CMS is pleased to an­nounce new heads for four of its in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pert­ise groups.All CMS law­yers work in cross-bor­der groups across more than 40 coun­tries world­wide that are struc­tured ac­cord­ing to...

Read about our ex­pert­ise in ad­vising Tech­no­logy, Me­dia and Com­mu­nic­a­tions play­ers, and their fin­an­ci­ers and in­vestors, in our TMC bro­chure.

CMS is de­lighted to sup­port The Mo­bile Cen­tury, a pub­lic­a­tion writ­ten by wo­men in the di­git­al space, pub­lished by the Glob­al Tele­com Wo­men’s Net­work (GT­WN).The GT­WN 30th An­niversary Pub­lic­a­tion is a spe­cial edi­tion. The theme “Re­flec­tions” brings to­geth­er the per­spect­ives of the older gen­er­a­tion of wo­men who have lived ex­per­i­ence of the evol­u­tion of ICT over the past three dec­ades and bey­ond, with wo­men of the young­er gen­er­a­tion, while look­ing ahead to what work re­mains to be done.This sem­in­al work in­cludes es­says by glob­al ex­perts in: Tech evol­u­tion from the early days of the in­ter­net and the mo­bile phone to today; Tech ESG and how di­git­al tech­no­logy can drive sus­tain­ab­il­ity in­to the fu­ture; Tech safety, pro­tect­ing your­self and oth­ers on­line; Tech equity, bridging the di­git­al di­vide; and Fu­ture tech, with a fo­cus on the im­pact of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. You can either browse the pub­lic­a­tion on­line or fill in your de­tails be­low to down­load the full pub­lic­a­tion.

