CANTV: Evolving Toward an All-IP Network

CNTV is the largest state-owned telecom operator in Venezuela with 3.5 million fixed-line subscribers and 14 million mobile subscribers. It pretty much dominates the fixed-line and mobile markets in Venezuela.

Now, nearly all major MANs and national IP backbone networks in Venezuela are monopolized by western telecom vendors and rely on leased lines, SDH and microwave. Due to the particular political and economic conditions in this country, the construction and expansion of the existing IP backbone network owned by CANTV’s mobile service company Movilnet has ground to a halt.

As demand for services increases, network bandwidth is in short supply. Worse still, Movilnet has no high-performance bearer network of its own, so it has to spend much more on network infrastructure leases and O&M, causing its OPEX to increase every year. In recent years, Movilnet has also witnessed an explosive growth in its 3G/4G mobile subscribers and traffic volume. Given all these challenges, CANTV is in urgent need of network transformation and upgrade. To increase network bandwidth, lower OPEX, and become more competitive in the market, CANTV has started evolving its network toward all-IP and 100G.

ZTE’s IP network solutions have been widely used in China and abroad. ZTE’s R&D team has a precise understanding of the market demands for installation engineering; O&M, network and service evolution; and continuous optimization of solutions. After several exchanges with CANTV, ZTE tailored an optimal IP network solution and persuaded CANTV to build a new IP backbone network based on a 200G platform rather than expanding its existing IP backbone. The solution provides a network that is extensible and boasts E2E L3-to-edge capability, freeing CANTV from the bandwidth and L3-to-edge pressures in the evolution to mobile broadband and IP private line services.

ZTE’s high-end routers are applicable to the edge of an IP backbone network, an IP MAN, and other large-scale IP networks, delivering a variety of services and reliable QoS. These products simplify network architecture and help with the evolution of the IP/MPLS bearer network to an intelligent, broadband, multiservice network. Based on its full-service, evolvable, and integrated telecom-class platform, ZTE is able to customize a complete and efficient IP network solution for CANTV to meet the challenges of differentiated user needs, new services, and fast-growing bandwidth needs. The solution has the following attractions:

●   Service convergence to build an intelligent, full-service bearer network. The high-end routers provide a terabit hardware structure, distributed parallel processing mechanism, non-blocking CLOS switching architecture, and high-density 10 GE/40 GE/100 GE interfaces for smooth capacity expansion. The routers also have a flexible dual-card structure that supports different types of interface cards for diverse networking modes. Extensive access modes, including IPoE, PPPoE, IP private lines, enterprise VPDN, ATM and TDM, allow CANTV to build hybrid MPLS L2/L3 VPN networks as required. Modular, fully-distributed, and highly-reliable software and hardware system supports BRAS/CGN hot redundancy and NSR/ISSU to guarantee service continuity.
●    Deep network analysis to consolidate information security. The solution provides three-dimensional equipment security mechanisms and complete access control policies. On the control plane, a high-performance multi-core CPU is used for independent multi-process scheduling. On the data plane, there is a special separate TM traffic engine for high-speed packet parsing and filtering. On the management plane, unified RADIUS/TACACS+ is adopted for hierarchical authentication and authorization.
●    Intelligent resource scheduling to create an energy efficient network. The solution provides intelligent process dormancy so that idle processes and devices can be shut down. It provides intelligent service adaptation to automatically balance system loads, evenly dissipate system heat, and greatly reduce average system power. It also provides intelligent line card activation to automatically activate and deactivate line card resources according to actual service loads and improve line card usage. Moreover, intelligent fan speed control with precise fine-tuning and seamless speed adjustment reduces noise pollution and power consumption, and intelligent power supply with independent power monitoring plane and automatic power control module enables real-time monitoring and on-demand supply.

In April 2015, ZTE won CANTV’s bid for the new Metro-E project and Movilnet’s bid for the IPBB project. ZTE became the only contractor across all 85 sites in the Metro-E project and all 17 sites in the IPBB project.

By working with ZTE, CANTV will rebuild its IP network into a powerful underlying network with higher quality and lower information security risks and resistant to network attacks. This efficient, integrated, and sustainable bearer network platform will reduce networking costs, provide secure and reliable service-carrying capabilities, improve user experience, and increase the network value. ZTE is poised to partner with CANTV in responding to the increasingly rapid service growth and heavy network loads in the competitive telecom market, and to empower CANTV with its state-of-the-art technical solutions and excellent project delivery quality.