Vasona Networks has announced that it is teaming up with Telefónica UK for a pilot deployment of its platforms for mobile network capacity, resource management and intelligence. The deployment follows successful trials allowing for real-time network traffic visibility resulting in active session management across individual cells to identify and resolve congestion issues.
“The trials conducted in advance of this deployment produced lessons learned that aligned across all customers we’ve worked with during the last 12 months,” said John Reister, VP of marketing and product management. “What was most surprising to us was the rapid increase of encrypted traffic on mobile networks.”
During the trials, Vasona Networks was able to address this trend by developing classification capabilities for that traffic in order to ensure the appropriate treatment of the data.
A different approach to optimizing RAN
How does Vasona Networks do this? Its approach to radio access network optimization is to address all traffic within a cell during a period of congestion. This is different across the market as many vendors tend to focus on a single type of traffic and reduce bits associated with that traffic at all times, instead of just when there is a congestion problem. As operators work to drive revenue based on increasing data consumption, this plays out as a challenge in keeping their network up to the task in a way that doesn’t consume all of their potential profits and result in happy end users. During the trial with Telefónica UK, Vasona Networks said it was able to help them achieve that goal, and the deployment is now live in addressing O2’s 3G service across 700 cell sites in central London.
According to Ken Rehbehn, principal analyst at 451 Research, “Vasona Network’s success at Telefónica is important because it reflects validation from a global tier-one operator that has a reputation for thinking differently, but moving carefully. Gaining a nod from a leading operator suggests Vasona Network’s approach is delivering real value by protecting the mobile network at peak load times. For operators, this translates into vital time to respond to growing traffic with added capital investments that, unfortunately, take time to realize. By being agnostic to the specific type of traffic flowing – video, HTTPS, Ipsec, etc. – the Vasona Network’s offer helps the operator cope with cell sites in crisis due to spikes in data load regardless of data source. Smoothing out traffic bursts without compromising the user traffic means end users enjoy a satisfying experience during heavy traffic periods and that translates into important protection for the operator’s brand reputation.”
Building on this statement, Vasona Networks explained that the end user shouldn’t actually feel that their solution is there. The outcome should be a feeling of the network being less crowded as there is a consistent level of performance even during busy times of the day.
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Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA for RCR Wireless News, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and security. Having experience as an operator, software and hardware vendor and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News.
