Page 72 - SAMENA Trends - November 2020

REGULATORY & POLICY UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

UK Prepares Tougher Telecoms Security Measures

The UK government proposed a new bill to increase its powers Companies which fall short “on the new duties or do not follow
over telecoms networks, which could result in operators being hit directions” could face fines of up to 10 per cent of turnover, or
with large fines if they do not adhere to security requirements. In up to £100,000 a day. The bill comes four months after the
a statement, the government explained the Telecommunications government banned the use of Huawei equipment in 5G networks
Security Bill would give it “unprecedented new powers” to boost and ordered operators to strip the vendor’s kit from their networks
security standards of UK networks and remove the threat of by 2027. UK digital secretary Oliver Dowden said the country was
high-risk vendors. It will strengthen the security framework for investing billions to roll out 5G and gigabit broadband, but the
technology used in 5G and fiber networks, including equipment benefits could only be realized if it had the full confidence in the
and software on masts, along with phone and internet traffic security and resilience of networks. “This ground-breaking bill will
exchanges. The aim is to protect the UK from hostile cyber give the UK one of the toughest telecoms security regimes in the
activity, after an increase in attacks from Russia, China, North world and allow us to take the action necessary to protect our
Korea and Iran over the past two years, the government explained. networks,” he said. Regulator OFCOM will be tasked with policing
In addition, the bill will give the government the power to compel the new rules, and it will therefore also be given stronger powers
operators to manage the risk of vendors deemed a security risk. to monitor and assess operators’ security efforts.

AWS Plans Multi-Billion-Dollar Cloud Investment in India

Underlining the growing interest on the part of US technology The AWS concept of a Region refers to a physical location around
companies in India, Amazon, through Amazon Web Services the world where the company clusters data centers. AWS calls
(AWS), reportedly has plans to invest an estimated $2.8 billion in each group of logical data centers an Availability Zone. Globally,
the city of Hyderabad, Telangana State, India, to set up a new cloud AWS has 77 Availability Zones across 24 infrastructure regions,
region – or AWS Region, as it is known. The new AWS Region will with plans to launch 15 Availability Zones and five more AWS
consist of three so-called Availability Zones joining the company’s Regions in India, Indonesia, Japan, Spain and Switzerland. The
existing nine AWS Regions and 26 Availability Zones across Asia. new cloud region in Hyderabad will be launched by mid-2022.
According to Indian press reports, Amazon has been investing in
the country for some time. This year, the company announced it
was spending $1.6 billion on two data centers in India. One will
occupy 66,000 square meters; the other is to measure 82,000
square meters. Both will be in the Ranga Reddy district in the
state of Telangana. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has already visited India
as part of a marketing campaign, announcing plans to invest $1
billion to digitize small and medium businesses across India.
But this isn’t just about Amazon. Earlier this year, Google and
Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced the Google for India
Digitization Fund, worth $10 billion. Google already has two data
center regions in India. Microsoft, meanwhile, has three data
center regions in India, and last year announced plans to partner
Reliance Jio to build Azure data centers across the country.

Korea Operators Push for Lower Spectrum Price

South Korean operators threatened legal action after hitting operators argue the fee should be lower, since they are likely to
an impasse with the government over what they say is an each have 100,000 sites, up from 40,000 to 50,000 at end-August.
unrealistic price for 2G, 3G and 4G spectrum to be reallocated The government plans to set the final price by the end the month
in 2021, Yonhap News Agency reported. The Ministry of Science and open applications for redistribution in December. Earlier this
and ICT wants SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus to pay at least month, the three operators called on the government to hold
KRW3.2 trillion ($2.9 billion) compared with the KRW1.65 trillion auctions to reallocate the spectrum, which expires in June 2021.
the operators proposed, the news agency wrote. Yonhap News The operators paid KRW3.6 trillion in June 2018 for 5G spectrum
Agency explained the government price is conditional upon the in the 3.5GHz and 28GHz bands and have invested heavily in new
operators each deploying 150,000 5G base stations by 2022. The networks over the past two years.

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