Insights into what Digis Squared will be showing, and more.
Let’s connect at MWC22! Request to meet with the Digis Squared team here, or email sales@DigisSquared.com
Mobile World Congress, the world’s most influential conference and exhibition for the connectivity industry is back!
“The Digis Squared team will be in Barcelona at the end of February, meeting clients and partners, and demonstrating solutions on our biggest stand to date, in Hall 7,” shared Ziad Khalil, Digis Squared CEO. “Our tech team will be providing demos on live network optimisation, capacity planning and other cognitive-operations tools, and more.”
“We’re excited to be attending an in-person event again. We’re reassured by the measures the GSMA and Catalan Government have put in place, and are grateful for the support of the UK Department of International Trade. We’ll be doing everything we can to put our clients at ease as we meet with them in Barcelona.”
For those not travelling to Spain, or if the MWC situation changes, we are always happy to arrange private demos and discussions online, just get in touch and we can arrange that for you.
Let’s connect at MWC22! Request to meet with the Digis Squared team here, or email sales@DigisSquared.com
Digis Squared Chief Technology Officer, Abdelrahman Fady, shares insights into Digis Squared’s approach to cognitive solutions and AI.
“Today, there are three distinct and significant challenges that Mobile Operators face,
5G and new technologies are adding extra dimensions of complexity to the networks
Mature markets, ever-increasing customer expectations, and higher standards to reach for customer satisfaction
Revenues shrinking and increased budget pressures.”
“For sure, you can find an opportunity in every challenge,” shares Abdelrahman, “and here the opportunities we found within this complexity, pressure and maturity is the existence of massive amounts of data and very strong computational power. So let’s see how we can tackle these challenges using the created opportunities. This article digs into some answers!”
What is cognitive technology?
“Yes, it is software-based technology built on the 3Vs – volume, variety, velocity. Characteristics of big data lakes generated from networks, deployed over the strong computational power provided to us by new technologies, in combination with ML advanced modelling that fits in with SMEs unique logic.”
“Cognitive technologies refer to a multiple set of techniques, tools and platforms that enable the implementation of intelligent agents.”
Intelligent agent tasks can be considered as,
Sense
Think: Previous knowledge + known data
Act
Intelligent agent thinking stakes: how cognitive agents work with ML & MR
“Cognitive computing represents self-learning systems that utilize machine learning, ML, and machine reasoning, MR, models to mimic the way brain works,” explains Abdelrahman.
The characteristics of cognitive computing include that they are,
Adaptive: cognitive software mimics the ability of human logic and brains to learn from and adapt to its surroundings
Interactive: cognitive solutions interact with all elements in the system (processors, devices, clouds and users)
Iterative: cognitive software always remembers previous interactions in a process
Stateful: cognitive solutions return suitable information
Contextual: cognitive software is capable of identifying contextual elements such as syntax, time, location, users, profiles etc
Cognitive benefits
“Cognitive solutions nowadays are in the circle of focus of all mobile operators. Applying them in technical operations as well as commercial operations are likely to bring a lot of benefits to operators,” says Abdelrahman.
CAPEX rationalization: “Decisions about where to add new sites, layers, technologies, where and when to undertake network expansion should be taken based on many factors. ROI is part of this decision-making process, along with many other technical and commercial aspects, including the network growth and consumer behaviour changes, commercial positioning in the market, the general economic climate. Cognitive software like Smart Planning (Smart Capex) software ensure that proper investment and budgeting decisions are based on the complex interaction of such a diverse range of factors.”
Operational efficiency “Optimizing operations activities and resources are vital, and the hottest active topic these days due to the impact of COVID-19 on the overall telecom ecosystem. Automation has been used for ten years or more in the telecoms sector, however continuing to reach high efficiency targets needs more than just automation. It needs a combination of automation, AI, Big Data Analytics and human brain emulations, and this can only be achieved by deploying cognitive solution in operations.”
Superior network and customer experience “Smart Optimization for newly deployed sites, sectors and technologies are very important to enhance customer experience, and must work very swiftly to have impact. Additionally, network KPI enhancement plus handling customers pain-points before complaints arise or impact network churn KPIs are vital. It’s very important that all of these elements should be automated and continuously updated. To achieve that you must adopt smart cognitive solutions for network optimization.”
Fast time to market “Analysing consumer behaviour and response to what is offered by operators, as well as the impact of broader economic changes, help in the design optimisation of operators’ products and services. Because of the complexity of these inputs, the only way to assess the users and market needs is adopting cognitive technology in commercial analysis of client behaviour and product usage.”
