Idea Cellular and Vodafone India both using cloud-native core solution
As India’s booming mobile market continues to develop, Nokia is chalking up another win for its cloud-native core solution. The infrastructure vendor is working with operator Idea Cellular to deploy a cloud-native core as part of Idea’s larger digitalization strategy.
The cloud-native core technology will support voice and traffic on one platform, which has a straight line to operational costs. Idea CTO Anil Tandan said the investment will have an impact now and in the future. “As India prepares to define its path to 5G, we at Idea are building the foundation by adding Nokia’s cloud core capabilities,” he said. “This deployment will allow us to deliver a best-in-class network experience to our subscribers and significantly reduce the time required to introduce new services.“
On the product side, Idea is specifically using Nokia’s core, Cloud Mobility Manager, Cloud Mobile Gateway and CloudBand, an NFV/SDN software product that uses ETSI NFV MANO. Nokia’s Nitin Dahiya said the deployment “allows Idea to address the growing demand from both data and voice services to continue to evolve our business model and services.”
Back in June, Nokia worked with Vodafone India to deploy a cloud-native core and other infrastructure in Bangalore, a major Indian tech hub, to support nearly 8 million enterprise and consumer subscribers.
Vodafone India’s Technology Direct Vishant Vora noted the inherent scalability that comes with moving core functionality onto a cloud platform. With the deployment, the carrier can improve “business productivity and network operations. The introduction of a new architecture also enables us to reduce power consumption per customer in our goal to contribute positively to society.”
The tech stack involved includes the core, a cloud mobile gateway, services controller, security protocols, DNS and signaling equipment. The mobile gateway sets Voda up to quickly offer differentiated internet of things services.
According to Nokia research, in December 2017 82% of total data traffic was carrier over LTE networks with average monthly data usage of 11 GB per subscriber. The infrastructure vendor found that mobile data traffic increased 144% last year, with around 70% of mobile traffic supporting video services.
