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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.

  • Korea still has fastest average broadband speeds

    Korea still has fastest average broadband speeds

    South Korea retained its position of having the world’s fastest average internet speeds during the first quarter, but it was the only market in APAC to experience a year-on-year speed decline.

    These are among the findings of Akamai’s latest State of the Internet – Connectivity report, which found that South Korea’s average speed was 28.6Mbps for the quarter.

    Hong Kong had the second fastest average speeds in APAC and the fourth in the world at 21.9Mbps, followed by Singapore (seventh globally) at 20.3Mbps and Japan (eighth globally) at 20.2Mbps.

    Vietnam had the highest year-on-year gains in average speeds at 89%, but remained in ninth place among APAC countries and just 58th globally with an average speed of 9.5Mbps. India (87% improvement to 6.5Mbs) and China (78% improvement to 7.6Mbps) also recorded strong gains.

    The Philippines continued to have the slowest average broadband speeds in APAC at 5.5Mbps, despite a 57% year-on-year improvement. The report notes that president Duterte’s up to $4 billion national broadband network project has the potential to turn the market around. Deployment could commence as early as this month.

    By contrast, besides South Korea’s year-on-year decline, Hong Kong had the lowest level of improvement with just a 10% gain.

    In terms of average peak connection speeds, Singapore retained its top spot with a speed of 184.5Mbps, up 26% year-on-year. Singapore was followed by Hong Kong (129.5Mbps), South Korea (121Mbps), Thailand (106.6Mbps) and Taiwain (106.6Mbps), which had global rankings of fourth, fifth, eighth and 13threspectively.

    The slowest average peak connection speed was recorded in India (41.4Mbps), followed by the Philippines (45Mbps), China (45.9Mbps), Australia (55.7Mbps) and Sri Lanka (57.3Mbps).

  • Myanmar cellcos cleared to use 1800 for 4G

    Myanmar cellcos cleared to use 1800 for 4G

    Myanmar’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) has granted permission to the market’s mobile operators to launch 4G over the 1800-MHz spectrum assigned to them.

    Mynmar Posts and Telecommunications, Telenor Myanmar and Ooredoo Myanmar have been cleared to use 2x10MHz of 1800-MHz spectrum allocated under a 12 year license.

    Operators will be required to pay an $80 million usage fee, the ministry’s Posts and Telecommunications Department has revealed.

    State-owned MPT has announced that with the approval the operator will be expanding its network to 4G, starting with the cities of Nay Pyi Taw, Yangon, and Mandalay. The operator will offer customers the ability to swap their existing 2G and 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM free of charge.

    MPT has teamed up with KDDI and Sumitomo for its mobile operations as part of the liberalization of Myanmar’s telecoms sector.

    Telenor Myanmar and Ooredoo Myanmar will meanwhile be able to use the spectrum to expand their respective 4G operations to more cities and regions.

    Telenor Myanmar launched 4G services in July last year, and now offers 4G in 19 cities. Ooredoo Myanmar launched 4G in May  in Yangon, Mandalay, and Nay Pyi Taw, and has since expanded the network to the Magwe Region.

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  • Singtel to help heritage SMEs adopt digital tech

    Singtel to help heritage SMEs adopt digital tech

    Singtel is working with the Ngee Ann Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic universities to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with heritage brands adopt digital technology.

    The collaborations are part of the 99%SME initiative to help SMEs use digital tools to get online, reach out to a wider customer base, and develop e-commerce capabilities.

    An SME is considered to have a heritage brand if it has a compelling success story to share from a cultural or social perspective; the business should have been established for more than 30 years and passed down from the founding generation to the next.

    Singtel and Ngee Ann Polytechnic will focus on helping multi-generational family-owned SMEs, including those managed by the polytechnic’s alumni members, to digitalize their operations using business analytics solutions and improve their efficiency and competitiveness.

    In addition, Singtel and Temasek Polytechnic will engage SMEs in traditional businesses such as provision shops, watch shops, tailors and tea-leaf merchants to provide ideas to keep their heritage brands alive.

    By leveraging digital technology, students from the polytechnic’s School of Business will guide SMEs on using the 99%SME website (www.99sme.sg) to market themselves online without cost.

    “Many SMEs with a long and rich heritage do not have the resources to market themselves effectively online or connect with younger, digitally savvy customers,” Singtel managing director Group Enterprise Andrew Lim said.

    “Through this partnership between the private and educational sectors, we also provide digitally-savvy students the opportunity to gain business insights and entrepreneurship experience while they help in the digitalisation journey of the SMEs,” he added.

