Networking

Following its series of acquisitions in the back half of 2020, Uniti Group now says it has transformed into a core infrastructure owner.
For its first half results to December 31, the company posted record revenue of AU$54.6 million, up 148% compared to last year. It also tripled earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) to AU$29.3 million which does not take into account shared based payments, acquisition, and restructuring costs.
During November and December, Uniti picked up Telstra Velocity for AU$140 million, paid AU$9.25 million for Harbour ISP, and ended the saga to acquire Opticomm.
Broken down by business unit, wholesale and infrastructure increased revenue from AU$6.6 million to AU$30 million with EBITDA growing from AU$4 million to AU$20 million. Extrapolating its December numbers, as well as adding some acquisition synergies and Telstra Velocity revenue, the company said it would see revenue of AU$141 million for a full year and EBITDA of AU$100 million. The unit has 438,000 connected premises on its wholesale networks, and a further 152,000 premises are slated to come online in the next five years.
The company said its market share in the full-fibre greenfields market stands just below the 20% mark.
In its consumer and business division, Uniti saw revenue increase 44% to AU$17.4 million and EBITDA drop 17% to AU$2 million. The EBITDA fall was pinned on having more customers on offnet infrastructure and the coupled increase cost of access. Using the December run rate figures, the company said it expects AU$52 million of revenue and AU$6 million in EBITDA.
For the communications platform-as-a-service segment, Uniti reported revenue increased 144% to AU$15 million and EBTIDA tripled to AU$10 million.

In terms of net profit, Uniti increased its final line item from AU$3.4 million to AU$17.3 million.
“We are today a core infrastructure business, generating operating free cash flow exceeding 60% of our earnings, after investing in the further expansion of our fibre telecommunications infrastructure,” group managing director and CEO Michael Simmons said.
“We are privileged to be in operating in a segment of the telecommunications industry experiencing once-in – a-lifetime favourable market and economic conditions and investing in fibre infrastructure, which delivers a highly demanded essential commodity to consumers and business, which is able to accommodate very long term demand growth with minimal incremental capital or operating expenditure.”
In the bidding war for Opticomm, Uniti stared down Aware Super, which on Wednesday was revealed to have joined the Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets Holdings (MIRA) bid for Vocus under the same AU$5.50 a share terms.
“Vocus has been advised by MIRA that it has entered into a co-operation agreement with Aware Super … to progress its proposal via a consortium,” Vocus told the ASX.
“The consortium’s due diligence investigations are continuing. The Vocus board notes that there is no certainty that the proposal will result in a binding offer.”
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Chorus on Monday reported net profit after tax (NPAT) of NZ$24 million and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) of NZ$323 million for the half year to December 31.
These were both year-on-year decreases from NZ$31 million and NZ$332 million, respectively, with Chorus attributing the drops to the continued migration of customers from legacy copper services to alternative networks in non-Chorus fibre network areas and fewer people migrating to fibre connections than expected as a result of COVID-19.
Operating revenue for the period was NZ$473 million, down from NZ$483 million, while operating expenses essentially remained flat at NZ$150 million. Depreciation and amortisation was NZ$209 million for the half and EBIT jumped by NZ$20 million year-on-year to NZ$114 million.
Network performance was steady, Chorus CEO JB Rousselot said, with fibre uptake improving from 60% to 63% with 62,000 fibre connections added during the six months, which brought the total of its fibre connections to 813,000. Of those connections, 17% were on gigabit plans, the telco said.
Across its wider footprint, the company now has almost 1.37 million fixed-line connections, a decrease of 50,000 from the year prior, along with 966,000 premises passed in total, meaning the Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) network is now 92% complete.
Rousselot added that the second phase of its UFB fibre build, UFB2, is still on track. In the six-month period, fibre was added to Fox Glacier, National Park, and Mokau.
“As in the larger centres, those upgrading to fibre in these communities can typically get fibre installed for free and comparison websites highlight the diverse range of sharp retail offers available to new fibre customers,” Rousselot said.

