28 November 2017

Mobile operator Three UK is said to be deploying the world’s first fully integrated cloud native core network with the claim that it will enable “massive scalability, elasticity and better reliability”. 

It’s hoped that the network, which leverages NFV and SDN, will give Three UK greater agility to rapidly respond to dynamic service demands while preparing for IoT and 5G, as well as provide high-quality services for its customers.

The company’s all-new Telco Cloud is based on the ETSI NFV MANO framework. It incorporates open source technologies such as Red Hat’s OpenStack platform, and is said to span several new “state-of-the-art” data centres architected for full geo-redundant high-availability.

Three UK will use MYCOM OSI’s Experience Assurance and Analytics (EAA) to monitor the network. EAA will assure both new virtualised and existing physical networks, and provide closed-loop assurance-driven orchestration based on end-to-end network and service quality.

MYCOM says its products will give the operator a single, integrated assurance suite that manages end-to-end network and service quality across all hybrid, carrier, and IT network domains. 

It adds that some of the key benefits for Three UK include: proactive and real-time surveillance; closed-loop assurance with policy- and analytics-driven auto-recovery and self-healing support; and a cloud-native and self-orchestrated assurance suite that is based on microservices architecture principles, containerisation, Big Data storage, elastic auto-scaling and agile DevOps deployment. 

According to Three, it currently carries 36 per cent of the UK’s mobile data traffic and its network covers 98 per cent of the population.