Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Monday, January 02, 2023

Facundo Leal: "We are making a possible Arsat, the one we dreamed of".

Arsat's new president and general manager presented the team and the objectives of the Argentine state-owned company, which combine political and technical intelligence, and allow the construction of a State policy. The plans: prepare the network to provide 5G backhaul, agreements with LEO satellite operators and provide connectivity to 36,000 schools.

At the end of October Facundo Leal presented the team in charge of building the Arsat, in which he defines as the one he dreams of. The team has political and technical intelligence. A combination that is not minor when it comes to setting the objectives of a state-owned company that has consistency in its business plans, beyond the changes of political signs -which are on the horizon- and becomes a State policy tool, and not a government policy tool.

Leal took over as President and CEO of Arsat in August 2022, after the departure of Matías Tombolini, and at the end of October, during a meeting with journalists, he presented the team who will execute the company's strategy during his term of office. The protagonists of the meeting were Marcelo Tesoro (Director), Anabel Cisneros (Terrestrial Network Development Manager), Martín Fabris (Space Services Manager), Mariano Greco (IT Manager) and Federico Silva (responsible for Satellite Services and Digital TV Operations). The meeting was also attended by Juan Navarro (Commercial Area Manager) and Leonardo Comperatore (Institutional Relations and Communication Manager).

The names have their own weight due to the experience of each in the sector and within Arsat itself, but it is also clear that several factions of the governing alliance are represented. Massa is in charge of Arsat, but agreements dominate.

Tesoro, who has been with Refefo (Argentina Conectada) since its origins, explained that 80% of the equipment of the new network core is already installed and that at the time of the announcement there were about three weeks left to reach 100%. After that, they would start upgrading the aggregation layer. The tender by invitation through an abbreviated bidding process was launched in 2020 and ended in 2021. Huawei, Nokia, Cisco, ZTE participated. Huawei won, which implied a change of supplier. The total investment is close to US$ 30 million and the tender allowed significant savings in the core with respect to the budget.

With the improvements it will be possible to meet the increased demand for capacity brought about by the pandemic. Asked by Convergencia about the reasons for the upgrade and future plans, Tesoro explained that it is related to stages two and three of Refefo and the replacement of technology acquired in 2012. He acknowledged miscalculations in the past and that they consider that an upgrade will be necessary in two years based on technological evolution, although the current technology allows them to grow by incorporating boards.

A plan for 6,000 new kilometers of fiber is also in the process of being approved for 2023, which would allow the network to be ringed. Currently, the network has 36,000 kilometers, of which 34,000 are lit. Among the goals of the dream, Leal would like to achieve the connection of border crossings and Puerto Williams. At the beginning of December, the project "Strengthening Connectivity" was signed between the Chancellor, Santiago Cafiero, and his Paraguayan counterpart, Julio César Arriola Ramírez, which will serve as a framework for the negotiations between Arsat and the Paraguayan Communications Company (Copaco). The first step will be the network link between the cities of Clorinda and Formosa.

On the commercial side, Leal did not mince words when it came to making an assessment: "Arsat has had the pleasure of neglecting its customers. It has great potential. It neglected the cooperatives." That is why at the beginning of October a hundred cooperatives were summoned to Benavídez. The cooperatives welcomed the approach.

In order to be close to its clients, during the last two months of the year Arsat was present in the caravan of conferences of the sector that took place before the World Cup, from ATVC to the 6th Expo TIC 2022, held in Puerto Madryn, Chubut. In this last meeting, they presented the product "Conexión a cámara de empalme" and anticipated another one destined to the IT Security area, still under development.

In the political field, the same day he presented his team, Leal agreed with Gerardo Morales, Governor of Jujuy, an understanding whereby the province will be able to use Refefo and the school connectivity module will be implemented within the framework of the Program for the Improvement of Educational Access and Quality (Promace).

Pivot. Anabel Cisneros is partly responsible for diagnosing the current state and laying the groundwork for the next stage of the terrestrial network. With political waist and engineering precision, Cisneros went to the point: Refefo was created in 2011 for a backbone backbone; since then, the demand of telcos and cooperatives has changed, the management has changed and so have the objectives.

