The Telecom Industry Is Proving Essential In The COVID-19 Response

Telecom operators have never been more relevant than they are today, connecting families and communities while keeping businesses and educational institutions logged on.
During this unprecedented time, communication service providers (CSPs) have shown a resilience and willingness to act, giving us a glimpse into the new market reality. In this “new normal,” CSPs are leading the effort for remote working, online learning and social distancing.

Immediate Response: Answering the Call

Around the world, CSPs have responded with a sense of urgency, purpose and empathy. IBM is supporting our CSP clients in their efforts across several fronts:

• Supporting healthcare and government agencies by equipping field hospitals in the U.K. with high speed connectivity and devices, providing insight on population movement to tackle the spread of the virus in the U.S., Asia and the E.U., connecting citizens to vital information, and providing national healthcare institutions with the tools to work remotely and securely as they research treatments for COVID-19
• Extending network capacity by 30-50% to support secure remote working for businesses and to connect teachers and students via virtual classrooms
• Implementing remote and virtual agent strategies to deliver customer care amid escalating traffic to contact centers and digital channels
• Ensuring continued service to residential and small business customers unable to pay their current bills, waiving late fees and opening WiFi hotspots to anyone who needs them 

Short-Term to Mid-Term: Reacting to Market Conditions

As our society and economies are connected and powered by communication networks, the telecom industry has been less impacted in the financial markets than many others. However, over the next few months the industry will need to respond to several common challenges, including:

• Significant pressure on operating expenses, with rapid cost take-out initiatives
• Prioritization of critical capital expenditure aligned to revenue and business continuity
• Supply chain optimization in the face of equipment and labor supply volatility
• Revenue and cash management amid an economic downturn

Longer-Term: Implications for the New Normal

As a new normal emerges, there are a few fundamental reactions that we can expect from the telecom industry:
1.CSPs will likely accelerate their digital transformation, institutionalizing new ways of working for their employees. Consumers and businesses will demand a richer, more consistent omnichannel digital experience with an emphasis on digital self-service. We will see more use of artificial intelligence (AI) to augment call center agents and retail stores, providing for greater customer insight and real-time decisions. 
2.Facing continued pressure on operating expenses and business agility, we expect to see a renewed sense of urgency in shifting to hybrid cloud IT and network architectures and operations with extreme automation. This will propel deployment of open, seamless networks that deliver new levels of orchestration and agility. Changes to accommodate major shifts in workload, load balancing and more infusion of AI/machine learning (ML) into the network at the Core, Edge or vRAN will become key to investment strategies and sustained operational efficiency.
3.We can expect to see more examples of traditional telcos re-inventing themselves as a platform business, operating as both Digital Services Providers and Digital Services Enablers. We are already seeing the impact of COVID-19 on planned 5G deployments—with China and the U.S. continuing, if not accelerating, the pace while several other countries have postponed spectrum auctions and rollouts. As businesses and governments establish their own new normal, 5G and Edge computing will be necessary to deliver the automation, performance and cognitive insight required by many industries—including manufacturing, healthcare, energy and utilities, among others. Telecom operators will need to embrace open ecosystems to externalize innovation and accelerate new services.
4.Cybersecurity will be high on the agenda, as the post-COVID-19 era will bring an increased level of digital access to businesses and information around the globe. CSPs will experience an increase in remote working among their own employees, in addition to an expansion of Security as a Service offerings to support their business customers.
Moving forward, whatever this new normal holds for the industry, we can expect change to impact all aspects of the telecom business. That will include the manner in which providers serve their customers and engage with partners; the work environment they create for their employees; the actions they execute to prioritize investments and streamline their operations; and the steps they take to extend the closer-knit relationships they are forming with local communities.

