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.

Rest Of Europe

1. Deutsche Telekom (DT): Companies part of this group -T-Mobile, Telekom

Virtualization Journey/Status:

In 2016, DT group decided to build a modular Pan European Network (PAN-NET) on which services can be offered to all countries as building blocks/modules. This PAN-NET was not exactly DT's virtualization attempt however it was a start towards that direction.
PAN-NET allowed DT’s subsidiaries to pick individual services that suit their local needs and the parent ability to offer new services throughout Europe “within just a few days”.
In 2019, DT decided to build a cloud native 5G Core that will support all its European markets. Beyond 2020, DT aims to have standalone 5G core built using kubernetes with the edge sites running as Kubelets.
For the 5G Core DT will be using Open source technologies and is working with Common NFVI Telco Taskforce to decide the infrastructure which would typically be Openstack based.
In Feb 2020, DT announced partnership with VMWare & Intel on an open and intelligent virtual RAN (vRAN) platform, based on O-RAN standards for supporting 4G & future 5G traffic.
Also in Feb 2020, T-Mobile CZ and Slovak Telekom Selected Mavenir for Their Next-Generation NFV-Based Harmonized IMS
In June 2020 Mavenir announced that it had completed RCS interconnection with the networks of Telefónica(3 markets), Vodafone(13 markets) and Deutsche Telekom Germany.
Also,Mavenir confirmed in June 2020 that it has successfully tested with DT its standalone 5G Core.
Hrvatski Telekom Croatia selected Ericsson as sole 5G RAN supplier in June 2020 which is the first 5G deal in Croatia.

5G News:

DT, Telefonica, Vodafone agreed in Nov 2019 to share 6K new cell sites in Germany. In May 2020,Vodafone & DT started discussions for a new 5G network-sharing agreement.
In Feb 2020, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Nokia and Qualcomm collaborated to validate end-to-end network slicing from device to core based on a multi-vendor platform using integrated Standalone 5G New Radio and 5G Core.
In July 2020, DT selected Ericsson for 5G RAN in Germany.
5G has been launched by DT in below countries:

Poland in 2018
Austria in March 2019
Hungary in April 2020
Germany in June 2020

As of June 2021, DT has switched on ORAN-Town in Neubrandenburg. ORAN town is DT's multi vendor ORAN network that will provide 4G & 5G Services to 25 sites. The ORAN town is built using equipment from vendor partners Dell, Fujitsu, Intel, Mavenir, NEC and Supermicro. In the setup NEC is providing the radio units, while Mavenir is taking care of the container-based centralized unit and distributed units of the disaggregated RAN as a software.
The setup is built on Intel FlexRAN software architecture with - The remote radio units (O-RU) are provided by Fujitsu and NEC; Mavenir provides the Cloud-Native baseband software for the 4G and 5G distributed units (O-DU) and central units (O-CU), including for the mMIMO radio units; standard server hardware provided by Dell and Supermicro.

2. Telefonica Group: Companies part of this group - Movistar, O2

Virtualization Journey/Status:

Telefonica launched its NFV program called "UNICA" in 2015 which was to be applicable for all its locations.
As part of the UNICA Program Telefonica initially selected HP OpenNFV platform stack with carrier grade HP Helion OpenStack technology but later decided to change the Infrastructure partner to Ericsson.As part of the project Ericsson was tasked to supply the new Hyperscale Datacenter System 8000, Ericsson Cloud Manager, OpenStack based Cloud Execution Environment, Cloud SDN and automation required for the project.
In 2019, Telefonica added Wind River's Titanium cloud virtualization platform as a virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM) for NFV workloads in UNICA.
On the VNFs front, Telefonica selected Huawei in 2017 to deploy virtual EPC in Germany and Spain along with 11 countries in Latin America.Along with Huawei, Telefonica Deutschland selected Mavenir's virtualized IMS solution.
Telefonica Spain along with Huawei, added Oracle's Virtualized SBC & Nokia’s SDN, NFV and core routing capabilities to transform the IP core network.
In June 2020 Mavenir announced that it had completed RCS interconnection with the networks of Telefónica(3 markets), Vodafone(13 markets) and Deutsche Telekom Germany

5G News:

DT, Telefonica, Vodafone agreed in Nov 2019 to share 6K new cell sites in Germany.
In 2020, Telefonica selected Nokia & Huawei for 5G RAN in Germany with Ericsson building its 5G core network on it for private & business customers.
Further in September 2020, Telefonica Germany added AWS for virtualizing its 5G Core. Ericsson will be providing 5G core and orchestration components while all the data will remain exclusively on AWS servers in Germany to ensure cloud security and to comply with data protection laws.
In Spain, Telefonica selected Huawei to build its 5G core network. Also for 2 cities of Spain Nokia & Ericsson were selected to deploy the 5G RAN.
O2 Czech Republic launched 5G in 1 city in June 2019 and further started expansion in June 2020 using 5G network of Ericsson. Also Nokia & Huawei 5G networks are being used in 5G Trial.
Telefonica turned on 5G site in Spain in September 2020 but commercial users are expected in Oct/Nov2020 .
5G is expected to go live in Germany on 8th October.
Telefonica added Juniper's vSRX & cSRX firewalls for its 5G back-haul setup.
In September 2021, Telefonica announced creation of its first ever cloud-native, 5G Core Network Platform UNICA Next using IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation, Red Hat OpenShift, and Juniper Networks Apstra and QFX technology aligned to deliver streamlined end-to-end orchestration and operations. UNICA Next data centers are planned to be deployed starting in October 2021 and its scalable architecture is designed to address ETSI and other relevant industry standards.

3. Vodafone :

Virtualization Journey/Status:

Vodafone operators in different European cities started deploying Virtualization in their setups around 2015.
In 2015, Vodafone Germany launched virtualized VoLTE along with Mavenir while Vodafone Italy deployed with Huawei.
Vodafone Netherlands, Vodafone Spain, Vodafone Czech Republic deployed virtualized VoLTE solution in 2016 using Ericsson's solution.
In 2016, Vodafone group selected Affirmed's vEPC for M2M in Germany & Spain.
In September 2017, Vodafone group partnered with VMware to setup its vCloud NFV virtual infrastructure management platform including the vSphere server virtualization system and NSX management and security suite in its European countries.
Vodafone updated its strategy in April 2019 to expand from only NFV SDN to establishing Telco Cloud strategy based where vCloud NFV supports Openstack infrastructure as well as Kubernetes. VMware was again tasked with this cloud deployment along with Juniper Networks, Mirantis, and Nuage Networks.
By April 2020. the VMWare vCloud NFV was deployed across 21 of Vodafone's markets and all of its European businesses.
Ericsson 5G cloud packet core was selected for 5G deployments in Germany, Netherlands, Portugal & Spain. In Vodafone Italy, 5G cloud packet core from Nokia was selected.
In June 2020 Mavenir announced that it had completed RCS interconnection with the networks of Telefónica(3 markets), Vodafone(13 markets) and Deutsche Telekom Germany

5G News:

In order to expedite deployment of 5G network sharing agreements have been made in number of countries to share the towers/RAN etc in specific areas of the countries. Some of the agreements are:

Vodafone, Orange signed new mobile and fixed network sharing deal in Spain in April 2019.
Vodafone finalized network sharing partnership with Telecom Italia and agreed to combine Italian towers with INWIT in July 2019.
Vodafone Portugal and NOS announced Feb 2020 that they have signed a Letter of Intent in relation to a potential nationwide partnership for mobile network sharing, thus ensuring increased efficiency and speed on the coverage of the country.
DT, Telefonica, Vodafone agreed in Nov 2019 to share 6K new cell sites in Germany. In May 2020,Vodafone started discussions with DT for new 5G network-sharing talks.

5G has been launched by Vodafone group in below countries:

Spain in June 2019 using 5G Network from Ericsson & Huawei
Italy in June 2019 using 5G Network from Nokia & Huawei
Romania in June 2019 using 5G network from Ericsson & Huawei
Germany in July 2019 using 5G Network from Ericsson & Huawei in NSA mode followed by Standalone 5G in April 2021 using Ericsson.
Ireland in August 2019 using Ericsson's 5G network
Netherlands in April 2020 using Ericsson's 5G network

4. Orange :

Virtualization Journey/Status:

Orange in 2017 decided vendors for its multinational NFV deployment. Orange selected Red Hat Openstack, Juniper Network's Contrail solution for the SDN controller and hardware from HPE & Dell Networking. VNFs would run on this above setup.
Orange group partnered with Nokia in 2017 for 5G Services.
Orange Poland adopted ONAP as MANO solution.