Speedy mean time to resolve “Currently, mobile networks are very mature and very complex. In general, competitors are focused on customer centricity. Actually, this customer centricity couldn’t be in place without very accurate and decisive solutions that help us to identify and resolve network and customers’ technical and commercial issues and pain-points very quickly. This is one for the early targets achieved by the application of cognitive solutions and software.”
Cognitive technology limitations
“Having described and enthused about the benefits, lets provide some balance, and consider the limitations,” says Abdelrahman.
Handling un-expected risks and abrupt changes are the most serious challenges that face cognitive solutions. Due to slow response times to this type of change, cognitive solutions risk not being very accurate and speedy. Continuous development and training for adopted models in cognitive solutions is the only way to mitigate these challenges.
Data bias: as with any AI system, and mathematical model, bias is always dangerous. To mitigate this requires diversified data sources.
Decision accuracy is another challenge here which arises from the risk and possibility of mimicking the human brains of inexperienced team members. This risk may be mitigated easily by adopting a check-points technique during the solution design phase.
Explain-ability & repeatability: as with any AI system, it is vital that developers are able to explain how the cognitive system arrived at the answer it did. Decision tree mapping is a vital part of this process, as is the ability to explain and demonstrate why variability or repeatability does / not occur.
Data protection, data privacy and security are very important legal, regulatory and ethical factors, especially when you are dealing in your solution with personal data usage. Governments, regulators and authorities are putting a lot of effort into protecting consumer data, and customers are increasingly aware and vocal on the issue. One of the techniques which is often implemented to mitigate this risk is to mask any personal info with code like mapping.
Digis Squared & cognitive solutions
“Digis Squared has a set of cognitive solutions, and extensive experience in this domain with multiple operators. Our solutions are already deployed and in action helping telecom operators and communications service providers in different regions to enhance their operational limits. If this is something you would like to know more about, I am always happy to discuss more with clients, get in touch,” shared Abdelrahman.
Digis Squared cognitive operations
Our live cognitive solutions deployed today include,
Drone site audit
Smart CAPEX
Smart optimization.
“In an upcoming blog I’ll share more about a future vision for cognitive operations, and moving towards zero-touch network operations, full automation for FCAPS model.”
In conversation with Abdelrahman Fady, Digis Squared Chief Technology Officer.
If you or your team would like to discover more about our capabilities, please get in touch: use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com .
Digis Squared, independent telecoms expertise.
Image credits
Digis Squared social media and blog banner image: NASA
Digis Squared Chief Business Officer, Yasser Elsabrouty shares a Wangiri Fraud Case Study, a growing and costly type of telecom fraud.
“Fraud in the telecommunications industry has serious impacts on operator finances, brand value, and most importantly, subscriber trust and relations,” shares Yasser. “In this blog, I’ll review the scale of the issue and its impacts, illustrate how Wangiri fraud is undertaken, and share a little on what we’re doing for clients to detect and prevent this fraud.”
How large is fraud in the telecoms sector?
Public data on the scale of the issue is understandably limited. The Communications Fraud Control Association (CFCA) publish a Fraud Loss Survey every 2 years, the most recent was November 2019 [1]. They estimate that over US$ 28 billion of telecom operator revenue was lost to fraud, 1.74%.
Global telecom revenues & fraud [2]
In the finance field, fraud is considered an annual financial risk that requires attention to detect and prevent future losses, especially when such losses keep increasing as more time passes and fraudsters become more confident, creative and daring in committing those fraud schemes.
Wangiri Fraud
Wangiri is a callback scam. Its name has its origins in a Japanese word which means “one ring and cut”.
UK Regulator OfCom [3]: “These are calls in which the scammer will ring a person’s phone number but immediately hang up in the hope that the recipient will call back. If the person calls the number back, they will then find themselves connected to an expensive number, such as an international number, which will be charged at a premium rate. This can leave them facing a costly charge for the call.”
“Considering this in a little more detail, in Wangiri, a fraudster gives a missed call to several victim’s phone number, usually randomly dialled and in different countries, from an international or unusual number. To the user, the CLI, caller number ID, is modified in such a way that it may look like a genuine call. When the victim naively calls back out of curiosity, they will discover later that they have called a premium rate service, PRS, number owned by the fraudster for which the victim is charged heavily for the calls. The fraudster intends to keep the victim on hold for as long as possible to increase the billed amount. The premium rate service provider pays the fraudster a certain share of the call revenue for each minute of call received by the premium rate number.”
