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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.

  • Wi-Tribe to launch Pakistan’s first LTE-A network soon

    Wi-Tribe to launch Pakistan’s first LTE-A network soon

    Pakistan’s Wi-Tribe is on track to deploy the market’s first LTE-Advanced network in around May this year.

    The former Wimax operator plans to launch a network capable of speeds of up to 100Mbps within the next few months.  The company expects to raise this speed to 200Mbps by end-2018 and to 400Mbps by around 2019 as more advanced customer premises equipment becomes available.

    On Facebook, Wi-Tribe group chairman Hasan Bokhari and Wi-Tribe advisory board chairman Shahid Malik Chairman confirmed that the company has awarded Huawei a $15 million contract to help deploy the network.

    The executives said the network will be the first LTE-A deployment in the 3.5-GHz band in South Asia and the Middle East, and is expected to be fully operational in June.

    Wi-Tribe plans to invest over $25 million in LTE-A over the next three years, and its owners have committed to reinvesting all profits from the company’s operations over this time back into the business.

    “We see a very bright future through LTE-A insha’Allah, and intend to offer not just competitive packages with unrivalled technology, speed and reliability but with the advantage of having all this backed up by our Tribers who will continue to deliver the best customer support in Pakistan,” the executives wrote.

  • Taiwan’s Quanta Computer taps Brocade for IP rollout

    Taiwan’s Quanta Computer taps Brocade for IP rollout

    Taiwan-based notebook manufacturer Quanta Computer has deployed Brocade-powered New IP networks at factories within its key manufacturing site.

    The deployment of Brocade IP networking technology at both the company’s network edge and its data center dramatically simplifies operations at the Quanta Shanghai Manufacturing City (QSMC) plants, Brocade said.

    The project also paves the way for the company to employ SDN as it diversifies into producing a broader range of digital products.

    Quanta Computer has grown to become a $ 31.5 billion business by delivering manufacturing excellence to major brands including Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, and Sony.

    “Competition in the notebook market is relentless and so is the demand to improve manufacturing quality and efficiency,” said Dave Chen, AVP of Quanta Computer. “Our factories are highly automated and that makes them highly network-dependent with a network edge of more than 10,000 ports now deployed at Quanta Shanghai Manufacturing City, which is a big network administration challenge.”

    Chen said they deployed Brocade networking solutions at Quanta Shanghai Manufacturing City because they provide a radically simplified administration model, which reduces costs and improves network availability, and sets us up for further improvements and increased production line flexibility by leveraging SDN.

    Henry Zhu, Brocade country manager for China, the deployment opens the way for the development of software-defined production lines that are capable of virtual retooling on the fly to dramatically increase flexibility.

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  • PLDT to expand FTTH footprint by 80% in 2017

    PLDT to expand FTTH footprint by 80% in 2017

    PLDT plans to expand the reach of its high-speed FTTH service by around 80% in 2017 to reach 4.4 million homes passed, the company announced.

    The expansion will see around 1.9 million new serviceable homes added to the network footprint, which reached 2.5 million homes last year following an aggressive fiber rollout.

    PLDT offers FTTH services under the PLDT Home Fibr brand, which offers speed of up to 1Gbps.

    PLDT Home Fibr has also introduced the nation’s first symmetrical fiber service, and the platform is being used to support a growing line of smart home services such as home monitoring services.

    The operator has also started to deploy G.fast technology from Huawei and hybrid fiber technology GiGa Wire, developed by KT. The technologies can provide speeds of up to 700Mbps per user over existing copper last mile connections.

    “We are stepping up our efforts to deliver unrivalled internet services to more homes in various parts of the country, from the Ilocos provinces in the North to Zamboanga in the South,” PLDT chairman and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan commented.

    PLDT had a capex budget of around $1 billion last year, and a significant portion of this was allocated for the rollout of domestic fiber infrastructure.

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  • Energia Communications to deploy G.fast nationwide

    Energia Communications to deploy G.fast nationwide

    Japan’s Energia Communications has signed a partnership and reseller agreement covering Nokia’s G.fast technology.

    Energia Communications plans to offer G.fast nationwide across Japan as part of an initiative to expand its utility service provider operations.

    G.fast is designed to squeeze fiber-like speeds from copper cable over last-mile connections such as apartment buildings with no fiber wiring. Energia Communications will use G.fast to replace the use of traditional VDSL2 technology.

    Energia Communications last year became Nokia’s first G.fast customer in Japan and one of its first customers for the technology worldwide, according to Energia Communications CEO Satoshi Kumagai.

