Author: Richard Carter

A side effect of the fiscal intervention made by Western governments supporting economies during Covid has been the rise and rise of SPAC’s. For the 99.9% of the population who sensibly are more interested in gardening or the fulminations and machinations of Europe’s top football clubs, SPAC’s, Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, appearance may have been unnoticed. They represent a new way of taking firms public, bypassing what some see as the cumbersome traditional IPO (Initial Public Offering) process. 

A SPAC consists of a promise to give a management team considerable financial resources with their aim being to gather sufficient assets together to construct a going concern and float it on the market. According to the Economist Magazine (1) some $100bn has been raised between January and April 2021 for the purpose of finding interesting nascent private companies to bring to market. The bringing of Virgin Galactic to market via a SPAC was an early example of this trend in 2019.

A $100bn of new business is a lot of new business! Or to put it another way before Covid and prior to governmental interventions absence of cash may have been cited as limit for the progressing of a good business – but in a world with SPAC’s, awash with easy money, we have seemingly limitless funds to support good business idea’s.  So in our world of ICT where should we spend some of this money?

The ICT industry is seen as an interesting market space for SPAC investment. As a senior investment executive said: “the ‘new normal’ in working see’s gains for the ICT industry. Waiting in the lobby for a Zoom call to start will replace waiting on the platform for the 9:05am to Paddington to arrive.” The arrival of SPAC’s is concurrent with a change in our work patterns – and both are a result of Covid. 

Pulling together the strands from a number of customer conversations we see market opportunity in the following dimensions of the ICT industry:

Bandwidth everywhere but not where we want it. The internet traffic has moved from the office to the home, from the city centre to the suburb (and village). With working couples both at home Zoom resource contention would be a matter of idle dinner party conversation, if there were dinner parties. A number of suburban bandwidth plays have been made in the past, 4G modems, mesh, discrete fibre solutions and perhaps now 5G modems may be viable, subject to the specific’s of cities town’s and regions. What’s clear said a board member is “The new normal of work will be much more work from home and we have a duty to help our staff be effective in this new way of working“. In summary there’s an expectation that all novel bandwidth solutions will be given extra impetus in 2021 and have better cases for investment. 

Digital assistants galore. With staff working remotely a renewed interest in Digital Assistant’s and Office Productivity aids may be expected. Some companies have already implemented tools to track white collar work performance at home, although in early implementation these can often be blunt and damage morale. “HR can tell I’m in front of my computer, but they can’t tell which game I’m playing!” as a recent graduate remarked. Tools for aiding efficiency will become more sophisticated and measures of remote working fairer and more discriminating all leading to opportunity in the ICT space.

Security at the edge.  Away from the office our personal security setting can mistakenly be reset to ‘at home’ rather than warning ‘working at a remote site’. The security issues of a largely working from home workforce will require a new processes and tools for all companies, from the simple (increasing the security training and given more emphasis to the risks of remote work) to the complex specific tools to facilitate secure remote working. 

Ed Tech and the drop in office. “Where I used to be in the office 4 days a week I suspect after June I’ll be in less than 2 day’s a week” said one board member. …“On the one hand I want to find ICT tools so I can run meetings so all parties can contribute equally, a mash up between Slack, digital and physical whiteboards, Webex and Teams” … “and for the younger staff who most miss those water cooler moments a nice WeWork environment (at the right price!)”. Solutions are being actively sort in ICT for the challenges we now face in the work

If any of these remarks have sparked thoughts as to how ICT investment will evolve through 2021 please contact us. We’d be delighted to chat! 