    Clarence Ti, Principal of Ngee Ann Polytechnic, said, “Ngee Ann Polytechnic is excited to collaborate with Singtel in helping second-generation family-owned SMEs digitalise their processes to gain competitive advantage and business efficiency. Leveraging our expertise, we hope to help the SMEs use business analytics to enhance their e-commerce capabilities and drive results.”

    Peter Lam, Temasek Polytechnic’s Principal and Chief Executive Officer, said, “Over the years, many SMEs have created brands of enduring success and significance. This initiative provides our students with valuable real-life learning experiences that allow them to deepen their knowledge and apply their skills.”

    As part of the 99%SME movement, Singtel’s partnerships with Ngee Ann Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic complement the partnerships forged with Nanyang Polytechnic and Singapore Polytechnic in March this year, to help SMEs in the retail and F&B sectors digitalise their business.

    Singtel, together with DBS and other partners, launched the nationwide 99%SME movement in 2015, to rally all in Singapore to use products and services offered by SMEs. The highlight of the SME campaign is the annual SME Week in October, where participating SMEs offer special promotions to walk-in and online customers.

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  • 60% of IoT attacks originated from Asia in 2016

    60% of IoT attacks originated from Asia in 2016

    The number of DoS or DDoS cyberattacks doubled from 3% to 6% in 2016, due to the lack of sufficient security controls of IoT devices, according to Dimension Data and NTT Security.

    Of all IoT-based attacks, 60% originated from Asia, 21% from EMEA and another 19% from the Americas.

    Dimension Data’s executive’s guide to the NTT Security 2017 Global Threat Intelligence Report,  published earlier this month, finds that the most likely reason for the high volume of attacks from Asia is that technology sourced from the region has historically been susceptible, and compromised infrastructure tends to be reused to perpetrate additional nefarious activities.

    The report was compiled from data collected by NTT Security and other NTT operating companies including Dimension Data, from the networks of 10,000 clients across five continents, 3.5 trillion security logs, 6.2 billion attempted attacks, and global honeypots and sandboxes located in over 100 different countries.

    Global honeypot sensors monitored IoT cyberattacks and their targets over a six-month period. Based on the credentials used by threat actors, it was determined that 66% of attacks targeted specific IoT devices such as a particular model of video camera.

    These attacks appeared to be from compromised IoT devices attempting to find and compromise even more such devices. This would be consistent with an attacker acquiring a large number of devices to use in DDoS and other forms of attack.

    DDoS attacks using IoT devices can impact an organization in multiple ways can prevent customers, partners, and other stakeholders from accessing their organizations’ internet-facing resources, thereby impacting sales and other daily operations.

    They can also prevent employees and internal systems from accessing the internet, disrupting many facets of operations, and affect organizations providing services from the internet, which can cause supply chains to be broken.

    “There’s nothing about a DDoS attack which requires use of IoT devices only, so attackers may look for as many devices as possible regardless of type,” explained Mark Thomas, Dimension Data’s Cybersecurity strategist. He points out that while DDoS attacks are the most recognized threat, they’re not the only potential outcome of an organization’s IoT and operational technology (OT) devices being compromised.

    According to a February 2017 press release by research firm, Gartner Inc, 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017- up 31% on 2016. This number will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. And total spend on endpoints and services will reach almost $2 trillion in 2017.

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  • PLDT, Globe complete SMC acquisition

    PLDT, Globe complete SMC acquisition

    PLDT and Globe have completed the final payment for their joint acquisition of conglomerate San Miguel Corporation’s telco assets, despite the ongoing court challenge from the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC).

    The final 13 billion peso payment of the 69.1 billion ($1.39 billion) acquisition fulfills the operators’ payment obligations under the acquisition agreement for valuable spectrum assets reached in May last year.

    But the agreement has been a contentious one for Filipino regulators, with the PCC currently petitioning the Supreme Court to lift an injunction blocking a planned review into the joint acquisition on competition grounds.

    The regulator had sought to stop the operators from completing the payment or closing the acquisition while the case is ongoing.

    PLDT and Globe officials both told that the payment is merely fulfilling the operators’ contractual obligations, with Globe asserting that the PCC’s call for the final payment to be postponed was a mere suggestion.

    The operators also plan to continue implementing their newly-acquired spectrum into their operations while the case is ongoing.

    In its petition to the court, the PCC had argued that allowing the operators to proceed with the acquisition will make it harder to unwind the acquisition if the court does find in its favor and the investigation proves that the merger violates competition law.

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  • Rescue plan approved for Hong Kong’s i-Cable

    Rescue plan approved for Hong Kong’s i-Cable

    Minority shareholders in Hong Kong pay TV broadcaster i-Cable Communications have voted to approve a rescue plan that will inject fresh cash into the struggling operator following the withdrawal of support by its majority shareholder.