    “We have been very happy with the service and have complete trust in Nokia’s capability and strengths of its fixed access business, which is why we decided to take the relationship forward as a successful business partnership/reseller model,” he said.

    Nokia’s Bell Labs holds the current world speed record for a single copper pair, having demonstrated speeds of 10Gbps using its XG-FAST technology in 2014.

    “This strategic partnership with EneCom will increase G.fast deployments in Japan, providing real benefits to subscribers who might otherwise be unable to enjoy ultra-broadband speeds. Japan is a very important market to us, and we look forward to a successful venture that will boost local economies,” Nokia Japan head Jae Won added.

  • Singtel Q3 profit grows 2% to $686.6m

    Singtel Q3 profit grows 2% to $686.6m

    Singapore’s Singtel grew its net profit for its fiscal third quarter by 2% to S$973 million ($686.6 million) in the face of declining operating revenue.

    Revenue fell 2% to S$4.41 billion as a result of a regulator-mandated reduction in mobile termination rates in Australia, the home market of Singtel’s wholly-owned subsidiary Optus.

    The reduction led to a 10% decline in group consumer revenue from Australia to A$1.81 billion ($1.38 billion), but consumer revenue from Singapore grew 4% for the quarter to S$657 million, as home services revenue increased by 7%.

    Group enterprise revenue was mostly flat at S$1.65 billion, with revenue from cybersecurity up 10% to S$113 million. Group digital life revenue meanwhile grew 22% to S$167 million, driven by a strong performance from digital marketing arm Amobee.

    Singtel’s share of pre-tax earnings from its regional mobile associates meanwhile grew 2% – or 0.6% in constant currency – to S$660 million. Indonesia’s Telkomsel delivered a strong performance with pre-tax profits up 31%, but Bhari Airtel’s pre-tax profits fell 27% due to the ongoing price war in India.

    Thailand’s AIS likewise saw its pretax profit decline by 28% due to spectrum and financing costs, reducing its contribution to S$89 million. The Philippines’ Globe’s contribution grew 18% to S$66 million.

    This quarter also included contribution from the company’s new 21% stake in Intouch, acquired in November. Intouch contributed a pre-tax profit of S$4 million.

    “This is a resilient set of results. We have managed to hold good ground against the backdrop of a slowing Singapore economy and more challenging business environment all around,” Singtel group CEO Chua Sock Koong commented.

    “While there are concerns of a global economic slowdown, the growth story in the developing markets where we are invested remains compelling as mobile data usage continued to grow across all our mobile associates.”

    The Singtel group’s total mobile customer base across its operations and those of its affiliates meanwhile grew another 2% during the quarter to 640 million.

  • IBM, Ericsson make phased-array breakthrough

    IBM, Ericsson make phased-array breakthrough

    IBM and Ericsson have announced a joint R&D breakthrough that the vendors say could accelerate the launch of 5G networks.

    The companies have created a contact silicon-based millimeterWave (mmWave) phased array integrated circuit operating at 28GHz within a phased array antenna module designed for use in future 5G base stations.

    The development is a result of a more than two-year collaboration to research phased-array antenna technologies. This partnership was first announced in November 2014.

    According to the companies, the prototype module has the potential to meet the size, weight, cost and performance standards that would be required for future 5G phased array deployments to be commercially viable.

    The module measures around 2.8 inches by 2.8 inches, and consists of four monolithic integrated circuits and 64 dual-polarized antennas. It supports a beam-steering resolution of less than 1.4 degrees for high precision pointing towards users.

    “There has been a lot of encouraging progress in 5G standardization last year including the beginning of live field trials,” Ericsson senior advisor for network products Thomas Noren said.

    “Big efforts in research and development are key to this and our collaboration with IBM Research on phased array antennas can help operators to effectively deploy radio access infrastructure necessary to support a 5G future.”

  • APAC widens lead for average broadband speed

    APAC widens lead for average broadband speed

    Asia-Pacific further increased its lead in the fourth quarter in terms of the average bandwidth of residential broadband services, as well as the best value for money in terms of cost per megabit, according to Point Topic.

    The research firm said average bandwidth in the region jumped 28% year-on-year during the quarter to 419Mbps, well ahead of the global average of 118Mbps.

    Globally, the average monthly cost for residential broadband services declined by $2 to $98. Costs have been decreasing for several quarters. In APAC by comparison, the average monthly cost is roughly $50.

    The 118Mbps global average bandwidth provided to residential subscribers was up from 112Mbps in the previous quarter, in a result Point Topic attributes to the accelerated rollout of Docsis 3.1 cable networks capable of 1Gbps speeds.

