EE Q&A: Bringing together the entire British mobile video industry

Mobile operator EE is looking beyond its comfort zone and building on partnerships to put the UK at the forefront of mobile TV.

CBR’s Joao Lima sat with Matt Stagg, principal analyst at EE, to discuss mobile video, 5G and the role of colo Equinix in the mobile revolution.

CBR: Explain the cooperation between EE and Equinix?

MS: We use LD5 [an Equinix data centre in Slough] and LD6 [a new building on the same campus] for our interconnects to all of our content partners.

All of the main content delivery networks are connected directly with YouTube, Netflix and other channels.

We have a very close relationship in that sense, but also we co-founded the EE and Equinix Mobile Video Alliance (MVA), a global consortium bringing together the entire end-to-end mobile video industry in the UK, to share knowledge and drive forward TV in the UK.

We have the largest LTE network in the country and we had a year of building that out before the competition.

We are effectively building a video distribution network. One of the big things about 4G (as well as the high capacity) is that it is of extremely low latency.

CBR: What else do you get apart from collocation space?

MS: It is actually the other networks that we get to. EE has to get to all the content delivery networks (CDNs). We need to get to the London Internet Exchange and to be able to get to direct peering and direct fiber connectivity with all of the major content providers including YouTube, Google and Netflix.

We directly connect with all of EE’s top 20 content providers and CDNs via Equinix’s Slough data centre.

CBR: Before T-Mobile and Orange were merged to form EE, how did the telecoms manage data?

MS: When Orange and T-Mobile where active we had four interconnect networks, or main data centres.

EE needed to consolidate that, because it only needed two. A lot of the business case around the merger was consolidation and synergies savings. Obviously, that came down to data centres as well.

I used to be responsible for IP design and development and we would always think: "Do we move to Slough?". And in those times, there was nothing that would drive us, as a business case, to say "okay, we are going to move everything from one data centre to Slough" because Slough is not the Docklands [a main inner city data centre hub because of its connectivity infrastructure and low latency to the City of London].

When we had the opportunity, we looked at it and as I said, it was commercially viable.

CBR: How do the interconnects work?

MS: The interconnects are so quick and close that for us, in terms of looking into end-to-end, it almost doesn’t exist.

We want to be transparent because we want to look like we are connected to Google, and that is what it is: fast and responsive.

EE is one year ahead of the competition to roll that out. We are moving at an unprecedented speed – the fastest global roll-out.

CBR: Could you expand more on the MVA?

MS: We are kind of seen in the industry as unusual bedfellows in terms of founding the MVA.

However with all the contacts that we have and then all the contacts Equinix has, a data centre is fundamental.

We have 18,000 [web]sites, spectrum and then the internet. For our customers it is about to get that video played from YouTube onto their handset. Equinix, as a data centre, is the centre of all that.

In addition, they will peak and drive the interconnect space in the US with the fixed network. Their thinking was far advanced of data centres.

I put the challenge out to the industry saying "we need to work together now". Equinix then approached me. That was very forward thinking of a data centre company.

We have a data centre embracing a change of technologies and not just providing space, power and cooling.

CBR: How do you work with the London Internet Exchange?

MS: The London Internet Exchange is a non-profit organisation that has hundreds of members, and it is a site where everybody can connect directly with each other.

It is a network that runs through all data centres. We plug in there and then we can connect to any other company that also plugs in there.

As a mobile network, we have three different forms of connectivity. We have one where we use internet transit where EE would just give traffic.

We use Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom – we give them the traffic and they have the connection to the internet.

Then there is what we call a public interconnect, and that’s where EE uses the London Internet Exchange’s transport network to connect. After we move to out critical partners. EE goes directly to them.
We just put a fibre cross connect from here [LD5 and 6], and we plug Google in and that is pretty much it.

CBR: EE has recently announced £1.5bn to rural broadband and ‘wowed’ Wembley with a download speed of 400Mbs per second. How will 4G finally become wide available and what are the plans for 5G?

MS: EE will just continue to lead in LTE and we are rolling out LTE Advanced across the UK. We have just made a demonstration in Wembley of pre-carrier aggregation, which takes a spectrum from all of our different spectrum portfolios and adds them together, achieving 400Mbs per second of download speed in the Wembley case.

EE is investing £1.5 billion over the next three years to continue that growth of coverage and capacity, so that we can maintain the experience our customers have now as we move towards that demand both on video and in general.

At the same time we want to be continually pushing the technology to ensure it is one of the global leaders of innovation. We are also working on 5G and we have a number of inputs into that.

EE collaborates with the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey; we sit on the board and have a number of people in the work streams acting as mentors.

Like a colleague said: "If we get 5G right, we won’t need 6G."