Joddy Hernady, senior advisor for digital business at Telkom, talks about how to prepare the transport network for the 5G era and new trends in video service development. As the leading telecommunications operator in Indonesia, Telkom faces such challenges as rapid changes in technology.
"The transport network should be very precise to support services of different SLAs"
What challenges do you think the transport network is facing in the era of 5G?
The 5G era has come. With a 5G network we will be able to deliver not only traditional consumer services but also many kinds of new 2B services for various industries.
First, the 5G network is considered as one network for diverse industries, so the transport network should be very precise to support services of different SLAs with deterministic latency for example.
Second, the 5G network is considered as one network connecting multiple clouds, so the transport network should have the capability of integrated cloud network provisioning with one touch deployment.
Third, the 5G network is also considered as one network on demand, so the transport network should meet the large capacity and small granularity requirements to provide multiple cloud services.
In short, to support various kinds of B2B services, the challenge is not only on the 5G network but also on the entire network.
What has ZTE done to help Telkom Indonesia meet the challenge?
Telkom and ZTE have been collaborating for more than 15 years and there are several key milestones that we've been together. If we go back to 2005, Telkom built a backbone network in Java Island, the main island in Indonesia. We constructed two rings. The second milestone was made in 2015 when ZTE helped Telkom finish the network upgrade to 100G. The third one was in 2018 when we also started to deploy a metro OTN. Last year ZTE helped us finish network expansion to 200G and 400G.
With these milestones, we are very optimistic that we can provide many kinds of services that can be provided by a 5G network. In the future, we'll continue the innovation and improvement to continue being the No. 1 operator in Indonesia. With the cooperation with ZTE, we will be able to meet many kinds of network demands, especially for the digital transformation in Indonesia.
"We are becoming the No.1 video operator in Indonesia"
To enrich users' experience, Telkom has partnered with many third parties to introduce premium OTT videos services, including iFlix, HooQ, and Catchplay. Meanwhile, Telkom has also developed value-added services such as Message, Game and Online shopping services to seize the TV market opportunities. What is your opinion on the video service development in Telkom?
Video services are becoming the main services in Telkom besides the telecommunication itself, so we have been deploying the video services for more than ten years. Especially in the last six years we have been actively deploying IPTV services. Now we are becoming the No.1 video operator in Indonesia. We need to keep up with the changes of the technology. About four years ago we introduced the hybrid STB between IPTV and OTT because the trend is moving to OTT. Last year we introduced Android TV set-top boxes because Android TV is the direction of the video services.
Android TV is very rich in terms of ecosystem ranging from applications, contents and terminals that give more experiences to users. We will continue to collaborate with partners and leverage the Android TV technology to meet the video service requirements of the users, which are in the direction of OTT now.
What do you think of the future development trends of IP video services for Telkom?
I think there will be three development trends. The first one is the improvement of user experience including the introduction of high quality content. The improvement of the user experience will also be supported by several technologies such as voice control and a more vivid UI.
The second trend is the evolution from IPTV to OTT. I think it is becoming the key if we look at the capability of the Telkom network. Telkom's network will improve signicantly and the user terminals will be very diverse in the future if we look at the OTT technology. I think for sure OTT will be the deterministic direction.
The last trend will be cloudification. With the micro-services and containerization technology, the platform element will be migrated to the cloud to achieve flexible deployment and unified operation.
What are your expectations for the future cooperation with ZTE?
We do hope that we can continue to collaborate with ZTE. Telkom is a leading telecom operator in Asia Pacific and ZTE is a leading technology provider in the world especially in video services. I think there are several areas that we can collaborate in video services. For example, we can innovate new services together, operate the Android TV ecosystem together, and in terms of operation we can introduce cloudification to our platform so we can have flexible operation and in the end provide more immersive user experience to our costumers.