Vodafone took press and analysts to Thruxton, advertised as Britain’s fastest race track, for the launch of its SuperMobile service, advertised as the country’s fastest… you get the idea.
A starting grid of fast-talking VodafoneThree execs announced the launch of a new class of service known as SuperMobile, which VodafoneThree says is built upon a network which will sit in pole position in the UK, following an £11 billion programme to combine and transform the networks of both Three and Vodafone.
Consumers and SoHo businesses will be able to pay £3 more per month (or £8 for SIM only customers) to access the SuperMobile slice, which guarantees 15 Mbps whenever the user is in a 5G+ (for which read 5G SA) coverage area. However, expected speeds will be much faster – one user test that VodafoneThree carried out of the SuperMobile slice in London’s Parliament Square was showing a 724 Mbps download speed.
Medium and large businesses will also be offered access to a business-specific SuperMobile slice, available on a national basis, rather than on the local baasis with which VodafoneThree opened up its slicing offer in April this year. VodafoneThree doesn’t have too many available details on what specific parameters it will be offering businesses or sectors, but it does say that it will be working to meet sector-specific demands around speed, reliability, security and latency.
Also new from VodafoneThree was the promise of using its slicing ability to support critical and emergency communications services. This would put its sales people firmly on BT’s lawn.
Launching SuperMobile, CEO Max Taylor it marked the start of the next phase of VodafoneThree’s network-based strategy. “The truth is, we’ve only been laying the foundations, and the race is now on,” he said.
How (and where) SuperMobile works
VodafoneThree’s new offer and its network slicing vision depends on the network it has been building and will continue to build.
SuperMobile is backed by a prioritisation capability and network slicing control enabled by VodafoneThree’s Ericsson-provided 5G SA core. That means SuperMobile service will only be available within 5G SA coverage areas, which VodafoneThree said is about 60% by population currently, with a commitment to reach 99% of the population in 5G SA coverage by 2030 and 99.96% by 2033.
It also relies on users being attached to a cell site that has the capacity and speeds to meet the minimum guarantees. That starts with the radio access network itself, and how the operator is rolling out within its spectrum holdings. Speaking to TMN, VodafoneThree’s Chief Network Officer Andrea Dona described three tiers of site builds. The highest tier in areas of densest demand forms its full spectrum configuration, which includes 210 MHz of high capacity C-Band 3.5 GHz spectrum. Then there are mid band and low band tiers that can add coverage. Dona said that the operator currently has the “strongest spectrum portfolio in the market with 700-1400 MHz lower bands, 1800 -2600 MHzx mid bands and then its C-Bands.
VodafoneThree’s spectrum position vs its two competitors.
But it is the 5G SA C-Band coverage areas – with their combo of slice control and high speed and capacity – that will be serving the SuperMobile slice.
“The SuperMobile offering is linked to 5G SA coverage.” Dona explained. “So as that expands, we are able to offer SuperMobile to more customers. Currently, if you’re in SA coverage, you can have SuperMobile. If you’re not, you fall back to what we call SpeedBoost.”
Valeria Baiamonte, Director of Network Strategy & Transformation added, “Over time, we’ll expand the rest of 5G SA coverage in low and mid areas. But today when we sell it [SuperMobile], it’s linked to our 5G SA C-Band coverage.”
Vendors, Open RAN and AI
The RAN and RU suppliers for its build is “primarily Ericcson”, Dona said, with the introduction of Nokia in the north of the country. Having two vendors “keeps competition alive and ensures they meet their roadmap commitments,” he adds.
In fact both Nokia and Ericsson have committed to technology roadmaps that support VodafoneThree’s “unique spectrum holdings”.
Although producing RAN products for a specific operator’s profile might seem uneconomical, Dona said that it will also give the vendors further opportunities with other operators in similar positions.
“Consolidation is going to happen in Europe. You’re going to have scenarios where spectrum holdings similar to the ones we have will need to be delivered in other markets, and they’ll be ready for it.”
Mention of vendors making custom commitments to build specific Radio Units inevitably opens up memories of Open RAN, where Vodafone UK – prior to the merger with Three – had committed to roll out a multi-vendor build based on Samsung O-RAN across 2,5000 ex-Huawei sites. It has since abandoned that plan. One key aspect that hampered O-RAN progress was availability of O-RUs (Open RAN Radio Units) on a sufficient scale but also with sufficient granularity to meet operators’ discreet spectrum requirements.