    Wharf Holdings announced in March that it will stop providing funding for the broadcaster following nine consecutive years of losses, and that it was considering winding down the company after failing to find a buyer for its 73.8% stake.

    But now consortium Forever Top has agreed to step in and be the new majority shareholder, injecting fresh funding into the company.

    i-Cable launched in 1993 as Hong Kong’s first pay TV operator. But the company’s subscriber base has been declining over the past five years, the report notes, and its net losses have been widening.

    Industry experts are urging the company to rebrand and modernize its operations, focusing on providing OTT video services over its website. The company is also being encouraged to expand its operations to outside of Hong Kong.

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  • Ncell’s 4G license to be withheld

    Ncell’s 4G license to be withheld

    The Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has backtracked on its decision to grant Ncell a 4G license in response to a directive from the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

    The committee recently directed the regulator to prevent Ncell from launching 4G services until an ongoing dispute over capital gains tax is settled. The NTA has announced it will abide by this decision.

    Ncell was granted approval earlier this month to launch 4G services despite an earlier decision by the PAC not to allow the launch until the tax dispute is settled.

    In making its decision, the NTA said the directive has been issued in the spirit of Nepal’s technology neutral spectrum policy, as well as in response to a finding from Nepal’s Development Committee that withholding a license would negatively affect consumers and state funds.

    The tax dispute revolves around the sale of Sweden’s TeliaSonera’s indirect majority stake in Ncell to Malaysia’s Axiata for $1.03 billion in 2015.

    But the government has been split on whether the tax should be paid by the buyer or the seller and may require Ncell to pay on behalf of the international companies. There is also disagreement over whether Nepalese tax law even applies to the transaction, as it involved the sale of a holding company listed in a tax haven.

  • Huawei, REDtone, Fuisonex form cloud partnership

    Huawei, REDtone, Fuisonex form cloud partnership

    Huawei, REDtone and Fusionex have formed a three-way partnership to help  meet the rapid increase in demand for big data and analytics cloud solutions in Asia Pacific.

    According to Huawei’s Global Connectivity Index 2017, a yearly survey conducted by Huawei to track key countries in their progress towards connectivity, having a robust ICT infrastructure is foundational to digital transformation.

    While broadband networks and data centers form the basis of a digitized world, cloud services power the use and analysis of Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT) where actionable insights are driven.

    The collaboration aims to leverage on all partners’ unique expertise to intelligently identify pain points and opportunities for users while lowering opex and capex with on-demand one-stop cloud service solution.

    Under the partnership, Huawei will act as the cloud solution provider and the go-to-market advisor. REDtone flexiCloud, the next generation business-to-business cloud, will offer enterprise cloud services that runs on the Huawei’s cloud platform. Fusionex, an international software provider for analytics, big data and the IoT, will contribute business insights and analytics-as-a-service to complete the full-suite of cloud solutions tailored for verticals including healthcare, retail and more.

    “With this strategic partnership, we are moving towards swift digital transformation together with our partners and customers, as well as enabling business success of our customers by helping them to cloudify their business through our global experience and professional services. We see this as a future model of growth for enterprises in the digital era,” said George Pan, CTO of Huawei Malaysia.

    He added, “We are appreciative that REDtone and Fusionex have set their sights in helping their customers from different industries to digitalize their businesses. It excites us to launch the services with our partners beyond Malaysia through our innovative business model above IaaS, focusing on what customer want, business agility, cost efficiency and service aggregation.”

    “Businesses facing digital transformation are no longer “going it alone.” Finding the right technology partner is mission critical. At REDtone, we leverage cloud computing, Big Data, IoT and enhanced vertical applications to facilitate enterprise digitalization towards agile and smart operations, to ultimately deliver an extraordinary experience to the customer,” said Lau Bik Soon, Group Chief Executive Officer of REDtone International Berhad.

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  • Telstra to connect 29 stadiums for Fox Sports

    Telstra to connect 29 stadiums for Fox Sports

    Australia’s Telstra has secured a contract to connect 29 sporting stadiums across the country using its nationwide Distributed Production Network end-to-end IP network for cable TV broadcaster Fox Sports.

    Under the long-term contract, Telstra will use the network to connect the stadiums to new Remote Production Hubs in Sydney and Melbourne.

    The deployment is expected to be completed ahead of next year’s National Rugby League and Australian Football League seasons.

    Telstra’s DPN has been custom-built for the media industry to allow customers to remotely produce live broadcasts combining multiple raw camera feeds and audio signals from centralized production hubs.

