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Category: Telecom

Retail News Asia is committed to providing both local and global retailers with the latest Telecom & Telco news throughout the Asian market. This on a daily base.

  • SmarTone trials LAA on live network

    SmarTone trials LAA on live network

    Hong Kong’s SmarTone has completed a trial of license assisted access (LAA) technology over a live network using equipment from Ericsson.

    The trial combined 10 MHz of licensed LTE spectrum with three 20MHz carriers of unlicensed 5-GHz spectrum to ahieve download speeds of around 800Mbps.

    Using a Qualcomm Snapdragon LTE mobile test device and Ericsson micro radio technology, Smartone validated the use of technology over its network to improve speeds and capacity for users.

    “SmarTone is very pleased to have completed the first LAA trial in Hong Kong.  LAA is an important technological evolution that can combine licensed and unlicensed spectrum to provide LTE service. It will be widely adopted in the US and European markets in the near future,” SmarTone CTO Stephen Chau said.

    “We are very excited that with the support of Ericsson, our long-term technology partner, SmarTone has once again brought a ground breaking technology to mobile users in Hong Kong and taken a great step further toward 5G.”

    The LAA standard is expected to be enhanced next year to enable download speeds of over 1Gbps by adding support for five component carrier aggregation, according to Ericsson president for Hong Kong and Macau Petra Schirren.

    “LAA is a key evolution of mobile technology and we are pleased to be first in Hong Kong together with SmarTone to demonstrate the increased capacity, improved speeds and enhanced user experience through the combination of licensed and unlicensed spectrum. Through the introduction of advanced technologies, such as LAA, we enable Gigabit Class LTE on the road to 5G”.

    SmarTone and Ericsson entered a pre-5G collaboration in the fourth quarter of last year.

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  • India consulting on next spectrum auction

    India consulting on next spectrum auction

    The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has launched a public consultation on details of the next round of spectrum auctions, including for spectrum to be used for 5G.

    The regulator is seeking views on the timing, pricing and amount of spectrum to be sold during the next auctions.

    Trai is seeking views on the valuation methodology for 5G spectrum in the 3.3-GHz to 3.6-GHz bands. According to the regulator, the government plans to auction spectrum in the range of 700-MHz to 3.6-GHz in the next auction to be held later this year.

    But with operators struggling with high debts accrued from the previous auctions and intense competition triggered by the entry of a new operator, the telecoms industry is opposing any sale of new airwaves before 2019.

    Industry body COAI is arguing that the auction should wait until the current wave of consolidation triggered by this new competition draws to a close, and until the 5G technical and regulatory standards are settled.

    The consultation also covers proposals on spectrum caps and rollout obligations for 5G spectrum, as well as views on the pricing of the 700-MHz 4G spectrum left unsold during the most recent auction.

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  • Symbio launches sub-wholesale MVNO service

    Symbio launches sub-wholesale MVNO service

    Australian wholesale telecoms operator Symbio Networks has launched an innovative new sub-wholesale MVNO offering allowing the activation of new SIMs within seven seconds of order placement.

    Through an agreement with Australia’s largest mobile operator Telstra, Symbio Networks will provide a service providing 4G coverage of 95% and combined 4G and 3G coverage of 98.8% of Australia’s far-flung population.

    The service will use Symbio’s iBoss platform to allow new mobile players to go to market in four weeks and activate SIMs in seconds.

    The white label service will allow customers to manage their own billing and communications with customers. Symbio also offers a conventional agency model iBoss MVNO service for customers which do not want to handle their own billing.

    Symbio said it has already signed up a number of new mobile players, including ISP Aussie Broadband.

    “Symbio and [parent company] MNF Group have a proven track record of delivering innovative, first to market solutions for our customers,” MNF Group CEO and co-founder Rene Sugo said.

    “While our agency MVNO offer has been welcomed by wholesale customers, we also found that there was a growing demand for services through a sub-wholesale model. This new MVNO offer will give our customers unprecedented control over their own consumers when it comes to billing and communication; we simply deliver the SIM card and the 4G mobile coverage.”

