• The companies commonly conducted their major flagship project “virtual one core”
• Project successfully delivered within nine months
• Results provide velcom with one of the most innovative telecom virtual core architectures on OpenStack based NFV and standard COTS hardware
• Worldwide first true commercial deployment: 100% of commercial traffic on virtual core

velcom – the leading mobile operator in Belarus and a 100% daughter company of Telekom Austria Group – and one of the leading network solution providers ZTE Corporation, have conducted a major flagship project with focus on migrating and transforming the core architecture of velcom’s network. All legacy core network components – like HLR/HSS, EPC, MSC, PCRF – were migrated to a fully virtualized platform on OpenStack based NFV and standard hardware. The project team of velcom and ZTE delivered the ambitious project within nine months from contract signature to full deployment.

“With this major step towards the next generation network architecture we are able to significantly reduce our OPEX spending, benefit on massive economies of scale for further growth and provide highest flexibility and service value to our customers on the way towards a fully cloud-based network architecture,” says Sascha Zabransky, Director Technology, Telekom Austria Group.

By transforming and virtualizing its core network into “vCore”, velcom managed to abolish its legacy silo-based network and significantly cut service running costs, while at the same time ensuring higher flexibility, feature richness and reliability for velcom’s customers of voice and packet services. This project provides velcom with one of the most innovative telecom core architectures worldwide. It is also the only project of a size of more than 5 Mio subscribers and a scope of a full-service mobile operator that concluded a migration of 100% of subscribers and legacy services within only nine months to a virtual core, based completely on NFV/COTS hardware.

This breakthrough in system optimization was possible by the implementation of ZTE’s unique OpenStack based TECS software (Tulip Elastic Cloud System), which combines virtualization and cloud infrastructure management for computing, storage and network resources. As the system is convergent with NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) and ready for SDN (Software Defined Networking), it centralizes technical processes and therefore cuts costs, allowing velcom to regain flexibility through easy configuration of new services and improving the security as well as reliability level.

ZTE managed end-to-end architecture and delivery, ensuring with its senior resources a combination of best of breed from both network and IT world.

Christian Woschitz, COO of ZTE Austria, confirms: “We are highly pleased about this successful collaboration and proud to support velcom in offering superior services by using ZTE solutions. The smart combination of local know-how as well as global resources by ZTE made the success of this flagship project possible.”

Christian Laque, CTO of velcom, adds: “By merging our joint expertise, we were able to ensure a fast implementation of one of the most advanced core network architecture as well as the migration of 100% of our subscribers in a very short time period. The transformation provides our customers with higher security- and reliability levels. The velcom brand stands for quality and innovative solutions, thus we are happy to have kept our promise.”

Both velcom and ZTE Corporation are planning to collaborate on further project partnerships in the future.