Vodafone Germany migrates to Virtual Next Generation Network

The project will see the migration of the German operator’s fixed legacy networks and the deployment of innovative services onto a common virtualized infrastructure empowered by VCE technology.

Vodafone set up the Telco over Cloud strategy, which combines telco strengths and Cloud benefits, in 2012 as an early adopter of relevant NFV and SDN technologies.

Italtel has fully supported the strategy from the very beginning to when it materialized in 2014 with the delivery of the vNGN (virtual-NGN) project which is based on iMCS (Multimedia Communication Suite), the Italtel modular IMS framework, and on iNEM (Neutral Element Manager), the Italtel comprehensive management suite.

Italtel is managing the deployment of this solution in Germany while Cisco is acting as Prime Contractor for the users’ migration, which is successfully ongoing and mostly completed.

“Vodafone is a firm believer and supporter of Telco over Cloud and SDN as two key technology transformational thrusts that will deeply affect the way the telecom industry will consume technology,” said Roberto Vercelli, Head of All IP One Core - NFV at Vodafone Core & Transport Center of Excellence - TSO. “Italtel’s rapid adoption of this strategy has enabled us to move from theory into real implementation to serve real customers,”

Rui Frazao, Director Network Engineering at Vodafone Germany, added: “We were impressed by how quickly Italtel adapted to our Telco over Cloud strategy to offer the right technology services, which we need to transform our network. We are now in the final phase of migration of our customers to the new platform and Italtel has proven to be a reliable partner, ensuring a smooth migration with a clear focus on quality and customer satisfaction. We are very satisfied with the long-time partnership with Italtel and the flexibility to support us towards the future Cloud strategy.”

The project consists of the migration of six classless proprietary-based soft-switches serving more than two million SIP subscribers onto three Vodafone Data Centers spread in the country.

“We are proud to be part of a project which is on the leading edge of innovation,” said Stefano Pileri, Italtel CEO. “SDN and NFV are the technological elements of our R&D activities and all our products are virtualized. We strongly believe simplification, virtualization and automation will be the guidelines driving the evolution of service providers’ networks.”

The solution offers NGN parity features in term of user, network and regulatory services, as well as invariance of OSS/BSS processes.