Mavenir’s voice, text and multimedia services ‘purpose-built for fully automated cloud environments’
Mavenir announced Thursday that Telefónica Hispam (Hispanoamérica) has selected the company to supply IP Multimedia System (IMS) Core services for fixed and mobile networks in Mexico, Colombia, and Chile. The IMS Core solution will be deployed on TCloud, the companies said. TCloud is Telefónica’s own private telco cloud infrastructure, providing cloud-native core voice, messaging and multimedia functions in Telefónica’s Latin America deployments.
Mavenir says its cloud-native IMS is “purpose-built for fully automated cloud environments.” The cloud-native suite provides zero-touch network automation (ZTNA) and a fully containerized app environment for more effective scaling and agility as Communication Service Providers (CSPs) move to 5G services, according to the company.
Javier Gavilan, Mavenir’s CTO CALA region, said that Mavenir’s IMS Core solution is already in use by O2 Telefónica in Germany and Virgin Mobile O2 in the UK.
“Mavenir’s cloud-native IMS Core can be deployed on any cloud eliminating legacy hardware platforms,” he explained.
For Telefónica, the move to IMS Core will help accelerate its network modernization efforts. Alejandro Ghianni, Planification and Engineering Director at Telefónica Hispam, explained that virtualized software architectures need core services scalable to both both Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and Voice over 5G (Vo5G) — something Mavenir’s IMS Core provides.
Telefónica’s Latin America infrastructure buildout took an interesting turn in June with news that subsidiary Movistar Mexico was considering a launch of 5G in the country through a network sharing agreement with AT&T.
The news emerged within days of AT&T’s launch of 5G in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey. AT&T Mexico users will be able to access 5G through AT&T Ármalo, a personalized experience which will allow users to build their own 5G plan. Additionally, businesses will be able to take advantage of 5G through AT&T Business, the company said. The carrier had initially launched 5G services in Mexico in December last year using spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band. AT&T’s 5G network was limited to the Cuauhtémoc and the Napoles districts in Mexico City. AT&T said it expects 5G infrastructure to reach 25 new cities by the end of 2022.
Mavenir’s recent core networking wins include Vodafone Portugal, which in April selected Mavenir’s 5G Converted Packet Core for its forthcoming 5G Standalone (SA) network. 5G SA brings new technology to bear for CSPs, said Paulino Correa, Network Director of Vodafone Portugal. He said that Vodafone Portugal and Mavenir have been working on 5G SA for over a year in the lab and are now “ready to deliver a cloud-native Packet Core platform that will transform our network and prepare it for powerful applications and differentiating use cases, as the 5G solution evolves,” he said.
Mavenir was among half a dozen Open RAN vendors recently chosen to participate in a federal 5G challenge that focuses on supporting development and interoperability of 5G Open RAN systems. The challenge is being hosted by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Institute for Telecommunications Sciences (NTIA’s ITS), in coordination with the Department of Defense. CableLabs serves as the host lab for participants. Contestants were chosen based on white paper submissions and now must go through two stages of emulated integration and network integration testing.
