Nokia announced that Ooredoo Tunisia will deploy the Nokia AirGile cloud-native core and services to power its current 2G/3G/4G network in order to prepare for the transition to 5G.
Ooredoo Tunisia is the country’s biggest mobile operator with 8.8 million subscribers and 40% market share. Data use, excluding voice-only subscribers, has more than doubled over the last four years and is expected to triple by 2025 — driven largely by smartphone adoption and video usage, with a fivefold increase since 2015.
The new virtualized core infrastructure will harness the scalability, automation and agility afforded with cloud-native network solutions to reduce operational costs; boost the responsiveness of the network to escalating data and video demand, and speed the development of new services for the Tunisian consumer and enterprise markets. The cloud-native mobile core will make services more affordable and responsive to demand, in terms of both capacity and bringing innovative services to subscribers faster.
As a part of Nokia’s end-to-end 5G offering, Nokia’s cloud-native core solution is essential to running a 5G network and can be deployed in 4G networks today. The cloudification network elements allow rapid scaling in real-time to meet immediate capacity demands for consumers and enterprises, including time-sensitive services for enterprise automation or support for industrial internet of things (IIoT) sensors and devices; as well as innovative voice services, such as voice over LTE (VoLTE) and voice over broadband (VoBB). This will lead to the significant improvement of phone calls, as they move from 2G/3G networks to 4G, and eventually 5G.
The Nokia solution deployed as part of this agreement by Ooredoo Tunisia include:
- Nokia AirGile cloud-native core, which includes VoLTE and Packet Core products;
- Nokia’s engineered Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI), built using Nokia AirFrame cloud infrastructure, Nokia CloudBand cloud management and orchestration stack; and
- Nokia Nuage Networks’ software-defined networking (SDN).
Hatem Mestiri, CTO for Ooredoo Tunisia, said: “Deploying the cloud-native mobile core from Nokia is about preparing Ooredoo to meet future customer demands. It will enable us to be more agile in our response to their needs for everything from video capacity to VoLTE services. And it will enable us to offer them advanced 5G services such as support for industrial automation and IoT as these exciting technologies come to the Tunisian market.”
Pierre Chaume, Head of the North and West Africa Market Unit at Nokia, said: “Ooredoo Tunisia is a pioneer in North Africa in moving its core network to the cloud. It will streamline and automate its operations, enable Ooredoo to use software development to speed new services to market, and make it far more responsive to the needs of its consumer and enterprise customers. By also preparing for the transition to 5G, the steps that Ooredoo Tunisia is taking to modernize its network will ensure that it continues to lead in the delivery of advanced services to the Tunisian market.”