Telefónica selects Huawei to build virtual EPC network in 13 countries

Spanish telco Telefónica has contracted Huawei to virtualize its 4G networks in 13 countries as part of its UNICA program.

The Spanish telco said the two companies are building a large scale virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC), an industry-approve framework for providing converged voice and data on 4G LTE networks, in Latin America and Europe.

The vEPC network will cover 11 countries in Latin America:  Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, México, Colombia, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala; and two in Europe: Germany and Spain.

Telefónica will be using Huawei’s vEPC solution, called CloudEPC, that will allow the operator “to build agile networks that quickly scale to match the performance demands of new services”, the companies said in the statement.

Telefónica and Huawei have been jointly working and testing Huawei CloudEPC performance, in Telefónica’s NFV Reference Lab in Madrid. During the test, Huawei CloudEPC showed one of the best performances in both data and signaling planes by good cloud-formation architecture and by using EPA (Enhanced Platform Awareness) technologies.

The companies are currently testing the onboarding of the CloudEPC solution over Telefónica´s UNICA infra cloud platform that will allow full automatization of the vEPC deployments and life cycle management within Telefónica networks.

“This large scale vEPC network deployment is a further step within the Telefónica UNICA virtualization program where a smooth migration to UNICA infra cloud capabilities will be reached following extensive test in Telefónica Lab,” Javier Gavilán, planning and technology director at Telefonica said.

“These results provide the confidence needed to continue with the adoption and deployment of virtualized solutions and to enable the transformation to software-driven networking.”