“When customers discover the charges on their bills, and talk with their operator, most refund the call cost to the client. This takes time and effort for the operator, and impacts reputation and brand trust. And of course, in the mean time, because of the bill-lag, the Wingiri fraudsters have hit many more clients, and continue to exacerbate the fraud exponentially.”
Telecom operators are facing this type of fraud for over a decade now, and this is only growing exponentially year on year around the globe.
Estimated fraud losses by method, in $USD billions [1]
The CFCA 2019 fraud loss survey reported that Wangiri had moved up into the top 5 fraud methods used by fraudsters – after subscription application fraud, it held joint position with payment fraud, PBX hacking, and IP PBX hacking. It is estimated that in 2019, the last date at which data is currently available, telecom operators lost close to US$ 1.82 billion globally to Wangiri fraud.
Case study: impact on one telecom operator group
“To put that another way,” says Yasser, “if we assume the CFCA survey is representative of all telecom operators, then if we consider a real case study for one of our large tier-one operator group customers with 2019 revenue of US$ 20 billion, this report suggests that they would have lost US$ 348 million to fraud, of which US$ 22.4 million would have been lost to Wangiri fraud. Additionally, by taking action against Wangiri, the cost of customer complaints will be reduced by 20%.”
“But these figures tell only part of the story – in addition to the costs associated with handling the customer call, identifying the calls, and processing the refund, a far greater impact for the operator is on reputation, brand value and customer trust, and many would argue the value of that far exceeds any US dollar figure.”
“At Digis Squared we are using our own expertise, tools and methodologies to help many of our customers to detect and prevent Wangiri fraud calls, globally,” said Yasser. “If we can help you with this, please get in touch.”
In conversation with Yasser ElSabrouty, Digis Squared Chief Business Officer and Co-Founder.
If you or your team would like to discover more about our capabilities, please get in touch: use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com .
“2021 has been a year of significant milestones for the Digis Squared team,” shared Ziad Khalil, Digis Squared’s Co-Founder and CEO. “As the end of the year approaches, we send our gratitude and thanks to our customers and partners for their continued collaboration, and trust in us. As our business continues to grow, we know that our people, and the people we work with are absolutely vital to our success. We succeed together!”
+3 New Cloud-based AI-assisted tools launched.
To enhance our existing suite of cloud-based, AI-led, and vendor-independent tools – INOS suite for drive testing and field optimization, and IPM cloud-based performance management solution – in 2021 we developed and launched Digis-One, a cloud-native Unified Fault Management platform, UCM an AI-assisted cloud solution for Unified Configuration Management, and Digis-Capacity, our ML & AI capacity management tool. Further new tools and enhancements are planned in early 2022, as we continue to invest in our market-leading multi-vendor, multi-technology solutions.
+10 Significant new customers and contracts.
Most notable public announcements included a very significant new end to end Managed Services and In-Building Coverage contracts for Africell Group’s new network in Angola.
x2 New regional offices.
We increased the number of global Digis Squared offices, and doubled the number of regional offices with the addition of a new facility in Luanda. Digis Squared now have offices in UK, Cairo, UAE and Angola.
+3 New strategic partnerships.
As a part of our technology-oriented System Integration, and through new strategic partnerships, we are now ready to introduce to our telco customers E2E use cases covering 5G standalone, private networks, Open RAN, IOT & support for public cloud adoption. Public partnership announcements: We have been recognized by Intel Corporation and awarded Intel Winner’s Circle Membership.
+44 Increased our global team.
With recruitment to support new contracts in the Middle East in our Dubai office at the start of the year, and significant recruitment in our new offices in Angola in the last quarter, in addition to growth in the teams in the Technology & Support Centre in Cairo, it has been an immensely busy year for the HR team and everyone involved in recruiting and onboarding new staff. (If you’re interested in working with us, all our current roles are here.)
#WeAre5
CEO Ziad Khalil says, “As a relatively young company, reaching the Year 5 milestone is an immense achievement, and something to celebrate. As a fully self-funded, profitable business, the founders are proud and thankful to have achieved this success. We know this is only possible because of the hard work and dedication of the entire team, and the trust our clients and partners continue to place in us. As a leadership team, we are mindful that the growth we are experiencing now is also an ambitious time for any business to navigate – we are working carefully to ensure our systems and processes scale, and our culture remains strong. We work flexibly and with care, always looking to improve, and acting with integrity. We can be counted on to deliver what we promised, and always focussing on delivering commercial value to our clients.”