Does Dona think he could have done what he’s doing now if Vodafone/ VodafoneThree had stuck to the O-RAN path?
“Good question. I think the O-RAN roadmap enabled us to deliver what we wanted, but not within the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) timescales.” [The CMA timescale was the agreed rollout and investment plan Vodafone agreed to as part of its regulatory clearance for the Three merger.]
“We could have stayed on the O-RAN roadmap,” Dona repeated, “but the timescales imposed by the CMA meant that we had to make different decisions. That doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in O-RAN, or changed my mind, but the CMA timescales imposed different deadlines.”
AI-RAN – VodafoneThree to be first in Group with Nokia kit
In its presentation, VodafoneThree had also mentioned how AI-RAN and AI use cases would underpin its ability to configure the SuperMobile service.
Dona clarified that this referred to the AI in the RAN use cases that vendors such as Ericsson are integrating into their RUs and RAN platforms to handle things such as energy efficiency and channel adaptation, rather than a deployment of GPU-based base stations which some (although far from all) would associate as underpinning AI-RAN.
In terms of ongoing AI-RAN development, however, Baiamonte referred to the existing announcement that Vodafone Group is committed to deploying the latest Nokia RAN equipment that is based on Nvidia GPUs, and she said that VodafoneThree will be the first operator in the Group to test the new product.
Slicing and prioritisation
Aside from the evolving RAN, the other key element sitting behind the SuperMobile offer is VodafoneThree’s approach to slicing and prioritisation.
Note that these consumer and business SuperMobile slices are not the dynamic slices of the industry’s fond imagining – where businesses and consumers invoke slices on the fly, all automatically provisioned, monitored, assured and billed for.
What VodafoneThree has currently is a set number of static slices that partition the network, guaranteeing a set level of service for those who have bought in.
Baiamonte points out that although these are static slices in terms of their configuration, resources can be released dynamically if there are not enough SuperMobile customers in an area. She added that the operator also has an AI-enabled orchestrator on its roadmap to enable configuration of the slices.
Crucial to operation of SuperMobile is Vodafone’s concurrent application of a prioritisation weighting, to make sure that the most critical or important slices are honoured.
Dona said, “For each user you have a weighting. The secret is ensuring that this works well with the network partitioning. So you partition a section of the network, but that has to work in synch with the appropriate prioritisation of that particular user.”
These services do not impinge net neutrality rules, Dona said, because the operator is not favouring specific applications or services. Instead it is applying prioritisation to slices themselves.
“This is giving the option to a user to have his or her particular traffic prioritised. We’re not prioritising a particular website or a particular app. Now, what we are asking Ofcom to do is for us to be able to enhance our service offering, and be more creative and offer more optionality. But that’s for the future. For now, this our offering is compatible with net neutrality.”
Monetisation
VodafoneThree has taken a bet that it can sell network quality. It has spectrum, it has an £11 billion investment programme, and it has a programme to add increasing amounts of intelligence to the RAN and the core.
CEO Max Taylor said at the launch, “The health of our industry depends on us monetising quality effectively and consistently, across all of our segments, which is why all our segments launch together.”
It may also see the offer as something that can attract users from other operators, or help stop its own customers leaving.
Taylor added that their research shows that, “50% of customers would consider switching if the quality was better.”
The big question for VodafoneThree is how many of its consumer customers will pay the extra £3 per month (or £8 per month if they are SIM-only customers) for the SuperMobile tier. And then of course how it can market and manage sales to enterprises in ways that make sense to them.
While Taylor took care to state that it was monetising “quality”, it is speed that the launch leads on. And although speeds are important, they are also what operators are left with to express a network quality advantage. But there is also evidence that what customers hate is lack of reliability – in other words sessions and calls dropping in no-coverage or poor coverage areas. So from a messaging point of view speed wins over quality because telling customers, in effect, ‘Pay us three pounds more a month and you’ll definitely get the service you thought you were paying for already’ is a much harder sell than advertising super-high (4x) speeds. But Vodafone will also have to choose whether to go with headline speed numbers (very fast) or its 15 Mbps as a floor guarantee (not very fast), or both. Plus, it will also have to message that SuperMobile will only be available in areas that have 5G SA coverage, currently forming 60% of the population.