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  • Emerging APAC nations most exposed to malware

    Emerging APAC nations most exposed to malware

    Emerging APAC nations are the most vulnerable to malware, according to Microsoft’s bi-annual Security Intelligence Report (SIR).

    Of the top locations across the globe most at risk of malware infection in the first quarter of 2017, most of them are developing economies in the region.

    The report found that Bangladesh and Pakistan have the highest malware encounter rates around the world. This is followed by two ASEAN nations – Cambodia and Indonesia. Approximately one in four computers running Microsoft real-time security products in these countries reported a malware encounter from January to March 2017.

    Other top areas facing malware threats include Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, each with an average malware encounter rate of more than 20% in the first quarter of 2017. This is more than double the global average of 9%.

    On the other hand, markets with higher levels of IT maturity, namely Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore, performed better than the worldwide average. In fact, Japan has been ranked the safest country in the world, with only 2% of its computers reporting a malicious program incident.

    Ransomware attacks on the rise

    Ransomware is one of the most infamous malware families in 2017. In the first half of the year, two waves of ransomware attacks, WannaCrypt and Petya, exploited vulnerabilities in outdated Windows operating systems worldwide, disabling thousands of devices by illegitimately restricting access to data, through encryption. This not only disrupted individuals’ daily lives but also crippled many enterprises’ operations.

    The attacks were disproportionately concentrated in Europe while most of the Asia markets have not been too heavily impacted. In fact, Japan and China were listed as the two top countries with the lowest ransomware encounter rates. One of the few exceptions in the region is Korea, which has the second highest ransomware occurrence rate worldwide.

    Attackers evaluate several factors when determining which regions to target, such as a country’s GDP, average age of computer users and available payment methods. A region’s language can also be a key contributing factor as a successful attack often depends on an attacker’s ability to personalize a message to convince a user to execute the malicious file.

    Cloud accounts and services under cyber siege

    As cloud migration increases, the cloud has become the central data hub for the majority of organizations. This also translates into more valuable data and digital assets being stored the cloud, making it an increasingly attractive target for cybercriminals.

    The SIR highlighted a 300% increase in consumer and enterprise accounts managed in the cloud being attacked globally over the past year while the number of logins attempted from malicious IP addresses have increased by 44% year-over-year.

    In addition, a large majority of these security compromises were the result of weak, guessable passwords and poor password management, followed by targeted phishing attacks and breaches of third-party services. As the frequency and sophistication of attacks on user accounts in the cloud accelerates, there is an increased emphasis on the need to move beyond passwords for authentication.

    Malware Encounter Rates for Markets in Asia in Q1 2017 (from highest to lowest):

    1. Bangladesh
    2. Pakistan
    3. Cambodia
    4. Indonesia
    5. Mongolia
    6. Myanmar
    7. Vietnam
    8. Nepal
    9. Thailand
    10.  Philippines
    11.  Sri Lanka
    12.  China
    13.  India
    14.  Malaysia
    15.  Taiwan
    16.  Korea
    17.  Hong Kong
    18.  Singapore
    19.  Australia
    20.  New Zealand
    21.  Japan
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  • STI to expand 4G services to Bali

    STI to expand 4G services to Bali

    Sampoerna Telekomunikasi Indonesia (STI) has announced plans to expand its Net1 Indonesia branded LTE services to the island of Bali.

    The operator’s 450-MHz LTE service will be deployed to all areas of Bali ranging from Gilimanuk on the west to the eastern end in Gili Selang, the operator announced. STI is targeting rural areas before entering urban areas.

    “Bali is one of the provinces on Indonesia that support the nation’s economy through its tourism industry, STI CEO Larry Ridwan said.

    “Over time, the tourism industry is not only talking about traveling or merely to market travel destinations, but also to provide growth for supporting industries, especially in remote parts of Bali island. That is why we have a strong commitment to support local economy of Bali through the provision of reliable telecommunication access.”

