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  • Singapore Cruise Operators Navigate Rising Fuel Prices with Speed Cuts and Route Adjustments

    Singapore Cruise Operators Navigate Rising Fuel Prices with Speed Cuts and Route Adjustments

    Cruise operators in Singapore are taking measures such as reducing sailing speeds, modifying routes, and discontinuing promotional offers in an effort to mitigate the effects of surging fuel prices triggered by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. StarDream Cruises, which operates three vessels, disclosed that its operational expenses have increased primarily due to the global surge in fuel prices.

    The company’s president, Michael Goh, noted that while there have been minor adjustments made in certain areas of their network, the Asia itineraries, including those stopping in Singapore, have generally remained steady. These changes, made as part of regular operational optimization, have been managed carefully to ensure that the overall guest experience remains unaffected.

    In response to the escalating costs related to the Middle East conflict, StarDream Cruises announced a fuel surcharge of SGD15 (US$11.82) per person in March. The company has also implemented measures such as itinerary and route adjustments, speed management, and energy efficiency initiatives across its fleet.

    Cruise Industry Resilience Amidst Rising Costs

    Despite the rising fuel costs, international cruise arrivals to Singapore saw a 10% year-on-year increase in March, as stated by the Singapore Tourism Board. The board’s director of cruises, Chitra Rajesh Kumar, highlighted Indonesia, mainland China, and Malaysia as the top three source markets, with passenger numbers from these markets also seeing an increase.

    The primary marine fuel used by cruise ships experienced a global price surge from approximately $550 per tonne in February to around $1,060 per tonne in March. As of May 5, the price stood at $975 per tonne. This has prompted some operators to revise their routes in response to the geopolitical situation and the energy crunch.

    Several cruise operators have made similar moves, revising their schedules and routes to avoid areas of conflict and minimize exposure. For instance, Oceania Cruises has rerouted its ship Oceania Vista, originally set to transit the Suez Canal on a voyage from Singapore to Southampton in the United Kingdom, to now sail via Cape Town, South Africa, and up the continent’s west coast.

    Despite the challenges, the demand for cruise holidays has proven resilient. The Singapore Tourism Board noted that the cruise industry has demonstrated resilience with steady bookings for future months. This continues to be supported by sustained global interest in cruising, the strength of regional source markets, and excellent air connectivity.

    Questions & Answers

    What measures have Singapore’s cruise operators taken to manage rising fuel costs?
    Singapore’s cruise operators are reducing sailing speeds, modifying routes, and discontinuing promotional offers to manage the impact of rising fuel costs. They are also implementing energy efficiency initiatives across their fleets.

    How has the increased fuel price affected the cruise industry?
    While the price of marine fuel has significantly increased, the cruise industry has demonstrated resilience, maintaining steady bookings for future months. Cruise operators have adjusted their operations, such as rerouting ships and adding fuel surcharges, to manage these costs without significantly impacting the guests’ experience.

    How is the demand for cruise holidays in the current climate?
    The demand for cruise holidays remains strong, as indicated by steady advance bookings. The strength of regional source markets, sustained global interest in cruises, and excellent air connectivity contribute to this resilience. Despite the challenges, more travellers are exploring cruising as a convenient and value-driven option.

  • Casino Operators Battle Proposed Doubling of Monthly Entry Fees to $1,900: A Game Changer?

    Casino Operators Battle Proposed Doubling of Monthly Entry Fees to $1,900: A Game Changer?

    Casino operators are voicing their concerns over a proposed plan by regulatory bodies to increase the monthly casino entry fee to VND50 million ($1,900). Some operators suggest this amount should instead be set as the annual entry fee.

    Increased Entry Prices

    The Ministry of Finance is currently inviting feedback on an initiative to raise the entry fees for casinos. The proposal also includes an increase in the price of a one-day ticket by 2.5 times to VND2.5 million. At the moment, there is no option to purchase annual tickets.

    The Ho Tram Project Company, the entity operating the Ho Tram Casino in Ho Chi Minh City, has put forward a suggestion for the introduction of an annual ticket at a cost of VND50 million, with no changes to the existing rates. This initiative would equate to approximately VND4.2 million per month, or 16.8% of the present VND25 million. The company states that this pricing structure aligns with that of Singapore, where visitors pay VND3 million for a 24-hour pass and VND60 million for an annual pass.