Chorus also announced it will start cutting copper services from September, with the switch-offs to first commence in areas where fibre uptake is “already high”.
Around 5,000 customers, which comprises less than 1% of Chorus’ copper network customer base, will have their services withdrawn by the end of the year. The decision to cut off copper networks was in response to the Commerce Commission’s final Copper Withdrawal Code being released in December, the telco said.
Customers using Chorus’ copper network will be given a six-month notification period before the first set of switch offs start in September.
“Outside of these limited initial trial areas, no one should feel under any pressure to move from copper. There is no overnight switch-off of the copper network. Our plans in the next 12 months are expected to affect less than 1% of the half million customers still on copper today,” Rousselot said.
For the year ahead, Chorus said its EBITDA guidance remained the same despite COVID impacts, but the company is tracking towards the lower half of the guidance’s range of NZ$670 million to NZ$700 million.
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The amount of bandwidth purchased from the company running the National Broadband Network dropped form 20.2Tbps down to 19.8Tbps over the quarter to December 31, according to numbers from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
In the latest edition of its NBN Wholesale Market Indicators Report, the average amount of CVC per connection fell from 2.59Mbps to 2.44Mbps. The largest drop was in Victoria where capacity plummeted 11% from 5.6Tbps in the prior quarter to 4.98Tbps. The Australian Capital Territory saw a 7% drop in bandwidth, while Western Australia and the Northern Territory had 4% less capacity by the end of 2020, and Tasmania saw a 3% drop.
Heading in the other direction was New South Wales with a 4% increase to 6.4Tbps and South Australia with a 2% increase. Queensland was only slightly up from 4.05Tbps to 4.07Tbps.
The lower bandwidth was expected as NBN began tapering off its 40% free capacity boost to retailers due to the coronavirus pandemic during the quarter.
Compared to the same quarter a year prior, NBN was selling 12.7Tbps of capacity, which meant bandwidth increased by 56% over 2020.
Nevertheless, the ACCC said it was now up to retailers to cough up the difference.
“NBN’s temporary COVID-19 CVC boost offer has expired, so it’s important that retail service providers provide sufficient CVC capacity for consumers to continue to receive the speeds they are paying for, particularly during periods of high demand,” ACCC chair Rod Sims said.

Over the quarter, NBN saw almost over 590,000 premises take up its 100/20Mbps Home Fast plan as the total number now sits at nearly 742,000 connections. Also seeing increases in the number of premises connected were 25/10Mbps plans, which saw a 56,525 boost in numbers to 92,000, and the 25/5Mbps plan that gained 26,650 new additions to take its total to 1.28 million connections.
Plans with numbers headed in the other direction were the slowest 12/1Mbps plan, which now has 1.05 million connections thanks to a 41,600 drop; the most popular 50/20Mbps plan, which saw 298,000 premises drop off to result in only having 4.2 million connections in total; while 63,600 fewer premises were connected to 100/40Mbps plans, leaving it with 718,000 connections.
At the higher end of its speed offering, the 250/25Mbps Home Superfast plan recorded over 11,000 connections with 6,000 additions being made in the quarter, and 2,670 premises took up the 500-1,000/50Mbps Home Ultrafast with just shy of 10,000 premises around the country using it.
The vast majority of customers on plans above 250Mbps are with Aussie Broadband.
Earlier this week, Aussie Broadband reported a revenue spike of 89% to AU$157 million for the six months to December 31, thanks to the addition of 81,000 customers to its network.
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Data center switch giant Arista Networks this afternoon reported Q4 revenue and profit that topped analysts’ expectations, and an outlook for the current quarter higher as well. 
The report sent Arista shares surging by 12% in late trading. 
CEO Jayshree Ullal remarked that she was “pleased with Arista’s return to growth in Q4 2020,” adding that “with our laser focus on customer success, pristine financials and transformative innovations, Arista is well positioned to continue our momentum in the post pandemic era.”
CFO Ita Brennan commented that the company’s employees “showed great resilience and flexibility throughout 2020, maintaining operational excellence, while executing well on our market and product diversification initiatives.”
Revenue in the three months ended in December rose to $648.5 million, yielding EPS of $2.49, excluding some costs.
Analysts had been modeling $630 million and $2.39 a share. 
Arista said its gross profit margin as a percentage of revenue rose ever-so-slightly to 65% from 64.7% a year earlier. 

For the current quarter, the company sees revenue of $630 million to $650 million. That compares to consensus for $609 million and $2.27 per share.
The company’s gross profit margin is projected in a range of 63% to 65% for the quarter.

