Kathy Gibson reports from a virtual Ericsson briefing – Telecommunications has proved to be incredibly important during the Covid-19 pandemic, helping people to stay in touch, keep entertained, and work remotely.
This is according to Chafic Traboulsi, vice-president and head of networks at Ericsson Middle East and Africa, who points out that telecommunications is equally important in the field of healthcare as the virus spreads.
“It has taken a significant toll on healthcare systems globally,” he says.
With connectivity playing such a key role, fixed and mobile telecommunications have become an even bigger part of the critical infrastructure than ever.
Global trends are driving demand for higher bandwidth, Traboulsi says. Fixed and mobile connectivity are both in demand; where there is a more advanced fixed infrastructure, traffic is higher than on the mobile networks, he adds. However, where there is weak fibre or ADSL connecivity mobile traffic is growing.
Utilisation is on the rise, and there is a change in traffic patterns, with people online more and now in new hotspots as people stay home.
There has been a 100% increase in traffic on fixed residential networks., Traboulsi says, with mobile networks up by 20%.
The major increases have been in data, although there has also been some growth in voice.
There has been a big growth in social media apps, with Facebook and WhatsApp seeing increases. TikTok as see increases, as has Netflix. YouTube and Amazon PrimeVideo have seen mixed results, and Instagram use has actually dropped in many places.
Online gamin has picked up, with millions of people now playing every days. In fact, games have been developed to minimise network traffic in order to improve speed and reduce latency.
The industry is collaborating to minimise the impacts of this increased traffic.
Some countries have taken action to curb network use; while some players, like YouTube, have dropped to standard definition to reduce bandwidth.
Ericsson as put an action plan into place to ensure that business continuity plans are implemented.
“In almost all countries, telecommunications is seen as an essential service, so we have been able to act on problems in the network to support our customers,” Traboulsi says.
The telecommunications supplier was also able to streamline its supply chain to ensure that any deployments were carried out timeously.
In terms of occupational health and safety, Ericsson has taken care to ensure high standards for its staff, customers and end users.
Ericsson has also helped its customers to optimise their networks in face of the changing pattens and needs.
“We dug deep to understand what our customers require, and heling them to look at the network, uplift it, do planning and dimensioning and ensure they get the best performance.”
Ericsson has worked to support partners to maximise network capacity and performance, Traboulsi says. “Our engineers are part of the critical teams deployed in order to keep networks up and running.”