Feds move to stop US telecom companies from carrying foreign robocalls

Federal authorities are trying to crack down on five US telecom companies who they say are helping flood Americans’ phones with robocalls from overseas. Prosecutors on Tuesday filed for restraining orders in Brooklyn federal court against three companies controlled by Long Island resident Jon Kahen and two companies owned and operated by Nicholas and Natasha Palumbo of Scottsdale, Arizona. A Department of Justice official told reporters the companies act as a “bridge” for calls from fraudsters working in foreign call centers, which are located mostly in India. Officials are asking the court to block the firms from carrying the predatory calls. In just one 23-day sample period, the Palumbos’ companies allegedly carried 720 million calls, 425 million of which lasted less than one second — which the feds say is a sign they were robocalls that didn’t connect or were immediately hung up on. The robocallers’ schemes include posing as immigration authorities and employees from the Social Security Administration or the Internal Revenue Service — then claiming people’s Social Security numbers have been wrapped up in a crime or that they are facing deportation unless they fork over cash, court docs say. The SSA imposter scam is the most prevalent fraudulent robocall, the feds allege. The Federal Trade Commission estimated that the scheme was responsible for $11.5 million in losses to victims last year. “Robocalls are an annoyance to many Americans, and those that are fraudulent and predatory are a serious problem, often causing devastating financial harm to the elderly and vulnerable members of our society,” Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt said. Kahen and the Palumbos did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Indemnity insurance on property

When you’re buying a house and applying for a mortgage, the conveyancing process can sometimes throw up all sorts of surprises.
Some of these might seem like insignificant issues to both the buyer and the seller, but they can throw a real spanner in the works when it comes to persuading the mortgage lender to release the funds.
Indemnity insurance - sometimes called legal indemnity insurance, or title indemnity insurance - can come to the rescue in such cases, satisfying the lender (and the buyer) that it’s ok to proceed.

What’s indemnity insurance?

Indemnity insurance is used during conveyancing transactions to cover some sort of legal defect with the property which can’t be resolved swiftly, or at all.
As an alternative to rectifying the defect, an indemnity insurance policy can be taken out, particularly when the buyer is otherwise satisfied with the property and simply wants to make sure their mortgage goes through smoothly.

 The Council of Mortgage Lenders’ (CML) handbook for conveyancers says: “You must effect an indemnity insurance policy whenever the Lenders' Handbook identifies that this is an acceptable or required course to us to ensure that the property has a good and marketable title at completion.”
The issues covered by indemnity insurance usually have a very low risk of causing any actual loss - but if they did cause a loss, it would be significant.
Yet buyers should always keep in mind that the indemnity policy doesn’t actually remedy the defect - it simply provides financial compensation in the event of the defect causing a loss.

Who’s covered by legal indemnity insurance?

Legal indemnity insurance covers the buyer and the mortgage lender in the event of any loss of value on the property as a result of the defect.
Unlike other types of insurance which have an annual premium, indemnity insurance is paid as a one-off, is transferred to successors in title and lasts for the life of the property.
Yet it’s usually the seller who pays for the policy.
Most policies cost in the region of a few hundred pounds, so most sellers will pay this rather than see a sale fall through.
However, if the seller refuses to pay, the buyer may need to negotiate with them over who covers the cost, or else walk away from the sale.

Defects covered by indemnity insurance

Legal indemnity insurance could extend to a whole range of defects, with planning permission and building regulation issues being the most common.

Planning permission/building regulations

When you’re buying a property, your conveyancer has a responsibility to make sure all relevant planning permission and building regulations have been obtained.

If a property has been built, altered or extended without building regulations or planning permission approval, then the local authority could take action to ask for it to be reversed or remedied.
However, in most cases there's a four-year limit on the local authority issuing an enforcement notice, so if the work was carried out before this the risk of any action is remote.
Because of the low risk involved, indemnity insurance is often more appropriate than the seller trying to retrospectively satisfy planning conditions in the case of things like loft conversions and extensions.
However, indemnity insurance is no guarantee that the work carried out is safe or satisfactory, so a prudent buyer should still consider arranging surveys and engineer reports for their own peace of mind.

Restrictive covenants

Restrictive covenants are provisions written in the deeds of a property which limit its use in some way. On residential properties that could be anything from an agreement not to erect any outbuildings, to not keeping chickens in the garden.

If you’re looking to buy a house where a covenant has already been broken – for instance an extension has been built in a position where it’s forbidden – a neighbour or other interested party could, in theory, insist that it’s removed.
However, if the breach has been in existence for some time, indemnity insurance may be a solution to allow a house sale to go through.
There may be conditions to the insurance, such as no dispute being currently ongoing, or the breach having been committed a certain time ago.