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Verizon Business said it will expand its managed networking services with Cisco with three new offerings.
The telecom giant said that it will offer three new SD WAN managed services offerings. For Verizon, the Cisco partnership bolsters its business services unit, which is seen as a growth area for the company. For Cisco, Verizon expands an existing enterprise partnership and gives it more throughput as its data center stack powers more services.
Verizon Business and Cisco are offering the following managed services.
Co-managed Cisco SD WAN powered by Viptela with an option to control and self-manage security and application policies. Verizon would include managed services for fault, performance and configuration.
Managed SD WAN powered by Viptela for Cisco’s ISR1100 Series platform. This managed service is for branch offices via an appliance.
Managed service tiers for Cisco SD WAN powered by Meraki. This service offers the Cisco Meraki platform as well as deployment support globally. Verizon will also manage Cisco Meraki MV smart cameras.
Cisco has been busy building out partnerships with key enterprise players. Cisco and Amazon Web Services (AWS) said they will integrate AWS IoT Core and Cisco Edge Intelligence software. The partnership aims to make it easier to manage IoT and industry 4.0 implementations.   More

Image: Asha Barbaschow/ZDNet
Optus is currently experiencing a mobile outage along the east coast of Australia.
“Our network team is working to resolve a network issue on the Optus mobile network in NSW, QLD and VIC,” a notice on its network status page says.
The company said in a statement that as of 9am on Thursday, technical issues could lead to “intermittent disruptions” to using data, making calls, and sending SMS messages on its mobile network.
“We understand connectivity is important and are working to restore services ASAP. We apologise for any inconvenience caused,” Optus social media managers were telling users that complained on Twitter.
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Aussie Broadband has seen its revenue spike by 89% to AU$157 million for the six months to December 31, thanks to the addition of 81,000 customers to its network.
Broken down, its residential base accounted for AU$138 million in revenue, an increase of AU$65 million compared to the same period last fiscal year, and contributed AU$5.75 million in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA), which is more than double the AU$2 million reported last year.
From its business customers, Aussie Broadband received an AU$8.7 million jump in revenue to AU$19.7 million and EBTIDA increased from AU$1.9 million to AU$2.78 million.
Overall, the company reported a 87% increase in EBITDA from AU$3.9 million to AU$7.3 million, from its AU$157 million in revenue. Aussie Broadband reported a net loss of AU$10.5 million, with a AU$12 million hit coming from the line items related to its IPO completed during the half.
The company said before these items, it had AU$2.9 million in profit, compared to a loss of AU$1.6 million a year prior.
Aussie Broadband now has 331,353 unique customers, which have taken up 342,634 services, with 313,193 marked as residential and 29,441 as business. The residential customer number increased by 30% since June 2020, with business customers growing by 49%. The company added that its NBN market share jumped from 2.8% in December 2019 to 4.2% a year later.
In addressing the recent HFC pause on new customer connections, the company said it was also impacted.

“There have been some interruptions to the supply chain of customer routers, but the business has found alternative equipment where necessary and the impact on customers has been some modest delays in delivery times,” it said.
“The company holds significant forward inventory but will continue to work with its partners to ensure continuity of supply.”
Aussie Broadband added if the HFC pause had hit in January, 9% of its orders would have been affected.
The company also said on Wednesday it was in the process of getting ready to switch wholesalers for its 19,000 mobile services from Telstra to Optus.
Aussie Broadband added that the new deal would allow 4G failover to be available for its NBN customers, and the deal includes access to Optus 5G and fixed wireless products.
The company expects to have new plans and handsets ready in the final quarter of its fiscal year between April and June.
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Myanmar’s ruling military has drafted new cybersecurity laws that have been widely condemned as draconian, giving the government sweeping powers to access user data and block online sites. The legislation also can undermine the country’s location as an offshore hub for data services, since it will not be in compliance with international laws. 
News leaked days after the February 1 military coup that a draft copy of the bill was sent to telcos and online service providers for their feedback, due back on Monday. According to various organisations that had seen the 36-page document, the proposed legislation would require online platforms operating in the country to retain all user data, including IP address, home address, and ID number, for three years and in a system assigned by the government. 
In addition, Article 29 would enable the government to instruct a user account be intercepted, blocked, or removed when identified to incite hate or disrupt peace with “fake news”, “disinformation, or comments that violated existing laws. Local authorities also would have access to the data when requested, without the need for a warrant.

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The current military government, which had named itself State Administration Council, had pitched the proposed legislation as necessary to combat cybercrime and various online activities deemed detrimental to the country. 
Various organisations, though, stepped up to condemn the rules as repressive, comprising vague terms that would provide the government powers to outlaw content with which it objected and prosecute its author. It also marked a significant step back after years of economic and social progress in Myanmar. 
In its statement, the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business (MCRB) cautioned that such laws would not only impact civil society, but also risk driving away international investors and stymie local business growth, particularly in the ICT sector. 
MCRB singled out the legislation’s focus on data localisation, requiring data to be stored in sites designated by the government, which it said would leave local businesses vulnerable. This was especially true for banks and e-commerce companies that used significant volumes of data and would not be able to tap the security and features offered by global cloud services. 