    The Corona Casino, located on Phu Quoc Island, has proposed fixing the one-day ticket price at VND1.5 million, with a VND35 million monthly pass. These prices are 30-40% lower than the new proposed rates.

    Opposition to the Proposal

    The ministry, however, has dismissed both proposals, arguing that increased pricing is necessary to dissuade individuals with insufficient funds from engaging in gambling activities. The Ministry of Justice previously stated that using entry prices as a measure of a player’s finances is not an effective approach.

    At present, Vietnamese citizens are permitted to enter three casinos, the third being the Van Don Casino in Quang Ninh province near the Chinese border. Vietnam has six other casinos; however, these are exclusively open to foreign visitors, as the government continues to maintain strict control over the gambling industry.

    The Phu Quoc casino, which is operated by a subsidiary of Vingroup, was the pioneer in allowing local entry through a pilot program initiated in 2016. The venue houses 1,470 slot machines and 147 gaming tables. Over the past five years, Vietnamese patrons have made up 52% of the casino’s clientele and contributed to 88% of its revenue. However, these figures have seen a downward trend following the Covid-19 pandemic, with local patronage dwindling to a mere 12% last year.

    Questions & Answers

    Why have casino operators objected to the proposed increase in entry prices?
    Casino operators argue that the suggested price hikes could deter visitors, leading to a decrease in revenue. They propose that these increased fees should instead be applied to annual tickets.

    Why does the Ministry of Finance believe higher entry prices are necessary?
    The Ministry of Finance maintains that increased entry prices are a means to discourage individuals who may not have sufficient financial resources from indulging in gambling activities.

    Why have the numbers of Vietnamese patrons at the Phu Quoc casino decreased since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic?
    The reduction in local patronage may be due to factors such as economic hardship caused by the pandemic, increased health concerns, and the implementation of social distancing measures.

  • Casino operator targets ending losing streak

    Casino operator targets ending losing streak

    Royal International Corporation, which operates a casino in the northern Quang Ninh Province, has set itself a profit target of $500,000 this year after two years of losses.

    It seeks to double revenues to $10.3 million, $5.8 million from the casino and the rest come from its hotel and villas.

    The corporation will continue with last year’s business strategy of targeting foreigners working in Vietnam who are unable to return to their home country due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

    It plans to cut costs and adopt a flexible pricing strategy to attract Vietnamese customers once the pandemic passes.

    It posted a VND82 billion ($4.3 million) loss last year, and said casinos are a unique business that rely on chance but also pointed to the increasing number of casinos in the north, which cut into its revenues.

    RIC, which has a charter capital of $22 million, is listed on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange.

  • Nokia demonstrates record Optus’ 5G mmWave capabilities

    Nokia demonstrates record Optus’ 5G mmWave capabilities

    Nokia and Optus announced that they achieved a record-breaking aggregate site throughput of 10 Gbps during a downlink speed demonstration using 800 MHz of millimeter Wave (mmWave) spectrum at a live 5G site in Brisbane. Powered by Nokia AirScale Radio, the site demonstrates the huge potential of 5G as it is introduced across future spectrum bands. Once deployed, the speed and a capacity boost from the 5G mmWave layer will unleash lightning-fast speeds for consumers and enterprises alike to support a range of new low-latency, high-bandwidth services.

    The recent demonstration showcased the capabilities of Nokia’s 5G mmWave technology and the benefits of adding it on top of an existing 5G/4G site. The demonstration showed how Nokia’s 5G mmWave technology delivers on the promise of super-fast data rates by boosting the site capacity to 10 Gbps and beyond.

    Nokia’s 5G mmWave technology will allow Optus to focus on scalability, automation, and performance by supporting services that utilize the full capability of 5G. Leveraging Nokia’s solutions, Optus can also harness 5G mmWave to serve the enterprise market and explore new use cases in healthcare, mining, port operations, and smart manufacturing, among other industries.

    The decision to select this mixed commercial and industrial area of Brisbane was made keeping these new use cases in mind as they sought to showcase the many real-world benefits of mmWave to the enterprise; thereby gaining early insights into this new exciting technology before wider rollout in the future.

