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