Absence of easement

During the conveyancing process it might transpire that the property is accessed by land where the property hasn’t been granted a right of easement – the right to get to the property this way.
Indemnity insurance for an absence of easement will cover the cost of establishing easement, or the loss of value in the event access ever becomes an issue due to this lack of permission.
Again, the chances of this happening are usually remote if the property has had access that way for many years, or if the owner of the access land is unknown.

Chancel repair

Sometimes during the searches, the conveyancer will find that the property is liable for chancel repair. This means that the owner of the property could be collared for repair costs to their local church and there are horror stories of this running to thousands of pounds.
In practice, however, it’s rarely enforced, so an indemnity insurance policy can offer a cost-effective solution if it’s a sticking point during a home sale.

Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio hike prepaid tariff by up to 40%

The three telecommunication giants together account for over 90% of India’s 1.18 billion mobile subscribers, with the market share of around 30% each split evenly among them. 

The era of low tariffs for Indian consumers seems to have ended as major telcos — Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL), Bharti Airtel Limited and Reliance Jio — have hiked tariff by up to 40% for prepaid customers. 
While VIL, and Sunil Bharti Mittal-led Bharti Airtel have decided to hike the tariffs with effect from December 3, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio has decided to effect the hike from December 6. 

90% of market

The three telecommunication giants together account for over 90% of India’s 1.18 billion mobile subscribers, with the market share of around 30% each split evenly among them. 
“New plans will be available across India starting 00:00 hours of December 3, 2019,” a Vodafone Idea statement said. 
Bharti Airtel’s statement read: “Airtel’s new plans represent tariff increases in the range of a mere 50 paise/day to ₹2.85/day and offer generous data and calling benefits.”
Both Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel announced new prepaid plans starting with options of 2 days, 28 days, 84 days and 365 days validity and prices starting from ₹19 and going upto ₹2,399. Reliance Jio is yet to announce its new plans.

Telecom services spending up less than 1% in next year

pending on telecom services and pay-TV will reach $1.63 trillion worldwide in 2019, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Telecom Services Database.

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IDC expects this figure to reach $1.65 trillion billion in 2020, representing an increase of 0.9%.
Despite the overall lack of growth, some areas of the sector have seen a moderate increase and IDC is optimistic about 5G’s impact.

Winners and losers

Mobile remains the largest segment of the market, accounting for 52.8% of the total in 2019. The mobile market is set to post a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.3% over the 2019-2023 period, driven by the growth in mobile data usage and M2M applications, which is offsetting declines in spending on mobile voice and messaging services, IDC said.
Fixed data service spending represents 21.7% of the total market in 2019, with an expected CAGR of 3.3%, driven by the need for higher bandwidth services.
Spending on fixed voice services will post a CAGR of negative 4.8% over the forecast period and will represent only 8.5% of the total market by 2023. Rapidly declining TDM (time-division multiplexing) voice revenues are not being offset by the increase in IP voice, according to the analysis.
On a geographical basis, the Americas was the largest services market, with revenues of $630 billion in 2019, driven by the large North American sector. Asia Pacific was the second-largest region, followed by Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). The markets with the fastest year-on-year growth in 2019 were EMEA, driven mainly by emerging markets, followed by the Americas.

One billion 5G subs by 2023

IDC also forecasts that the number of mobile 5G subscriptions will surpass 1 billion by 2023.
“By introducing extremely high speeds and ultra-reliable low latency, 5G will create the infrastructural foundation for a smarter and even more connected world," says Kresimir Alic, research director with IDC's Worldwide Telecom Services.
He added, "It will also generate new opportunities for telecom services operators. More than ever before, these companies will be expected to create, innovate and educate — becoming true leaders of the global digital revolution."

Europe launches second EDRS space laser satellite

Europe has launched the second satellite in its space laser telecommunications network.

It will use optical beams to pull pictures and data from other spacecraft and then speed that information to the ground.
EDRS-C, as it is known, was sent into orbit on Tuesday by an Ariane-5 rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.
It joins the first node in the network, EDRS-A, which was put up in 2016.
That spacecraft was positioned over Central Africa to service Europe.
The new satellite will sit slightly to the east, where it will provide additional capacity.
The European Data Relay System is a joint venture between the European Space Agency and aerospace giant Airbus.
It is used predominantly by the European Union's Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Earth observation spacecraft. These platforms take images of the planet's surface.

