The Sunrise Way: Bold Moves, Customer Focus

In a telecommunications landscape often populated by cautious incumbents, Sunrise stands out as the leading challenger in the Swiss telecom sector. As the first operator in Europe to launch 5G and among the earliest in the world to deploy a nationwide 5G Standalone (SA) network, Sunrise has built its strategy around staying ahead of the curve. It pursues innovation relentlessly and is firmly committed to operational excellence and customer satisfaction.

As Vice President of Entertainment, In-Home and One Assurance, Fabrizio Campanale brings a valuable perspective to Sunrise’s network strategy and recent developments. With a career that began in semiconductor design and now encompasses the full spectrum of telecommunications services, a philosophy of pragmatic innovation shapes Fabrizio’s leadership. His remit gives him a unique insight into how the most complex network transformations ultimately impact the daily experience of millions of customers.

A culture forged in disruption and ambition

Sunrise emerged from its 2020 merger with UPC, an event that combined complementary strengths to create an organisation with a unique culture and strategic advantage. The integration was central to Sunrise’s ability to innovate rapidly while maintaining a deep understanding of infrastructure.

“Sunrise today is the result of a cultural and strategic integration between two distinct legacies: UPC, with its strong network infrastructure orientation and Sunrise, with its telecom-driven mindset, mobile leadership and proven spirit of innovation in mobile technology,” Fabrizio says. He notes that the merger brought together complementary strengths and identities, further strengthened by the connection to the global media technology company Liberty Global, which offers access to innovation on an international scale.

The merger has fuelled a corporate culture where challenging the status quo is not only encouraged but expected. It is this mindset that has empowered Sunrise to become a European pioneer in 5G and, more recently, 5G SA. Rather than taking a cautious, follow-the-leader approach, Sunrise embraces calculated risks grounded in a clear vision of enhancing customer value.

“At Sunrise, innovation isn’t just a strategy – it’s part of our culture,” Fabrizio states. “We challenge assumptions, we break down barriers and we move with boldness. Our culture is built on a mix of ambition, agility and a constant drive to improve the customer experience.” The culture is more than aspirational: it drives tangible, market-defining achievements. “What truly drives Sunrise is a focus on the customer. Every bold move we make, from spectrum optimisation to AI-driven service assurance, is grounded in the question: how will this benefit the customer experience?”

The 5G standalone gamble: A leap into the future

The nationwide rollout of 5G SA represents a landmark achievement for Sunrise, marking a decisive step beyond the non-standalone architecture that relies on a 4G core. The transition was more than a technical upgrade – it was a strategic imperative to unlock the full potential of 5G, enabling lower latency, advanced network slicing capabilities and greater efficiency. While the technology was maturing in some markets, Sunrise became the first operator in Switzerland to deploy 5G SA nationwide.

The project’s complexity cannot be overstated. Delivering such a nationwide transformation meant meticulous cross-functional coordination across multiple domains. “It required deep coordination across several teams to roll out the fundamental pieces of the technology in the access domain,” Fabrizio recalls.

One of the most critical and often underestimated challenges was ensuring the device ecosystem was ready. A cutting-edge network is only as powerful as the devices that can access it. “To fully leverage the capabilities of the new network and core, devices needed to be compatible from both a hardware and certification perspective, including regulatory compliance,” Fabrizio explains. “This meant launching dedicated workstreams with handset manufacturers to ensure smooth integration and engaging closely with regulatory authorities, so that customers could use the new technology safely and seamlessly.”

Alongside its forward-looking 5G strategy, Sunrise made another bold and decisive move: the shutdown of its 3G network.

“The biggest challenge was customer migration, especially since we had already switched off 2.5G in Switzerland years before. That left no fallback,” Fabrizio explains.

To manage the high-stakes transition without leaving any customers behind, Sunrise adopted an intensely data-driven governance model. “We analysed large and diverse customer data sets, built multiple data lakes and brought together different teams to identify impacted segments. We then designed targeted communications and propositions for each group. Sometimes we missed a few customers, other times, we may have overcommunicated. But the intention was always to cover the entire base and make sure everyone understood what was happening and could move with us,” he says.

Leading the programme governance from the Chief Technology Officer’s office, Fabrizio and his team were responsible for aligning all technical and commercial streams under a single framework. The unified approach was critical to mitigating risks and maintaining customer trust throughout the process. “The governance was ensured at the CTO level with our team, aligning technical and commercial streams under one umbrella. It was a cross-functional effort that demonstrated Sunrise’s ability to lead decisively and responsibly, while always keeping the customer impact at the centre,” Fabrizio says.

Operational excellence: The engine room of innovation

A culture of bold innovation thrives only when it rests on a foundation of rock-solid operational excellence. For Sunrise, it means striking the right balance between the velocity of change necessary to stay ahead and the stability and reliability that customers expect. The environment poses a formidable challenge, with teams implementing thousands of network changes every month.

An integrated quality framework ensures that every action, from major technology rollouts to routine maintenance, is measured against its impact on the end-user experience. “We always ensure that every single intervention in the network, whether it comes from innovation and development or from maintenance and incident management, is measured against its impact on user experience and satisfaction, for both residential and B2B customers,” Fabrizio says.

To manage the complexity at scale, Sunrise is increasingly investing in intelligent automation. “We’re investing in automation, AI and machine learning to complement human expertise. It enables faster anomaly detection, smarter root cause analysis and more efficient resolution. It’s about scaling innovation without compromising stability,” he adds.

A pragmatic journey into AI and a vision for the future

Looking ahead, the next frontier in enhancing customer experience lies in the intelligent application of AI and machine learning. Sunrise has embarked on this journey with a clear and pragmatic focus: leveraging data to shift from reactive problem-solving to proactive and predictive service quality management.

Sunrise’s initial pilots have already delivered valuable insights. “One of the most significant learnings from our early activities has been the power of telemetry, pulling anonymised technical parameters from customer devices, correlating them with optimal values and automatically improving mobile connectivity or in-home setups without any customer interaction,” Fabrizio notes.

However, he recognises that the real challenge lies not in deploying the technology itself but in achieving effective organisational adoption. “The real challenge with AI and machine learning is not just the introduction of a new tool but adopting it effectively. The focus must remain on the goals: enhancing customer experience, strengthening network reliability and driving operational efficiency, without allowing the tools themselves to become distractions.”

Fabrizio warns against what he calls the “reality-hype gap,” stressing the importance of keeping the ultimate objective front and centre: tangible improvements in both customer experience and operational efficiency. Such a pragmatic approach will guide how Sunrise harnesses its vast data resources to create a more intelligent and responsive network.

So, what does this mean for the typical Sunrise customer in the years ahead? Fabrizio paints a clear picture of a seamless and reliable future: “AI will allow us to observe service performance more deeply, discovering patterns of hidden defects in network services or hardware that would otherwise remain subtle or below the noise of telemetry. It makes fixes and improvements far more efficient.”

Sunrise is further improving how it monitors the network and correlates alarms and issues. The goal is to detect interruptions and identify root causes much faster and in a more automated way, proactively maintaining and fixing infrastructure before outages or degradation cause a service interruption.

A blueprint for market leadership

The story of Sunrise is one of audacious goals backed by meticulous execution. Fabrizio’s perspective reveals that authentic market leadership in telecommunications is no longer just about network speeds or coverage maps. It is about building an integrated system of technology, people and processes that can anticipate customer needs, resolve issues before they arise and translate cutting-edge innovation into simple, reliable and meaningful experiences.