Having selected Ericsson as its Network Function Virtualization partner, Vodafone Egypt has gone live with the first commercial virtual network function in the Middle East. Since October 2016, Ericsson's virtual Serving GPRS Support Node - Mobility Management Entity (SGSN-MME) has been serving and managing commercial mobile broadband traffic on the Vodafone Egypt network.
The Ericsson virtual SGSN-MME supports multi-access technologies such as GSM, WCDMA and LTE, and interworks with Wi-Fi. It provides full feature parity, and is agnostic to the underlying cloud system with support for both Open stack and VMware. Based on the leading Ericsson pooling concept, Vodafone Egypt network runs using a combination of virtual and native SGSN/MME in the same pool, supporting efficient capacity expansion.
Ericsson said that the SGSN-MME extends network capabilities to meet even the most aggressive traffic growth predictions. It provides superior scalability and capacity so that operators can optimize their operations and manage the increasing volume of traffic from mobile broadband.
Osama Said, Technology Director, Vodafone Egypt
We are happy to be working with Ericsson to take forward steps towards our Network Function Virtualization. The virtualization technology will enhance the speed and efficiency of services we provide to our customers. which will in turn support our main goal to reach customer satisfaction.
Rafiah Ibrahim, Head of Region Middle East and East Africa, Ericsson
Utilizing the virtual SGSN technology will be the first step in Vodafone Egypt's journey towards virtualization and cloud transformation. Operators are looking for ways to increase capacity and achieve efficiencies; today's agreement will enable Vodafone Egypt to achieve these goals.
