Carrier Challenge

      With the global ICT development wave, Vodafone declared cloud strategies. They need to deploy new services on cloud, deploy expanded services on cloud, and migrate services that reach the end of life to cloud.

Huawei Solution

     As the primary integrator, Huawei integrated HP hardware and VMware OS with Huawei IMS applications, cooperated with six teams of Vodafone, and performed IOT tests for multiple 3GPP interfaces to complete vertical and horizontal integration tests in eight months.

Carrier Benefits

     Since commercial use in July, 2015, Vodafone gained 160000 more subscribers until Nov,2015.

On July 6, 2015, Vodafone declared commercial use of the first global NFV-based VoLTE network in Italy. Subscribers can use HD voice and video services on 4G networks.

Seizing Opportunities

     Vodafone, Italy is the largest carrier in Italy. Solution selection in Italy functions as a demo for the entire group. The SBC, CMN, and EPC provided by Huawei have gained good brand effect. Huawei fully understood Vodafone cloudfication strategies and used the opportunity of SBC deployment and IMS Core integration to detect the pain point of the live network. For example, hardware provided by other vendors is aged, the performance is poor, the networks and routes are complex, and capacity expansion is difficult. Therefore, Huawei deployed the SBC and cloud-based VoLTE network.

Behind the First Global Cloud-based Commercial VoLTE

    At the beginning, the Huawei IMS solution was not listed in Vodafaone's shortlist. The project team analyzed the SBC on the live network, and guided Vodafaone to deploy new services on the SBC. IMS networks provided by Huawei and other vendors can co-exist and do not affect each other. In this case, Vodafaone recognized and accepted Huawei new services.

    Although the VoLTE bidding result is not satisfactory, Huawei firmly determined the telecom cloudification strategy and actively matched against Vodafaone's ToC strategy. Huawei selected the Vodafaone, Italy for POC tests because Huawei has built a good relationship with them and Huawei has fully understood their networks.

    As the solution provider and primary service provider, Huawei has rich CT experience and acts as the primary integrator. Driven by VoLTE services, Huawei quickly completed vertical cloud integration and horizontal VoLTE service integration through reasonable resource planning, flexible network architecture design, reliability design, and verification. The project started in April, 2014, the first call was connected in May, the beta test was prepared in September, and pre-commercial use was completed in December. The entire delivery takes only eight months, with a decrease of 54% compared with the average benchmark.

Win-Win

     Both Huawei and Vodafone drew valuable experience from this project. Huawei established the optimal NFV management model, output golden seed acceptance cases, maximized resource usage and performance, implemented auto OAM through the MANO, and laid a solid foundation for subsequent projects.