What’s up with… Edge interconnect, Ukraine, ADVA, AT&T

• A telco edge interconnectivity breakthrough
• CSPs step up to enable free communications for those in, and connecting to, Ukraine
• ADVA reports a cracking year ahead of its merger with ADTRAN
• AT&T gets innovative with street furniture to densify its 5G network

A telco edge breakthrough, CSP support for those impacted by the distressing developments in the Ukraine, another good year for ADVA and some nifty street furniture moves by AT&T are the lead news items today.   

One of the main challenges holding up the broader development of telco edge services is interconnectivity (wasn’t it ever thus so!), so it’s good to hear that the Bridge Alliance, MobiledgeX, Singtel and Telefónica say they have “successfully achieved an interconnection between two heterogenous multi-access edge computing (MEC) platforms as part of a GSM Association (GSMA) Foundry Telco Edge Cloud trial. The hub-to-hub interconnection between the Bridge Alliance Federated Edge Hub (FEH) and MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud platform could allow edge applications to be deployed across different edge platforms and regions served by each hub,” the partners state. As shown in the diagram above, Singtel’s MEC and Telefonica’s MEC are connected by FEH and MobiledgeX Edge-Cloud platform respectively. “With the interconnection, Singtel’s customers will be able to deploy edge applications on Telefonica’s MEC and vice versa, enabling multi-market services delivery across an extended geographical footprint, including Asia and Europe. Customers, developers, and partners can discover, as well as order cross-regional edge resources and deploy applications through a unified interface, ensuring a uniform experience across different networks and markets in these regions. Previously, interconnections were performed between operators on a one-on-one basis, making it difficult to scale the edge coverage.” This reminds us of the pain the industry went through to enable standards-based carrier Ethernet service interconnectivity – let’s hope things move quicker in terms of edge services. Read more. 

Many global telcos reacted quickly to the ongoing conflict situation in Ukraine, as Russian military forces advanced into Ukraine’s capital city of Kiyv. To help people contact each other during the tensions, US operator T-Mobile US  waived international roaming charges for calls and SMSs made to and from its customers in the US and Ukraine from yesterday to 3 March. In Europe, Vodafone Group issued the same type of reprieve for its customers in Ukraine and the rest of its operations, and pledged to donate €500,000 for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary to support refugees fleeing from Ukraine. Deutsche Telekom gave a more extensive timeline of free calls and text messages to and from Ukraine – retroactively from 23 February and “initially until the end of March 31”, and this also applies to customers of the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary Congstar in Germany. Yettel Bulgaria (recently rebranded from Telenor) also made international calls between Bulgaria and Ukraine free of charge temporarily, in support of Bulgarians and their relatives who are in Ukraine. It said it also provides free roaming, including SMS, mobile internet and calls, to its mobile subscribers located in Ukraine. In Asia, Philippine operator Globe Telecom yesterday began offering free texts, calls and a 1GB of mobile data for seven days to its customers in Ukraine, and they can use the allocation by connecting to Globe’s roaming partners, Life or Kyivstar. On 23 February, Smart, another Philippine operator, started giving away 1GB data for free to almost 1000 roaming customers in Ukraine for five days.

ADVA reported record annual revenues of €603.3 million for 2021, up by 6.8% year-on-year, and its best ever annual earnings before interest and tax ahead of its merger with ADTRAN. “Our business transformation strategy will remain our focus in 2022. Profitability, liquidity and expanding our sales in new industries are top priorities,” noted Brian Protiva, CEO of ADVA. “Technologically, our solutions are extremely well aligned to the transformation of networks with cloud, mobility, 5G, automation and security. In addition to the high-value performance features of our optical data transmission, precise network synchronization technology and programmable cloud access solutions, our service portfolio also delivers increasing value. Furthermore, our strategic move to join forces with ADTRAN will create a global leader in a quickly expanding market opportunity around the network edge,” he added. Read more. 

AT&T has teamed up with Ericsson to introduce a way to turn “streetlights into 5G sites in as little as 15 minutes with zero footprint, efficiently boosting 5G experiences in dense, urban environments.” Read more.

- The staff, TelecomTV