    This achievement further strengthens the long-standing and collaborative partnership between Nokia and Optus. In early 2019, Optus became the first operator globally to deploy Nokia’s FastMile 5G indoor gateway in a live 5G network. Recently, the two companies also successfully launched 5G services at the Optus Stadium in Perth, Australia.

    Lambo Kanagaratnam, Managing Director of Networks at Optus, said: “We’re committed to keeping Australia connected and at the forefront of 5G. By partnering with global technology leaders like Nokia, we’ve taken an exciting step towards unlocking the massive potential that 5G mmWave will bring to the consumers, enterprises and industries in Australia. Reaching 10 Gbps per site is a crucial step in our 5G development and validates the progress we’ve made with the technology together with Nokia.”

    Anna Wills, Head of Oceania at Nokia, said: “This is another milestone in the development of 5G services and demonstrates the confidence operators have in our 5G solutions. Today’s achievement with Optus shows the potential of mmWave deployments, particularly at a time when connectivity and capacity are so crucial. We’re proud of our long-standing relationship with Optus and the great strides we continue to make together in this new era of connectivity.”

  • Vietnamese operators to begin 5G testing as of 2019

    Vietnamese operators to begin 5G testing as of 2019

    Starting from the capital, Hanoi, the country aims to upgrade its mobile network along with the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City.

    “Vietnam should be among the first nations to launch 5G services in order to move up in global telecom rankings,” said Nguyen Manh Hung, the country’s minister of Information and Communications.

    Hung, previously the chairman and general director of Viettel Group, wants to reacquire Vietnam’s rank among the top countries worldwide in terms of major exporter of 5G gear through boosting the development of local equipment. He also plans to make the licensing and approval process easier for Vietnam’s IT sector.

    Several partnerships have been made in order to facilitate the procedures: VNPT has teamed up with Nokia on 5G, while MobiFone signed an agreement with Samsung Electronics to cooperate on 4G and 5G networks earlier this year.

    In 2017, Ericsson held the first 5G demonstration in the country in partnership with the Vietnam Authority of Radio Frequency Management.

    While MobiFone and VNPT are on the list of state-owned companies slated for privatization by 2020, Viettel is to remain in government hands.

  • Cinia and MegaFon to develop new Arctic telecom infrastructure

    Cinia and MegaFon to develop new Arctic telecom infrastructure

    The arctic is one of the most environmentally protected areas in the world, making permits for laying cables to be very difficult to obtain.

    Ari-Jussi Knaapila, CEO of Cinia, said, “The Arctic cable will contribute to the socio-economic development of the Arctic areas. The cale is an environmentally sustainable way to boost global, regional and local economies. At the same time, the cable will connect three continents, covering approximately 85 percent of the world’s population.”

    The new route will offer low latency, physical diversity and high network availability which will serve the markets of Europe, some parts of Russia, Japan and North America.

    CEO of MegaFon, Gevork Vermishyan said, “MegaFon is proud to join a major international infrastructure project that will not only connect several continents via the Arctic but also will benefit MEgaFon as a leader of digital opportunities by enabling the development of network infrastructure for customers in the Arctic region and the Far East.”

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  • Consumers willing to pay a premium for 5G

    Consumers willing to pay a premium for 5G

    Despite concerns surrounding the commercial proposition of 5G technology, smartphone users are willing to pay an average of a 20% premium for 5G services, according to Ericsson.

    The company’s latest ConsumerLab report on the 5G consumer potential finds that half of the early adopters would be willing to pay as much as 32% more for 5G.

    But consumers’ willingness to pay a premium for 5G is reliant on operators introducing new use cases and payment models and providing a consistently high uplink and downlink speed, the report finds.

    Meanwhile, 5G is expected to drive usage behaviors that also promise to increase revenues. The study finds that 5G is expected to significantly increase video consumption, both by enabling streaming in higher resolutions and through the increased use of augmented reality, virtual reality, and other new formats.

    Ericsson predicts that one in five smartphone users’ data usage could reach more than 200GB per month over 5G devices by 2025.

    Consumers also expect that 5G will bring additional benefits such as reducing network congestion in dense urban areas and introducing more home broadband choices.

    Based on the research, Ericsson ConsumerLab has drawn up a consumer roadmap of 5G use cases involving 31 different applications and services.