Ordinarily, such satellites would have to wait until they pass over a radio receiving dish on the ground before downloading their pictures, which could mean a delay of over an hour as they circle the globe.
But the Sentinels were equipped to connect with the EDRS satellites' 1.8-gigabit laser links.
The relay platforms orbit much higher in the sky - some 36,000km in altitude - and always have visibility of a radio antenna on the ground.
The capability has particular relevance in the realm of natural disasters, such as major floods or big earthquakes.
Information about the scale of these emergencies can be put in the hands of first responders much faster than would normally be the case.
"We have demonstrated that it's possible to get a Sentinel image on the ground and ready to use after just 15 minutes of it being acquired," Magali Vaissiere, the director of telecoms at Esa, told BBC News.
"The launch of EDRS-C brings additional capacity to the network, obviously, but it also provides redundancy, a back-up, which you need in an operational system."
Between a third and a half of all image data from Sentinels 1 and 2 is now routed through EDRS, and usage is certain to expand with the second node now in orbit.


There are plans to use the relay system to regularly pull data to the ground from the European Columbus science laboratory on the space station. Future Earth observation satellites are also actively being planned with EDRS in mind, including the EU's next batch of Sentinels and Airbus's Pléiades Neo satellites which will take Earth images at 30cm resolution. Airbus says airborne reconnaissance could make use of the laser links, too.
A third node, EDRS-D, should be launched over the Asia-Pacific region before 2025.
Esa wants to see optical technology play a much bigger role in space communications.
Telecoms satellites that rely solely on radio frequency transmissions are being left behind by the performance of terrestrial fibre networks.
In time, this is going to put significant constraints on applications that include TV broadcasting and the services carrying the messages of connected devices (the so-called Internet of Things).
It is why the space agency will propose to Europe's research ministers in November that they fund the R&D necessary to break the "bottleneck in the sky".
Esa's High Throughput Optical Network (HyDRON) project envisages laser links, not just between satellites but between spacecraft and the ground.
This brings certain challenges, including the issue of how to manage light transmissions through a turbulent - and often cloudy - atmosphere.
However, if the technologies can be mastered they should permit terabit-per-second connections.
"We have shown with EDRS that we have some leadership in Europe in these technologies, and one of the strategic lines we have defined for [the ministerial meeting] will be dedicated to optical uses so that we strengthen that leadership," the Esa telecoms director said.
The 3-tonne EDRS-C satellite also hosts a Ka-band radio frequency payload for the London-based Avanti telecommunications company.
Avanti calls the payload Hylas-3 and will be using it to deliver broadband and other data services to markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Trai invites public comments to review mobile call termination rate deadline

NEW DELHI: Telecom regulator Trai on Wednesday invited public views to review the January 1, 2020 deadline for service providers to end interconnect usage charges. A telecom operator pays for connecting calls of its subscribers to the company on whose network a call is made. Currently, an operator is required to pay 0.06 paisa per minute as mobile call termination charges, called interconnect usage charges (IUC), which is proposed to be made nil from January 1, 2020.

Telecom operators with large number of subscribers gain from IUC as most of the calls are made within their network while net payout for service providers with lower subscriber base is higher.

At present, Reliance Jio leads mobile market with 339.7 million subscribers followed by Bharti Airtel with 328 million customers. Vodafone Idea in July reported decline in customer base to 320 million in the first quarter of 2019-20. BSNL has mobile customer base of 116 million.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said it has seen rapid adoption of modern technology in the country's mobile networks since the time it lowered ICU from 14 paise to 0.06 paise from October 1, 2017 onwards.

"Though the imbalance in the inter-operator off-net traffic is reducing over a period, it still exists," Trai said.

The regulator said it has proposed a bill and keep (BAK) regime in which no operator raises bill for IUC, after analysing that the regime will reduce the inter-operator off-net traffic imbalance.

Trai said it has received representations from some interested parties about revision of the existing IUC regime.

The regulator has sought public views on whether there is a need "to revise the applicable date for BAK regime i.e. zero mobile termination charge, from January 1, 2020".

Last date for comments on the paper is October 18 and for counter comment it is November 1, 2019.