Azenby is a consultancy comprising of seasoned ICT veterans with experience across business case development, project definition and management, and new business venture including due diligence reviews for investment and acquisition

What I’d like to see under the Christmas Tree from the European ICT industry

Perhaps it’s a function of age but I have noticed that ‘want’ very rarely has any correlation with ‘gets’, most especially when we come to the receiving of Christmas gifts. 2020 has been an especially challenging year, but also a year where the ICT industry has shown both its importance to society at large and one where by and large, actors in the ICT industry have been very successful economically. ICT has been at the forefront of keeping us working, providing some of the infrastructure to support controlling the spread of Covid-19 and shine a light toward the next stage of an everything connected industrialisation, Industry 4.0(1). The people of Europe, through our various governments have also reiterated the strategic importance of ICT, not least by reinforcing vendor choices. This gives our industry, rightly, clout and credibility.

With such great power of course comes a responsibility, which leads to some humble requests on the Christmas front:

The end of designed obsolescence: It’s a shame that my trusty iPhone7 is purposely being made obsolete by Apple who prefer to ‘up sell’ me rather than sell me fair and by an industry that’s become entrapped in selling the newest version of mobile phones. Ultimately Apple are seen as a business who’s design philosophy is not compatible with it’s articulated environmental credo (2) and we in the industry are complicit. The consumer has every right to expect a phone that costs more than £1000 to last at least a decade and have a battery that’s easy to replace. For Christmas the ICT industry can lobby European Legislators toward equipment longevity policies and opt for marketing campaigns focused at ‘your investment and your environment is safe with us’. This would be heard by the consumer. I will give a short shout out of support to Virgin in the UK (and Sky with a colleague), who on replacing a router this month committed to reuse the equipment and gave the consumers (us!) a small discount. Bravo! A step in the right direction.

Terms & Conditions to be no more than 2 pages of A4 (in 12-point font): We all know when we’re being scammed. And if we’re the recipient of 40 pages of closely packed legal gobbledegook(3) I’m certain Facebook, Google, Linked In, Apple and Microsoft to name just a few are actively nudging their customers towards abstaining from reading terms and conditions. Given the credit that our industry has garnered in 2020 it seems sad that we waste a little of that valuable trust purposely obscuring our customers. Since 1979, The Campaign For Plain English (4) has worked to provide easy to read documents and for Christmas it would be great for the European ICT industry to commit all its own and its 3^rd party contracts to meeting this standard of plain English. While this could be achieved through legislation, I think it would be positively embraced by customers and have a great positive influence inside the corporation. Atul Gawande’s ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ (5), gives a brilliant example of focusing on the details of minor accidents in the nuclear industry to transform a whole business. When we stop obscuring to our custome’s, I wonder how much power that transparency gives our corporation?

Great at Integration, Verification & Acceptance, be really good at what we need to be really good at: With 5G, Layered Architecture and IOT upon us and our governments mandating a move away from monolithic Chinese technology solutions as an industry we have a renewed duty to be really good at a number of our core industrial activities; most especially integration, verification and acceptance, which allows us to drive and control the speed of new services roll out. For Christmas a review of the competences that are essential to be excellent core in-house functions would be a great start to 2021. Ultimately the winners in 5G will be those operators that can provide novel new services fast to the market and that requires a renewed enthusiasm for the operational and engineering side of the business.

I reiterate, the European ICT industry finishes 2020 with a considerable boost in its social standing. Sure, we’re not doctor’s or nurses but to be effective our health workers and our society needs the ICT industry to succeed. With that credit and our unique place in society (after all we’re here licenced by governments to use a common good for the benefit of the citizens) we have great power and an equivalent dollop of responsibility.

In 2021 we have the potential to leverage our stature to a better place for our customers and all the participants in what is truly a circular economy (6). If now is not the time to act – then when?

If any of the points in this article are interesting, we’re here to listen and help feel free to contact us. Have a great Christmas.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/09/02/what-is-industry-4-0-heres-a-super-easy-explanation-for-anyone/
2. https://www.apple.com/uk/environment/
3. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/gobbledegook
4. http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atul_Gawande
6. https://www.circle-economy.com/circular-economy/7-key-elements

In common with the vast majority of people the 2020 that’s unfolded since February has been subject to the three U’s: unpleasant, unexpected and unprecedented. Watching Covid-19 impact our society, health and global economy has the drama of a ship hitting an iceberg, agonisingly slow but with only one prospective outcome. Beyond the lives sadly lost there’s certain to be a legacy in our society, how we conduct business, and for the purposes of this article changes in the ICT industry of which we’re part.

