Interview: Engineer, Sri Lanka Telecom: “I see fewer engineering challenges and more commercial and financial challenges.”

Anuradha Udunuwara, Engineer, Sri Lanka Telecom

Anuradha Udunuwara, Engineer, Sri Lanka Telecom is speaking on Day One of the 9th annual LTE Asia conference, taking place on the 23rd-25th September 2014 at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. Click here to download a brochure for the event.

In this Q&A Udunuwara tells us about the challenges facing Sri Lanka Telecom’s network, and what the most important technologies to look at for enhancing the network.

What are the major network-related engineering challenges you expect to face over the next 12 months?

In terms of challenges, I see fewer engineering challenges and more commercial and financial challenges. While technology and engineering enables us to overcome most of the challenges, the real challenge for operators will be how to minimize CAPEX/OPEX/TCO and increase revenue/profits. That requires innovation, common sense, changing plans and taking risks.

On the network side, what’s important is supporting the increased bandwidth requirements and optimizing packet transport techniques. Major challenges will arise in supporting migrations from legacy [Circuit/TDM (Time Division Multiplexing)] to next generation [Packet/IP (Internet Protocol)/Ethernet]. On the financial side the challenge will be how to best make future-proof investments.

How are you using analytics on your networks to gain more subscriber knowledge?

Network analytics are important in order to gain knowledge about the behaviour of the traffic in the network. If you correctly translate this knowledge, you can gain a good understanding of how the subscriber/user/consumer/customer applications behave, and eventually, how the individuals behave. This knowledge helps operators to perform the required network and service optimizations, introduce or change products to suit that behaviour, and finally to take informed investment decisions. We are working on these lines and would like to focus more on this area in the future.

IP architect at Telefonica UK: “There will be organisational challenges as teams that previously worked separately are brought together in an IP-centric world.”

Andrew Davies, IP architect at Telefonica UK

Andrew Davies, IP architect at Telefonica UK, is speaking on Day Two of the LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, taking place on the 24th-26th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Ahead of the show we find out what’s pressing most in his mind in terms of upcoming IP challenges.

What were the main technical challenges you face as you look to move from 2G/3G to 4G LTE?

As an IP Architect, from my perspective the issues are around the IP Infrastructure. The main concerns are how we can build sufficient capacity into the network. We are moving towards latest technology, such as 100Gbps, and in subsequent years, bundles of 100Gbps or alternatives. We need to build an IP infrastructure that supports potentially incompatible goals of both low latency for the user plane and physically separate paths for signalling traffic. We also need to secure our core IP infrastructure against as yet unknown threats from the all-IP enabled backhaul. The implementation of a shared LTE infrastructure with our partner operator Vodafone will also through up new challenges to us and our vendors. Finally, there will be organisational challenges as teams that previously worked separately are brought together as Radio, Access and Core collapse into one in an IP-centric world.

You’ve recently announced BT as your backhaul provider – what impact do you think LTE will have on your backhaul in the first six months after launch and then a year after launch?

The BT service gives us greater flexibility and resilience and for the first time will bring offer high availability, extending across the aggregation backhaul. We expect significant growth in our mobile backhaul, with it approximately doubling each year.

Is VoLTE on the roadmap, and what are the challenges in implementing it?

Voice over LTE will not be available for launch and will be carried using existing 2G and 3G networks. Voice over LTE will be considered as part of our roadmap of capability over the coming years.

Why is the LTE World Summit such an important event in your calendar?

The LTE World Summit is an opportunity to hear how other operators and experts in their fields are dealing with the challenges posed by LTE.

The LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, is taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a brochure for the event.