Financial services institutions would not be able to mitigate security risks and ensure governance, and this would drive away foreign investors and harm local businesses already struggling to cope with the COVID-19 crisis. 
Myanmar’s ability to create jobs and be a hub for offshore data-based services, such as call centres and shared service centres, also would be undermined as the proposed law would not be in compliance with international data protection rules, including the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), said MCRB. 
It noted that the Myanmar Computer Federation, Myanmar Computer Industry Association, and Myanmar Computer Professionals Association already had voiced their objections to the draft law. 
Norwegian telecommunications group Telenor said in a statement Tuesday the legislation should be debated in parliament and consulted with industry stakeholders to ensure it was “fit for purpose” and in line with Myanmar’s constitution. 
Describing it as broad in scope, the company said the proposed laws provided extensive powers that could “significantly impact many”. The telco said its local operations, since 2013, were established on commitments from Myanmar’s government that its regulatory updates and framework would be in line with international best practices. These included the establishment of an independent telecommunications regulator. 
“We are concerned that the proposed bill does not progress relevant regulatory frameworks and law for a digital future, [neither does it] promote and safeguard digital safety and rights,” Telenor said, adding that it was “not appropriate” to pass a bill with such broad powers to a temporary administration during a state of emergency. 
It further called for the proposed bill to adopt transparency and “legal certainty” with regards to the exercise of powers, and to exclude provisions that could be used to order interception of user accounts. It noted that laws governing personal data protection, electronic transactions, and cybersecurity should be kept separate to ensure governance. 
In calling the proposed legislation “draconian”, Human Rights Watch urged for it to be withdrawn as it would “consolidate” the government’s ability to conduct pervasive surveillance and cut access to essential services. It also neither specified how authorities would determine what constituted as misinformation nor provide any options for those whose content was blocked or removed to appeal.
Human Rights Watch’s Asia legal advisor Linda Lakhdhir said: “The draft cybersecurity law would hand a military that just staged a coup and is notorious for jailing critics almost unlimited power to access user data, putting anyone who speaks out at risk.” 
Under the proposed rules, companies that failed to comply faced up to three years imprisonment or fines of 10 million kyats ($7,009). 
“The provisions of this cybersecurity law pose a clear threat to the right of Myanmar’s citizens to reliable information and to the confidentiality of journalists’ and bloggers’ data,” Daniel Bastard, Asia-Pacific head of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a statement. “We urge digital actors operating in Myanmar, starting with Facebook, to refuse to comply with this shocking attempt to bring them to heel. This junta has absolutely no democratic legitimacy and it would be highly damaging for platforms to submit to its tyrannical impositions.”
According to RSF, Facebook has almost 25 million users in the country or 45% of the local population. It added that access to the social media platform as well as others such as Twitter and Instagram was blocked soon after the February 1 coup. 
UNI Global Union also called for industry stakeholders to speak out against the law, singling out Japan’s KDDI, Qatar’s Ooredoo, and Telenor, as these three multinational corporations had strong presence in Myanmar. 
Representing some 3 million employees in the ICT services sector, UNI Global Union’s general secretary Christy Hoffman said: “This so-called cybersecurity bill only protects the government’s grasp on power and it will be a powerful weapon against trade unionists, students, teachers, and the broad swath of civil society speaking out. The international community must stand up to reject this law… Telecommunications companies must also push back against this law or risk becoming a weapon of this military junta against democracy.”
According to activist group Access Now, Myanmar’s junta on Tuesday ordered another internet shutdown amidst increased military presence and use of force against demonstrators. It described the military’s “weaponisation” of internet shutdowns to silence dissent as “unacceptable and a flagrant violation to human rights laws”. 
Access Now’s Asia-Pacific policy director and senior international counsel, Jit Singh Chima, said: “Myanmar’s draft cybersecurity bill is already instilling a fear of surveillance and being persecuted for what you say and do online. The gagging of telecom and ICT firms from being able to report on government orders concerning internet shutdowns, web censorship, or user surveillance is very concerning. Given the evolving situation and suppression of free media on the ground, the ability of telecom firms to provide information about the government directives they receive is key.”
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