But we shouldn’t have been that surprised? Should we? Really? Nassim Nicholas Taleb published Black Swan back in 2007 (1), it was a very popular business book (which I actually read, rather than it just collecting dust on the shelf!), reminding us that unexpected events while unlikely and unpredictable can have extreme consequences. How many risk registers did I dutifully compile at work, while all the time not actually addressing or mitigating the underlying risk? As managers, board members and business leaders we have a duty to immediately review and update our risk assessments and act to build more robust businesses. Currently our customers, shareholders and staff viscerally understand risk and now’s the time to make our companies more ‘anti fragile’ (2). Planned mitigations for an extreme denial of service attack, such as we saw with Travelex (3), or a catastrophic hacking of Microsoft 365 or Android would be high on my list, and I would insist on appropriate preparatory work.

Building on risk management, ICT is now perceived as truly critical infrastructure.  For service providers working under government licence we should anticipate a smart and thoughtful government to insist on greater network robustness given the critical importance of ICT as a public good. A smart and thoughtful ICT industry would actively promote these credentials. In parallel a debate will continue as to the importance of our critical infrastructure being independent of Chinese economic policy. A forward looking solution may be to embrace the power of open source with companies such as Rakuten (4).

Covid-19 has certainly created some wins for the ICT industry. A super graphic from Fortune magazine (5) recognises Amazon, Apple and Microsoft as three winning stocks from this crisis, and we all wish we had invested (and then sold) Zoom stock, which predicts a doubling of 2020 revenue to somewhere about $1.8 billion. Further as Bill Best mentioned in a previous blog (6) ‘voice is the new killer app’, who would have guessed? However while we have rays of sunshine ICT spend by enterprise will unavoidably track the general economic down turn (7). As a final observation one ICT insider said to me; “at least we didn’t have the cost of GSM Congress in Barcelona to bear, so there’s been some savings!”.

For the lucky white collar many Covid-19 has meant working from home. While I count it as a personal pleasure that I haven’t had to schlepp around the M4 and M25 since February two homeworkers trying simultaneously to run video conference calls has strained our home ICT infrastructure. Network infrastructure is in the wrong place. Capacity is elsewhere. A legacy of Covid-19 is likely to be a network re-planning with more capacity in the suburbs. The CTO community has been party to many slide presentations covering smart networks, self healing networks, intelligent networks and the like. Now may be the perfect time to position with the board a network evolution encompassing the change in geographic usage.

Customers may well pay for an honest high quality service, as opposed to the dishonest throttled data offering many of us are suffering today. With a legacy of significantly increased home working security offerings (without the obligation of virtual private networks) will also be essential. In parallel with security surely we can do much to improve upon the foundation of Teams, Zoom and Webex. As a colleague put to me: “My biggest observation is that although video conferencing is a vast improvement on pure voice, it simply struggles when you are trying to brainstorm, negotiate or create common purpose. I can’t quite put my finger on whether it’s limitations of technology and home working techniques/tools or whether it’s actually that humans are hugely complex and clever communicators. I suspect it’s a bit of both ….”, we have now proved that we have no need to travel to work every day and that remote working is fantastic for the majority of circumstances. However I also think we have learned to really value personal interactions (socially and work) and that for certain activities there is no substitute for a chat. Lastly, can we expect to see ‘access to fast internet’ on the prospectus of a house sale, and any buyer insisting on an internet speed check? Perhaps the new middle class must have, as well as a guaranteed Ocado slot and a wash room immediately entering a house, is superb internet access.

