Eased the network congestion in hotspot areas and greatly improved user experience.

Lao Telecom recently worked with Huawei to verify the enhanced FDD smart massive MIMO solution based on Huawei’s latest software version of eRAN17.1.

Over the past few years, Lao Telecom has seen a rapid growth in traffic, with the average monthly data usage per user exceeding 25 GB, the growth was especially significant in hotspot areas.

Networks in the traditional 4T4R 6-sector form were also congested, putting user experience at risk. To accommodate this trend, Lao Telecom adopted the FDD dual-band massive MIMO solution in 2020 in hotspot areas.

The operator has also managed to expand network capacity to 1.9 times as large as that of a 4T4R 6-sector network, without adding sites or spectrum resources. Suppressed traffic was therefore significantly released. The joint test taken this year proved that the enhanced FDD massive MIMO solution further improved the network performance for Lao Telecom.

This paves the way for large-scale commercial use of massive MIMO, said Latthapanya Khieovongphachanh CTO of Lao Telecom.

“Huawei’s MIMO solution effectively eased the network congestion in hotspot areas and greatly improved user experience,” he said.

Tags: HuaweiLao Telecom

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Telemedicine platform designed for Quality Healthcare HK.

Quality HealthCare Medical Services in Hong Kong has launched its mental health consultations (including counselling and psychotherapy) and psychiatric services on the DrGo platform, providing DrGo users with access to specialty services.

Partnering with Hong Kong Telecom, telemedicine platform DrGo aims to connect users with registered Hong Kong doctors and other healthcare professionals for video consultations. As one of the largest private medical service providers in Hong Kong, Quality HealthCare has been supporting holistic healthcare while advocating the digitalisation of related services.

Given the increasing public awareness of mental health issues, DrGo and Quality HealthCare have joined hands once again to expand the scope of services from general practice only to now include mental health video consultations, empowering users to manage both their physical and mental wellbeing. The remote psychological consultation provided by Quality HealthCare includes counselling and psychotherapy, as well as psychiatric services.

Psychiatric video consultation is the first specialty service being offered on the DrGo platform, providing a more comprehensive healthcare experience for users. The remote counselling and psychotherapy consultation will be conducted by counsellors or registered psychologists, who will help users cultivate a positive attitude and develop an optimistic outlook through education and by establishing a close and trusting relationship with them.

Following professional assessment and if deemed necessary, users may be referred to psychiatrists who specialise in mood disorders, psychological problems, insomnia, anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric disorders. Users can also directly book a video consultation with a psychiatrist. Appointments can be made via the online booking system on the DrGo platform.

Users can then attend their scheduled video consultation from the comfort of their home. The new service not only removes the need for users to physically visit a clinic, but also allows them to choose an environment where they feel safe to share their personal mental health concerns, enhancing the overall treatment progress and experience.

Aside from video consultations on DrGo, a wide range of healthcare products and services are also available on the DrGo Health Store online.

Tags: HKTPlatformpsychologyQuality Healthcare Medical

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Tapping into the potential for the large data centre market in Mumbai.

Singapore-based Princeton Digital Group (PDG announced plans to build one of the largest new greenfield campuses in Mumbai region, its first data centre in India, scheduled to be service ready in 2022.

PDG’s Navi Mumbai project will have 48 MW of critical IT capacity across two buildings. The new campus is designed to serve leading hyperscalers including internet and cloud companies in the fast-growing Mumbai region, with infrastructure built to hyperscale design and standards to support the massive scale requirements of customers in the region.

Mumbai is the most exciting market in India and Navi Mumbai is the preeminent cluster within Mumbai. With this campus, PDG has become a significant player in the India market. ‘Our ambition is to be one of the largest, pan national hyperscale data center provider in the country over the next 3 years.’ added Vipin Shirsat, Managing Director, India at PDG.

“Mumbai’s data centre market is estimated to reach a CAGR of 22 per cent for the period 2017-2023. As the largest data centre market in India, Mumbai houses 31 per cent of the nation’s colocation footprint even as providers move further inland through Navi Mumbai which is considered a submarket of Mumbai.”, said Dan Thompson principal research analyst at Datacenter Services & Infrastructure for 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

PDG’s operational model enables it to rapidly enter critical hyperscale growth markets like Mumbai and power its customers with globally standardised, secure, reliable, and sustainable data centxer capacity.

