Ooredoo Tunisia, which has 8.8 million subscribers and 40 percent market share, 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.
Mobile data use, excluding voice-only subscribers, of Ooredoo Tunisia customers 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.

Nokia said 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.

Nokia said its cloud-native core solution is essential to running a 5G network and can be deployed in 4G networks today. The cloudification network elements allow scaling of 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.

Ooredoo Tunisia will deploy 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).

Ooredoo Tunisia CTO Hatem Mestiri 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.”