The upgrade means wholesale and enterprise customers can add capacity faster and more cost-effectively to meet future demand, as well as introduce new services and boost security at scale, said the company.
CTO Johan Wibergh (pictured) said: “This software upgrade gives us a single view on the section of the transport network connecting people and machines globally. It will allow us to provide even faster and more secure connectivity across Europe and to other regions.”
Vodafone said the network “serves hundreds of millions of users and third-party internet and content providers in 28 countries across four continents”.
The company said it directly applied software defined networking (SDN) to the multi-vendor parts of the global network that orchestrates all mobile and fixed data and voice traffic. “Specifically, Vodafone engineers applied the software to both the optical network, which converts data into light for transmission at very high speeds, and the internet protocol (IP) network that securely allows computers and devices to connect to the internet.”
Wibergh said: “We can continually and automatically adapt to dynamic peaks in traffic worldwide, whether they are due to people returning to the office or live streaming major sports events.”
The upgrade involves elements of the network from Juniper Networks, Ciena and Cisco. “Communication between these different vendor components is facilitated through open and standard industry protocols and APIs [application programming interfaces], creating a single, end-to-end SDN management layer,” said Vodafone.
It said the new technology “will lead to a network that is fully automated and programmable and behaves more like a super-computer”.
Data traffic over Vodafone’s fixed and mobile networks is growing by more than 15% per year. It said: “Through the introduction of advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence, the company will in the future be able to anticipate precisely where it is needed.”