PDG has about 18 data centres, with over 350MW, across four countries – China, Singapore, Indonesia, and India.

Tags: DatacentreMumbaiPDG

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5G innovation facility to be built at University of Technology Sydney’s Tech Lab in Botany, Sydney

Nokia has today announced a five-year partnership with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) to build and run a state-of-the-art 5G innovation facility at the university’s Tech Lab campus in Sydney, Australia.

The 5G Innovation Lab will enable Nokia, UTS and their partners to push the boundaries of 5G technology by testing exciting new 5G use cases with real world applications, including Industry 4.0, IoT and smart cities. While providing a live 5G test bed for commercial partners, the 5G Innovation Lab will also serve as an environment for new research opportunities within the ICT sector.

This multi-year, multi-million-dollar investment by Nokia reflects the company’s commitment to Australian innovation and the essential role telecommunication plays in both securing critical infrastructure and fostering economic growth.

Researchers and commercial partners will undertake projects to explore the capabilities of 5G and 6G technologies for Industry 4.0 applications such as industrial automation, agriculture, and human-robot interactions, as well as ‘Internet of Things’ capabilities for Internet of Energy applications in smart grid, energy storage and management and wireless power transfer.

The facility will include a 5G lab and a 5G use case demonstration area, with campus-wide 5G coverage planned to allow for the development & testing of potential 5G use cases in both the lab and the field. The new lab will also connect directly into the university’s anechoic radio frequency test chamber – the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere – allowing researchers to test the potential of Nokia’s Massive MIMO and other innovative antenna technologies.

Robert Joyce, CTO at Nokia Oceania, said this partnership builds upon the existing innovative facilities at the university’s Tech Lab and will enable researchers to develop, test and demonstrate innovative uses of 5G here in Australia.

Tags: 5GNokiaUTS

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Providing a fully sovereign ecosystem in terms of supply chain, staff, and data access and storage.

Macquarie Data Centres and Macquarie Government, part of Macquarie Telecom Group has launched its latest facility in the company’s highly secure data centre portfolio – Intellicentre 5 (IC5) – in Canberra, purpose-built to house the most highly classified Australian Government workloads.

The A$17 million ‘bunker’ data centre is a product of a record year for Macquarie, during which the company invested over A$100 million into the construction of secure, sovereign Australian data centres in Sydney and Canberra, after pioneering the industry 20 years ago. The IC5 construction alone supported over 400 construction and related industry roles in the ACT.

IC5 expands Macquarie’s sovereign data centre footprint in Canberra, providing a fully sovereign ecosystem in terms of supply chain, staff, and data access and storage. Alongside Macquarie’s adjacent Intellicentre 4 (IC4), the new facility offers further capacity for Government cloud workloads and an additional secure facility to back up data.

The combined 4-megawatt (MW) facilities leverage the latest physical and virtual security and compliance credentials to manage highly classified Government cloud workloads. These include being a Tier IV, SCEC Zone 5 ready data centre, supported by over 150 NV1 government-cleared engineers – including in its 24x7x365 support centre – a 25 per cent increase in cyber security engineers since construction commenced in July 2020.

“Data and cloud demand has skyrocketed as the pandemic continues to bring forward years’ worth of IT and digital transformation projects[1],” said David Hirst, Group Executive, Macquarie Data Centres. “Ensuring that data remains secure, sovereign and within Australia’s borders is vital to protecting our national security and privacy interests – this facility embodies that need in every way.”

The launch follows the on-time and on-budget completion of IC5 in December 2020 despite unprecedented challenges including COVID-19 lockdowns, travel restrictions, and record rainfall in Canberra during October. The project also contrasts with the overall decline in data centre infrastructure spend last year, which research has found reduced by 10.4 per cent in 2020[2].