Looking ahead to 2022
CTO AbdelRahman Fady shared, “All our state of the art software and solutions are future proof, cognitive, cloud-native, and with 5G support, ensuring that we provide independent, vendor-agnostic solutions for our clients. Our 2022 development schedule is ambitious, and there will be drops of new capabilities delivered as part of our agile development process. A number of our clients have early access already to some of our new capabilities, and their feedback is helping us refine further enhancements before we push them out on general availability. This development work is vital to keep pace with the constantly evolving issues we see as network interactions become more complex.”
CCO Mohamed Hamdy said, “2022 is already looking like a big commercial year for us. We have new clients coming on board, and extensions to existing contracts – a great mix! And, fingers crossed, at the end of February, we will get the chance to meet in real life at GSMA Mobile World Congress, where our exhibition stand will have live connectivity to our AI-led tools. If you want to see a live demo of network optimisation whilst you’re in Barcelona, drop by or get in touch to book a dedicated meeting!”
“I am very proud of the team and solutions we have built, and the difference we are making to the people and networks we manage and enhance,” CEO Ziad concluded. “To everyone who has contributed to Digis Squared’s significant milestones and projects this year, thank you! To the team, partners and clients we work with in the year ahead, we are ready, let’s help make your mobile network work, better.”
Managed Services from Digis Squared will maximise mobile network efficiency and give Africell’s customers in Angola an outstanding user experience.
November 2021: Africell Angola has awarded Digis Squared a multi-year contract to provide end to end Managed Services to support the launch of Africell’s new network in Angola. In this article, Africell Angola CEO Christopher Lundh and CTIO Faissal Abdallah discuss the partnership with Digis Squared’s CCO, Mohamed Hamdy, and explain why it will contribute to the success of Africell’s launch in Angola.
Optimising digital connectivity
The multi-year contract will see Africell Angola benefiting from Digis Squared’s end to end Managed Services capabilities, covering Radio, Core, BSS, VAS and Field.
“Digis Squared’s tools will help our systems work smartly and efficiently”, says Christopher Lundh, CEO of Africell Angola. “We have been impressed by Digis Squared’s commitment to transferring skills to local staff, a goal which aligns with our own, and we are confident in their experience of multi-vendor systems. It is exciting to have Digis Squared join our new network team.”
“We thank Africell Angola for the trust they have invested in us with this significant commitment”, said Mohamed Hamdy, CCO of Digis Squared. “The contract for Managed Services will enable the new Africell Angola network to launch smoothly and undertake a successful rollout of solutions to customers. Digis Squared’s resources, AI assisted tools, and processes will ensure Africell Angola’s end-to-end services perform at their peak. With our support, Africell’s customers in Angola will be able to experience a revolution in network excellence and performance.”
Supporting Africell’s mission in Angola
Africell Angola’s mission is simple: to help Angola grow by providing innovative, affordable and reliable mobile services.
“The telecoms sector is key to the future success of Angola,” explains Christopher Lundh, “and we will play a big part in this success. Our team of staff and suppliers is tasked with building a network that excites customers, keeps pace with new technologies, and fulfils our vision of leading a digital transformation in Angola.”
Africell Angola’s CTIO Faissal Abdallah added, “The technical solutions we deploy now will form the backbone of the systems we use for decades ahead. Making sure that the complex web of systems deployed can work together seamlessly and resiliently is vital if Africell Angola is to be a network which delivers innovation, affordability and reliability over the long term – working in this new partnership with Digis Squared will enable us to achieve that.”
Africell Angola selects Digis Squared for in-building coverage optimisation
Digis Squared have also been entrusted with an additional contract for Africell in Angola, handling in-building coverage optimisation. In this workstream, Digis Squared will utilise their AI assisted tools including Digis One, INOS, and iPM solutions. Developed in-house by Digis Squared, these tools deliver intelligent, automated testing, benchmarking and analysis platform for network operators and service providers, delivering drive testing (DT), in-building solution (IBS) capability, end to end IoT system testing, as well as Unified Performance and Fault Management and much more, whilst decreasing both the time taken to complete the work and OpEx cost. These AI-led tools are ideally suited to analysing and optimising multi-vendor, multi-technology network implementations, including 5G.