In parallel with continued homework a reduction in demand for fixed office space and fully virtualised business ICT solutions will also continue – with my office phone being as anachronistic as my office desk. Currently the office phone is just a liability certain to be incorrectly call forwarded and a health hazard to boot.  In the small survey of colleagues, one FD will be serving notice to their landlord, another Director is downsizing and nobody is taking extra seats. However there is an active debate as to how to maintain and enhance sharing, coordination and group work which leads to a conversation about the right sort of co-working space (8).

We must learn from this pandemic. Our industry has seen to have contributed positively and with maturity in the face of this crisis – our task now is to convert that goodwill into a set of actions, plans and ultimately physical network architecture that makes our businesses robust and excellent for our shareholders and the wider stakeholder community. At Azenby, as seasoned ICT professionals, we would be delighted to define, support and engage in the projects that naturally lead from this article.  Good luck in the meantime!

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile
3. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51152151
4. Economist 8^th April Edition https://www.economist.com/business/2020/04/08/america-does-not-want-china-to-dominate-5g-mobile-networks
5. https://fortune.com/2020/05/14/fortune-500-ceo-survey-coronavirus-pandemic-predictions/
6. Bill’s Blog https://azenby.com/news-and-views
7. https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-spending-forecasts-take-a-hit-as-coronavirus-slams-global-markets-11583963714
8. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danestangler/2020/04/03/here-are-three-reasons-covid-19-makes-coworking-spaces-even-more-important/

 

A man walks into a bar with a newt on his shoulder. He asks for a coke and a mango juice for his newt, Tiny. The bartender asks, ‘Why is it called Tiny?’ And the man replies. ‘Because it’s my newt!’. Sorry. But in my defence this joke has generated a mirthful chuckle on more than one occasion. Possibly exactly two occasions.

Microsoft announced the acquisition of 5G core software maker Affirmed Networks Inc on March 26^th 2020. The deal valued Affirmed at $1.35 Billion. Affirmed has designed a range of NFV (network function virtualisation) solutions, including a virtualised EPC (evolved packet core). Reading Affirmed’s web site the business has developed all the software for a 5G core. Whether the solutions from Affirmed can truly yet compete with a Nokia, Ericsson or Huawei in the full and total provision of service to a national carrier such Vodafone or AT&T is I believe currently untested. No CTO has quite been prepared to give their network the green light to being the 1^st major network to totally step away from the incumbents and into darkest terra incognito. However Affirmed is often included on procurement bid lists and has some great track record in 5G most certainly making a credible stalking horse. Stalking horse today may be stallion tomorrow?

Where Affirmed’s NFV software is already attractive is as a 5G core for private 5G networks, a growing market segment and sweet spot in 5G. Whether building a private network to flood a logistic centre with 5G coverage or in other industrial settings where low latency and high bandwidth will be advantageous the Affirmed core has been used in the build out of sophisticated private networks. These highly complex, important mission critical networks will increasingly underpin our society and the Affirmed software has already found a place in these solutions.

 A Microsoft backed Affirmed looks on the surface to bring very powerful enhancements to the offering. Affirmed along with special hooks into Microsoft Azure’s cloud computing platform is a good story, before we even mention Microsoft’s acquisition of Metaswitch, which has a portfolio of 5G offerings as well as Cyber X with it’s software portfolio in the IOT space. From the outside this looks like a coherent strategy on Microsoft’s part to build a capability in 5G ahead of major deployments in 2021, 2022. And better still a strategy to focus in at the enterprise space, through IOT, 5G for enterprise and private networks.