    The global average price per Mbps accordingly fell to $0.83 by the end of the Q4, from $0.89 at the end of the previous quarter. The average cost per Mbps of a copper connection reached $7.07, compared to $0.58 for cable and $0.45 for fiber.

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  • CenturyLink launches ‘integrated big data’ for global firms

    CenturyLink launches ‘integrated big data’ for global firms

    CenturyLink has launched CenturyLink Big Data as a Service (BDaaS) with Managed Cloudera, a new managed service offering.

    The company said the new offering combines CenturyLink’s expertise in data and advanced analytics, network, cloud and application services with the highly secure Apache Hadoop-based data management and analytics platform from Cloudera.

    This managed service delivers data integration and analytics consulting to help customers deliver use cases for increasing sales, streamlining operations, improving customer engagement and gaining competitive advantage.

    Many organizations lack the in-house resources, expertise and strategy needed to successfully leverage their big data, especially as the Internet of Things (IoT) places more demands on their IT infrastructure.

    CenturyLink BDaaS, led by specialized consulting from the company’s team of big data experts, delivers a comprehensive managed service backed by infrastructure that can handle data-intensive workloads, including surges. This enables rapid analysis of large and complex data sets, the company said.

    CenturyLink BDaaS is enhanced by adding data and advanced analytics consulting services supported by a deep bench of Cloudera-certified data scientists and Cloudera Hadoop solution administrators, developers and architects. The solution, bolstered by CenturyLink’s global high-speed network connectivity, provides storage, processing, and management components deployed on CenturyLink Cloud Bare Metal servers.

    As a preferred Cloudera partner, this new BDaaS solution on Cloudera Enterprise furthers CenturyLink’s commitment to its recently expanded strategic alliance with Cloudera.

  • Colt launches Ethernet on-demand service

    Colt launches Ethernet on-demand service

    Colt Technology Services has announced the expansion of its SDN-enabled on-demand portfolio.

    The company said the new solutions are designed to “enable the digital transformation of today’s demanding businesses.”

    Colt’s Ethernet on Demand service supports dynamic real-time ordering, provisioning and flexing of high bandwidth connectivity between locations connected to the Colt IQ Network, the company said.

    This includes more than 5,000 enterprise buildings and 200 data centers that are currently eligible across 11 countries in Europe, creating an industry breakthrough never before realized on this scale. Colt also plans to further expand its reach to additional locations during 2017, including Asia.

    The new service allows businesses located in Colt-connected enterprise buildings to intelligently meet variable additional demands for high-bandwidth applications, such as cloud connectivity, disaster recovery or real-time data backup.

    Colt’s Ethernet on Demand service is the latest innovation available from the company’s On Demand Portfolio. It follows the launch of Colt’s DCNet On Demand in 2016, which transformed the user experience for managing high bandwidth connectivity between data centers.

    Colt’s On Demand Portfolio, which allows enterprises to consume Ethernet connectivity services on the Colt IQ Network in real-time via an intelligent online customer portal, bypasses the legacy service delivery processes.

    It also gives customers full control and the ability to flex bandwidth requirements up and down instantaneously, using the portal. The on-demand flexibility also extends to pricing, giving customers the option to choose per-hour pricing plans, as well as more traditional fixed term contract durations.

  • Telefónica selects Huawei to build virtual EPC network in 13 countries

    Telefónica selects Huawei to build virtual EPC network in 13 countries

    Spanish telco Telefónica has contracted Huawei to virtualize its 4G networks in 13 countries as part of its UNICA program.

    The Spanish telco said the two companies are building a large scale virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC), an industry-approve framework for providing converged voice and data on 4G LTE networks, in Latin America and Europe.

    The vEPC network will cover 11 countries in Latin America:  Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, México, Colombia, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala; and two in Europe: Germany and Spain.

    Telefónica will be using Huawei’s vEPC solution, called CloudEPC, that will allow the operator “to build agile networks that quickly scale to match the performance demands of new services”, the companies said in the statement.

    Telefónica and Huawei have been jointly working and testing Huawei CloudEPC performance, in Telefónica’s NFV Reference Lab in Madrid. During the test, Huawei CloudEPC showed one of the best performances in both data and signaling planes by good cloud-formation architecture and by using EPA (Enhanced Platform Awareness) technologies.

    The companies are currently testing the onboarding of the CloudEPC solution over Telefónica´s UNICA infra cloud platform that will allow full automatization of the vEPC deployments and life cycle management within Telefónica networks.