“The contract for in-building coverage optimisation is significant to Digis Squared. When considered alongside our Managed Services contract, it shows that there is real momentum in our southern Africa business operations,” said Mohamed Hamdy. “It’s an exciting time for Digis Squared, and we are grateful to all our clients for the faith they have shown in selecting us. The team are excited to apply their skills, tools and experience to benefit Africell Angola and their clients.”
In partnership with Africell, Digis Squared aims to develop and enhance the capability of local engineers and other technical professionals, increasing their skills and experience. The target is to create a significant number of skilled jobs in the local Angola telecoms market. Says Mohamed Hamdy: “This is a key part of how we work. Digis Squared is committed to developing local employees who can benefit from our international multi-technology and multi-vendor experience and form a vibrant and capable cohort of local engineers in Luanda”.
About Africell: a fast-growing mobile operator with a pan-African footprint Africell provides mobile network coverage and related technology services to more than 12 million subscribers in sub-Saharan Africa. In January 2021 Africell won a competitive international tender process for a telecommunications license in Angola. Africell will launch mobile network services in Angola 2022.
These two new contracts between Africell Angola and Digis Squared follow the recent Digis Squared announcement of new offices in Luanda. With business continuing to expand across central and southern Africa, the new Digis Squared office space in Luanda will serve as a regional hub and give the growing Digis Squared team a Covid-19 secure space to meet clients and collaborate with colleagues.
Members of the Digis Squared team, Key Account Manager Ahmed Ma’moon, CCO Mohamed Hamdy, and Co-Founder and Chief Business Development Officer Yasser Elsabrouty outside the new offices in Luanda, Angola.
Yasser ElSabrouty shares the latest news from the team: Digis Squared awarded Intel Winner’s Circle Membership.
“We’re very excited to confirm that Intel Corporation have selected Digis Squared to join their Winners Circle,” Yasser ElSabrouty, Digis Squared Co-Founder and System Integration Business Unit Director announced.
The Intel Winners’ Circle program rewards the most innovative solutions in the ecosystem, in alignment with Intel’s technologies and strategic objectives. Intel is committed to driving advancement in the networking landscape, and the Intel® Network Builders Winners’ Circle seeks to further align the industry in order to accelerate network innovation. The program drives greater technical enablement in the form of testing and benchmarking of solutions, and it helps strengthen the industry’s relationship with end users.
Ongoing collaboration
This announcement demonstrates the growing collaboration and partnership between Digis Squared and Intel. In February this year, Digis Squared joined the Intel Network Builders ecosystem program, and brought with it the deep experience and expertise of the Digis Squared team in ultra-reliable network configuration and optimisation.
A joint case study with Intel published in May, utilising Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, described substantial enhancements to Video and TCP optimisation achieved utilising Digis Squared’s System Integration capabilities to deliver 30% down link throughput enhancement, thanks to the data traffic optimisation capabilities of INOS.
“The optimisation described in that Intel case study was tested, and customer experience verified, using INOS, Digis Squared’s radio testing and network optimisation solution. INOS works over all data network technologies, including 5G and Open RAN,” Yasser explained. “All our ongoing commercial deployments of INOS utilise Intel technology, as their processing capabilities meet our demanding performance requirements.”
“As part of our partnership with Intel, we’ve also been working within the Intel Lab to characterise the behaviour of INOS with the latest generation of Intel processors, and plan to undertake further work in this facility focussed on Open RAN.”
Thank you
Yasser added, “Thank you to the team at Intel Network Builders and the Intel Lab for their ongoing support and collaboration as we work together to deliver optimised world-class telecom network solutions, and enter the next phase together as a Member of the Winner’s Circle.”
Link to the official announcement on the Intel website.
In conversation with Yasser ElSabrouty, Digis Squared Co-Founder and System Integration Business Unit Director.
If you or your team would like to discover more about our System Integration capability, video and TCP optimisation, or other elements of mobile network optimisation, please get in touch: use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com .
Keep up to speed with company updates, product launches and our quarterly newsletter, sign up here.
Digis Squared, independent telecoms expertise.
About Intel® Network Builders
The Intel® Network Builders ecosystem program accelerates network transformation by connecting all of the players that are driving new solutions to the market, including service providers, end users, infrastructure, software and technology vendor.
The ecosystem offers members technical support technology training, technology matchmaking, co-marketing opportunities and more. These programs help companies to optimally utilize Intel technologies in their solutions, and facilitate joint collaboration.
In conversation with CEO and Founder Ziad Khalil, we discuss how Digis Squared’s new office in Angola supports business expansion across southern Africa.