    STI is in the process of migrating its CDMA subscribers to its 4G network and plans to complete the migration by the end of the year.

    STI is Indonesia’s only operator to have deployed in the 450-MHz band using CDMA2000 1x technology. The operator holds a nationwide license and has so far deployed coverage on the islands of Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Bali, Nusa Tenggara Barat, and Maluku.

    As part of its 4G migration, STI recently entered a partnership with telecoms vendor PT INTI to jointly produce devices supporting the 450-MHz spectrum.

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  • Sri Lanka instructs cellcos to register SIMs

    Sri Lanka instructs cellcos to register SIMs

    The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) has instructed the nation’s operators to register their customers SIMs in order to curb fraud and crime.

    The operators have been told to register SIMs with owners’ personal details and photocopies of their National Identity Cards, the Daily Mirror reported.

    President Maithripala Sirisena had proposed the SIM registration scheme after it was observed that a large number of active SIMs have been issued without proper documentation on the identity of the customers.

    Sri Lanka will be following other APAC nations in implementing a mandatory SIM registration scheme, such as Thailand, Bangladesh and Cambodia.

    Sri Lanka’s mobile market is dominated by the big three operators Dialog Axiata, Mobitel and Etisalat. Mobitel is in the process of being separated from parent company Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) and listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange. The government currently owns a 49.5% stake in SLT.

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  • Korean cellcos may sue govt over subsidy hike

    Korean cellcos may sue govt over subsidy hike

    South Korean mobile operator’s SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus are considering taking the government to court over an order to increase discounts for new subscribers.

    The operators last week received a formal order to implement a 25% discount rate for regular new subscribers as part of the current government’s objective of reducing telecoms expenses for household.

    The change would represent a five percentage point increase of the current selective discount rate of 20% for regular subscribers, which was itself raised from the previous 12% in 2015.

    But the operators are reportedly considering taking administrative litigation to counter the order, citing a lack of sufficient discussion and consultation about the change as well as a need to prevent further revenue declines and asset depreciation.

    Another potential avenue for challenging the decision involves the way the discount rate was calculated.

    The mobile sector has also expressed concern over the potential for the 25% figure to be raised further in the future – the ICT ministry has proposed to review the discount rate every two years to reflect the average length of a postpaid contract.

    South Korea’s ICT ministry has estimated that the higher discount rate will reduce the country’s mobile costs by around 1 trillion won ($884.6 million) per year.

    Analysts have meanwhile estimated that the cut would lead to a 300 billion won reduction in sales for the three operators if applied to all customers currently benefiting from the selective discount rate, and 600 billion won in losses if it is expanded to apply to all existing subscribers.

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  • Myanmar’s startups map past, shape future with virtual reality

    Myanmar’s startups map past, shape future with virtual reality

    Few countries in the world have experienced such rapid discovery of technology than Myanmar.  Gasps echo across the hall as the Myanmar school kids trial virtual reality goggles, marveling at a device that allows some of Asia’s poorest people to walk on the moon or dive beneath the waves.

    “In Myanmar we can’t afford much to bring students to the real world experience,” beamed Hla Hla Win, a teacher and tech entrepreneur taking virtual reality into the classroom.

    “If they’re learning about animals we can’t take them to the zoo… 99 percent of parents don’t have time, don’t have money, don’t have the means,” she added.

    Few countries in the world have experienced such rapid discovery of technology than Myanmar which has leapfrogged from the analogue to the digital era in just a few years.

    During the decades of outright junta rule, which ended in 2011, it was one of the world’s most isolated nations, a place where a mobile phone sim card could cost up to $3,000.

    For half a century its paranoid generals cut off the country, restricting sales of computers, heavily censoring the Internet and blocking access to foreign media reports.

    But today phone towers are springing up around the country and almost 80 percent of the population have access to the Internet through smartphones, according to telecoms giant Telenor.

    Budding startups

    Tech startups are emerging around the commercial capital Yangon, many seeking to improve the lives of rural people, most of whom still live without paved roads or electricity.

