Altice, a cable, fiber, telecom and media company with 50 million customers, has tapped Cisco to build a network function virtualization (NFV) platform.
SFR, Altice’s French subsidiary, is already working with Cisco and its tech partner RedHat for the NFV platform.
The strategy and target of Altice is to transform its business operations with new network architectures to grow revenue, lower costs and improve customer retention.
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Altice aims to speed time to market for new services across its global footprint by virtualizing key network functions.
SFR, Altice’s French subsidiary, has already made investment in the transformation of the mobile packet core infrastructure with an NFV platform architected to support multiple vendors. The technology solution is based on Red Hat OpenStack Platform, in combination with Cisco networking, virtualization and data center compute solutions.
“We are focused on innovating faster and taking bold leaps to transform our network operations, providing our customers with experiences beyond mobile that no one else can match,” said Philippe Le May, SFR CTO, Altice Group.
SFR benefits from virtualized mobile network platform
Operational excellence: A solution that can flexibly and rapidly scale to deliver on the virtualization promise
Agility: Shorter solution deployment time and agility to provide new services by deploying new specific virtualized network functions (VNF) as part of an existing or new service chain
CAPEX efficiency and cost control: Significant savings through greater automation; offering better ways to invest capital moving forward
Improved workflows: Virtualization is allowing teams to be more agile in the way they collaborate, ending organization siloes
SFR has a roadmap in place for 2017 to virtualize additional mobile services, utilizing its Cisco-based SDN/NFV core platform.
With 50 percent of the mobile traffic already running on its virtualized platform and 80 percent planned by end of 2017, SFR is well under way in executing on its strategy.
The SFR implementation gives Altice the justification to consider similar virtualization deployments throughout its operating companies. This transition can also help Altice converge all mobile packet core services spanning 2G-4G networks into a single virtualized solution, and prepare a smooth transition toward 5G.
“Our strategy is to enable customers’ success at growing both profits and revenues by connecting new services and virtualized applications to networks and clouds,” said Yves Padrines, vice president, Global Service Provider EMEAR, Cisco.
“Red Hat OpenStack Platform enables Altice to create an agile, flexible, and scalable NFV cloud that can meet its modernization goals and deliver new, differentiating services to its customers,” said Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager, OpenStack, Red Hat.