Hy­brid work­ing re­quires in­vest­ment Al­though the roll out of 5G con­tin­ues around the globe, with 162 com­mer­cial net­works hav­ing launched world­wide at the time of writ­ing, pro­vi­sion is vari­able across dif­fer­ent geo­graph­ies. The pan­dem­ic has high­lighted the im­port­ance of re­li­able con­nectiv­ity and fast in­ter­net ac­cess, par­tic­u­larly in rur­al areas.Fast broad­band is now an es­sen­tial util­ity along­side power and wa­ter in many na­tions, pla­cing the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­dustry in the spot­light. While the di­git­al trans­form­a­tion was well un­der­way pri­or to the pan­dem­ic, from smart in­fra­struc­ture and the In­ter­net of Things to di­git­al en­ter­tain­ment and di­git­al fin­ance, the cent­ral­ity of the in­ter­net in our daily lives was put in­to sharp fo­cus. As the ‘new nor­mal’ emerges, and flex­ible work­ing mod­els be­come more pre­val­ent, sig­ni­fic­ant di­git­al in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment to provide re­li­able, su­per­fast con­nectiv­ity is es­sen­tial. Pre-pan­dem­ic, 5G rol­lout was the fo­cus of many West­ern na­tions, and re­mains a pri­or­ity, but cov­er­age is frag­men­ted. It is still un­clear how net­works will be con­sol­id­ated where a mix of equip­ment has been used.COV­ID-19 has demon­strated the need for in­vest­ment in a bal­anced range of di­git­al tech­no­lo­gies. The use of cloud ser­vices con­tin­ues to grow and, dur­ing 2020 and 2021, it has been used as much for col­lab­or­a­tion as for stor­ing con­tent. From data centres to sub­sea cables, satel­lite in­ter­net and Smart Cit­ies, the glob­al ac­cel­er­a­tion of di­git­al trends of­fers up many in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment op­por­tun­it­ies. Geo­graphy driv­ing choice of tech­no­logy In densely pop­u­lated areas of de­veloped and emer­ging eco­nom­ies, new op­er­at­ors are rolling out fibre when the eco­nom­ics stack up. New fibre com­pan­ies are provid­ing neut­ral host struc­tures that are offered on a whole­sale basis to op­er­at­ors. In Feb­ru­ary 2021, KKR an­nounced it had entered in­to an agree­ment with Tele­fón­ica to es­tab­lish Chile’s first open ac­cess whole­sale fibre op­tics com­pany and, in Po­land, Or­ange Pol­ska and APG Group have formed a joint ven­ture to rol­lout a fibre net­work to 1.7m house­holds.In more rur­al loc­a­tions, where the unit costs of fibre are less fa­vour­able and the chal­lenge of con­nect­ing ‘the last mile’ is more acute, pro­viders are im­ple­ment­ing solu­tions such as fixed wire­less, mo­bile broad­band and satel­lite. Space: the new fron­ti­er Starlink is the satel­lite net­work that SpaceX is de­vel­op­ing to provide low-cost in­ter­net to re­mote loc­a­tions and in April 2021, the US Fed­er­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Com­mis­sion ap­proved SpaceX’s pro­pos­al to modi­fy its Starlink satel­lite li­cence. Re­por­ted to cost more than USD 10bn, the net­work of thou­sands of satel­lites is de­signed to de­liv­er high-speed in­ter­net any­where on the plan­et.Sim­il­ar plans for space-based in­ter­net are be­ing launched by OneWeb, whose ma­jor stake­hold­ers in­clude Eu­telsat, the UK gov­ern­ment and In­dia’s Bharti Glob­al. OneWeb’s fleet of 648 Low Earth Or­bit satel­lites are ex­pec­ted to de­liv­er high-speed, low-latency con­nectiv­ity to Alaska, North­ern Europe, Green­land, Ice­land, the Ar­tic Seas and Canada later this year, and glob­ally by the end of 2022. Data Centres to sup­port col­lab­or­a­tion while re­du­cing en­vir­on­ment­al foot­print As work­ers col­lab­or­ate re­motely and on­line trad­ing in­creases, latency be­comes more prob­lem­at­ic; more loc­al­ised data centres help re­duce the delays. It is not enough to have su­per­fast in­ter­net on the edges of the net­work, the sup­port­ing di­git­al in­fra­struc­ture must be out on the edge too.Data centres, while cent­ral to di­git­al trans­form­a­tion, are highly en­ergy in­tens­ive. Giv­en glob­al com­mit­ments on green­house gas emis­sions, the in­dustry is mak­ing strides to di­ver­si­fy data centre power gen­er­a­tion sources, with re­new­ables in­cor­por­ated in­to the mix. In­fra­struc­ture is be­ing built and up­graded to im­prove the en­ergy ef­fi­ciency of data centres, par­tic­u­larly in man­aging the cool­ing pro­cess. Big Tech is lead­ing the charge Many di­git­al in­fra­struc­ture pro­jects are be­ing driv­en by the large, mostly US, tech firms.Mi­crosoft, which op­er­ates more than 200 data centres, is plan­ning to build between 50 and 100 more each year ‘for the fore­see­able fu­ture’ as its Azure cloud foot­print grows. This in­cludes es­tab­lish­ing a pres­ence in ten new coun­tries by the end of 2021.Apple has plans to spend an ex­tra USD 80bn in the US over the next five years, open­ing new fa­cil­it­ies and de­vot­ing re­sources to fu­ture tech­no­lo­gies in­clud­ing 5G.Face­book re­cently an­nounced that it is in­vest­ing in two sub­sea cables con­nect­ing Singa­pore and In­done­sia to North Amer­ica.Google has in­ves­ted in at least fif­teen sub­sea fibre cable pro­jects.Amazon is a part-own­er of two cables and a ma­jor ca­pa­city buy­er of ca­pa­city in three oth­ers.Chinese com­pany Heng­tong Op­tic-Elec­tric Co. is build­ing its ‘Peace Cable’ for PCCW Glob­al and Or­ange and it will reach Mar­seille from China via Pakistan and East Africa in late-2021. Spe­cial­ist funds provid­ing fin­ance There is a rise in spe­cial­ist funds that only in­vest in di­git­al in­fra­struc­ture; Cube In­fra­struc­ture Man­agers in Lux­em­bourg has a vehicle in­vest­ing purely to sup­port fibre rol­lout in areas of Europe where high-ca­pa­city net­works are not yet de­ployed. In­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors with long-term views now see tele­coms as a core strategy.With di­git­al now seen as crit­ic­al in­fra­struc­ture, in­creased For­eign Dir­ect In­vest­ment (FDI) con­trols are im­pact­ing on the deals in the di­git­al in­fra­struc­ture space. As na­tions fo­cus on se­cur­ity of sup­ply and crit­ic­al in­fra­struc­ture, they are in­creas­ingly scru­tin­ising who is be­hind each in­vest­ment.The pan­dem­ic has amp­li­fied the need for spend­ing on di­git­al in­fra­struc­ture, provid­ing in­vest­ment op­por­tun­it­ies across the globe. Where pre­vi­ously we saw com­pan­ies vy­ing for prime of­fice real-es­tate, the fu­ture will more likely see them com­pet­ing for the best data centre loc­a­tions. Soar­ing de­mand for cloud and in­ter­net-based ser­vices in Africa, for ex­ample, has seen large tech com­pan­ies, in­clud­ing the likes of Google, Amazon and Mi­crosoft, con­tin­ue to open data centres across the con­tin­ent.

It took clear, de­term­ined and force­ful reg­u­lat­ory ac­tion for the con­tin­ent­al broad­band rol­lout lead­ers, Spain and Por­tugal, to change the dy­nam­ics of their mar­kets. Some long es­tab­lished prac­tices had...