Macquarie worked with Australian construction company Manteena on IC5, leveraging its unique expertise in designing and constructing secure, complex infrastructure for Government agencies including the Australian Department of Defence and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Last year, Macquarie became the first Australian sovereign cloud service provider (CSP) certified to work with Defence through the Defence Industry Security Program (DISP).

The build involved four kilometres of underground electrical conduit, 15 tons of copper in the main cables, and generators powerful enough to run 400 homes.

Manteena formed part of Macquarie’s all-Australian supply chain responsible for the design, build and fit out of the data centre. This supply chain included Queanbeyan company SRA Solutions, which provided data centre racks for IC5.

IC5 has also been fitted with a five-ton solar rooftop installation to maximise energy efficiency and use of renewable energy in the facility’s operations. The data centre will maintain an industry leading power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.35, and leverage state-of-the-art cooling technology, further enhancing its environmental efficiency.

The data centre is a boon for Macquarie’s Government business, which already supports more than 42 per cent of Australian Federal and State government agencies and personnel with cyber security, secure internet gateway (SIG) and cloud services.

“Government agencies cannot risk having all their data eggs in one basket,” said Aidan Tudehope, Managing Director, Macquarie Government. “Canberra needs greater diversity in its balance of data storage, protection and management, and the Australian Government wants greater competition in the local market that supports Government agencies. IC5 is not just welcome, but necessary infrastructure for Government agencies that are increasing their cloud and IT needs.”

IC5 will continue to bring new jobs and vital skills, including graduate roles, in areas such as engineering and cyber security.

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Mobile call, text and data services affect telco provider’s business and residential customers.

Singtel’s Australian telecommunication service provider, Optus has suffered a mobile outage on the 18th of February, with customers experiencing intermittent disruptions to their mobile call, text and data services.

According to the telecommunication provider its technical teams are investigating as a priority and working to restore services.

“We understand that connectivity is important and apologise for any inconvenience caused during this time,” states Optus. “We are aware that some Optus customers including residents and businesses may be experiencing intermittent disruptions to their mobile call, text and data services.”

A spokesperson noted Optus has begun remediation on the identified fault, with some customers services having their services restored.

News outlets in Australia report Optus said the outage has affected mobile network in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.

Financial service provider also reported “intermittent” issues with EFTPOS services. However there’s no confirmation if these two issues are related.

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Provided services to the government by Australian providers to assure both the security and reliability of the supply chain.

Australian Data Centres (ADC) has selected Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer to provide sovereign hosted cloud services to the Australian Federal Government.

Hosted within  Australian Data Centres’ secure data centre facility in Canberra, the Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer will extend Oracle’s current services to government, particularly across secure workloads in National Security, Health, Human Services and other departments and agencies dealing with the sensitive data of Australia and Australians.

With Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer, ADC can build Oracle’s public cloud regions in its own datacenters giving ADC physical control of infrastructure and providing for locally hosted data to help meet the most demanding data sovereignty hosting requirements. The cloud region provides strong isolation of customer data, including all API operations, which remains local to the datacentre and provide high levels of security.

ADC can access all of Oracle’s second-generation cloud services, including Bare Metal Compute, VMs and GPUs, Autonomous Database, and Exadata Cloud Service; container-based services like Container Engine for Kubernetes; and analytics services like Data Flow, while also having control and governance of their systems and services.

With Oracle Cloud@Customer, enterprises can lift and shift legacy workloads and consolidate on a single platform, enabling them to dramatically improve TCO without requiring re-architecture. Customers also have access to development services, like API Gateway and Events Services that will help them incrementally modernize their stack in-place, reducing the risk and expense of adopting new technologies.

Australian Data Centres will provide best practice data centre security operations, risk management and a “sovereign beyond doubt” hosting location approach with connectivity to the Intra-government Communications Network (ICON) and all major telecommunication providers.

Agencies will have access to the complete portfolio of second-generation Oracle Cloud services, including a broad range of Oracle’s SaaS applications. This brings new and exciting opportunities for government customers to digitally transform while meeting stringent sovereign hosting.