Digis Squared Ltd, the UK-based managed services, system integration and telecoms consulting specialists, continues the expansion of its global footprint with the opening of new offices in Luanda, Angola this month. This latest announcement builds on solid business growth at Digis Squared, and enhances support to clients in the southern region of Africa.
Digis Squared’s London HQ, and Technology & Customer Support Centre in Cairo now have over 180 staff, an increasing team in the Dubai office opened in December, plus additional staff in-country embedded in clients’ offices in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The announcement today builds on the celebrations of Digis Squared’s fifth year in business, and their #WeAre5 campaign.
Ziad Khalil, CEO and Founder at Digis Squared, shared his insights into why the business is investing here in Angola, now,
“Our clients and partners have demonstrated their trust in the Digis Squared team and our capabilities, and as our commitment in the region continues to expand, this is reflected in our new investment in Angola. With increasing numbers of significant engagements locally, and across Africa, now is the time for Digis Squared to invest and open a new office in Luanda.”
With business continuing to expand across central and southern Africa, the new office space in Luanda will provide a regional hub, and ensure that the growing Digis Squared team has a Covid-19 secure space to meet clients, and collaborate in-person safely.
“2021 continues to be another year of significant success and growth for the Digis Squared team. The work we undertook for clients in 2020 addressed massive changes in mobile network demand caused by the pandemic, re-dimensioning and optimising network performance,” commented Ziad.
“This significant investment in new offices in Luanda, strengthens our commitment to clients in Angola and across the southern Africa region. The facilities will enable our local team to provide enhanced support to new and extended contracts, as our business continues to expand.”
“As 2022 approaches, and new technology deployments continue at pace, this location is ideally situated to deliver further business expansion and enhanced presence in the region for Digis Squared,” Ziad added. “This investment strengthens the local support and capabilities we can deliver to our clients and staff, and demonstrates our commitment to them.”
In conversation with Ziad Khalil, Digis Squared CEO and Founder.
If you or your team would like to discover more about our capabilities, please get in touch: use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com .
Keep up to speed with company updates, product launches and our quarterly newsletter, sign up here.
Digis Squared team Key Account Manager Ahmed Ma’moon, CCO Mohamed Hamdy, and Co-Founder and Chief Business Development Officer Yasser Elsabrouty outside the new offices in Luanda, Angola, here on LinkedIn
Image credits
Digis Squared social media and blog banner image: Mohamed Hamdy
The Digis Squared team has recently achieved a huge milestone of delivering one thousand hours of client training. As we share our congratulations, we asked Amr Ashraf from the Training Team to talk about who we train and how – including solving real network issues on the courses, that students can immediately fix – and any tips he can share about capturing people’s attention on long zoom calls.
February 2020, pre-Covid-19. Amr (centre left with glasses) after delivering training on-site and in-person to the Vodafone team in Cairo Smart Village, Egypt.
Structured training for maximum flexibility
“Clients often have a mixture of highly experienced and new staff wanting to attend our courses,” said Amr. “My colleague Ahmed Ma’moon will work with the client’s HR team to assess existing knowledge. Together, they develop a tailored program to ensure that everyone ultimately reaches the same level, by providing specific courses to ensure gaps are filled. So, for example, before attending a 5G course, Ahmed will help to determine who needs to first cover specific elements of our 4G courses.”
“We work with HR departments to understand skills and knowledge, bringing everyone up to the same speed, so that each person joins the program at the level which is right for them. Then, they can progress through the courses until they acquire the knowledge and skills they need for their role. As their role changes and adapts in the future, we often return and provide more training, picking up from where they completed their previous training. This structured program is efficient and flexible.”
A slide from the 5G Deep Dive training course, used to illustrate a specific issue for discussion
And it’s not just the technical ops teams that attend Digis Squared’s courses. “Technology in the telecoms sector continues to evolve and move rapidly. It’s really important that senior staff continue to maintain and enhance their knowledge of new technologies. They need to keep pace with new skills and capabilities so that they can make critical investment and vendor decisions.”
Solving real-life network problems as part of the training
“HR staff often tell me that their teams prefer our courses, and certainly, once we start working with a team, they will continue to ask Digis Squared back to provide more and more training. One of the key reasons clients chose training from us is the way in which we approach the practical training. We work hard to ensure that everyone acquires some special experience of how the technology behaves and works in the real world. So, as we are teaching a specific topic, we will also consider and learn more about how their own network and unique configuration behaves. We don’t just teach how to code the solution, we teach how to tune it, and what to watch out for, what additional points to consider and how to monitor for issues once their solution is live.”
