimble, digital businesses to improve subscriber experiences and drive higher revenues. This push toward digitalisation is, says Tim McElligott, senior analyst at TM Forum, driving telcos to consider significant infrastructure changes. (more…)
20 February, 2020TM 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, 2019Communications 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, 2019Estimates 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, 2019For 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…)
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