Vodafone's effort to get silicon for telco

This as an exciting time for semiconductors, says Santiago Tenorio, which is why his company, Vodafone, wants to exploit this period to benefit the radio access network (RAN), the most costly part of the wireless network for telecom operators.

The telecom operators want greater choice when buying RAN equipment.

Santiago Tenorio

As Tenorio, a Vodafone Fellow (the company’s first) and its network architecture director, notes, there were more than ten wireless RAN equipment vendors 15 years ago. Now, in some parts of the world, the choice is down to two.

“We were looking for more choice and that is how [the] Open RAN [initiative] started,” says Tenorio. “We are making a lot of progress on that and creating new options.”

But having more equipment suppliers is not all: the choice of silicon inside the equipment is also limited.

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The Blue Planet platform's ongoing automation journey

Vodafone UK is one operator that has recently chosen Ciena's Blue Planet for the management of its optical and IP networks. An interview with Ciena to understand what the Blue Planet network automation tool does.

Having some knowledge of a telco's operations helps in understanding the role of a network automation platform. So says Kevin Wade, senior director and product marketing team leader at Ciena Blue Planet.

Source: Ciena

Service providers, like any business, have an operational infrastructure that begins with business processes. For a service provider, the process starts with a connectivity service request. The business processes capture the customer's order and deliver the requested service.

Once up and running, the service must be monitored and managed to ensure the service level agreement is upheld.

"Today, these processes are highly manual," says Wade. "Automation is being looked at and deployed more extensively to simplify these processes."

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Europe gets its first TWDM-PON field trial

Vodafone is conducting what is claimed to be the first European field trial of a multi-wavelength passive optical networking system using access equipment from Alcatel-Lucent. 

Source: Alcatel-Lucent

The time- and wavelength-division multiplexed passive optical network (TWDM-PON) technology being used is a next-generation access scheme that follows on from 10 gigabit GPON (XG-PON1) and 10 gigabit EPON. 

“There appears to be much more 'real' interest in TWDM-PON than in 10G GPON,” says Julie Kunstler, principal analyst, components at Ovum. 

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Will LTE lead to new revenues for the operators?

The opportunities and challenges the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard poses for mobile operators. An article for the Mobile World Congress show for the magazine Informilo, click here.