“We are committed to building capacity to provide services to the government by Australian providers to assure both the security and reliability of the supply chain,” said Rob Kelly, managing director at Australian Data Centres. “This is a major step toward enabling more choice for government to access world-leading cloud services, in a data centre managed by an Australian company, focused on connectivity, security, and simplified deployment. Critically, it addresses data hosting sovereignty, enhanced security and performance attributes required to accelerate Governments shift to the cloud services.”

Australian Data Centres is a private, and wholly owned-and-operated Australian company which hosts several Commonwealth Departmental tenants, along with their Gateways, as well as several Australian international telecommunications companies and commercial organisations. Australian Data Centres provides a highly secure and independently certified Tier III Data Centre (Uptime Institute) with no single point of failure and efficiencies built into all levels of its technical design and implementation.

 This news follows a number of significant recent announcements from Oracle focussed on the Australian Government market.  In November, Oracle announced that it had established a whole-of-government arrangement with the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA), to make it easier for government agencies to purchase Oracle products and services. Earlier in the month it disclosed that a number of key components of its Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications suite had been assessed by an Information Security Registered Assessors Program assessor against the Information Security Manual  Protected controls.

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Enables key staff to focus on growing the business as well as managing day-to-day finance operations.

Independent fresh food chain Harris Farm Markets has rolled out its first RPA (robotic process automation) projects in conjunction with Sherpa Works and UiPath.

With 26 stores already and 3000 staff across New South Wales and Queensland, the family-owned business is poised for major growth with four new locations opening in the next 12 months.

To enable key staff to focus on growing the business as well as managing day-to-day finance operations, the company’s CFO, James Williamson, brought in Sherpa Works to identify processes in the finance department that could be automated.

The broader objective was to prove the use case of RPA in the Finance department before championing the initiative across the rest of the business.

“The process began with a Discovery Report,” explained David Barlow, Co-founder of Sherpa Works. “Matt (Skinner, Co-founder & CTO) and I get the buy-in of the executive team and then spend time with the frontline staff to understand their processes. After “buddying up” with these Subject Matter Experts at Harris Farm Markets we identified over 20 processes fit for automation with Robotic Process Automation. The report also covered how best to structure the investment, the estimated pay-back period, and other meaningful business outcomes.”

Harris Farm Markets picked eight of these processes to automate initially, ranging from processing concession store charges and invoices, data refreshes, warehouse and price reporting, recharges, and the like.

Winnie Wen, senior accountant at Harris Farm said the impact the RPA project has had on her day.

“I used to spend my mornings doing invoices and stock journals, but now the bots do them. Instead of spending time producing the reports I can now spend that time analysing and digging into the data the bots give me,” she said. “This means I can add more insight for our teams, telling them which lines are most profitable for example. It not only saves time it also cuts down on errors as we’re not manually typing data into the system, so I certainly have more trust in our reports now.”

Harris Farm Markets not only sells its own produce, it also sub-leases areas of its stores to tenants, who sell their own produce. Sales going through the tills used to be put into Excel files.

Financial Controller, Josh Banks, said that the main benefits of the RPA project so far have been time saving and accuracy of information. “We’ve saved a lot of time, but this is just the beginning and we look forward to using RPA more in the future. We have plans for payroll, pay awards, more journal stuff, as well as accounts payable. The possibilities are endless.”

Another member of the accounts team compiles and sends out daily trading information to the leadership team and store management, including reports on the performance of seasonal product categories and promotional activities.

These reports, which are now produced entirely by bots, help foster competition between stores and drive sales. Having these processes automated enables the Finance team to provide more relevant information to the business much more quickly, and accurately. As they don’t have to collate the data by hand it also gives the team more time to analyse the information first and suggest areas for improvement.

The most recent project with Sherpa Works, and the first outside the Finance department, came about when the business switched to a new Human Resources Information System (HRIS).

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Digital solution providers to leverage from the current evolution in technologies in both mature and nascent markets.

Research and Analyst firm, Frost & Sullivan finds that growth in infrastructure development and urbanisation projects, alternate powertrains, and the need for modern, compact, and rental equipment are top industry trends driving the global construction and mining equipment industry.