    According to Telstra Broadcast Services head Trevor Boal, the DPN network will deliver a standard capacity of 100Gbps for each stadium using diverse network paths, and will support the broadcasting of more than 520 live tier sporting events per year.

    “Telstra’s DPN is designed to help our broadcast customers meet the rapidly growing demand for live content by offering access to our high capacity, low latency, multi-tenant network of scale,” he said.

    “In a world first, multiple channels of uncompressed linear contribution video at the lowest possible latency will be traversing our network from sporting venues up to 3500 kilometers away from the Remote Production Hubs.”

    Telstra has already previously integrated its live, point of view miniature wearable camera technology Globecam into Fox Sports’ broadcasts.

  • ZTE calls for globally harmonized 5G ecosystem

    ZTE calls for globally harmonized 5G ecosystem

    ZTE has called on mobile operators to work towards a globally harmonized 5G ecosystem to ensure the healthy development of the telecoms industry.

    In an address at the third global 5G Event in Tokyo last week, ZTE’s director of wireless standardization and industrial relationships Wang Xinhui said that industry standardization for the future of both mobile broadband and the IoT should move forward in parallel.

    “This year is a critical year for 5G,” Wang said during his address.

    “Standardization for next-generation mobile broadband and the Internet of Things should go hand-in-hand, and cooperation with industries should be enhanced. For example, it is vital for 5G to integrate with vertical applications such as the Internet of Vehicles.”

    He said 5G standards should simultaneously meet the requirements of enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable low latency communications and massive machine type communications. To ensure this, he said industry participants should collaborate more openly to build unified standards and ecosystems.

    Global 5G Events are sponsored by industry groups including the IMT-2020 promotion group, Europe’s Fifth Generation Mobile Communications Promotion Forum, the 5G Infrastructure Association, South Korea’s 5G Forum and the 5G Americas.

    At last week’s event, industry experts gathered to discuss 5G policies, spectrum, security and further cooperation in various industry verticals.

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  • VMware to integrate Horizon Cloud with Azure

    VMware to integrate Horizon Cloud with Azure

    Virtualization company VMware has announced plans to deliver VMware Horizon Cloud on the Microsoft Azure public cloud platform.

    The integration is designed to help customers accelerate the move to Windows 10 and brings VMware virtual desktops and applications to the increasing global presence of Azure in the enterprise – available in 38 regions globally.

    “The addition of VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure puts VMware in a unique position to offer customers several infrastructure options for virtual desktops and applications with the flexibility to move between different platforms,” said Sumit Dhawan, senior vice president and general manager for end-user computing at VMware.

    “This is an example of VMware executing against its cross-cloud strategy and bringing innovation to the desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) category it pioneered in 2009.”

    Horizon Cloud uses a single cloud control plane to let customers choose their preferred infrastructure for delivering and managing virtual desktops and applications.

    Customers can choose from several deployment options and can dynamically switch options if use cases change, employees move or economics shift. The options include fully managed public cloud infrastructure from either VMware or Microsoft, as well as bring your own on premise infrastructure.

    VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure is expected to be available in the second half of 2017.

  • IBM, Nutanix enter hyperconvergence tie-up

    IBM, Nutanix enter hyperconvergence tie-up

    IBM and Nutanix have announced a multi-year initiative to aimed at bringing new workloads to hyperconverged deployments.

    The integrated offering aims to combine Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud Platform software with IBM Power Systems, to deliver a turnkey hyperconverged solution targeting critical workloads in large enterprises.

    The partnership plans to deliver a full-stack combination with built-in AHV virtualization for a simple experience within the data center.

    This joint initiative intends to bring new workloads to hyperconverged deployments by delivering the first simple-to-deploy, web-scale architecture supporting POWER based scale-out computing for a continuum of enterprise workloads.

    These include next generation cognitive workloads, including big data, machine learning and AI; mission-critical workloads, such as databases, large scale data warehouses, web infrastructure, and mainstream enterprise apps; as well as cloud native workloads, including full stack open source middleware and enterprise databases and Containers.

    “Hyperconverged systems continue on a rapid growth trajectory, with a market size forecast of nearly $6 billion by 2020. IT teams now recognize the need, and the undeniable benefits, of embracing the next generation of datacenter infrastructure technology,” said Stefanie Chiras, VP for power systems at IBM.

    “Our partnership with Nutanix will be designed to give our joint enterprise customers a scalable, resilient, high-performance hyperconverged infrastructure solution, benefiting from the data and compute capabilities of the POWER architecture and the one-click simplicity of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform.”