    “This large scale vEPC network deployment is a further step within the Telefónica UNICA virtualization program where a smooth migration to UNICA infra cloud capabilities will be reached following extensive test in Telefónica Lab,” Javier Gavilán, planning and technology director at Telefonica said.

    “These results provide the confidence needed to continue with the adoption and deployment of virtualized solutions and to enable the transformation to software-driven networking.”

  • AWS dominates public cloud market in Q4, says report

    AWS dominates public cloud market in Q4, says report

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) is maintaining its dominant share of the burgeoning public cloud services market at over 40%, new fourth quarter data from Synergy Research Group showed.

    The research firm also said that the three main chasing cloud providers – Microsoft, Google and IBM – are gaining ground but at the expense of smaller players in the market.

    In aggregate, the three have increased their worldwide market share by almost five percentage points over the last year, helped by particularly strong growth at Microsoft and Google, and together now account for 23% of the total public IaaS and PaaS market.

    The next ten cloud providers in the ranking have slipped off the pace a little, though this group does include Alibaba and Oracle who continue to grow at impressive rates. There is then a very long tail of small-to-medium sized cloud service providers, whose collective market share has now dropped to just 18%.

    With most of the major operators having now released their earnings data for Q4, Synergy estimates that quarterly public cloud infrastructure service revenues (including both public IaaS and public PaaS) have now reached well over $7 billion and continue to grow at almost 50% per year.

    If managed private cloud services are included, quarterly cloud revenues are now well over $9 billion. The cloud providers and rankings are very different in the managed private cloud, where IBM continues to lead while Rackspace and traditional IT service providers feature more prominently than they do in public cloud.

    “While a few cloud providers are growing at extraordinary rates, AWS continues to impress as a dominant market leader that has no intention of letting its crown slip,” Synergy Research chief analyst and research director John Dinsdale said.

    “Achieving and maintaining a leadership position in this market takes huge ongoing investments in infrastructure, a continued expansion in the range of cloud services offered, strong credibility with the large enterprise sector, consistently strong execution, and the wholehearted and long-term backing of senior management. AWS is checking all of those boxes and any serious challengers need to do likewise.”

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  • HGC launches iBizCloud in Indonesia

    HGC launches iBizCloud in Indonesia

    Hutchison Global Communications (HGC) has teamed up with Indonesian ISP PT Centrin Online Prima to launch a cloud service tailored for the Indonesia market.

    The launch of ibizCloud in Jakarta aims to provide a one-stop global cloud service that meets the infrastructure and speed requirements of local and international enterprises.

    HGC is providing cloud technologies and service design, as well as international connectivity, while Centrin Online provides local connectivity for the service. This launch aims to help the latter meet increasing demand for data exchanges from corporations operating in Indonesia.

    Offered as a total solution, ibizCloud aims to enable Indonesian businesses to access reliable cloud storage without having to make hefty upfront investment in infrastructure.

    The service grants access to a cloud environment via infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), bandwidth-as-a-service (BaaS) and dedicated bandwidth-as-a-service (DBaaS).

    Customer organizations can also choose to use on-demand Virtual Leased Line (ODVLL), which facilitates end-to-end data transmission over a secure network. ibizCloud comes complete with virtualised infrastructure such as virtual machines, CPU cores, RAM and storage.

    “Making ibizCloud available in Jakarta represents a great start to 2017 for HGC,” commented Andrew Kwok, Limited president of international and carrier for HGC parent company Hutchison Telecommunications (Hong Kong).

    “The new cloud site strengthens ibizCloud’s market position in Asia, following launch of the service in Hanoi last December. HGC works tirelessly to enhance ibizCloud features in order to meet ever-rising demand from multinationals. One of the value-added features to look out for in early 2017 will be a resource pool arrangement by which customers can allocate additional resource promptly, without having to go through a subscription process.”

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  • Level 3 opens DDoS scrubbing centers in APAC

    Level 3 opens DDoS scrubbing centers in APAC

    Multinational companies located in the Asia-Pacific region now have access to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation solutions from Level 3 Communications.

    The new scrubbing centers in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore signify an expansion of the company’s security service functionality. The company says its security solutions provide layers of defense through enhanced network routing, rate limiting and filtering that can be paired with cloud-based scrubbing for a more comprehensive mitigation solution.

    The Asia-Pacific region is key for both Asian and multinational enterprises which demand global security services — making Level 3’s cybersecurity solutions and global presence essential.

    Level 3 began operating in Asia Pacific in 2004. The company has 14 on-net markets throughout Asia Pacific with service reach to more than 50 markets in the region. Level 3 offers its customers in the region VPN, direct internet access, Ethernet VPL, managed services, unified communications, CDN and security solutions.

