Highlights from Key Speeches on Core Network Evolution at Huawei User Group Meeting 2016

On the second day of the 2016 Huawei User Group Meeting, industry leaders shared their views with attendees from all over the world. With his opening speech on core network evolution at the Mindshare Forum, Long Jiping, R&D president of Huawei Cloud Core Network Product Line, welcomed all the guests. Seven representatives from KPN, EE, Guangdong Telecom, SKY, Telkom, XL, and Telefonica shared their future roadmaps and the opportunities and challenges in their business operations.

EE: Driving Towards Virtualization and 5G

Scott Berry, head of Core Network (Design & Planning) at EE presented the topic "EE Drives Towards Virtualization and 5G." He said that EE has the largest number of 4G subscribers in Europe and has experienced a 100-fold increase in traffic over the past ten years. Facing digital transformation, EE is actively exploring new fields such as ESN, NB-IoT, NFV, and 5G, aiming to build a more efficient and value-added network. Shi Jilin, president of Huawei Packet Core Network Product Line, commented, "Huawei and EE have collaborated in the MBB field for over ten years. In the future, we will invest more in service innovation, cloud-based telecom network, and 5G to help EE implement strategic transformation."

Scott Berry, head of Core Network (Design & Planning) of EE, giving a speech "EE Drives Towards Virtualization and 5G"

Holland KPN: Pursuing Customer-centric Innovation

Perry Jackson, director of KPN Technology Labs, talked about challenges faced by the telecom industry. He pointed out that operators lack differentiated and attractive services, as well as rapid service innovations, although they still have a high network coverage ratio. Their revenues are continuing to decline due to OTT. "We have to change our innovation mode from network-centric to customer-centric." said Jackson. At present, KPN has a three-pronged strategy: investing in start-ups to support innovation, funding technical departments to develop disruptive technologies and innovative business models in network services, and collaborating with partners like Huawei to explore new technologies. Each concept or technology developed by KPN aims to achieve five objectives: generate new revenues, improve user experience, reduce costs, strengthen KPN's image as a technical leader, and be aligned with KPN's development strategy.

 Perry Jackson, director of KPN Technology Labs, talking about customer-centric innovation

EE: Packet Core Network Architecture Evolution

Martin Stuart, senior manager of EE, opened his speech by reflecting on the successful collaboration between EE and Huawei, "This March, EE and Huawei celebrated their ten years collaboration with champagne." He then shared EE's network isolation strategy for ensuring network robustness and user experience during traffic surges and signaling storms. He also introduced the design concepts of smooth evolution to NFV, including gateway decentralization, pooling capacity redundancy, and hybrid networking.

Martin Stuart, senior manager of EE, introducing packet core network architecture evolution

Guangdong Telecom: Embracing Enterprise Cloud Communications

Guangdong Telecom leads the development of government and enterprise services in China Telecom Group. However, it still encounters challenges such as limited service profile and low-value broadband in an all-optical fiber network. Chang Wenzhuo, vice general manager of the Marketing Department at Guangdong Telecom, shared Guangdong Telecom's strategy and opportunities in the enterprise market. He also spoke about the transformation of Guangdong Telecom from a communications service provider to a communications + cloud infrastructure service provider.

Guangdong Telecom has adopted the "one fiber, multiple functions" strategy to derive value from fiber broadband. Guangdong Telecom has created multiple VLANs on a fiber, with each VLAN bearing different services at network bandwidths and featuring different charging modes. In addition, Guangdong Telecom worked together with Huawei Cloud IMS Core to build a unified cloud platform, which provides enterprises with one-stop cloud communications services such as smart center, call center, and video conferencing. Based on APIs and SDKs provided by Huawei, Guangdong Telecom developed a unified conference control platform as well as a video terminal and enterprise self-management platform, which is a remarkable ICT innovation. In the future, Guangdong Telecom plans to implement integrated video services including cloud PBX, cloud conferencing, iVPN, and 4G.