CIO’s of major industrial enterprises must be exhaustingly familiar with Microsoft. Even if their company uses another vendor of cloud computing the worlds laptop’s are mostly running the Microsoft suite on subscription, and is crucial IT infrastructure (most especially Microsoft Teams in these days of lockdown). So perhaps the burgeoning portfolio of 5G capability, most especially solutions for complex industrial solutions is a great entrée for Microsoft. However it’s really a newt based question. To any other company multiple billion dollar acquisitions represent a meaningful investment. Microsoft has more than $100billion in cash and over 140,000 people in a global organisation. Affirmed, Metaswitch, Github and 5G don’t represent a fly on the back of an elephant, rather a bacteria floating in the gut of the fly – they are minute investments given the momentum of Microsoft’s mainline business. That’s not to say Microsoft as a corporation isn’t without an ambition in 5G, but I wonder if Microsoft can amend it’s way of working to suit the demands of 5G to the enterprise sector let alone to the requirements of large network providers?

 Any 5G implementation be it at an enterprise level for private networks or part of a national network will require sophisticated project management, implementation and unique builds. Imagine a 5G private network implementation for liquified gas processing and storage facility with mega ships unloading mega quantities of gas and mega swarms of lorries and pipes distributing fuel ceaselessly day and night. It’s not going to be amenable to a hands off delivery where a half dozen 5g hotspots can be delivered by post and the software is downloaded and automatically installed. Not least a click yes to ‘you bought it so it’s all your fault anyways and we take no liability whatsoever’ contract might not entirely appeal to the CIO running this mission critical network. And if regulating a liquified gas plant isn’t mission critical, running the nation’s telephony and data services surely is.

Perhaps an easier imagining for the future is Microsoft, via the Affirmed acquisition, reaching out to corporate users on mobile platforms through small off the shelf private networks fitting small and medium sized enterprises? In this scenario Microsoft is offering a value added alternative to that oh so nearly dead office desk phone. This thought came from a senior industry insider who also likes the combination of Azure, IOT, private networks and AI giving us some clever flexible yet engineered solutions for the future.

Another point to consider is the need for global procurement to rebalance purchasing choices away from suppliers in embargoed countries. Many national carriers will be seeking new options and Microsoft (as well as Amazon and Google), so long as it learns to give project discounts and understands that a strategic deal is often a synonym for low-to- no-margin business, could easily be added to bid lists.

Lastly we might gaze in our collective crystal balls and imagine what other acquisitions Microsoft intend to make so as to have full capability in the telco sphere. Vmware perhaps?

Microsoft has made intelligent and coherent acquisitions toward establishing a bridgehead in 5G. The road from the bridgehead depends on figuring out how to surround those services with skills, resources and processes that go to meeting their customers needs which may be very different from existing ways of working. Minute and in detail, yes, but nevertheless very complicated.

In Azenby we have expertise in solution specification, architecture and technical strategies for 5G NFV and experience of working with Affirm solutions and through the issues raised in this blog piece. Please contact us if you would like to discuss how we can support you in this space.

Interesting places to read more

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/microsoft-deal-said-to-value-affirmed-networks-at-1-35-billion

 https://www.owler.com/company/affirmednetworks

https://www.affirmednetworks.com

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/microsoft-to-buy-metaswitch-its-second-telecom-acquisition-this-year

https://www.metaswitch.com/blog/metaswitch-announcement

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/06/22/microsoft-acquires-cyberx-to-accelerate-and-secure-customers-iot-deployments

In it’s Q1 2020 trading update Vodafone’s CEO announced the intention of divesting it’s European tower business. With some 61,700 towers across 10 European countries this represents a sizeable asset portfolio and of itself would be amongst Europe’s biggest tower companies.

The underlying rational for this decision was cited as the financial reality that the ‘City’ value this asset at an attractive multiple of more than 20 times EV to EBITDA. With interest rates low across Europe our pension funds seek assets, such as bridges, buildings, tunnels and radio masts that generate regular income streams and are as the adage goes as ‘safe as houses’. In this regard Vodafone’s planned divesture of it’s tower business is very logical and will generate a useful lump sum diminishing debt on the balance sheet.