    “The increase in activity from last year till now — new startups, more people determined to become entrepreneurs and working in the tech sector in general — is significant,” said Jes Kaliebe Peterson, CEO of community hub Phandeeyar.

    Virtual reality is the latest advance to cause a stir, with a handful of entrepreneurs embracing tech for projects including preserving ancient temple sites to shaping young minds of the future.

    The Phandeeyar incubator works with more than 140 startups. Among them Hla Hla Win’s virtual reality social enterprise 360ed which is using affordable cardboard VR goggles attached to smartphones to break down barriers in Myanmar’s classrooms.

    She founded the non-profit last year after 17 years working in the woefully underfunded education system in a bid to bring learning to life.

    “I see it as an empathy machine where we can teleport ourselves to another place right away,” she told.

    And it’s not just school children who benefit from stepping into places they could only ever dream of visiting.

    360ed has used virtual reality to help Myanmar teachers attend training courses in Japan and Finland and is working on setting up deals with schools in India, Pakistan, China and Bangladesh.

    “With VR there’s no divider, there’s no distance,” Hla Hla Win said.

  • China cloud computing market grew 54% in 2016

    China cloud computing market grew 54% in 2016

    China’s cloud service providers have been urged to beef up their security ecosystem in expectation of managed security services becoming a new growth area in the increasingly challenging area of security.

    IDC’s latest China Cloud Service Provider Security 2017 Vendor Assessment found that the nation’s public cloud computing market expanded 54% in 2016 from a year earlier as more enterprises started to deploy their business to the public cloud.

    However, recently enterprises are increasingly becoming the targets of hackers as the digital transformation boosts their digital asset value, making security a major concern for public cloud service tenants.

    Digital transformation has linked enterprises’ business security closely with IT security, resulting in a big increase in enterprises’ digital asset value. This has also attracted the interest of criminals and hackers, posing a huge threat to enterprises’ digital assets.

    In May 2017, the WannaCry blackmail virus once again sounded the alarm bell, attesting to the fact that a considerable number of enterprises urgently need to improve the security of their IT systems.

    As public cloud tenants generally lack the ability to build security in a cloud environment, therefore cloud service providers have an unshakable responsibility to safeguard their cloud tenants’ business security. Thus, cloud service providers are facing unprecedented security challenges.

    IT security systems must be built with the strong support and close supervision of the government. The Chinese government has elevated the importance of cyberspace security to the level of national security, though cloud service providers also bear an unprecedented level of responsibility when it comes to security.

    It is essential that cloud service providers play the role of managed security service provider (MSSP) to help their tenants build secure IT systems.

    For cloud tenants, the only way to foster their strengths, circumvent their weaknesses, and use the capabilities provided by cloud service providers to strengthen the security of their IT systems is to raise their own security awareness and forge in-depth cooperation with cloud service providers.

    It is widely known that the security capabilities offered by cloud service providers have much room for improvement. In order to learn from others’ strong points to bolster their own weak links and win tenants’ unanimous recognition of their security strength, cloud service providers must engage in in-depth cooperation and close collaboration with professional IT security vendors through security ecosystem building.

    Building a complete security ecosystem will provide more reliable technical support for cloud service providers and their tenants.

    “Implementation of the Cyberspace Security Law of the People’s Republic of China means that cloud service providers now bear even greater security responsibilities. Cloud security capability enhancement will become one of the important strategies for cloud service providers in the future,”  IDC China senior research manager James Wang said.

    “In addition, as enterprises generally lack security planning and building abilities, they will have an urgent need for managed security service in building next-generation security systems. Globally, the managed security service model has been widely accepted by enterprises, while China’s managed security service market is still in its early stages.”

    Drawing upon their sound security ecosystem and rich security experience, public cloud service providers in China can provide managed security services to their large number of cloud tenants. Consequently, cloud service providers will be most likely to become the best practitioners of managed security services.