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  • India’s Supreme Court holds tower removal order

    India’s Supreme Court holds tower removal order

    India’s Supreme Court has put a hold on a state government order to remove all mobile towers from within 500 meters of jails across Rajasthan after a challenge from mobile operators.

    The Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI), the main industry body for India’s mobile sector, is seeking to have the order overturned on the grounds that it would affect around 8 million people an have a cascading effect on the sector.

    The order from the Rajasthan government, issued on April 6, demanded all operators remove their towers from within the vicinity of jails by early June.

    In order to comply with the order, operators would have to remove a total of 400 towers, including base station controller sites catering to a further 2,500 base stations.

    In the court challenge, COAI has argued that even the national Department of Telecommunications has supported operators’ position that they should not have to remove the towers.

    A policy passed earlier this year permits setting up cell towers within 500 meters of jails, hospitals, schools and other public or private locations, the report notes. But this policy has since been amended to stipulate that construction of towers in the vicinity of these locations can be blocked by a court order.

    COAI is seeking a declaration that operators should not have to follow the order, and that the state government should not be allowed to penalize them for non-compliance.

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  • 100b IoT connections by 2025: Huawei

    100b IoT connections by 2025: Huawei

    There will be more than 100 billion IoT connections by 2025, predicts Huawei. The company recently shared its vision of the IoT with over 200 attendees at the inaugural Huawei IoT Ecosystem Forum, held in conjunction with CommunicAsia2017 last week.

    Low power wide area (LPWA) networks such as narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) running on licensed spectrum will represent approximately 70% of cellular IoT connections, Huawei predicted. Today NB-IoT is already powering industry applications such as asset tracking, agriculture and parking.

    While the massive number of connections is expected to enable significant productivity gains for companies and individuals, IoT will need the support of the entire ecosystem to reach its full potential.

    Lim Chee Siong, chief strategy and marketing officer of Huawei Southern Pacific region highlighted in his opening speech that Huawei will support the IoT ecosystem by focusing on three areas.

    These are building wireless network, enterprise IoT gateways and home IoT routers; providing a cloud-based IoT connection management platform, which realizes secured and reliable IoT connections; and innovating IoT chipsets, with built-in LiteOS, to make communication and connection in the IoT environment with ease.

    “We will work to develop a cohesive IoT ecosystem, which all partners and telcos can leverage as they address the IoT needs of different vertical industries,” said Lim.

    To drive innovation and glocalisation of technology services in Singapore, Huawei announced its partnership with i5Lab with NUS enterprise in November 2017 to accelerate the growth of IoT startups in Singapore.

    The collaboration aims to cater to the industry’s needs for incubation of innovative ideas, training, research support, funding, testing and certification in the region.

    Huawei  president of IoT solutions Jiang Wang Cheng commented that “We believe that IoT is a ‘GLocal’ ecosystem where telcos, local enterprises and global vendors like Huawei leverage on each others’ knowledge and capabilities to build a vibrant ecosystem. Huawei is glad to recommend our partners in different industries and establish channels of communication between operators and vertical industries. We call for more partners from across different verticals to join us to build viable IoT solutions.”

    Huawei is currently working with more than 40 partners on smart meter, smart light and connected car to offer IoT device, network, service platform, applications and system integration. In March 2017, Huawei announced plans to invest US$1 billion in developer ecosystem worldwide.

  • Nokia, DoCoMo to test 5G in 4.5-GHz

    Nokia, DoCoMo to test 5G in 4.5-GHz

    Nokia and NTT DoCoMo have jointly announced plans to conduct interoperability testing of multi-vendor technology using the 4.5-GHz frequency band, as part of broader efforts to help develop Japan’s 5G ecosystem.

    The companies will be testing 5G applications using Nokia’s AirScale base station and 5G radio interface using the Intel 5G mobile trial platform.

    End-to-end applications will be tested over the air between the base station and the device using the 4.5-GHz spectrum, which is one of the 5G candidate frequency bands in Japan.

    Nokia’s AirScale active antenna with Massive MIMO technology and digital beamforming will be used to test applications including low-latency 4K video streaming.

    “This is a vital first step to allow us to ensure that we have the 5G network infrastructure available for when we commercially introduce the technology, with an ecosystem of device vendors to offer our subscribers the best possible choice and highest quality,” NTT DoCoMo CTO Seizo Onoe said.

    “This trial is an important milestone for the development of 5G in Japan, which will be one of the first countries in the world to adopt the technology,” added Nokia Japan head Jae Won.
    “Furthermore, the initiative is an important step forward in our collaboration with NTT DOCOMO, as well as other key technology partners, as we develop a technology that will meet the ever-growing demands of huge numbers of people living in megacities.”

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