Team photos from training courses delivered to (clockwise from top left) Etisalat Egypt, Africell Uganda, Africell Gambia, Africell Sierra Leone, Etisalat Egypt, Africell DRC in 2019.
Typically, these in-depth, tailored training courses run over 10 to 15 days, and as well as providing extensive theoretical training, those receiving training also apply their new knowledge to specific practical issues the client is facing in their network – the teams immediately put their newly acquired knowledge to work, and gain a deeper, hands-on experience under the training team’s guidance.
As part of Digis Squared’s commercial work, our teams are constantly working with multi-vendor solutions across all our clients. Amr explains, “We have seen and experienced almost all systems and combinations of vendor systems at one point or another. We know inside and out the differences between different vendor solutions, and specific features and issues to look for. This experience is not something you can read about in books, you can only acquire it by experiencing it, or working alongside others who have.”
Training during the pandemic
In the past all of this training was delivered on site and in person. How has this changed with the pandemic?
“Of course, everything switched swiftly to online training in 2020. With such technical training, it’s more difficult for everyone to maintain concentration. Plus, there is not always enough bandwidth to maintain a video connection, and not everyone wants to keep their camera on. I think we are all very aware of personal boundaries now.”
So what tips can you share for capturing people’s attention on long zoom calls?
“Try to ensure a two-way exchange of information, and ensure it’s a dynamic conversation – sometimes if all the cameras are off I can feel as if I am talking on a radio broadcast for a moment, but then I will ask a question and the interactions are started again. I really love teaching, but doing everything online, well, it has really given me a great appreciation of the work teachers have done during this time, teaching all their students online – I really admire both the teachers and students who have done this.”
“In general, teaching and delivering training online, I would say it’s more difficult to be sure that everyone has understood each point. Whenever I can, I switch away from using slides. I will draw things out on the digital whiteboard instead, even if I have a prepared slide for the same point – drawing it out is often more memorable, and somehow it also encourages people to ask more questions.”
Teaching with real-life issues grabs the attention
“On Digis Squared’s courses, most of the time, we are teaching based on real cases in the client’s network wherever we can, trying to solve relevant problems they have encountered in their own network. This definitely grabs people’s attention! By working together in this way, we can solve many cases they have in their own network. So it’s not just a training course, it’s also a live problem-solving opportunity, and we exercise our knowledge and new problem-solving muscles during the training.”
“Naturally, sometimes, there are problems which are too complex to answer during the training, and we need to solve them with more time, resources or expertise. For these bigger issues, the Digis Squared team can assist as part of our consultancy work, if the client wants us to. Those on the training course have a far greater understanding of the complexity of these issues, and a deep trust in our ability to solve them.”
An example of the comprehensive reference notes attendees receive
Comprehensive reference material
“We deliver Digs Squared training courses in English or Arabic. When we teach in-person we provide all the students with a printed copy of all of the materials and notes. Sometimes our suitcases can be very heavy with all this paper! I think this approach is worthwhile though, as the students can then add their own notes and examples, and extra elements they learn from the conversation and problem-solving sessions.”
“When taught online, students get a full digital copy, and can add their own notes, images of my sketches, and other material to their digital file. This, combined with all the real-life network issues we consider and solve during the course, ensures they have a really comprehensive reference for the future.”
Celebrating one thousand hours of training to clients!
This blog post was written in conversation with Amr Ashraf, 5G, LTE RAN and Software Solution Architect and Trainer at Digis Squared.
Amr recently achieved a huge milestone of delivering one thousand hours of training to clients, and we celebrate his success! Amr joined Digis Squared in 2018, and started delivering training in September 2019. Since then he has delivered 30 in-depth courses for clients. He has travelled extensively across the Middle East and Africa, delivering courses at the client’s premises, on a wide range of specific subjects in telecoms, and radio.
“This is a proud moment for the Digis Squared team! In July 2016, five years ago, we founded the business with offices in London and Cairo. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of our journey so far. So many tech start-ups struggle in their early years. We are fortunate to have a solid team, growing together in strength and capability, with clients and partners whose trust we’ve earned. As our global footprint expands, the teams we work with inspire us to achieve even more. Today we have 3 offices and staff across 4 continents, serving even more customers across the globe. We look forward to working together and delivering even more successful projects in the years ahead!”