    These applications are divided into six categories – entertainment and media; enhanced mobile broadband; gaming and AR/VR applications; smart home and fixed wireless access; automotive and transportation; and shopping and immersive communications.

    “Trough our research, we have busted four myths about consumers’ views on 5G and answered questions such as whether 5G features will require new types of devices, or whether smartphones will be the silver bullet for 5G,” Ericsson Research head of ConsumerLab Jasmeet Singh Sethi said.

    “Consumers clearly state that they think smartphones are unlikely to be the sole solution for 5G.”

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  • Telcos to use AI to fight SMS fraud and drive A2P messaging revenue

    Telcos to use AI to fight SMS fraud and drive A2P messaging revenue

    Juniper Research is forecasting that total operator revenues from A2P (Application-to-Person) messaging services will reach $62 billion by 2023, up from $43 billion in 2019.  This represents a growth of 42% over the next 4 years.

    The research firm also claimed that revenue growth will be driven by operator efforts in mitigating messaging fraud over grey routes, alongside the emergence of rich-media messaging technologies including RCS (Rich Communications Suite).

    The Juniper research, A2P Messaging: SMS, RCS & OTT Business Messaging 2019-2023, also found that increased investment in SMS firewalls and AI (Artificial Intelligence) will drive down operator loss due to grey route SMS messages to $4 billion by 2023. This represents a fall from $10 billion in 2019, further contributing to operators’ messaging revenue growth over the next four years.

    Grey route SMS includes A2P messages disguised as P2P (Peer-to-Peer) traffic to exploit the lower costs compared to directly connected A2P SMS. Juniper estimates that 24% of A2P SMS messages will be delivered via grey routes in 2019, however efforts in improving SMS firewall capabilities will drive this down to below 10% by 2023.

    Meanwhile, RCS business messaging will account for under 10% of operators’ A2P messaging revenue by 2023. However, the research claimed that RCS business users will continue to use SMS for simple notifications, such as OTPs (One Time Passwords) owing to the low cost and simplicity. The research identified the integration of mobile payment capabilities directly into the RCS client to provide a differentiation point to SMS and increase RCS traffic.

    Research author Sam Barker added “RCS will provide operators with additional revenue opportunities beyond simple message termination. Operators must explore the advertising ecosystem and mobile payments over RCS to exploit their substantial subscriber bases to generate fresh revenue streams.”

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  • Hyperscale operators to boost colocation market

    Hyperscale operators to boost colocation market

    Synergy Research Group (SRG) says hyperscale operators are the fastest growing customer category for colocation providers. For both wholesale and retail colocation, 2018 revenue from hyperscale customers grew much more rapidly than revenues from other service provider customers and from enterprises.

    While the overall colocation market grew by 10% in 2018, revenues from hyperscale operators grew by 24% in the wholesale segment of the market and by 16% in the retail segment. Enterprise spending on wholesale colocation was relatively flat in 2018 compared to 2017, while enterprise spending on retail colocation grew by 7%.

    Synergy’s Q4 and year-end data shows that the total colocation market grew to over $34 billion in 2018.

    Growth was strongest in the APAC region, with China, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore showing the highest growth rates in the region. Hyperscale operators comprise the world’s major cloud and internet service firms, including the largest operators in IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, search, social networking and e-commerce. The other service provider category includes telcos, non-hyperscale cloud providers and internet service firms, hosting/outsourcing companies and content & digital media service providers. The enterprise category includes all other industry verticals plus government and the public sector.

    “It comes as no surprise that hyperscale operators are providing a boost to colocation providers, as they are on a charge to rapidly extend their worldwide data center footprint and in 2018 ramped up their capex by no less than 43%,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group.

    “In order to support this rapid growth they cannot just build their own data centers, so they also need to rely on colocation providers to lease out both large wholesale facilities and capacity at smaller edge locations. Hyperscale operators are becoming an ever-more important source of business for leading colocation companies such as Equinix, Digital Realty, Interxion, CyrusOne, QTS and GDS.”

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  • 211 operators globally investing in 5G

    211 operators globally investing in 5G

    At least 211 operators across 87 countries are investing in 5G, according to statistics compiled by consultancy company Hadden Telecoms.