Driven in part by the eye wateringly high valuations the City are currently placing on annuity assets, Vodafone Group will go through the process of carving out a European tower company in preparation for a sale. As well as a significant legal and corporate process, this also has technical ramifications since Vodafone must leave each tower site with a clean, tidy technical interface to the rest of the network. By February 2020 Vodafone aim to have a separate Tower Co with the purpose of achieving a rapid divestiture.

It is good practice for any company to continually review it’s assets and make what we might call Goldilocks decision’s. Does this aspect of the business generate sufficient value? Can I buy this service or capability on the market cheaper or better than I can make for myself? Businesses change as does their environment and a continuous strategic dialogue, especially in such a dynamic industry like telecoms, is essential.

In parallel with this change Vodafone announced it’s successful 5G launch across 5 countries using speed tiered unlimited plans. The point of capital and capitalism is to bring benefit to society. The roll out of 5G is an unalloyed good and a very positive contribution to Europe’s public infrastructure for the betterment of it’s citizen’s. The value of Vodafone depends in great part on it’s roll out of 5G. Indeed across many European countries Vodafone sit’s as the firm leader in the enterprise market and it’s these customer’s with their need for IOT and a desire to drive the 4^th industrial revolution that will be at the forefront of 5G. A key  requirement to a rapid and successful 5G launch will be sites for antenna’s which will in urban environments be deployed more densely.

We are not accountants at Azenby, so for us is seems counter intuitive for the financial market’s value of the EV to EBITDA for the whole of Vodafone (despite the potential of 5G) to be lower than that of one of its constituent parts: the Tower Co. Without the mobile service business, the towers have no value as they would have no purpose. Or from a Goldilock’s perspective: can the porridge be the right temperature for both Vodafone and the City? A 5G network will make greater demands on a service providers tower portfolio than previous generations of mobile telephony. Vodafone in common with all service providers will be reviewing its infrastructure portfolio with an eye to preparedness for 5G and at first glance easy access to prime tower sites seems very valuable from an operational perspective.

In the original fairy tale of Goldilocks, an old woman, entered the bachelor residence of three bears tried the porridge, the chairs, the bed, before being spied, then jumps out of the window never to be seen again. Our more familiar version involves the testing of porridge, chairs and beds to find the optimal solution – porridge at just the right temperature. With the evolution of mobile networks to 5G working through these choices is essential for all service providers. We hope Vodafone finds a solution for it’s physical infrastructure that maximises both it’s value to the city and to it’s 5G customers. Both deserve porridge at just the right temperature.

Azenby is a seasoned group of telecom insiders with significant senior expertise and experience in strategic, technical and commercial decisions with service operators. The team have worked through and implemented make or buy decisions, been engaged in IOT discussions and infrastructure selection. We would welcome conversations covering all aspects of this article so why not get in touch.

 

A serious train crash isn’t something I can properly imagine. It’s because they’re so out of the normal human context. Big, fast and very, very heavy. I suspect all readers can imagine the crunch of plastic and metal in a car parking accident and some may have had a sharper bump and the gut wrenching feel of the airbag going off. Think a 100 times more energy involved. Or 10,000, maybe 100,000 is closer to the mark. A friend who survived a collision with a small commuter train at a level crossing told me that when the rescue team found him dazedly walking in a field he was barefoot – the impact had ripped the shoes clean off his feet. Lucky man to be alive. The unlucky dead car was confetti for a kilometre along the line. The train was perfectly fine.  As reported by the BBC on 6^th Nov 2018 a giant driverless train with 286 wagons filled with iron ore was safely derailed after 50km of increasing anxiousness. It was travelling at over 100km/hr thankfully through an unpopulated area of Australia. Had it arrived at the destination, a port,  the ore tsunami would have done untold damage, quite literally shunting all in front straight into the sea. More than a kilometre of speeding train is a special kind of wrecking ball.