Chang Wenzhuo, vice general manager of the Marketing Department of Guangdong Telecom, talking about enterprise communications service

Telefonica: Providing Smart Home Technology to Millions of Families in Latin America Homes

José Manuel Nistal, global head of the Marketing Department (Digital Home) at Telefonica, said, "Telefonica aims to build a ubiquitous communication network. IoT is an inevitable trend and a brilliant opportunity to develop Smart Home services. We are taking Smart Home to Latin America in 2016. The family users control the home devices via the smartphone. The Smart Home market worldwide will grow to 245 million homes by 2020. Huawei is a strategic partner with wide presence and strong capabilities in the Latin America market. Huawei's IoT platform offers a wide range of functionalities while ensuring the highest quality standard including open, scalable, total flexibility and highest levels of security and robustness. Huawei is helping Telefonica build the Smart Home ecosystem."

José Manuel Nistal, global head of the Marketing Department (Digital Home) of Telefonica, introducing Smart Home

South Africa Telkom: Cloud-based IMS Driving FMC

Albert Van Schalkwyk, manager of NW Transform&Planning of South Africa Telkom spoke about legacy PSTN disadvantages, such as high complexity, high maintenance costs, and slow growth in mobile subscribers. He opined that operators can build a cloud-based platform to implement network evolution and service transformation. The idea is to develop FMC using a cloud-based IMS network. The first step is to reconstruct fixed networks. By implementing an IP-based fixed voice service, operators can develop cloud-based VoLTE and VoWiFi, enhancing basic mobile communication experience from voice to dual HD. The second step is to develop FMC services. By streamlining the boundary between fixed and mobile services, operators can provide a convergent user experience. The third step is to implement ICT convergence. Speaking of VoLTE and VoWiFi, Albert emphasized three key factors for a successful go-to-market deployment – easy to deploy, easy to operate and maintain, and beyond the voice. Besides voice services, operators should develop video and enterprise communications services to expand their markets and derive value through capability exposure.

Albert Van Schalkwyk, manager of NW Transform&Planning of South Africa Telkom, explaining how to implement network evolution

Indonesia XL: Embracing Digital Transformation

Haris Chandra, general manager in charge of service operation management at Indonesia XL, shared XL's strategy for digital transformation. XL plans to implement the NFV technology to improve network, customer, and internal organization agility and speed up service provisioning. Haris then reviewed the company's collaboration with Huawei Packet Core Network and introduced three key points for XL to build the first NFV commercial network with 100 GB level traffic in the Asia Pacific. The first point is primary system integration, which requires XL to collaborate with technologically advanced vendors in the telecom industry. The second point is network reliability, that is, the NFV network must inherit the high reliability of the telecom network. The last point is network performance, with emphasis on commercial deployment of a network with a massive subscriber base.

Haris Chandra, general manager in charge of service operation management at Indonesia XL, talking about digital transformation

Britain SKY: Zero Service Interruption for Three Consecutive Years

As one of the biggest fixed network operators in the U.K., SKY has the largest fixed IMS network in Europe, serving more than 3.2 million subscribers. Because of its large-scale network and huge subscriber base, SKY is required by the U.K. government to keep its service interruption time under 20 seconds, putting great pressure on its NOC department. Oliver Henry Russell, operations manager of SKY, explained how SKY had achieved zero service interruption for three consecutive years. With extremely stringent network stability requirements, SKY adopted a 1+1+1+1 backup mode, established an independent IMS lab, and completely tested all version functions and important operations like upgrade before going live. Facing challenges such as complex IMS network architecture, high requirements for operation and maintenance, and difficulties in fault location, SKY deployed an emergency processing platform and collaborated with Huawei frontline engineers and remote maintenance experts to conduct routine troubleshooting drills. All these actions helped SKY achieve zero service interruption for three consecutive years.

Oliver Henry Russell, operations manager of SKY, sharing their experience in zero service interruption