    Operators investing in 5G are at a variety of stages, ranging from network deployments, to technology testing, demonstrations and pilot trials.

    To date, 15 operators have commercially launched 5G services, including Telstra and Optus in Australia, which are offering fixed wireless 5G services on the 3.6-GHz band. Vodafone Australia and the market’s national broadband network operator NBN Co are also investing in 5G.

    South Korea’s KT, LG U+ and SK Telecom meanwhile switched on their 3.5-GHz 5G networks last year, initially for enterprise customers only, and are planning to simultaneously launch commercial services for consumers shortly.

    The list of operators investing in 5G in Asia Pacific also includes China’s big three operators China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, Hong Kong’s 3 Hong Kong, China Mobile Hong Kong, HKT and SmarTone, and India’s Bharti Airtel, BSNL and Reliance Jio Infocomm.

    In Japan, KDDI, NTT Docomo, Rakuten Mobile and Softbank are spending heavily on 5G, while Malaysia’s Celcom, DiGi, Maxis, Telekom Malaysia and U Mobile and the Philippines’ Globe and PLDT are also trialing the technology.

    Singapore’s M1, Singtel and StarHub, Sri Lanka’s Dialog Axiata and Mobitel, Taiwan’s APT, Chunghwa Telecom, Far EasTone and Taiwan Mobile, Thailand’s AIS, Dtac, TOT and TrueMove and Vietnam’s Viettel are also at various stages of 5G development.

    “Operators globally are preparing for the large-scale introduction of 5G, the first services have launched, and the devices ecosystem is rapidly building and poised for the imminent scale availability of a range of smartphone models,” Hadden Telecoms director Alan Hadden said.

    “Dozens more operators are expected to launch their respective 5G services in the coming 12 months.”

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  • Operators not ready to exploit 5G opportunities

    Operators not ready to exploit 5G opportunities

    Syniverse’s global survey of service providers reveals that the industry is banking on driving new revenues from enterprise 5G opportunities, and that many have yet to develop the underlying payment, partnership, and interoperability systems that will allow a 5G ecosystem to monetize itself and flourish.

    Enterprise focus

    The survey highlights the degree to which 5G ecosystems are expected and prepared to play a significant part in an operator’s business model. Nearly 60% of respondents say that 5G will swing their organization’s focus to enterprise ecosystems, 77% of respondents expect their organizations to lead 5G ecosystems and offer advanced enterprise services, such as network slicing.

    Confident in recouping their investment in 5G enterprise plays, 90% of service providers surveyed said they have made progress in identifying vertical market opportunities. However, respondents raised significant concerns about the practical challenges of engaging in a new ecosystem that will entail many new partners, payment mechanisms and security challenges.

    Challenges remain

    Seventy-four percent acknowledged that coordinating multiple partners is somewhat or the most difficult challenge, followed by maintaining service quality (70%), and revenue-sharing mechanisms (65%).

    Where multiple partners require billing and charging, as many as 83% of respondents identified security and immutability of ecosystem transactions as a somewhat or most important feature, followed closely by the ability to allocate revenue between all partners (78%).

    Despite the scale of these specific concerns, as many as 51% say they have not yet identified, or are only just beginning to identify, their technical requirements for multi-party billing, reconciliation, and payment solutions.

    “One of 5G’s defining aspirations is that it offers service providers the capability to expand beyond the traditional consumer boundary by supporting enterprise services brought about by the internet of things (IoT), with such innovations as smart cities, self-driving cars, and robotics,” said Bill Hurley, chief marketing officer, Syniverse.

    “The ability to ensure operators can monetize these ecosystems is a particularly important aspect, along with the ability to ensure that every contributor to those ecosystems gets their fair share of revenue. Without monetization and related financial security, ecosystems just won’t grow.”

    Not ready

    The survey highlighted further concerns about the industry’s readiness to effectively monetize 5G, with just 10% of respondents saying their existing systems are suitable for multi-party billing, reconciliation and payment solutions in 5G. Ecosystem complexity also raises specific challenges around invoicing and paying non-operator partners.

    Seventy-seven percent of respondents see fraudulent activity as somewhat or the biggest challenge in this area, closely followed by revenue assurance for billing, and settlement vs. contract data (71%).