    Since China set up the Central Leading Group for Network Affairs in 2014, the importance of cyberspace security has risen to the height of national strategy. Following the release of Cyberspace Security Law of the People’s Republic of China, the National Cyberspace Security Strategy and other related laws, regulations and policies in recent years, security and trustworthiness have become key to enterprise-level users’ IT system building.

    For important sectors and fields such as public communications, information services, energy, transportation, water conservancy, finance, public service and e-government, it is more important to ensure a secure and trustworthy key information infrastructure. As a result, enterprise security building standards in China feature distinctive Chinese characteristics.

  • China Telecom 1H17 profit grows 7.4%

    China Telecom 1H17 profit grows 7.4%

    China Telecom has reported a 7.4% growth in net profit for the six months ending in June, even amid an intensifying competitive environment.

    Net profit for the half-year period reached 12.54 billion yuan ($1.88 billion), on the back of a 4.1% year-on-year increase in revenue to 184.12 billion yuan.

    Service revenues grew 6.8% over the same period – surpassing the industry average growth rate – to 165.85 billion yuan. Mobile revenues were up 12.2% to 75.7 billion yuan as the company completed the deployment of its full coverage 4G network incorporating its refarmed 800-MHz spectrum.

    China Telecom’s total mobile subscriber base grew by 14.85 million during the six month period to reach 230 million, with 4G handset users up 30.15 million to 152 million.

    On the fixed line side, China Telecom’s fiber coverage reached 92% as its FTTH subscriber base increased by 11.24 million to 117 million.

    During the period China Telecom also made progress with its planned Transformation 3.0 strategy, which is focused on “network intelligentization, service ecologicalization and operation

    intellectualization.” The company plans to continue with this strategy in the coming quarters.

    Despite the results, China Telecom’s board has elected not to pay an interim shareholder dividend for the period citing its capital requirements for future development.

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  • ECI launches hybrid virtualization platform

    ECI launches hybrid virtualization platform

    ECI has launched its Hybrid Virtualization Platform that designed to support multiple network functions virtualization (NFV)-based use cases to help communication service providers can simplify operations, increase agility, reduce opex and provide better SLAs.

    Featuring ECI’s vE-CPE family, the Hybrid Virtualization Platform combines hardware with management and orchestration (MANO), providing a platform as a service (PaaS) to organize different virtual network functions (VNFs).

    The platform leverages multi-access edge computing (MEC) capabilities to alleviate the workload of core networks. It encompasses ECI’s Mercury NFVi platform, ETSI-compliant MANO and a library of VNFs.

    By bringing service agility closer to the network edge, ECI said the platform can accommodate future demands of IoT networks and 5G.

    “Carriers need to get everything they can out of their current network assets. Virtualization at the edge can help unlock all the potential hidden in their current infrastructure, and create additional value on top of current assets,” said Erez Zelikovitz, VP SDN/NFV Solutions Global Portfolio at ECI.

    “Virtualization at the edge can help unlock all the potential hidden in their current infrastructure, and create additional value on top of current assets. We are giving our customers a cost-effective, future proof and easy-to-implement solution, which they can use now to improve service agility, and for the demands of future IoT and 5G networks on the same open and flexible platform.”

    The platform is based on open industry standard architecture, which allows CSPs to easily integrate it into current operations, enjoy end-to-end orchestration and incorporate third-party software.

    It is available on a “pay-as-you-grow” subscription model, and intended to reduce opex and shorten time to market, ECI added.

  • Cambodia’s Smart Axiata launches 4.5G

    Cambodia’s Smart Axiata launches 4.5G

    Cambodia’s Smart Axiata has launched 4.5G mobile connectivity in the country in collaboration with Huawei.

    The launch supports speeds 10 times faster than those available over normal 4G, the companies said.

    Smart Axiata will also potentially be able to use the technology to introduce new services including wireless home broadband and IoT services for residential and business customers. The deployment also marks part of Smart Axiata’s evolution to 5G.

    “I’m very pleased that together with Smart, we are able to build a better connected Cambodia through accelerating the mobile broadband development,” Huawei Cambodia CEO Margaret Hu said.

