Telecom industry interesting news & developments

This post is continuation of the " Road to Network Cloudification " series where we have been looking at the virtualization journey so far, status & 5G related news of some of the major Operators in the region being discussed. After looking at US,Canada , India , UK & Rest of Europe , I came across documents of NFV Reference Architectures and it only made sense to share them as well so that anyone interested in understanding the journey can get a feel & flavor of what the operators are deploying in their attempts to virtualize / cloudify their network.  Last Updated:20th July 2020.

Network Transformation: TM Forum's Open API & Open Digital Architecture (ODA) Majority global operators have been on the journey towards network transformation / cloudification for only 4-5 yrs now and due to challenges and complexities involved with network virtualization and cloudification, relatively very less progress has been made. However the speed of transformation has caught pace globally in the last 2 yrs as most operators plan for implementing 5G in their networks. In order to ease the transition , many open source projects and industry associations have got created over the years with goal of easing virtualization journey for vendors & operators. One such industry association who has been leading the efforts for Digital Business Transformation has been TM Forum. 2 initiatives of TM Forum to ease network transformation include OpenAPIs & Open Digital Architecture(ODA).

Road to Network Cloudification: Europe This is the 4th post part of the " Road to Network Cloudification " series where our focus is on summarizing the virtualization journey so far, status & 5G related news of some of the major Operators in the region being discussed. In the earlier articles we have looked at US,Canada , India & UK . The hyperlinks will take to the post of the respective regions. In this post we will be looking into some of the major operators for rest of the Europe Region .   Note: As of 21st August, 2020 have started a new post with summary table capturing all regions, the operators from these post and their NFV ecosystem and 5G status.  URL: https://matelecom.blogspot.com/2020/08/road-to-network-cloudification-summary-table.html    Last Updated: 4th January 2022.

Road to Network Cloudification: UK This is the 3rd post part of the " Road to Network Cloudification " series where the focus is on summarizing the virtualization journey so far, status & 5G related news of some of the major Operators in the region being discussed. In the earlier articles we have looked at US,Canada & India . In this post we will be looking into UK Region . Note: As of 21st August, 2020 have started a new post with summary table capturing all regions, the operators from these post and their NFV ecosystem and 5G status.  URL: https://matelecom.blogspot.com/2020/08/road-to-network-cloudification-summary-table.html      Last Updated: 4th January 2022.

Road to Network Cloudification: India " Road to Network Cloudification " : Series focusing on summarizing the virtualization journey so far, current status & 5G related news of some of the major Operators in a region/country.  In the last article we had looked at US & Canada . In this post we are now looking into  India .   Note: As of 21st August, 2020 have started a new post with summary table capturing all regions, the operators from these post and their NFV ecosystem and 5G status.  URL: https://matelecom.blogspot.com/2020/08/road-to-network-cloudification-summary-table.html    Last Updated: 4th Jan 2022.

Road to Network Cloudification: USA & CANADA " Road to Network Cloudification " : Series focusing on summarizing the virtualization journey so far, current status & 5G related news of some of the major Operators in a region/country.  Will be starting the series with focus on USA & Canada.   Note: As of 21st August, 2020 have started a new post with summary table capturing all regions, the operators from these post and their NFV ecosystem and 5G status.  URL: https://matelecom.blogspot.com/2020/08/road-to-network-cloudification-summary-table.html   Last Updated: 4th Jan 2022

Major Telecom Service providers Worldwide As part of this article, I have tried capturing list of the major Telecom Operators Globally. I will be trying to keep track of the latest developments in these regions & in some of thees operators from the perspective of Network Cloudification & 5G Deployments in this blog. I have captured the Mobile Network operators for some of the major countries below. For the remaining countries in the geographical regions (Americas, Middle East & Africa, Asia, Australia & New Zealand) I have captured the major players generally there instead of against each and every country specifically. Asia India Airtel Vodafone Idea Reliance Jio Singapore Singtel Starhub M1 South Korea SK Telecom Korea Telecom LG UPlus Thailand AIS TrueMove H DTAC Japan Rakuten Mobile (New) NTT docomo au by KDDI Softbank (formerly Vodafone) Malaysia Maxis Digi Celcom Indonesia Axiata (XL Axiata) Ooredoo (Indosat) PT Telkomsel Vietnam Viettel Vinaphone MobiFone Gtel

Telecom Network Evolution in Last decade (2011-2020): Legacy to Network Cloudification The Telecom Network space has changed immensely in the last decade and the journey towards network cloudification  has been definitely very interesting to watch with massive adoption globally in recent years. Network Cloudification at a very high level is basically converting actual network functions(routers,firewall, Evolved Packet Core(EPC), IP Multimedia Subsystem(IMS),etc) into a software package and deploying them on a network cloud (public, private, hybrid,on premise) running using commercial IT servers. Having been part of the Telecom industry for more than 9yrs, I have been fortunate to work on legacy setup as well as Telco NFV & Cloud environment during this tenure with focus on Telco technologies & use cases like 4G LTE, Voice Over LTE (VoLTE), virtualized enterprise offerings and 5G lately. Starting in the industry back in 2011 I was introduced to the Legacy network setup