Italtel, alongside Maticmind, announced it has completed a network automation project to automatically configure network services for Open Fiber, the wholesale-only FTTH Italian operator, which expects to reach around 19 million property units in Italy with FTTH ultra-broadband in the coming years.

Open Fiber has chosen the innovative Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) platform to automate and simplify its massive operations and provide services in a faster and easier way through network automation. The deployment will allow it to add, modify and delete services automatically without interrupting the overall service and will guarantee real-time activations.

Italtel, which was the first company in Italy to be certified on Cisco NSO technology, designed the Open Fiber IP Backbone and has been playing an essential role in analysing Open Fiber’s needs, designing network services and the related automation which leverages the programmable Cisco NSO platform. The platform operates on all network layers, ranging from access to the IP and Optical transport one.

“Open Fiber is now able to deliver wholesale services on a very large scale, significantly reducing the time-to-market of new services and minimising configuration errors,” said Domenico Angotti, head of Engineering at Open Fiber.

“Cisco’s Network Orchestrator greatly supports us for the end-to-end operation of the equipment and the supervision of the activation cycles, allowing us to mainly focus our efforts on developing innovative customer services, thus increasing efficiency and reducing complexity and operating costs.

We are particularly satisfied with this and what has been achieved with the valuable contribution of Italtel and Maticmind in terms of professional competence, response and commitment to the common objectives of the project.”

The network automation project has developed automated workflows that capture the work order from the Customer Relations Manager (CRM) and activate it in a heterogeneous multi-vendor network, consisting of FTTH access, IP and Optical Transport Network.

“For this project, which is particularly complex due to the heterogeneity of the network, Italtel hasdrawn on its undisputed strength, which is the ability to make different technologies interact with each other,” said Paolo Allegra, head of Product/Solution Unit Infrastructure Integrationat Italtel. ”We have dedicated a specific task force to design the IP Backbone, network services and automation activities on the innovative Cisco NSO technology, of which we are certified providers.”

The NSO-based network orchestration project is part of the broader network automation program which, by using Software Defined Networking (SDN) and in the future NFV-MANO (Network Functions Virtualisation Management and Orchestration) paradigms, defines the infrastructure of the virtualised network, which is managed by a special orchestration platform (NFVO).

Open Fiber is the first wholesale operator in Italy – and one of the few in the world – to use NSO throughout the chain of configuration and activation of the service (CRM, Order Manager, Resource Facing System, Network).

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