According to its recenty analysis, Digitisation and New Business Models Powering the Global Construction and Mining Equipment Market, 2030, Telematics and autonomous retrofit solution providers are expected to partner with rental companies to upgrade their fleet with new solutions and technologies and promote them in key markets, such as the United States, Europe, China, and India.

The construction and mining rental equipment market is expected to reach US$273 billion by 2030, driven by the need to manage operational costs and increase utilisation rates.

Global construction spending is estimated to reach US$17.5 trillionby the end of the forecast period with the rise in civil infrastructure development projects and real estate/buildings. However, the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to cause an 18 per cent decline in the unit sales of heavy equipment in 2020 due to the decline in manufacturing, operations, and distribution centres across the globe. Despite these obstructions, the construction and mining equipment unit shipment is likely to register growth at a compound annual growth rate of 0.84 per cent for the next 10 years.

“The construction equipment market is ripe with opportunities for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), suppliers, and digital solution providers to leverage from the current evolution in technologies in both mature and nascent markets,” said Krishna Achuthan, Commercial Mobility Industry Analyst at Frost & Sullivan. “Growth will be driven by the Asia-Pacific market and the earthmoving segment in the short term. The transition toward rental models, electrification, and automation will happen in the medium to long terms.”

Achuthan noted digital services that enhance convenience and operational costs are expected to spur the growth of telematics solutions in construction and mining equipment. Additionally, with the rise in mega cities and smart cities, the operational constraints of urban construction will lead to an increase in demand for compact equipment.

“This will further push the demand for electric construction equipment due to stringent urban emission regulations (EV sones) and reduced operational costs,” he said.

Processes in the construction and mining sector will be more modular, individualised, and connected to the Internet of Things (IoT), enhancing equipment utilisation and performance tracking. Prognostics using unabridged data collection, remote monitoring, and operation present immense growth prospects for stakeholders in the construction and mining equipment industry. Industry players should consider the following opportunities:

Partner with regional digital service providers and telematics companies to offer lucrative subscription models, improving network channels.

The rapid growth of rental and sharing platforms will allow OEMs and technology providers to form partnerships and leverage marketing channels.

Autonomous solution providers, OEMs, rental companies, and mining corporations are expected to pilot test and develop autonomous construction and mining equipment.

The substantial installed base of equipment with telematics, electric drives and other digital technologies will support the dominance of OEM dealer channels for equipment maintenance and service.

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Will streamline processes as well as evaluate and implement new and integrated systems and tools.

Global athletic foot and clothing wear company Foot Locker has appointed Himanshu Parikh as senior VP, CIO.

Parikh will oversee the execution of the next generation of Foot Locker’s strategic technology agenda in support of the its key strategic imperatives and future capability-building and innovation. Parikh will have operational responsibility for the company’s technology and infrastructure.

He will work closely with the senior executive team to streamline processes as well as evaluate and implement new and integrated systems and tools across the organization critical to the Company’s omni-channel initiatives.

Richard Johnson, chairman and CEO at Foot Locker said the company has made progress in leveraging data and technology to drive customer connections and convenience, support the growth of our loyalty program and build a customer-driven supply chain.

“I am confident that his deep expertise and breadth of experience leading Digital, Omni-Channel, Enterprise Resource Planning, and Information Security functions will be strong assets as we continue to advance our technology projects and investments to evolve as a fully-integrated omni-channel company,” he noted.

Parikh has over 25 years of experience in strategic planning, business solutions and organizational development for top-tier retail companies. And is an expert in leveraging modern technology and data to drive a customer-centric connected retail experience.

Most recently, he served as SVP, CTO at The Michaels Companies, where for the past five years he drove technology and customer-centric transformation, including overseeing Digital Commerce, marketing/CRM, data and analytics and Loyalty, as well as the expansion of its omni-channel commerce and supply chain growth.

Prior to joining Michaels, Parikh held several executive roles with Ross Stores, leading teams that developed modern web and mobile applications, IT investment plans, roadmaps, technology standards, and governance of new technology. Parikh holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from M.S. University, Vadodara India.

Foot Locker has 3,000 retail stores in 28 countries across North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, as well as websites and mobile apps.

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