Digis Squared CEO and Co-Founder, Ziad Khalil
on behalf of the Executive Team, Abdulrahman Fady, Ahmed AboulGheit, Ahmed Zein, Amr Maged, Mohamed Hamdy, Reda Abd El-Hadi, and Yasser Elsabrouty.
In this case study, Bassel Mashaka, RAN Senior Manager at Africell Group, and Ahmed Ma’moon, Digis Squared’s Account Manager for Africell Group, describe how Africell’s mobile networks were optimised remotely and safely during the Covid-19 pandemic. They share details of the cooperation within Radio, Field Optimisation and Core Optimisation Services, that were successfully delivered in 2020 – including +85% improvement in mobile data downlink throughput in most improved cells – and talk about the expanded scope of the teams’ collaboration in 2021.
Africell, one of the fastest-growing mobile operators in Africa
Africell provides voice, messaging, data, mobile money and other integrated telecoms services to over 12 million subscribers in 4 countries. It has over 60% of the market in Sierra Leone and The Gambia, and up to a quarter of the market in Democratic Republic of the Congo (including in Kinshasa, the capital city). In January 2021 Africell won a competitive international tender process for a telecommunications license in Angola, and has announced a target to launch services in Angola by the end of 2021.
Optimising Africell mobile networks remotely during Covid-19
At the start of 2020, as the pandemic struck, workers and students had to rapidly adjust to working from home where possible. Mobile data demand shifted in new and unpredictable ways and mobile network operators and service providers had to sprint to keep up.
Ahmed Ma’moon reflects on this time: “It was at the start of Q2 of 2020 that Digis Squared was selected by Africell Group to undertaken network optimisation work. When talking with Bassel Mashaka about how to confront the challenge, we appreciated the Africell team’s willingness to collaborate and consider new ideas – including undertaking the network optimisation work remotely, using Digis Squared’s cloud-based tools, putting an unprecedented emphasis on health and safety.”
Bassel Mashaka recalls, “The optimisation work we completed with Ahmed and the Digis Squared team ensured we could support our customers as normal working patterns were turned inside out and efficient digital communication between family and friends became more important than ever. The teams worked quickly and unfussily to optimise our networks’ performance. Together, with Digis Squared, we positioned Africell to be able to withstand unpredictable changes in demand and kept our customers connected throughout the pandemic.”
Case study ◦ Optimising Africell mobile networks during Covid-19, safely and remotely
Ahmed shares more about the early stages of the project: “Following previous work we had undertaken for Africell, and the early achievements in terms of network performance and customer experience, Africell awarded Digis Squared contracts for band re-farming and frequency planning services. This new project was focused on two operations, where we worked on preparation ahead of LTE expansion.”
“Working safely and remotely, the Digis Squared team delivered an over-achievement in the band re-farming service in Sierra Leone. Our team were able to re-farm more bandwidth than the planned portion without affecting the re-farmed band.”
“Driven by the successful co-operation between the two business in Radio Services, Africell then mandated Digis Squared to work on the Core Network Optimisation Service in Sierra Leone. Throughout, we also undertook targeted activities to improve network capability.”
“The Digis Squared achievements in 2020 were acknowledged by the Africell Teams and Senior Management in Radio and Core Domains”, Ahmed says. “We are pleased that this hard work led to the renewal and expansion of the network support services contracts for 2021, covering Radio Optimisation, Field Testing and Optimisation, and Core Optimisation.”
Mohamed Hamdy, Chief Commercial Officer at Digis Squared added, “The technical success that the Digis Squared team has delivered for the Africell Group is a great example of the type of collaborative, and long-term relationships our teams build with partners. I’m proud to look back on how their expertise, combined with perseverance during pandemic and cloud-based Digis Squared tools ensured that we could remotely deliver these achievements for Africell, and help them to ensure their customers and communities remained connected.”
In conversation with Bassel Mashaka, RAN Senior Manager at Africell Group, Ahmed Ma’moon, Digis Squared’s Account Manager for Africell Group, and Mohamed Hamdy, Chief Commercial Officer at Digis Squared.
If you or your team would like to discover more about our mobile network optimisation capabilities, please get in touch: use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com .
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Digis Squared, independent telecoms expertise.
Abbreviations
CQI Channel Quality Indicator
CSP Communications Service Provider
DCS Digital Cellular System (GSM-1800)
DL downlink
DRC / RDC Democratic Republic of the Congo / République démocratique du Congo
Image credits
Digis Squared social media and blog banner image: Itote Rubombora.
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