    Level 3 opened the additional scrubbing centers to provide customers with infrastructure in the region to quickly mitigate attacks with less disruption to business operations.

    Level 3’s DDoS ingest capacity, 4.5 terabits per second, provides a high capacity to ingest massive attacks so customers can get back to business as usual.

    The service is carrier agnostic and pulls all customer traffic into Level 3’s globally located scrubbing centers for cleansing before forwarding legitimate traffic through a private connection or the public internet.

    Level 3 now has 11 scrubbing centers on four continents. Other locations include São Paulo, Frankfurt, London, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC.

    24/7 Security Operations Centers detect anomalies in global NetFlow sessions, perform impact analyses, notify customers of threatening conditions and then help them mitigate the issue.

    Australia, China and Hong Kong are listed among the most vulnerable to cyberattacks, according to a report by Project Sonar.

    IoT-compromizing malware research by Level 3 Threat Research Labs reveals many connected devices are being compromised and enabling attacks reaching in excess of 600 Gbps.

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  • NEC wins deal with Philippines public broadcaster

    NEC wins deal with Philippines public broadcaster

    NEC Philippines signed a contract to provide digital terrestrial TV equipment for the People’s Television Network (PTNI), the public broadcasting service for the Republic of the Philippines.

    This contract supports the expansion of digital terrestrial TV broadcasting in the Philippines, which has been gaining momentum since November 2013, when the country adopted the Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting Technologies (ISDB-T) standard.

    Under this contract, PTNI is scheduled to introduce digital terrestrial TV transmitters and compression multiplexers across six locations in the Philippines by July 2017.

    NEC is providing total support for the introduction of these units, including their provision, installation, and the training of personnel.

    The equipment that NEC is slated to provide features some of the world’s highest levels of power efficiency, and is highly evaluated for superior reliability in the broadcasting field.

    “NEC is proud to be working with PTNI to expand the delivery of high-quality broadcasting to a larger audience in the Philippines,” said Elizabeth Pangan, president of NEC Philippines.

    “As part of NEC’s focus on providing Solutions for Society, this equipment will help to ensure that broadcasting and access to information is reliably maintained, especially during times of emergency, such as when powerful storms strike the region,” said Pangan.

    NEC began providing digital terrestrial TV transmitters for international markets in 1998, when it provided equipment for the world’s first commercial digital terrestrial broadcasting service in the United Kingdom. Since then, NEC has shipped more than 4,500 transmitters to over 50 countries throughout the world.

  • StarHub Q4 profit falls 33.2%

    StarHub Q4 profit falls 33.2%

    Singapore’s StarHub revealed its fourth quarter profit fell 33.2% to S$54 million ($38.6 million), as a result of higher costs and growing competition.

    Revenue for the quarter stayed flat at S$634.8 million, but service revenue grew 1% year-on-year to S$567.1 million.

    Higher handset subsidies, a higher finance expense and other costs all contributed to the decline in profit during the quarter.

    Mobile revenue decreased slightly to S$311.8 million, with both postpaid and prepaid ARPU declining by S$2 year-on-year to S$70 and S$15 respectively. Pay TV revenue also decreased 6% year-on-year to S$93.9 million.

    Broadband revenue by contrast grew 4% year-on-year to S$54 million, with ARPU growing S$2 year-on-year to S$37. But residential broadband customers fell by 1% year-on-year to 473,000.

    Enterprise fixed line revenue also grew 10% year-on-year to S$107.2 million due to a higher take-up of data and managed services.

    For the full year, SartHub’s net profit fell 8.3% to S$341.4 million, with total revenue down 1.9% to S$2.39 billion. Mobile revenue was up 2% to S$1.2 billion, broadband revenue was 8% higher at S$216.6 million and enterprise fixed revenue increased 3.9% to S$400 million.

    “Despite increased competition, we have registered growth in key areas. Mobile, which accounts for half of our total revenue, showed resiliency as we saw an increase in subscriber base and data revenue. Momentum for our broadband revenue was maintained and we also witnessed a consistent revenue growth in our enterprise fixed business,” StarHub CEO Tan Tong Hai said.

    “In the new year, we remain focused on our customer-centric approach to deliver innovative solutions to both our consumer and enterprise customers.”

    Based on the current outlook, StarHub is currently projecting roughly flat service revenue for the current year. The operator has a capex target of around 13% of total revenue.

    The Singaporean mobile market is facing renewed competitive pressure due to the upcoming entry of Australia-based TPG Telecom as well as the impact of disruptive 4G MVNO Circles.Life.

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