WCA November 2014

Telecom news

Elsewhere in telecom . . . Ø As reported by TeleGeography (5 th August), according to the Internet monitoring firm Renesys, the 28.6-mile Kerch Strait cable – which provides a telecommunications link between Russia and the newly annexed Crimean peninsula – is up and running, with Crimean Internet service providers (ISPs) having sent first traffic over the newly constructed fibre link on 24 th July. The cable, believed to have a capacity of 110Gbps, cost around $25.1 million to deploy. Services are said to be offered via state-backed Rostelecom’s local agent Miranda Media. In related news, also from TeleGeography , a televised con- ference between Russia’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and its communications and media minister, Nikolai Nikiforov, broke the news that Russia’s K-Telecom switched on its cellular network in Crimea on 4 th August. K-Telecom is thought to be wholly owned by Russia’s Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), which previously offered services in Crimea via its MTS-Ukraine unit. TeleGeography had earlier reported that MTS-Ukraine ceased retail activities in the disputed peninsula on 30 th June, with Russian SIM cards distributed as a substitute. Ø As noted by Sue Marek of FierceWireless , making an accurate global count of LTE-A networks is difficult because LTE Advanced consists of many different components – from carrier aggregation to HetNets to coordinated multipoint and more. Because of these different elements, not all operators are likely to deploy LTE Advanced in the same way. Nevertheless, Ms Marek reported (8 th July), 4G Americas at midyear expected there to be about 40 networks worldwide using some form of LTE Advanced by the end of 2014. In the USA, AT&T was the only operator to have commercially deployed LTE Advanced. In March the company said it was using carrier aggregation for its 700 MHz and AWS spectrum in Chicago and some other markets.

But Verizon Wireless and Sprint also were on the LTE Advanced path, with plans to deploy carrier aggregation late in the year. Although it is interesting to track operator deployments of LTE Advanced, wrote Ms Marek, experts say that the move from LTE to LTE Advanced will not be a huge upgrade over LTE: they expect instead more of an evolutionary step that will provide improved speed and better network capacity. Ø The California State Assembly has passed a bill requiring that, as of July 2015, all smartphones sold in the state be pre-equipped with theft deterrent technology. If enacted, California will be the second state in the USA – after Minnesota – to mandate so-called ‘kill switch’ software on smartphones. The Minnesota law was enacted in May. As noted by Henry Kenyon of FierceMobile (13 th August), State Senator Mark Leno, a co-sponsor of the bill, cited data showing that smartphone crime doubled across the USA in 2013 – with about 3.1 million devices stolen, up from 1.6 million in 2012. In San Francisco, Mr Leno’s office reported, more than 65 per cent of robberies involved the theft of a mobile device. Ø According to a study of mobile phone usage in the USA by the remarketing site SeeWhy , roughly 22.2 per cent of men completed purchases on their phones in 2013, compared to 18.2 per cent of women. Some 20.4 per cent of men made purchases using a tablet, compared with 16.9 per cent of women. The SeeWhy research showed men to be more likely than women to abandon a purchase out of frustration with such mobile shopping problems as slow Internet, small screens, and navigation issues. Although women account for most household spending in the USA, men do a fair amount of online spending. Data from a BI Intelligence report indicates that 57 per cent of women and 52 per cent of men in the USA made an online purchase in 2013.

28Tbit/s Southeast Asia-Japan cable (SJC), which went operational in June 2013. That, too, is a 6-fibre-pair system. (“Google in ‘FASTER’ Subsea Cable Consortium,” 1 st August) To achieve cost efficiencies African mobile operators are offloading tower assets in the tens of thousands According to the Nigerian daily Leadership , telecom operators such as MTN, Bharti Airtel, Orange, Vodacom, and Egypt’s MobiNil are seeking to sell their mobile tower networks in Africa in an effort to reduce the burden of costly infrastructure in the region. Citing data from tower builder IHS Holding Ltd, reporter Chima Akwaja wrote that, in Africa, towers with their associated infrastructure can account for more than 60 per cent of the expense of building a mobile network. (“Dwindling Margins Push Telcos To Sell Telecoms Towers,” 17 th August) Among examples given of the divestment trend, MTN Group is on the verge of selling towers valued at $1 billion in Nigeria, and Bharti Airtel Africa is selling some 15,000 of its towers across 17 countries for $2 billion-$2.5 billion. Orange, the largest phone company in France, is looking to dispose of towers in sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt; and a shortlist of three bidders has been drawn up for MobiNil’s 2,500 to 3,000 Egyptian towers. Meanwhile, another operator in which Orange owns a stake, Sonatel, is reported progressing with the sale of 3,000 towers across Senegal, Mali, Guinea Bissau, and Guinea Conakry. South Africa’s Vodacom has, to date, sold 1,149 mobile network towers in Tanzania to Helios Towers Africa. Bharti’s sale is seen as likely to result in a division of the towers among multiple buyers. Again as reported in Leadership , IHS, American Tower Corp (AMT), and units of Helios Towers and Eaton Towers Ltd are bidding to acquire the MTN and Bharti assets. These companies, backed by cash from interested parties including the American investor George Soros and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, have bought thousands of towers from carriers in Africa over the past two years.

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2014