The good news is that such accidents will be rarer as LTE Private Networks are in the process of transforming industries. Ericsson, along with the other two major infrastructure vendors, Nokia and Huawei, are actively promoting LTE equipment optimised for industrial use cases, bringing about ‘critical communications for Industry 4.0’ as Ericsson announces. Significant benefits are obvious: dedicated coverage, be that the Australian outback or a tunnel in central London, high speed and a fast route to digital transformation. One specific industrial case mentioned in Qualcomm’s white paper is Rio Tinto’s implementation across 15 mines, transport hubs, trains, ports and offices. With mega trucks, drilling machines (and let’s not forget those trains!) there’s an absolute safety imperative in removing human’s from what is a very dangerous environment. In parallel, efficiency gains are self-evident. The network is managed from a single NOC (network operation centre) and in this case with dedicated 1800Mhz spectrum. On site engineers can use push to talk, video share and have precise GPS control over equipment.

Not all gains from LTE private networks have to come from giant yellow dumper trucks. Lettuce picking can now be done on an individual basis, literally lettuce by lettuce, electronically with the farmer electively, growing, watering and harvesting a field selectively to match expected supermarket demand in an integrated supply chain. This has a many fold increase in yield, bringing us fresher produce with less waste, using a smaller quantity of targeted pesticide and providing the consumer full food provenance. In this example we can imagine how a farmer may work with a mobile operator and request a business solution with a guaranteed network slice whereas the distributor has a concentrated pick and pack warehouse with a dedicated network.

Ocado, a food delivery retailer and another early adopter of this technology was cited as having the most densely packed mobile network in the world, with it’s warehouse having over 1000 picker robots and communications every 100ms. Cambridge Consultants redesigned a scheduler running on top of the LTE network. Between these private networks at the farm and distributor, the lettuce, no doubt cossetted in a smart IoT enabled crate, is tracked seamlessly by the operator across the public LTE networks, making certain critical temperatures are never exceeded.

Every industrial vertical will be touched by this emerging technology. IoT and Private LTE networks will have a significant part to play in what will be a fundamental technological transition. Current mobile operators, industry leaders and mobile equipment manufacturers will be forced to find new ways of working together. This article is written at a time when we move from early adoption to mass market enablement. From leading edge to daily use. Mobile operators announce working 5G in the UK and across Europe. Equipment manufacturers now carry a fully suite of proven technology.

Where there may be some latent slowness in adoption is with the markets ability to rebalance for this opportunity. Azenby sees mobile equipment manufacturers are currently scaled only to touch large operators. And Operators currently touching industry through SIM and handset bundles. Meanwhile industry has a vast quantity of private mission critical data and a desire to control its’ manufacturing process end to end.

Azenby has actively engaged in these debates through spectrum requests, due diligence analysis, architectural review and partnership creation – we are at the beginning of the journey, but whether your business is in the fields of Lincolnshire amongst lettuce or in a mine with a mega machine – LTE private networks and their impact will be significant. It’s time to learn more. None of us can afford to be wandering around the field dazedly after the event. Whether there’s a need for advice on frequency and spectrum legislation, business support, partner discussion, RFQ creation, strategic review or technology analysis, Azenby can help and we have worked with customers and private LTE networks in UK, Europe and the Middle East.

Back to the start – the train that was derailed to avoid a catastrophe was owned by mining giant BHP, not Rio Tinto. The driver had alighted from the train to check on a wagon and then couldn’t re-board. Us humans aren’t always smarter than the algorithms!  “The damage bill from BHP’s catastrophic iron ore train derailment could be exacerbated by millions of dollars in fines if the company is found to have breached safety protocols” investigators from the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator reported in The Australian, adding to the woe’s that BHP face given closure of the line. Could perhaps the cost of a private LTE network be justified by just one days lost production and shipment of iron ore? And with our lettuce example we are reminded Ocado’s Andover warehouse was burnt to the ground in early 2019 after fire fighters failed to dampen the initial fire. Some reports suggest robot pickers accidentally spread the fire. Fortunately no one was injured. As a measure of the staggering robustness of Ocado integrated logistic network deliveries after the 1^st week were largely unaffected. Bravo to good engineering!