    Blockchain future

    Syniverse affirm development effort around the application of emerging technologies like blockchain as a means to transcend industry silos. This technology will ultimately allow universal payment processing and reconciliation among any company or provider across any technology by securely validating and managing transactions.

    It also sees blockchain as allowing companies to efficiently and securely overcome the inherent 5G challenges associated with security, monetization, and connecting partners.

    Anticipating a future dominated by 5G, Syniverse launched a 5G signaling service that supports cross-network connectivity for the IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual reality (VR), as well as interoperability with 4G and 3G networks.

    It is also partnering on a virtualized network that is already powering 30 million connected cars in Asia that all need globally accessible cellular connectivity. In addition, challenges around security of transactions in 5G ecosystems are being addressed by firewalls and a private global network that protect data from cyberattacks arising from IoT devices being connected to the internet.

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  • 9 in 10 operators look to real-time assurance for revenue protection

    9 in 10 operators look to real-time assurance for revenue protection

    Among global operators, 91% view real-time assurance as the most important priority for revenue protection, according to a research from telecom.com and Openet.

    The study shows that, without a transformed approach to revenue and service assurance, over half of respondents admit that they will risk losing more than 3% of the revenues expected to come from digital services (i.e. TV services, etc) in 2017 alone.

    The forecast leakage represents a significant level of risk as over 60% anticipating that revenues from digital services will account for 10% of total revenues, and 30% seeing this revenue figure at over 20% of total revenues.

    Also, over three quarters (77%) of those surveyed believe that existing revenue assurance systems would struggle to collect relevant data in real-time from virtualized networks for new services.

    The majority (87%) agreed that most existing revenue assurance systems were designed for traditional telecoms networks. With the advent of virtualization across operators’ infrastructure promising increased efficiency in the long-term, at a network level, it significantly increases complexity in the short term.

    With this in mind, 83% of operators believe the complexity of network virtualization is adding greater need to solve the challenge of dynamic data collection for assurance in this sense.

    “As the industry moves to roll out digital services enabled by new real-time systems and virtualized networks, revenue assurance needs a serious rethink,” said Jon Ross, GVP product and solutions management at Openet.

    “Many service providers are anticipating more than 20% of their service revenue coming from digital services in 2017, therefore it’s important that any potential for revenue leakage is addressed now,” said Ross.

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  • 5 operators are already testing 5G

    5 operators are already testing 5G

    Despite 5G standardization not being expected until 2020, 25 mobile operators have already commenced lab testing 5G technologies, according to industry data from network testing company Viavi.

    Of the 25 operators testing 5G, 12 have progressed to field testing, the company said. An additional four operators have announced plans for 5G trials but have not yet commenced them.

    Five operators have achieved data speeds of at least 35 Gbps in 5G trials, including Optus, M1 and StarHub.

    To date, Etisalat has the speed record at 36Gbps, Viavi said, with Ooredoo close behind at 35.46Gbps. All operators conducting 5G trials have reported data transmission speeds of at least 2Gbps.

    Viavi’s data also show that operators are testing 5G across a wide range of bands, ranging from sub 3-GHz up to 86-GHz.

    The most commonly trialed bandwidth among operators that have disclosed their test spectrum is currently 28-GHz – with eight operators using it – followed by 15-GHz, which is being used by seven operators.

    Among equipment suppliers, five major vendors have announced an involvement in 5G trials – Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Samsung and ZTE. Many operators are working with multiple vendors on their trials, with KT including all five equipment providers.

    “The pace of 5G development is already beyond the expectations of many observers,” Viavi CTO Sameh Yamany commented.

    “Now, as the technical delivery of data is starting to coalesce, it is time to think ahead to how future 5G networks can manage the disparate requirements of high data rates, very low latency applications and large-scale IoT services while maintaining QoS.”

    He said network slicing, involving the automation and programming of multiple cloud-based functions within a virtualized network, will be important to achieving these goals.

    “Service providers and their partners will require solutions that are virtualized from one end of the network to the other and have automated and correlated intelligence across each network slice for monitoring, optimization and service assurance.”

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  • 25 operators are already testing 5G

    25 operators are already testing 5G

    Despite 5G standardization not being expected until 2020, 25 mobile operators have already commenced lab testing 5G technologies, according to industry data from network testing company Viavi.

