Interview to José Antonio Aranda, Global Innovation Director of Cellnex

We have asked José Antonio Aranda, Global Innovation Director at Cellnex about Alaian and what this alliance means to his company and for the 5G industry.

What does Alaian mean to you? How would you define it in one word?

For us, this alliance means a partnership in open innovation. It brings us the opportunity to cooperate with our customers: Telefonica, Wind3, Bouygues Telecom or KPN to identify innovative startups and solutions in the market through a joint Open Innovation Program.

What does your telco contribute to the overall alliance?

Cellnex Telecom is the independent wireless telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure operator that will enable the alliance to:

• Access Europe’s most extensive Telco infrastructure network across countries like Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Poland.
• Enable different types of infrastructure for the partners: telecommunications sites, broadcasting sites or “telco hot spots”, specific Connected Street Infrastructure and Venue infrastructure that Cellnex manages in cities, hospitals, airports or Stadia.
• Provide access to Cellnex innovative capabilities and projects that we are currently working on including some of the existing working lines: security, emergency networks, solutions for smart urban infrastructure and services management (IoT).

Highlight a key telco technology for you today

Cellnex would like to explore not only its potential as an integrated infrastructure operator for 5G, but also embrace assets adjacent to towers which can be mutualized based on the neutral host model.

These adjacent assets include distributed antenna systems (DAS), Small Cells, fiber-to-the-tower (FTTT), edge data centers and edge computing.

Cellnex is also willing to evaluate the expanded management of passive infrastructure, moving to the management of active equipment (radio equipment) with new technologies including ORAN.

Why is it so important to innovate, and what role does innovation plays in your company?

Innovation is a key pillar in Cellnex’s Mission and Values to generate value to our customers in the sharing of infrastructure.

The innovative way we approach the possible new business models and products to our customers, encourages Cellnex to keep a creative mindset to come up with new ideas. And Open Innovation has become an important foundation for moving forward in pursuing these ideas outside the boundaries of the company and integrating in the portfolio of products that we can offer.

What does an alliance like this offer the entrepreneurial ecosystem?

Alaian can offer a joint acceleration program with multiple groundbreaking companies in the Telco industry to get higher revenue generation opportunities.

Because this alliance brings together relevant mobile operators and other telco players under the same umbrella that enables the entrepreneurs to find a rich ecosystem to develop their ideas and scale-up solutions across multiple countries and with different players at the same time.

What would you say to startups who want to be part of Allaian?

If you are a startup and you have a disruptive solution, this alliance is a great opportunity for finding an open door to Telco leaders across Europe and other continents to showcase your idea. In a single acceleration program you have access to an important variety of players with different experiences and business possibilities.