09 March 2017

Ericsson’s virtualisation technology has been managing Vodafone Egypt’s mobile broadband traffic since October 2017.

Having selected Ericsson as its NFV partner, Vodafone Egypt has now gone live with the first commercial virtual network function in the Middle East and North Africa. 

Since October 2017, Ericsson’s virtual Serving GPRS Support Node – Mobility Management Entity (SGSN-MME) has been handling and managing commercial mobile broadband traffic on the cellco’s network.

The platform is said to support multi-access technologies such as GSM, WCDMA and LTE, and interworks with Wi-Fi.

Ericsson adds that it also provides full feature parity, and is agnostic to the underlying cloud system with support for both Open Stack and VMware. 

Vodafone Egypt’s network runs using a combination of virtual and native SGSN/MME in the same pool which, according to Ericsson, supports efficient capacity expansion.

The vendor claims its system extends network capabilities to meet even the “most aggressive” traffic growth predictions, and provides “superior scalability and capacity” so that operators can optimise their operations and manage the increasing volume of traffic from mobile broadband. 

“Virtualisation will enhance the speed and efficiency of services we provide to our customers which will in turn support our main goal to reach customer satisfaction,” says Osama Said, technology director, Vodafone Egypt.