Paradise Mobile launched 5G services in Bermuda in December, and the company's CEO, Sam Tabbara, says its open RAN technology is working well. He also discusses AI, network APIs and more.
According to Paradise Mobile CEO Sam Tabbara, "thousands" of people have logged into the company's new 5G network in Bermuda since it first launched commercial operations in December.
"The tech works," Tabbara told Light Reading.
He declined to provide specific customer numbers but said the Paradise network is performing well. According to the latest results from network testing and monitoring company Ookla, Paradise Mobile operated the fastest mobile network in Bermuda during the first half of 2024. The operator competes against incumbents Digicel and One Communications.
According to Tabbara, Paradise Mobile's network speeds currently hover around 1.5 Gbit/s – and could rise to 3 Gbit/s within the next six months as Paradise works to deploy services across its various spectrum bands and expand and tweak the network.
Paradise Mobile is a player to watch in the global wireless industry because it's an upstart challenging market incumbents with a cutting-edge network. Its open radio access network (RAN) runs on equipment from Mavenir and cloud services from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Tabbara said Paradise continues to position itself not only as a provider in Bermuda, but also as a kind of external skunkworks operation for bigger companies that don't have the ability to set up a public, commercial network for such endeavors. Paradise Mobile hopes to test cutting-edge telecom products and services that can then be exported for use by bigger telecom providers internationally, he added.
Along those lines, the company recently said it would provide connectivity to SailGP's pre-season training camps. The international sailing race league has a similar networking agreement with T-Mobile in the US.
Looking to the future
Like the rest of the global wireless industry, Paradise Mobile is looking at how AI might be better integrated into its operations, according to Tabbara. "That's probably one of the biggest buzzwords this year," he acknowledged.
As an AWS customer, Paradise likely will use Amazon's AI products and services, Tabbara said. But he added that the company is agnostic to AI technology, noting that it also uses ChatGPT from Microsoft for its marketing efforts.
Further, he described AI today as just another tool for network operations, rather than the saving grace that some vendors have touted.
Tabbara also discussed Paradise Mobile's approach to network APIs. He said he's not against network API standards efforts like the GSMA's Open Gateway initiative, but he cautioned that "too many things in telco are based on non-practical applications."
Meaning, he's not going to waste time supporting API standards that might not be used.
That said, he argued that Paradise ought to be able to add network APIs into its systems relatively quickly, thanks to the company's AWS partnership. Amazon is one of the supporters of the GSMA's Open Gateway initiative, which seeks to create interoperable APIs across international operator networks.
Generating traction
Since its initial launch, Paradise has introduced a global roaming service that Tabbara said is popular among the company's users.
He added that Paradise has instituted more than 90 network updates so far this year. That's thanks to the software- and cloud-based design of the company's open RAN network.
"It's just incredible," Tabbara said of the speed at which Paradise can implement software updates.
Bermuda was hit by a major hurricane in August, and as a result 30% of Paradise's cell sites lost service, according to Tabbara. But the company's software-driven beamforming and self-healing capabilities immediately kicked into gear in order to patch up the operator's coverage area.
Then, Paradise launched a marketing campaign to connect affected customers to its network in the wake of the hurricane, Tabbara said.
"That was our best marketing ROI," he said, because customers found that they liked Paradise's services. "All the hard work is actually delivering customer value."
You May Also Like
.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
