Telstra (News - Alert) provides telecommunications and information services in Australia, currently operating the largest mobile and Wi-Fi networks in the country. Outside of the country, the company also offers global connectivity, cloud, voice, colocation, conferencing, managed network services, and satellite solutions with access to more than 2,000 points of presence around the world. And in this context, Telstra has a new initiative it calls the “Network of the Future” for future Web-scale networking projects. And in order to make it happen, the company announced it has selected Ericsson for some of the key transformation programs, including 5G, IoT and cloud, at Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) (MWC) in Barcelona.
Ericsson brings global scalability with more than 111,000 experts providing innovative solutions and services to customers in 180 countries. Combined, both companies will empower organizations around the world to take advantage of the opportunities a more connected future will offer.
The programs Ericsson (News - Alert) has been selected for include: a nationwide optical network transformation and expansion; conducting 5G new radio trials that will lead to the readiness of 5G launches; a cloud platform for media delivery that will complement an existing Telco Cloud project currently carrying live traffic; and the deployment of the largest Internet of things (IoT) network in Australia with Cat M1 functionality.
Ericsson is going to be supplying, installing and integrating the next generation of converged packet-optical solutions from Ciena and the Web-scale networking technology it provides. Ciena's 6500 Family, for example, has the ability to scale from 100 Gb/s to 500 Gb/s per slot with multiple chassis form factors, from a compact 2RU, up to full rack sizes.
For Ericsson, this will be a three-year optical transmission network and rollout plan to expand Telstra's long haul, metro and regional optical networks. And according to Ericsson, this will be the foundation for Telstra's fixed and mobile networks. With this system in place, Telstra will be able to support critical IoT and 5G traffic, along with cloud and media services, while addressing the resiliency, speed and security it will need for services with high bandwidth demand.
Mike Wright, Telstra Group Managing Director, Networks, said, “Our expanded optical network will support important emerging network capabilities such as IoT, 5G and enhanced media delivery. And our move to virtualization through the Telco and Media Cloud projects will enable us to deliver our customers unique and differentiated services to meet their personal and business needs.”
The 5G NR specifications being developed by 3GPP are going to be the basis of the global standard, and Ericsson, Telstra and Qualcomm (News - Alert) Technologies will be carrying out interoperability testing and an over-the-air field trial with the goal of driving the 5G ecosystem towards Web-scale networking.
The other program is going to be Telstra's Network Function Virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) to enable the first video call over a virtualized network function, the Evolved Packed Gateway (News - Alert) (EPG). This will be followed by Australia's first national IoT network deployed with Cat-M1 capability so Telstra can launch comprehensive IoT applications to accelerate the growth of Australia's IoT ecosystem.
Edited by Alicia Young