5G News:

In order to expedite deployment of 5G network sharing agreements have been made in number of countries to share the towers/RAN etc in specific areas of the countries. Some of the agreements are:

Vodafone, Orange signed new mobile and fixed network sharing deal in Spain in April 2019.
Orange Belgium and Proximus signed a term sheet today to enter into a mobile access network sharing agreement by the end of the 2019.

5G has been launched by Orange in only Romania so far in November 2019.
Orange selected Nokia & Ericsson for 5G launch in France.
5G Test network launched in Poland with Ericsson.
Orange Slovensko selected Nokia for 5G RAN
In Spain, Orange added ZTE in addition to Ericsson & Huawei for 5G

5. Telenor : Telenor/DNA

Virtualization Journey/Status:

Telenor group started virtualization towards end of 2015 by selecting a multi vendor environment. The environment is made of Red Hat Linux/KVM/Red Hat Openstack as NFVI and VNFs from Ericsson, Nokia & Huawei.
For the 5G core in Denmark, Sweden & Norway, Nokia Cloud Native core offerings & Ericssons 5G Core network offerings were selected to align with the multi vendor strategy.
Telenor Finland (DNA) also selected Affirmed's virtual NSA & SA solutions for its enterprise 5G offerings.

5G News:

In order to expedite deployment of 5G network sharing agreements have been made in number of countries to share the towers/RAN etc in specific areas of the countries. Some of the agreements are:

Finnish telecom operators Telia, Elisa and Telenor-owned DNA decided to share new 5G spectrum in June 2020.
Nokia, Telenor and Telia create the world’s most advanced shared wireless network in Denmark

5G has been launched by Telenor in Norway only so far in March 2020 using Ericsson's 5G Network.
5G testing is currently underway in Finland with Ericsson & Denmark with Nokia by Telenor Group. Sweden 5G launch is expected later in 2020.

6. Telecom Italia(TIM) :

Virtualization Journey/Status:

TIM started considering NFV in 2015 and between 2015-2017 deployed production grade Red Hat Openstack solution in its Data along with VNFs from Ericsson of vEPC, vIMS, optimization of mobile traffic and VoLTE management
In 2018, TIM deployed Ericsson's vRAN solution in Turin which will be used for future 5G support.

5G News:

In order to expedite deployment of 5G network sharing agreements have been made in number of countries to share the towers/RAN etc in specific areas of the countries. Vodafone finalised network sharing partnership with Telecom Italia and agreed to combine italian towers with INWIT in July 2019.
TIM launched 5G in Italy in July 2019 using 5G network & Cloud Core from Ericsson.
In June 2021, TIM announced that they are working on launching first "5G Cloud Network" in Italy, where Ericsson is working with Google Cloud. The project plans to use TIM’s Telco Cloud infrastructure, Google’s Cloud solutions and Ericsson’s 5G Core network and Automation technologies.

7. Swisscom :

Virtualization Journey/Status:

Swisscom in 2016 selected Ericsson to transform its core network in Switzerland through the deployment of a telco cloud infrastructure and virtual network functions of its mobile core.
As part of the transformation Ericsson was required to provide a range of solutions, including Ericsson Hyperscale Datacenter System 8000, Cloud Execution Environment (Based on Openstack & OPNFV), Cloud SDN and Cloud Manager. The cloud solutions were chosen with target of being extendable to 5G in future.
For Swisscom's TV and Media Services, HPE's Openstack based NFV cloud developed for running virtualized and containerized TV media functions such as transcoding, streaming, and hosting backend applications.

5G News:

Swisscom launched 5G in April 2019 using 5G network & Cloud Core from Ericsson.By Dec 2019, 90% 5G coverage has been achieved by the operator.
In June 2021, AWS was selected by Swisccomm as their cloud vendor of choice. As part of their digital tranformation they will migrate a wide range of core applications that power its enterprise resource planning, operational support system (OSS), business support system (BSS), analytics, contact center, and communications provisioning workloads.
Also Swiscomm will investigate migration of 5G core & 5G RAN to a hybrid cloud setup involving AWS.

Disclaimer:

The details presented above is based on data available online.The references used are available on: https://matelecom.blogspot.com/p/references-road-to-network_22.html

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