    Of the 25 operators testing 5G, 12 have progressed to field testing, the company said. An additional four operators have announced plans for 5G trials but have not yet commenced them.

    Five operators have achieved data speeds of at least 35 Gbps in 5G trials, including Optus, M1 and StarHub.

    To date, Etisalat has the speed record at 36Gbps, Viavi said, with Ooredoo close behind at 35.46Gbps. All operators conducting 5G trials have reported data transmission speeds of at least 2Gbps.

    Viavi’s data also show that operators are testing 5G across a wide range of bands, ranging from sub 3-GHz up to 86-GHz.

    The most commonly trialed bandwidth among operators that have disclosed their test spectrum is currently 28-GHz – with eight operators using it – followed by 15-GHz, which is being used by seven operators.

    Among equipment suppliers, five major vendors have announced an involvement in 5G trials – Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Samsung and ZTE. Many operators are working with multiple vendors on their trials, with KT including all five equipment providers.

    “The pace of 5G development is already beyond the expectations of many observers,” Viavi CTO Sameh Yamany commented.

    “Now, as the technical delivery of data is starting to coalesce, it is time to think ahead to how future 5G networks can manage the disparate requirements of high data rates, very low latency applications and large-scale IoT services while maintaining QoS.”

    He said network slicing, involving the automation and programming of multiple cloud-based functions within a virtualized network, will be important to achieving these goals.

    “Service providers and their partners will require solutions that are virtualized from one end of the network to the other and have automated and correlated intelligence across each network slice for monitoring, optimization and service assurance.”

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  • Mobile operators should embrace LTE Broadcast now

    Mobile operators should embrace LTE Broadcast now

    Mobile operators, especially those with multi-screen assets and ambitions of providing superior mobile video and data experiences to customers, should adopt eMBMS, or LTE Broadcast, more aggressively, says a new report by Strategy Analytics.

    Accessing mobile TV services, particularly live events, over the mobile network will only increase in future as competition drives larger data bundles to 4G users, the research firm predicts.

    To meet growing mobile video demand while maintaining performance for all users mobile operators must embrace LTE Broadcast to drive support from smartphone vendors such as Apple.

    The LTE Broadcast market has changed from optimism to caution in the last two years. No other mobile operators have launched commercial LTE Broadcast service since Verizon Wireless did so in 2015.

    Strategy Analytics believes two main impediments are holding momentum for LTE Broadcast back — the lack of a reliable monetization model and weak mobile device support.

    “Although LTE Broadcast is the best tool to deliver the same content simultaneously to multiple users using the broadcast channels, therefore ideal for covering live events, for example, sports or concerts, live video alone is not enough to make a paid for service,” says Wei Shi, analyst of wireless media strategies at Strategy Analytics .

    “However, the cost saved from offloading the traffic data, largely generated by mobile video consumption, from unicast to multicast will justify operators’ limited investment to upgrade the network,” adds Wei. “In addition to packaging LTE Broadcast as part of operators’ service portfolios, there are other non-live video opportunities for the technology, for example, batch software updates, public information dissemination, and supplementing terrestrial broadcasting.”

    Out of the 26,000 models tracked by Strategy Analytics’ SpecTRAX, more than 1,000 are using eMBMS capable chipsets, though very few devices are shipped with the feature enabled. None of the iPhone models, which account for a combined 15% of smartphone installed base, supports eMBMS.

    The launching and expanding of LTE Broadcast Alliance in 2016 is a positive sign that the industry, led by a group of leading operators and technology companies, is actively addressing the device support issue.

    “Leading mobile device makers have not rushed to equip a large number of their phones and tablets with the LTE Broadcast feature, the most obvious absence being Apple’s iPhones and iPads,” adds Nitesh Patel, the firm’s director of Wireless Media Strategies.

    “One of the main objectives of the Alliance is to shore up the mobile device support for LTE Broadcast. More important than the publicity, operators should take the lead to break the ‘no business therefore no device, no device therefore no business’ cycle,” notes Patel.

    “By embracing LTE Broadcast more seriously, operators will send a clear signal to the device makers, including Apple, that it is time they should bring the feature to a broader portfolio of their products.”

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