One of the challenges is to prepare the network to provide 5G backhaul. Another is to have before the end of the year the first version of a report that allows consolidating how far they have gone with the different stages of Refefo; at the same time, projecting the demand for capacities and services of large providers, to reach places that are difficult to access. "It is no longer possible to think of fundamental plans for five years due to the growth of technology. You have to plan for two, three and four years," he said. The idea is that the plan should take into account what the government is asking for and what is commercially demanded: the demand of operators, SME providers and the public administration at national level will be surveyed to estimate traffic and places to be covered, focusing on places that were not covered in previous plans and demands that appeared later.

Billing. Among the topics discussed in the meeting with journalists, officials assured that Arsat is self-sufficient. The greatest weight in invoicing is given to fiber, followed by satellite services, which are exported, explained Leal.

Space talks. Martin Fabris announced that the launch of the SG-1 satellite is planned for the first half of 2025, as a consequence of the delays caused by the pandemic. Meanwhile, for SG-2 they are in talks with CAF, which would be interested in financing the project and would analyze it in December or March. With this scenario, by 2025 Argentina will have three satellites: SG-2 will replace Arsat 1 but with innovations in the payload and a new technological development, assured the head of the satellite business.

Regarding the LEO maelstrom, Fabris acknowledged a sort of "willingness" to work together with Starlink. In March 2022, "Starlink Argentina S.R.L." was registered with the General Inspectorate of Justice, controlled by the Dutch firms Starlink Holdings Netherlands and Space X Netherlands. As stated in Convergencia Telemática nº 320, last August, coordination tasks were in progress with Arsat for the operation of Starlink's fleet over the country. On the other hand, this joint work aims at an eventual commercial agreement, once Starlink defines its strategy for Argentina. Fabris said that Starlink is not the only constellation with which they are talking, there are also Amazon Kuiper and OneWeb, although Starlink is the most advanced in the provision of services.

In an eventual agreement with any of these fleets, Arsat would gain the possibility of expanding its product portfolio, as low orbit constellations solve low latency connectivity for gamers and other applications.

Arsat has the mandate to create the "Creole cloud". Mariano Greco, IT manager at Arsat, has taken on the task of creating "the local cloud": this is how they define the plan to transform the Data Center business into a hybrid cloud model and offer services to both the state and private companies through their own services and through agreements with other cloud providers.

The third stage of the National Public Cloud initiative, launched in 2021, is currently underway. During the event Government Networks and Smart Cities 2022, organized by Grupo Convergencia in Chaco last October, Greco had outlined the axes of the third stage: strategic alliances with cloud service providers and vendors for services per use for the expansion of services in the national data center; promotion of on-site localization of own and external public clouds, guaranteeing the sovereignty of data and services in Argentina; generation of hybrid services with external cloud providers and infrastructure of the national data center; and enhancement of PaaS and SaaS of its own. Arsat seeks to differentiate itself through the certification of the data center and professionals, local data hosting, within the framework of an ambitious technological project with the possibility of expanding to a regional data center for a multi-zone service.

An ongoing step is the technological upgrade to provide cloud storage services. They see a huge opportunity in the digital transformation of companies and are talking to all cloud providers to reach agreements, since Arsat's Data Center is agnostic to all technologies, said Greco.

Schools. Greco also explained that Arsat has ahead of it the challenge of connecting 90% of the school enrollment, some nine million students, 49,000 schools and 54,000 schools. Currently there are 18,000 schools connected.

In order to meet the objective, the state-owned company has the collaboration of 170 companies, ranging from Sapem to private companies, to map the connectivity situation. The goal is to connect another 20,000 schools, a plan that begins with the installation of technical floors and ends with the provision of connectivity by different actors.

The installations are carried out according to the size of the floors (large, medium and small), which correspond to the size of the enrollment coverage. When medium-sized ones have been completed, 90% of the enrollment will be covered. In September, the bidding process for the technical floors was completed, which foresees around 1,500 floors installed per month. Then, in the final connectivity, fiber is favored over other technologies.

In the execution of the plan, Fabris commented, they found that Sapem was highly operational, with fiber deployed and a good number of connections between Sapem and local operators. This made it possible to shorten the time to connect schools. The remaining 10% of the enrollment to be connected is a more complex universe, both in terms of distance and logistics.

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