Page 21 - SAMENA Trends - March 2020

COVID-19 VS TELECOM INDUSTRY SAMENA TRENDS

2. Remote Working: In China, with many • Remote office services for enterprise: traffic surge.
workplaces affected by lockdown, it China Telecom e-Conference service • The sharp increase in data consumption
has brought 400 million users online has added 858,000 new users. China also resulted in a challenge to the
to finish their daily tasks digitally Unicom Cloud Video Conference is system capacity. As Chinese operators
where possible. In places like Italy, the providing services for 15,900 enterprises usually reserve additional capacity
number of remote workers grew by and institutions. China Mobile Cloud for core nodes, this offered a good
more than 300%, and again, the average Video Conferencing covers 31,000 buffer time for necessary expansions,
speed required for those remote work enterprises and 4.532M users. which made it easier to respond to the
scenarios is around 6 Mbps. Enterprise • Free Access to Video/Game Apps: Chi- surging data throughput. Additionally,
applications such as Skype, WeLink, na Telecom granted free access to four the massive launch of Voice over LTE
and ZOOM have witnessed significantly video/game apps. Mobile Data of ten network in China effectively increased
higher downloads and usage. video games of China Unicom is offered the voice network capacity, resulting in
3. Online Entertainment: This is an free of charge in Hubei to 229,000 users. no voice congestion during the whole
important category for operators China Mobile's Migu app live broadcast- pandemic.
to remember amidst the COVID-19 ed the construction progress of the Hu- • Most customer experience problems
pandemic. For example, in Italy 30% of oshenshan and Leishenshan hospitals were attributed to last mile connectivity
the data traffic increase was contributed through 5G. By February 10, the total as usage hotspots shifted from CBD &
to gaming. In China, a newly-released number of viewers has reached 490M. recreational areas to residential areas
online streaming movie reached 120 and hospitals. 5G fixed wireless access
million concurrent users and short Fight against COVID-19 by strengthened acted as a quick and economic way to
video apps such as TikTok have over network address these challenges, for ensuring
2.5 billion views/day. The average During the epidemic, the spike in data a better home applications experience.
required speed for enjoying short video usage posed multiple challenges to the
applications is 5.3 Mbps. telecom operators like poor network The advancement of 5G launches and
experience and high latency. This also the rapid deployment during medical
In this context, operators in both Asia shifted the classic busy-hour model and emergencies have played an important
and Europe were successful in providing highly loaded hot spots, which are used role in fighting the pandemic in China. The
services with a fast time to market, to design telecom networks as work from experiences on ground have also brought
especially in sub-urban and rural areas home and home education changed the the overall benefits of 5G to the forefront,
through 5G fixed wireless access (FWA). peak time. To address the problems and while unleashing more innovative cases
This provided the guaranteed network find out the corresponding solutions, that have brought much more confidence
experience to meet the increasing public telecom operators worldwide have taken to the public and to businesses for
demands. For example, in Italy, the user lots of actions to guarantee the users’ combating the pandemic.
accusation of TIM Italy has gone up 2.5 experience.
times by providing their customers much In the Middle East, we hope to endure
needed high bandwidth 5G service through For example, a lot of measures have been through this pandemic by learning from
FWA. Operators like AIS Thailand are also taken in many places in China successfully: such experiences. We are encouraged to
supporting work from home by bundling • Operators are playing catch up now see that most of the ICT infrastructure
apps like ZOOM and Office 365 for free with by the network optimizations in leaders in the Middle East are executing
their data packages. Many operators have highly loaded areas. Through end- or planning some positive measures to
given free data package and also made to-end customer service experience help governments and the public during
access to their entertainment apps free, to management and deployment of this period. This will really benefit the
keep people at home and entertained. network visualization tools, provide public, along with obeying government
means for deterministic positioning of regulations and staying at home, to instill
On the application front, to support business and network faults, which can confidence and to defeat COVID-19.
citizens, all three operators in China took effectively guarantee the best QoS and
many initiatives like: good business experience in the target Moreover, these learnings clearly
• Collaboration with multiple online area. depict how crucial 5G is for tackling a
education platforms: China Telecom’s • Over the years, the "Broadband China pandemic like COVID-19 on multiple
e-Cloud Classroom serves 1.01M Strategy” was initiated by the Chinese fronts in healthcare and at home. It’s fast
students. China Unicom’s WO Learning government that clearly defines the deployment, high bandwidth, and low
service provides free courses for 47M fiber broadband networks as a national latency is necessary for running critical
users and 10M high-quality courses strategic public infrastructure. In this applications required at this time. It’s time
for free. Online distance education critical time, the massive FTTH and the world realizes the importance of better
provided by China Mobile covers 60.7M bearer network has demonstrated its connectivity, not only to improve lives, but
individuals. high-elastic capability to cater to the to save them as well.

Thought leadership contributed by SAMENA Council Members.
21 MARCH 2020