Now is truly the time to gain a better understanding of private LTE networks. We would be happy to help make sure no one is left behind on this critical journey. Contact Azenby to help you generate a clear LTE private network action plan.

Follow up reading

https://www.qualcomm.com/media/documents/files/private-lte-networks.pdf

https://www.nokia.com/networks/solutions/private-lte/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-47168430

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-46105280

https://www.ericsson.com/en/portfolio/networks/network-solutions/private-networks

 

The UK ICT industry has loomed large in newspapers this last week, sadly for the wrong reasons. On Thursday 7^th the O2 mobile network suffered a major outage. For most of the day some 32 million subscribers were without service as a major part of the network stopped operating. The outage affected MVNO subsidiaries too including GiffGaff, Sky Mobile, Lyca and Tesco Mobile as well as impacting some emergency services and the train platform information services.

As a network failure it represents one of the most significant loss of service events in UK mobile history. And it reiterated to wider society the strategic importance of the UK’s telephony networks’ for daily life, entertainment and business utility. Small businesses reliant on credit cards mediated over phone apps may have lost a whole days takings and many activities on Thursday 7^th couldn’t elegantly fall back to Wi-Fi, not least in car navigation.

Initial investigation published in the press suggests that the root cause of the failure was the unexpected expiry of hard coded SW certificates in the SGSN-MME. These nodes were legacy SW that was in the process of leaving the network*. O2 and Ericsson both have hardworking, capable, smart and diligent engineers. Both companies have an absolute tradition of engineering quality, always aiming to do the best job for the customers and a great history of service.

In truth it is too easy to point to an expired SW certificate, talk about remedies through contracts and ignore the wider systematic failure mode underlying this event: modern networks are incredibly sophisticated, contain a multitude of networking nodes from a plethora of suppliers. No single network architect can understand the full SW stack in detail. Furthermore all actors in the industry are under commercial constraints, resources are limited. It could have been an outage on any of the UK’s networks’ that Thursday, and any of more than 20 SW and HW suppliers could have expiring SW certificates. And we should not skirt over the fundamental truth that 5G and IOT only make our network more complex, with more nodes, and designed to encourage interwork across an even larger pool of industry actors.

Things aren’t going to get easier!

As industry evolves and becomes ever more important to it’s customers, risk management and risk control and seeking network robustness may well become a defining value differentiator amongst service providers. As Volvo so ably proved, it built safer cars so it created an enduring market amongst it’s customers who ultimately were prepared to pay a premium for that feature. We can also learn from the fashion apparel industry. Not more than 5 years ago there must have been senior executives who thought it was impossible to make a football and prove no child labour had been involved. Industries have cleaned up their supply chains and put clear controls in place. The chemical industry is another case in point where single points of failure are engineered out of processes.

In summary, our mobile networks are increasing in complexity and it is that very complexity that brings risk. However we have a choice. We can manage that risk and take clear proof points of success from other industries. Last weeks outage gives us all a mandate to review our networks and how we manage the risk of the networks. Fore warned is fore armed.  We hope 2019 is the year when we begin to address this matter systematically. After all our customers depend on us.

Azenby is a forward leaning consultancy. Our specialism is helping mobile operators. We have implemented a number of strategic projects for leading MNOs around the world helping them find ways to increase revenues as well as reducing the cost of doing business. Our work has included in depth technical due diligences and risk management. Why not get in touch with us to learn more?

*NOTE 21/12/2018: please be aware  the phrase “These nodes were legacy SW that was in the process of leaving the network” was incorrect. We are subsequently informed that the SW in question was an in-life version, fully within support and maintenance contracts, and was not in the process of leaving the network. Our apologies for the inaccuracy.