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31 March, 2020Enea, a global supplier of innovative software components for telecommunications and cybersecurity, is offering unlimited software licenses for its Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) solution during a period of three months. This will enable network operators to secure the quality of voice calls, as millions of people are told to work from home during the Coronavirus pandemic. (more…)
17 October, 2019Mavenir, a US-headquartered network software provider, claiming to be the industry’s only end-to-end cloud-native vendor for CSPs, has announced launched its fully virtualised 4G/5G OpenRAN solution. (more…)
27 June, 2019Ericsson and RCS & RDS (Digi) have launched Romania’s first 5G commercial service in the busiest parts of Bucharest, where 5G can really make a difference by providing increased speeds for mobile broadband to businesses and consumers. (more…)
16 February, 2018Axial Systems has signed a partnership agreement with Polystar, a provider of real-time insights for telecoms operators. The new partnership will enable Axial Systems to bring the complete Polystar solution portfolio to the whole of the UK and Ireland, (more…)
06 April, 2017Syniverse has incorporated a comprehensive, cloud-based IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) suite of solutions into its platform. This will enable mobile network operators to implement VoLTE (Voice over LTE) and VoWiFi (Voice over Wi-Fi) more easily and cost-efficiently. (more…)
04 January, 2017In 2016, operators worldwide began strategising how NFV could play a central role in their networks, as they hoped to drive efficiencies and move to a more flexible Internet Protocol (IP)-based communications model. (more…)
23 June, 2016ZTE Corporation has jointly announced with Telefónica del Perú, the commercial operation of the first IP multimedia subsystem voice over long-term evolution (IMS VoLTE) network in Perú and in Telefónica LATAM. (more…)
28 December, 2015The year 2016 will see communications Device Management (DM) take a new direction, says Spirent Communications’ Lars Houbak, general manager of its device intelligence business unit. (more…)
09 November, 2015Heralded as the most disruptive mobile technology yet, more than an estimated one billion dollars has already been invested by operators to make their networks capable of handling Voice over LTE (VoLTE) traffic. But the return to date on those investments so far is minimal. (more…)
12 October, 2015As physical networks become crowded, the use of virtualised infrastructures has provided operators and users with a number of benefits. Here many functionalities are now implemented without requiring specific hardware components, allowing for automated workflows and more bandwidth for demanding services such as Over-the-top content (OTT) platforms.
The time-to-market for new services is reduced, enabling operators to generate additional revenue streams much more quickly, says Federico Descalzo of Italtel
But while the benefits provided by virtualisation (namely Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN)) are clear to see, many challenges still exist between where the technologies are today and widespread adoption.
Perhaps the most important obstacle yet to be overcome is interoperability, with many systems being developed in isolation and therefore not designed to complement each other. This is hindering further take-up of the technologies because operators are used to being able to pick and choose different vendors for different parts of the network, according to different company’s specialties. Collaboration and standardisation of NFV and SDN is therefore vital if the technologies are to become commonplace in networks and their benefits more wide-reaching.
The story so far
Despite the current lack of standardisation, there is cause for optimism. Deployments of proprietary NFV and SDN solutions have taken place, with a number of operators upgrading either part of or their entire network in order to realise new services. Vodafone Germany, for example, implemented Vodafone’s “Telco Over Cloud” strategy earlier this year. This project, which we supported via a partnership with worldwide IT leader Cisco, involved a large network evolution program, including NFV and SDN technologies. The result offers next-generation parity features in terms of user, network and regulatory services, as well as invariance of OSS/BSS processes. With early adoptions like this one, best practice can be developed and eventually translated into industry-wide guidelines.
Even more encouragement can be found from predictions being made about the technologies. Infonetics Research, for example, forecasts that global carrier SDN and NFV hardware and software will grow from less than US$ 500 million in 2013 to more than US$ 11 billion by 2018.
Helping to reach that destination is the implementation of Virtualised Network Functions (VNFs), which take advantage of cloud-oriented software architecture and cloud design patterns. Many operators are beginning to look to install these within their networks in a bid to ensure a smooth transition to a fully virtualised system. In response to this demand, Italtel, along with other vendors, is refactoring existing network products to include VNFs. Operating on both the control and user plane, these are now implemented on the NetMatch Session Border Controller (SBC), IMS Core Suite and Embrace, a WebRTC solution introduced last year. This enables us to give an equivalent performance to physical network functions, while newly installed network solutions, based on Voice over Long-Term Evolution(VoLTE), Voice over Wi-Fi solutions(VoWiFi) and Web Real-Time Communication(WebRTC) technologies, provide multimedia services which guarantee high throughput, high reliability and security.
This blog published by the author Federico Descalzo, vice president and chief marketing technology officer at Italtel
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