    “With increasing demand for personalized and diversified services, emerging markets represent tremendous new opportunities for the telecom operators. Huawei is committed to supporting operators seize new opportunities by driving sustainable development in emerging markets.”

    Smart Axiata is Cambodia’s top mobile operator with a market share of an estimated 57% as of last year. The company recently secured a $66 million investment from Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co and an affiliate, which secured a 10% stake in return. But Smart Axiata’s parent company Axiata Group has committed to maintaining a majority stake in the venture.

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  • Cisco to buy Springpath for $320m

    Cisco to buy Springpath for $320m

    Cisco and Springpath have apparently been working together for a while, and this will let Cisco bring those teams in-house rather than having to build them from scratch.

    Springpath’s specialty is hyperconvergence, and it has developed a distributed file system aimed at enabling server-based storage services.

    Hyperconvergence is a term I’m still coming to grips with. Basically, it seems to entail taking all the virtual stuff we’ve seen driving the cloud revolution, and combining it back with the hardware again to condense everything back down into a one-stop-shop appliance that retains the virtualization flexibility provided by the hypervisor and such despite looking more and more like, well, a mainframe…

    But I digress. Cisco’s move is another step down the path toward generating value from the software more than from the hardware, and $320 million is of course petty cash for them. The deal is expected to close in Cisco’s fiscal Q1/2018, which I believe would be by the end of October 2017.

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  • Ericsson suing Wiko over patent infringement

    Ericsson suing Wiko over patent infringement

    Ericsson is suing French smartphone maker Wiko in Germany, accusing the company of infringing Ericsson patents essential to 2G, 3G and 4G cellular technology.

    In a statement, Ericsson said Wiko has been infringing on its intellectual property rights without any license or compensation for years.

    Ericsson chief intellectual property officer Gustav Bismark said the company has tried to negotiate a license agreement with Wiko on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms since May 2013, but has not succeeded throughout the years of discussions. The company decided to take Wiko to court as a last resort, he said.

    “Global sharing of technology and open standards are the force behind the smartphone revolution and have allowed new entrants, such as Wiko, to quickly build successful businesses,” Bismark said.

    “This ICT ecosystem only works, however, if all market players respect the basic rules of FRAND licensing. It is unfair for Wiko to benefit from our substantial R&D investment without paying a reasonable license fee for our patented technology.”

    Ericsson has one of the telecommunications industry’s largest IP portfolios, spanning more than 42,000 patents worldwide. These cover 2G, 3G and LTE technologies and technologies that are likely to incorporate part of the 5G standard.

  • 5G connections to reach 1.4b by 2025: Juniper Research

    5G connections to reach 1.4b by 2025: Juniper Research

    5G connections are forecast to reach 1.4 billion by 2025, an increase from just one million in 2019, the anticipated first year of commercial launch, according to Juniper Research.

    In a new research, Juniper warned that to be successful, 5G fixed wireless broadband would need to meet expectations in real-world scenarios to compete with fiber broadband.

    The research forecasts that China, US and Japan will have the highest number of 5G connections by 2025. Together these three countries will have 55% of all 5G connections by 2025.

    The US alone will account for over 30% of global 5G IoT connections by 2025, with the highest number of 5G connections for fixed wireless broadband and automotive services.

    However, in terms of commercial IoT revenues, Juniper forecast that the ARPC (average revenue per connection) would be disappointing, including smart cities and digital health. This was due to low data requirements and nominal duty-cycles.

    The research urged operators to develop new business models to minimize network operating costs, including software-based solutions to manage the diverse requirements of individual 5G IoT connections.

    Furthermore, Juniper advised that maximizing connectivity revenues through 5G fixed wireless broadband would prove crucial to offset this disappointment, with ARPC forecast to remain above $50 until 2025.

    “Operators and vendors must test their networks in a real-world environment at scale, ensuring speeds can compete with fiber services,” said research author Sam Barker.

    “Networks that can deliver the highest speeds and greatest reliability will command the highest ARPCs, hastening an operators’ return on 5G investment,” said Barker.

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