How 5G and fibre are transforming the digital ecosystem

Pan­el
Azfar Aslam, CTO, Europe, Nokia
Belin­da Finch, CIO, Three UK
Chris Holmes, Direc­tor of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, Ser­vi­ceNow
David Toma­lin, Group CTO, City­Fi­bre
Mirko Voltoli­ni,
VP inno­va­tion, Colt

The future of con­nec­tiv­i­ty is com­plex. Essen­tial to pow­er­ing the next stage of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, it will nev­er­the­less require exten­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion and a fun­da­men­tal rethink of the role con­nec­tiv­i­ty providers play in the dig­i­tal ecosys­tem. A recent round­table assem­bled five experts in the con­nec­tiv­i­ty space to share their thoughts on the chal­lenge ahead.

David Toma­lin, group CTO, City­Fi­bre, explains that the only thing cer­tain about the future is uncer­tain­ty. “Net­works need to be based on qual­i­ty, pro­vide far high­er reli­a­bil­i­ty and have a lev­el of intel­li­gence that gives ser­vice providers and mobile oper­a­tors insights to empow­er the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. The expe­ri­ence that results from this can then be used to shape how we fur­ther devel­op our fibre net­works and sys­tems, enabling us to con­tin­ue to evolve and improve end cus­tomer expe­ri­ence over the next 15 to 20 years.”
Belin­da Finch, CIO, Three UK doesn’t mince her words. “I don’t think peo­ple know exact­ly what 5G real­ly means. With the right use cas­es, 5G could absolute­ly rev­o­lu­tionise where we are as a soci­ety. As long as we part­ner with the right peo­ple.”

The telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions indus­try has not been not­ed for its spir­it of col­lab­o­ra­tion and shar­ing to date. How­ev­er, as Chris Holmes, direc­tor of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, Ser­vi­ceNow, notes, the times they are a‑changing: “The com­mon theme at Mobile World Con­gress this year was ecosys­tems and how you bring rel­e­vant solu­tions. That’s through part­ner­ships and ecosys­tems but also through open stan­dards. It used to be a very closed indus­try but the shift to open­ness and part­ner­ships is the key to unlock­ing the val­ue across 5G and fibre.”

This is also the oppor­tu­ni­ty for net­work busi­ness­es to act as trust­ed advi­sors. “If we’re not able to antic­i­pate our cus­tomers’ require­ments, we are going to be left out. The rea­son we have to work proac­tive­ly with these cus­tomers is because some­times they don’t know what they need,” sug­gests Azfar Aslam, CTO, Europe, Nokia. “We can be most use­ful towards cus­tomers to help them be more pro­duc­tive.”

It is acknowl­edged that the largest oppor­tu­ni­ty is in the B2B space, but Aslam does note that the hybrid work­force, brought main­stream by the pan­dem­ic, will be the next emerg­ing seg­ment that net­works and mobile oper­a­tors “need to solve for pret­ty quick­ly”.
Of course, the more com­plex the dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies that cus­tomers – again, pri­mar­i­ly enter­pris­es – wish to engage with, the more crit­i­cal 5G and fibre will become. Mirko Voltoli­ni, VP inno­va­tion, Colt, refers to mobile 5G and the fixed net­work as “the glue”. “Some enter­pris­es are look­ing at lever­ag­ing tech­nolo­gies like arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, cloud, inter­net of things, aug­ment­ed and vir­tu­al real­i­ty. A big­ger pipe has to be an on-demand, real-time pipe that you can con­trol, that not just humans but machines can ini­ti­ate and con­trol that con­nec­tiv­i­ty,” he adds.

The chal­lenge is, of course, that organ­i­sa­tions can­not sim­ply wake up tomor­row and forge a uni­fied, brave new world togeth­er with a click of their fin­gers. “Once we decid­ed that we were going to make a com­mit­ment that would make a real­ly big impact with some part­ners, it changed people’s men­tal­i­ty – this is not a short term thing,” Aslam warns. “Let’s go and learn what their objec­tives are, what we have to offer today – and what we don’t. The gaps lead to new prod­uct devel­op­ment.”

