It’s been a few weeks since the highly successful Delta Summit but some of GO’s top talents are still shining from their participation and experience at the summit. GO strongly believes in giving its employees every opportunity to grow and share their ideas, experience and expertise on various subjects ranging from 5G to IoT, data in business, AI, fibre technology and security. Here is an insight into what they had to share.

Hayley Bugeja has been working with GO for three years having first joined the technical team to develop software interfacing with the network elements.

She recently joined the digital team to develop software to support the operational and business support systems. She delivered a Tech Talk on 5G mobile technology.

“My objective was to showcase how the mobile network is expected to change with 5G technology and more importantly, how these changes can potentially drive different business opportunities in the market. Society will start reaping the benefits of a 5G mobile network when businesses really comprehend and embrace the true potential of 5G and start developing ideas and business cases based on this network’s potential.

“While businesses already acknowledge 5G as ‘the next big thing’, they do not yet fully understand the true benefits it can bring. Many believe that a 5G network will simply increase the bandwidth currently available over the existing network. Education is therefore key and GO will be taking a leading role in this so that businesses can evolve and enable a 5G ecosystem.”

Nick Scerri joined GO almost two years ago and currently works as a software developer. He has a passion for anything digital and spoke about autonomous cars and how the Internet of Things will be driving the future.

“GO has invested and continues to invest millions of euros in its infrastructure to support applications and technologies of the future. The rollout of our True Fibre-to-the-Home technology, together with the constant expansion of our radio spectrum that is moving closer to a 5G network, gives GO a true competitive advantage when it comes to enabling and supporting IoT,” he said.

He also highlighted the main issues present within current transport systems, namely human driving deficiencies, the large number of cars on the road, and public transport inconvenience and explained how autonomous vehicles could improve the traffic situation in the future.

“It has been widely demonstrated that autonomous vehicles can solve deficiencies present in human driving. However this also emphasises the importance of having a reliable and robust ecosystem of ‘vehicle-to-everything’ communication within the context of IoT.”

Adopting autonomous vehicles alone will not reduce the number of cars on the road, so Nick also shared his views on the benefits of shared car use and the potential reduction in the number of cars requiring parking along with the consequent increased road capacity.

Anaisabel Rubio joined GO nearly four years ago when she was studying business intelligence and working as a telco financial analyst in Spain. She currently leads the Data Insights team, which provides advanced analytics and reporting across GO. In her tech talk, she shared her views on how data is shaping the future of businesses.

“There is a lot of talk about the importance of data but not enough appreciation of how data can serve companies and bring them a lot more value. In changing worldwide economies and saturating markets, businesses can use data to create new opportunities, generate value and compete in unexpected ways.”

Referring to data harvesting, she added: “Despite growing awareness over the possibilities that data presents for companies, a lot depends on having the right structure to capture and process that data. This obviously means having the right technological systems but, perhaps more significantly, having in place the right people who know how to analyse the data to get insights from it along with the right culture within the company to make use of those insights. The foundations, in the form of a strong strategic vision for the use of data, have to be in place.”

Vajk Turi is one of GO’s latest recruits, joining the company just over a month ago as a DevOps Specialist following a career as a Machine Learning Engineer in Hungary. Together with Hayley Bugeja, he talked about the applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the telecommunications industry and how workflows in the telecommunications industry can be enhanced with machine learning.

“AI changes how service providers such as GO can interact with customers and how it can identify and resolve faults with their services and equipment, therefore making the network resource allocation dynamic and proactive, eliminating the need for human interaction. Machine Learning also enables the use of new technologies in the 5G network and, whilst trained models improve the IoT devices, they also increase security and stability and become much faster.

“Network optimisation, preventive maintenance, virtual assistants and robotic process automation are just a few examples of how AI is being used. But the question remains whether local businesses are really ready for this. First and foremost, they have to decide if they need machine learning at all while being mindful that this is not a magic tool which can solve all its problems. The next step would be to decide if they want to build their own infrastructure or buy an already existing framework.

Paulseph Farrugia, IT manager, Software Delivery, QA and Test Automation joined GO nearly 20 years ago and is currently responsible for the team implementing software test automation and DevOps. He spoke about real fibre to the home as a fundamental enabler for the future jointly with Nick Scerri.

“Fibre is a necessary enabler for the evolving digital landscape and is essential for technologies such as 5G, IoT and cloud services. GO has already invested hundreds of millions in its infrastructure over the years and has committed a further €100 million to future proof the user experience for years to come thanks to True Fibre, which is expected to be available nationwide by 2024.

“True fibre technology is not only faster than copper technology but it is also more secure and reliable. It offers symmetric upload and download speeds which become increasingly important as, for instance, cloud service usage becomes more ubiquitous. As the emerging technologies, that are expected to bring new levels of interactions and heightened user experience, become increasingly hungry for bandwidth and performance, the transport technologies of yesteryear such as copper will be unable to cope with such demands. True fibre to the home will become the baseline requirement to sustain the future digital experience,” they said.

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