Manama, Bahrain (October 2017): VIVA Bahrain, the Kingdom’s innovative telecom operator and Huawei, the leading global ICT solutions provider, have successfully tested and deployed the world’s first ‘One Cloud Core’ network at VIVA Bahrain, merging the lanes that delivers data, voice, roaming and multimedia functions into one hybrid-model setup allowing for legacy and modern technologies to coexist.
The transformation project spanned 12 months and involved the deployment of state-of-the-art telco-grade servers with the highest computing power available in the market.The new network solution – which puts an end to long-known technology lifecycles – paves the way for easy, cost-efficient and continuous software updates across all core network domains. VIVA Bahrain being the only telecom operator in the world to implement this technology opens the door for a true cloud-based future, bringing Bahrain one step closer to implementing the latest generation network.
The long-term yield hybrid-model looks to reduce time to deploy new networking services to support changing customer requirements, capture new opportunities and improve existing services. It also allows VIVA to easily trial and evolve services to determine what best meets the needs of customers. Moreover, the solution allows VIVA to quickly scale up services to address changing demands and support IoT innovation services such as fleet management, e-health, smart meters among others.
Commenting on the deployment, Eng. Ulaiyan Al Wetaid, VIVA Bahrain CEO said, “The deployment of ‘One Cloud Core’ network with Huawei Technologies has put Bahrain at the front of technological innovation. This will accelerate VIVA Bahrain’s network transformation with greater flexibility and scalability – and generate opportunities to deploy new technologies and services while maintaining the efficiency of our network operations.
“This step will set the foundation for further milestones in evolving operational capabilities to serve the coming latest generation network in 2020 with our partner Huawei Technologies,” added Ulaiyan Al Wetaid.
“Network Function Virtualization offers efficient use of the core network infrastructure compared to other platforms, creating more space to provide agile network and services, and delivering a better network experience overall,” said Paul Fengnan, CEO of Huawei Bahrain. “It helps simplify and automate service providers’ NFV operations, delivers applications and services faster to support user experience needs and provides a robust solution with carrier-grade performance, availability, security, and scalability. This is a ready-to-go, fully integrated and tested infrastructure.”
Senior representatives from VIVA Bahrain and Huawei met at Huawei Headquarters in Shenzen to mark the achievement of this worldwide breakthrough.
Source: VIVA Bahrain Press Release