The process of chang­ing the approach of a whole sec­tor, or indeed mul­ti­ple sec­tors as part­ners join the new, intel­li­gent con­nec­tiv­i­ty ecosys­tem, may be a longer play. How­ev­er, deploy­ing those ecosys­tems on the ground has to become a much faster, more agile process, warns Finch. “We need to make sure we have all reached the stage in our dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion where we can work with these part­ners quick­ly. We can’t be in a posi­tion where it takes months to onboard and where the ways of work­ing are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent.”

“How we make this per­va­sive across organ­i­sa­tions is going to take time. Organ­i­sa­tions [may] have thou­sands of employ­ees, and this type of part­ner­ship approach needs to be tried across the whole busi­ness. We find it eas­i­er to work with part­ners that have shared val­ues, are the same size and have com­ple­men­tary capa­bil­i­ties,” Voltoli­ni warns.
So, while we may be look­ing at the tech­nol­o­gy as the way to accel­er­ate busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion, in real­i­ty, it is a much more human chal­lenge – being able to work togeth­er effec­tive­ly – that will be the lit­mus test for suc­cess.

“Par­tic­u­lar­ly in our engage­ments with the indus­tri­al sec­tor, trust comes into the dis­cus­sion very quick­ly,” Aslam adds. “In some indus­tri­al automa­tion cas­es, there are over 100 solu­tions that need to come togeth­er and no one par­ty is like­ly to be an expert in all 100.”

Toma­lin reveals that the wide ecosys­tem City­Fi­bre has already estab­lished relies on trans­paren­cy from the top. “To build trust with our part­ners, we share data about net­work-relat­ed events via our ecosys­tem of APIs – empow­er­ing them while demon­strat­ing best in class prin­ci­ples.”

Voltoli­ni points out that not every ecosys­tem will involve 100 enti­ties, some may only have two. “Work­ing with cloud providers has been a rel­a­tive­ly easy way to bring togeth­er most­ly just two par­ties togeth­er, dri­ven by cus­tomer require­ments.” Providers need to be ready for almost any­thing.

Holmes claims ser­vice inte­gra­tors (SIs) could come to play a vital role in build­ing these ecosys­tems. An SI could be the one to make sure that no part­ner los­es their essen­tial engage­ment with the process. Holmes notes that mobile oper­a­tors, in par­tic­u­lar, could be at risk, cur­rent­ly lead­ing in only around a fifth of the cur­rent engage­ments where an ecosys­tem is in play.

Crit­i­cal­ly, Finch notes that the SI has a vital role to play in facil­i­tat­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive mind­set. “You may not trust your com­peti­tor but hav­ing a trust­ed SI part­ner can bring that whole idea of col­lab­o­ra­tion togeth­er. They’re a real­ly impor­tant part­ner.”

With an ecosys­tem tai­lored to the end customer’s needs, and all part­ners work­ing togeth­er, it cre­ates the best con­di­tions for suc­cess for both provider and end user. Ulti­mate­ly, this is where the bat­tle will be won and lost. Toma­lin insists: “We are so reliant on each oth­er, we have to realise that ser­vice qual­i­ty is a shared dif­fer­en­tia­tor. To deliv­er excep­tion­al ser­vice, we need to under­stand the dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions of our part­ners and their cus­tomers.”

Holmes adds: “The best cus­tomer expe­ri­ence [comes from] pro­vid­ing the best employ­ee expe­ri­ence – giv­ing them the best tools to do their job.” But, he warns: “With inac­cu­rate data, incom­plete inven­to­ry or a lack of trans­paren­cy, we’re just tying their hands behind their backs.”

Finch con­cludes: “We all need to trust each oth­er that we’ve got the cus­tomer at the heart of what we’re doing. It’s about all of us work­ing togeth­er to grow the val­ue chain, as opposed to just look­ing after num­ber one.”

To find out how Ser­vi­ceNow can enable dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and improve expe­ri­ences in your organ­i­sa­tion, vis­it servicenow.com/uk/tmt