The agile telco needs the right partnerships in place to improve customer service. Antony Savvas looks at some of the latest developments that can help drive success.
Enterprises and public sector organisations across the UK can now access “secure and high-availability” unified communications and contact centre services thanks to a new partnership between KCOM and 8×8. The alliance combines KCOM’s carrier infrastructure with the integrated 8×8 Platform for customer experience, delivering voice, collaboration, contact centre and AI-powered capabilities on a single cloud platform.
The joint go-to-market activity includes coordinated sales enablement and customer engagement across the UK market. KCOM already supports around 8,000 enterprise customers across the public and private sectors, including critical national infrastructure such as hospitals and emergency services, and 8×8’s involvement will help retain and build on this customer base, says the telco.
“Selecting the right partner was critical for us,” says Jan Collins, the managing director at KCOM Enterprise. “We ran a rigorous tender process and looked across the market for a platform that could meet the needs of our customers, from everyday business communications through to mission-critical contact centre environments, and 8×8 stood out.”
Jamie Snaddon, the managing director of EMEA at 8×8, adds: “For carriers like KCOM, reliability, security and customer trust are non-negotiable. By combining KCOM’s network expertise with our unified communications and contact centre platform, we’re delivering an end-to-end solution that helps organisations support their customers, modernise their operations, and innovate with confidence.”
eSIM services
The growth of eSIM-only devices across global telecoms markets has driven a significant shift towards industry adoption of eSIM for both consumer and IoT applications. Service providers increasingly need faster onboarding and elastic scaling of eSIM deployment, especially during peak demand periods. Ensuring end-to-end security is also critical for the rollout of SGP.32 (IoT eSIM) and SGP.22 (consumer eSIM) compatible devices.
Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) has launched a new cloud-based eSIM offering that is powered by Amazon Web Services. The collaboration combines digital security from G+D with the necessary cloud agility and scale from AWS. The solution promises to deliver global provisioning and low-latency connectivity solutions across multiple geographies through IoT and other networks.
Gordon Mansfield, the vice president of global technology planning at AT&T, says: “eSIM has passed the tipping point to become the primary means of connecting to our network. The means to distribute services across multiple GSMA-certified cloud locations represents a significant opportunity for us to expand our offering globally across a broad range of verticals.”
Philipp Schulte, the CEO of G+D mobile security, added “As pioneers in SIM and eSIM, we are achieving another industry first through our collaboration with AWS. By bringing eSIM to the cloud and increasing agility and scalability, we will accelerate eSIM adoption in both consumer and IoT applications, providing a secure, future-proof and cost-effective solution for our customers.”
Cloud virtualisation
Global telcos are evolving from providers of simple connectivity to offering sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure, using distributed regional data centres to capture new revenue streams. Broadcom has updated its VMware Telco Cloud Platform to help them drive greater hardware efficiency and lower operational costs when delivering sovereign and AI services. The private cloud platform for telco data centres is evolving to support both 4G and 5G Core network functions and data-intensive AI workloads on a unified and open platform.
Version 9 of the Telco Cloud Platform promises to achieve overall estimated five-year cumulative total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of 40%, when compared to siloed architectures. Other Broadcom promises for version 9 include lower power consumption and associated costs – by an estimated 25–30% – through improved server performance and virtual machine (VM) density, and an estimated 38% lower memory and server TCO with advanced NVME memory tiering.
“Hardware costs are spiralling out of control, and the global demand for memory resulting from AI will further accelerate rising server prices. VMware Telco Cloud Platform 9 helps telcos dramatically reduce both their Capex and Opex,” says Paul Turner, chief product officer for the VMware Cloud Foundation division at Broadcom. “Version 9 will empower telcos to deliver the secure, sovereign, AI-native infrastructure that drives next-gen technology adoption, revenue acceleration and lower costs.”
Greg McCall, the chief networks officer at BT says: “In today’s interconnected world, reliable and robust telecoms cloud infrastructure is paramount. VMware Telco Cloud Platform provides the flexibility, scalability and reliability we need to help deliver award-winning mobile voice and messaging services across the UK. We are looking forward to continuing to build on the success of our partnership with Broadcom.”
Kal De, the senior vice president for core software at Nokia, adds: “Our integration with VMware Telco Cloud Platform shows how Nokia’s multi-cloud strategy helps telcos ensure requisite automation, security, resilience and scaling. By using our cloud-native core network portfolio on VMware TCP, telcos can monetise their core networks with total confidence on the cloud platform of their choice, while reducing operational risk and accelerating time to market.”
Antony Savvas