Telefonica has signed a framework agreement to use performance assurance technology from Accedian across its global footprint. The agreement forms part of Telefonica’s requirement to access more relevant, timely data about the performance of the network so that it can move to new operational and service models.
The operator has been using Accedian’s products in South America, notably Vivo in Brazil, since 2012 and has now engaged at the Group CTO level to standardise the use of Accedian’s instrumentation and reporting through the group.
Accedian’s solution is formed of element-based agents – either embedded by the NEP or deployed as small plug-ins – that can carry out live one-way tests for validation, set-up and monitoring of performance across the network. By reporting the test information up into service and network monitoring systems the instrumentation gives near real time visibility into network performance. Service providers can then use that to assure specific quality parameters required by a service, thereby monitoring different Classes of Service across a multi-vendor, multi-domain network.
Existing solutions either exist in a vendor-specific manner, or on a per-technology basis. Correlating all of that to gain an end to end view of a service across core, backhaul and then radio can involve crunching together huge amounts of data. Or it may simply be that operators don’t have the information they need to see if a specific service is operating correctly – with visibility into performance limited to generic performance data of elements. Accedian’s pitch is that its methodology enables operators to get more granular, time sensitive information about the specific parameters required by classes of service – across multiple domains and vendor environments.
For instance, Accedian customer Vivo now tiers network traffic over eight classes of service (CoS) to each base station, in order to ensure voice and critical signaling traffic are properly prioritised. Accedian’s performance assurance solutions monitor each CoS independently, ensuring the network maintains and optimises the QoS of each service flow, end-to-end.
Better instrumentation a precursor to the next generation
David Dial, VP International Sales, Accedian, said that SK Telecom and Telefonica, two of the 18 top 20 global MNOs to have announced they are working with Accedian, both view the deployment of Accedian’s instrumentation and reporting as a precursor to the deployment of next generation core and radio networks.
“We are providing information about performance that doesn’t exist in the market today. So it’s not overlapping [existing systems] it’s additive. There’s a gap between the requirement for more sensitive performance parameters and gaining visibility into the performance information that can be used to satisfy these parameters. That means accessing very granular performance information on a network from the access point all the way back to the customer, and reporting that information in a timely way.
“Accedian gives them [operators] information to go along with other information they have to do correlation, feeding SDN, SON and those big data analytics that everyone is working towards. So it’s a very important piece that doesn’t exist today,” Dial said.
Dial said that Telefonica is firming up its budgets for next year but he expected to see Accedian’s solutions be further deployed across Telefonica’s footprint, including in Europe, from next year.
“We already have business with them: by working in conjunction with the global CTO office this framework agreement ensures that across Telefonica properties there’s a common look and feel on the benefits, and then each individual property has to operationalise that.”
