What’s up with… Red Hat, AIS, Singtel & Hitachi

• Red Hat blends OpenStack with OpenShift
• AIS benefits from customer loyalty
• Singtel and Hitachi team up on datacentres and GPUs

In today’s industry news roundup: Red Hat releases its OpenStack Services, helping enterprises to more easily deploy virtualised and cloud-native networks from the core to the edge; AIS heralds the 20th anniversary of its Serenade customer loyalty scheme, calling it one of the company’s ‘proudest achievements’; Singtel and Hitachi join forces to enhance datacentre performance and capabilities in a more sustainable way to accelerate AI adoption and enterprise transformation; and more!

Red Hat has announced the general availability of its OpenStack Services on OpenShift, which it said is a significant step forward in how enterprises and particularly telcos can better unify traditional and cloud-native networks. The company added that enterprise users will be able to manage complexity for faster, simplified deployments of both virtualised and cloud-native applications from the core to the edge all in one place. Red Hat explained that by further blending its OpenStack Platform with OpenShift it will help telcos prepare their environments to best capitalise on opportunities provided by intelligent networks that can leverage AI and scale on-demand. Commenting on the changes within telco network infra, Chris Wright, senior vice president of global engineering and CTO at Red Hat, said that product support “must evolve as our customers’ needs change, and Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift will help provide our OpenStack customers with a more unified, flexible application platform.” Takeshi Maehara, deputy general manager of network and cloud platforms at Japanese telco KDDI, added: “This integration will allow organisations like KDDI to modernise and manage complexity from the core to the edge.” You can read full details in this press release.

Thai operator AIS is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of its Seranade customer loyalty programme. Opal Lertutai, head of customer proposition and Loyalty Management Department AIS, commented: “Serenade is one of the proudest achievements for us at AIS. We have been able to deliver exclusive services and extraordinary experiences to our customers, surpassing the standard customer relationship management (CRM) programmes typically seen in the market.” The Serenade scheme has now passed 6 million members, which accounts for 12% of the telco’s total mobile and broadband customers (and perhaps more significantly, contributes to 40% of its total revenue). AIS added that Serenade members stay with the telco five times longer than average. “Despite the intense competition in the telecommunications industry, we are determined to deliver excellence,” added Lertutai. “The services we design will not only benefit our customers but also help differentiate our business, enabling sustainable growth in the future.”

Singtel and Hitachi have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on next-generation datacentres and graphics processing unit (GPU) cloud in Japan. The strategic partnership will combine Singtel’s datacentre and connectivity expertise and technology platforms with Hitachi’s end-to-end datacentre integration (which includes green power solutions, cooling systems, storage infrastructure and data management). The two companies intend to sustainably enhance datacentre performance and capabilities to accelerate AI adoption and the digital transformation of enterprises. Nxera, the regional datacentre business of Singtel’s Digital InfraCo, is developing a platform of sustainable, hyper-connected AI-ready datacentres in the region, with a total capacity of more than 200MW. As part of the MoU, Nxera and Hitachi will explore opportunities to develop datacentres across Japan and the rest of the Asia Pacific region “Building a strong ecosystem of partners has always been a priority at Singtel to better serve our customers and broaden our global reach,” said Bill Chang, CEO of Singtel’s Digital InfraCo. “As we scale our digital capabilities with our partners, like Hitachi, we aim to become a leader in the Asia Pacific region.”

Talking of Hitachi… its subsidiary, Hitachi Vantara, has announced a new private and hybrid cloud solution in partnership with Broadcom. The co-engineered solution incorporates Vantara’s Unified Compute Platform with the VMware Cloud Foundation to manage the complexities of data proliferation and the escalating requirements of AI. Or in other words, it integrates a complete private cloud platform with proven enterprise infrastructure. “This not only addresses the current challenges of data management and infrastructure modernisation,” explained Paul Turner, vice president of products for VMware’s Cloud Foundation Division, Broadcom, “but also aligns with organisations’ sustainability goals.” According to research from IDC, spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments increased 36.9% year on year in the first quarter of 2024. “As more businesses face the realities of the AI age, they are actively seeking solutions that help them scale and improve data reliability without sacrificing cost or environmental commitments,” added Octavian Tanase, chief product officer at Hitachi Vantara. Read more.

Nokia has signed an agreement with Claro Argentina to deploy 5G infrastructure across the country. The agreement will cover the first phase of 5G implementation in Argentina and will cover the country’s largest cities. Nokia says it is the sole supplier to Claro for this project, which is the first time that Nokia’s Interleaved Passive Active Antenna (IPAA+) will be deployed in Latin America. Julio Carlos Porras, CEO at Claro Argentina, said the deployment will “continue to digitise society by bringing high-speed connectivity, increased capacity and seamless connectivity to densely populated areas supporting citizens and enterprises alike.” Read more. 

The UK Telecoms Innovations Network (UKTIN) has published an update on one of the country’s 5G supply chain diversification projects. The Coordinated Multipoint Open RAN (CoMP-O-RAN) project was set up to address the challenges of deploying dense networks of small cells, using millimeter-wave (mmWave) fronthaul to reduce the need for disruptive street excavation work – as small cell networks are typically connected with optical fibre. Highlights of the achievements so far of the £11m project can be viewed here. 

In other UKTIN news, the association has just published its latest market research report, which focuses on wireless network research and development (R&D) in the UK. It estimates that approximately £668m has been allocated to R&D and innovation projects relevant to wireless networking technology, of which 59% was government funded. “This report presents a snapshot in time of the main trends in UK public R&D&I [R&D and innovation] wireless networking technologies,” said report co-author Julie Valk of Digital Catapult, “and will be useful for a wide audience across telecoms professionals, academics and researchers, and policymakers.” You can find it here.

ZTE has provided its 5G-Advanced minimalist private network wireless live broadcasting solution for the 2024 Malaysia Games (SUKMA 2024), in partnership with local operators CelcomDigi and U Mobile. A 4K UHD live stream of the event was broadcast by Radio Television Malaysia (RTM). The private network provided 5G-A coverage throughout the Stadium Sarawak, enabling broadcast cameras to use ZTE’s 1.6GHz mmWave active antenna unit (AAU) technology to transmit their footage. Post-testing results showed that each link exceeded a 2Gbit/s uplink data rate with end-to-end transmission latency kept within 100 milliseconds. ZTE said this is the first time that 5G-A wireless technology has been applied to the live broadcasting of a major international event. Read more.

– The staff, TelecomTV