The system will use virtualised network functions (VNFs) to update or add new functions, and to manage and allocate voice capacity in the network.
“This approach is almost revolutionary,” says Walter Goldenits (pictured), head of technology at Telekom Deutschland, Deutsche Telekom’s German operating subsidiary “Within a few months, we have managed to create a completely new system and put it into operation.”
Juniper Networks has provided the cloud infrastructure and is the prime integrator, said the company, and other vendors are Red Hat, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Lenovo, Mavenir and Metaswitch.
It is an open platform, and Deutsche Telekom said it expects to expand this list of technology partners as the demand for services grows.
It’s calling the platform NIMS, an abbreviation for “next generation IP multimedia subsystem” – apparently an extension of IP multimedia subsystem (IMS), which excited the industry a decade ago.
Deutsche Telekom said its new platform “uses open standards and interfaces, allowing hardware and software independence. Infrastructure and applications from completely different manufacturers can be combined and individual blocks can be exchanged more easily.”
The NIMS platform accepts fixed network calls and delivers them to the right place, said the company.
“In a pilot phase, the Telekom fixed network team put the new system through its paces, where technicians successfully handled more than 100 million voice calls.”
They tested calls within Deutsche Telekom’s network and into other networks. “The rollout of the platform for interconnections will continue step by step over the coming months with support from the technology partners for the NIMS platform.”
The company added that, “with the virtualisation of interconnect traffic, Deutsche Telekom has taken an important step towards network modernisation and will continue driving forward the cloudification and automation of voice telephony.”
