Cellnex: swiftly embracing digital infrastructure innovation

I had the pleasure of visiting Cellnex at their booth during the recent edition of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and interviewing the firm’s Director of Innovation and Product Strategy, José Antonio Aranda. Our conversation revolved around 5G innovation, IoT, V2V, V2X and beyond, and it became clear that Cellnex is much more than a towerco and is quickly embracing digital infrastructure in all its facets. I also had the pleasure to test Cellnex’s emergency response solution, which (virtually) threw me at the very heart of a wildfire. Exciting times ahead, but not for the faint-hearted!

TowerXchange: What is Cellnex’s vision for edge computing? What applications will drive edge computing, and what do their requirements tell us about the infrastructure that must be deployed?

For us, edge computing represents a great opportunity to add value to our portfolio of sites. We are now in the process of defining Cellnex’s role in this space but one thing we are sure of is that we do need to work closely to the MNOs to achieve substantial goals. Edge computing will allow us to offer more storage and data processing capacity closer or even next to the antenna. By extending edge computing at the very edge of the network, we are achieving 1ms latency, as demanded by 5G connectivity.

In terms of our activities in the edge computing sector, in 2017 we acquired Alticom in the Netherlands which allowed us to enter the data centre segment. Now we are participating in the 5G City Horizon 2020 initiative funded by the European Commission to enable 5G across Europe. This means first of all the definition of the role of towercos in the development of 5G infrastructure and the launch of 5G projects in three cities, namely Lucca (Italy), Barcelona (Spain) and Bristol (UK).

The required infrastructure will include edge nodes, centralised data centres and small cells. This is the future of digital infrastructure and MNOs will need neutral hosts to deploy these solutions all at once. The implications are obvious as by enabling third party infracos, we will avoid multiple civil works across metropolitan areas and maximise the efficiency of the MNOs’ investments.

In 2018, we sealed an agreement with Bouygues Telecom, following the sale and leaseback deals of 2016 and 2017, that will allow us to build 88 strategic Central Offices and Metropolitan Offices, which are telecom centres with great capacity to house data processing capabilities. So Cellnex is officially shifting from being a “towerco” to an infrastructure partner, or infraco.

TowerXchange: What is “Adaptive Edge” and what are the use cases?

We’ve been experimenting with edge for a while and have finally achieved the so-called “adaptive edge”, which is a real groundbreaking system. This function enables the ability to detect in real time, adapt and locally focus the capacity of the network, according to the point of highest demand for data consumption.

During MWC19, Cellnex, in partnership with Intel and NearbyComputing, showcased various demos that clearly demonstrated the differences between local and cloud-based content. This represents the basics of edge as we know it, whereby local content is very different and much better in quality and resolution thanks to its proximity to the end user.

This concept becomes interesting when applied to 4K videos, that require plenty of bandwidth. In this scenario, which we’ve demonstrated at MWC19, we’ve modified the network by creating a smart system which turns the local content on when traffic requires it. This allows the video to keep streaming by switching from the cloud to local services. Additionally, we are now able to predict the increase in users by utilising cameras and traffic analysis which automatically turns the local content on. This is why we are calling it adaptive edge, and this is why it’s a real game changer.

TowerXchange: Tell us about the Mobility Lab at the Parcmotor Castellolí-Barcelona – what have you deployed there, what concepts are you testing, and what have you learned to date?

We are now working on two different scenarios, one in a closed circuit and the other on urban grounds. The first one relates to our Mobility Lab which we are developing in the Parcmotor Castellolí-Barcelona car circuit.

We’ve deployed nine energy efficient nodes across the circuit, all equipped with both a solar panel and wind turbine, and with various sensors allowing communications both among cars and with the circuit’s central office. This is our testbed for various advanced traffic solutions, smart mobility systems and autonomous vehicles which we are also testing in urban context.

In fact, we’ve already started testing connected cars with nodes installed inside the vehicles, enabling a wide array of messages including traffic and emergency alerts. This is part of the V2X-Arch project, which highlights the importance of communications between vehicles and street fixtures (traffic lights) or communications between emergency vehicles and all other vehicles on a road and building these networks that make it possible to develop the connected vehicle.

TowerXchange: Tell us about Cellnex’s solutions for emergency response.

Cellnex has been operating emergency networks for quite some time but now, we have been asked to perform with commercial standards, therefore enabling videos, bandwidth etcetera. For this reason, we have been working to develop private networks which can serve at times of emergency, when public ones tend to collapse. Our first use case relates to wildfires and allows a drone to fly and transmit live videos to the emergency team, which can then identify the fire and, after extinguishing it, ensure the emergency is indeed over. In fact, the drone can fly on the area after the intervention of the emergency team and not only live stream the area but also send temperature alerts thanks to its thermal cameras and sensors.