[Light Reading]: Telefonica NFV Plans Start w/DPI and PCRF

Ray Le Maistre, Editor-in-chief, Light Reading reports about " a closed-door presentation delivered to just a handful of telecoms industry editors at the Spanish operators headquarters in Madrid, Telefónica's global CTO Enrique Blanco outlined a timetable for the virtualization of much of the carrier's new network functionality and explained his reasons for being at the vanguard of a game-changing network transformation .. The operator is calling its initiative UNICA (a name it has used previously for API development work) and will begin as soon as June 2014, the CTO said".

"..Other elements set for the first phase are the evolved packet core (EPC) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), which is due to be the first implementation .. Also in phase one of UNICA are virtual deep packet inspection (DPI) elements, set-top boxes (STBs) and DNS (domain name system) servers ..Then in the next few years (2015-16), Telefónica will seek to introduce virtualized policy control resource function (PCRF), Broadband Remote Access Server (B-RAS), service delivery platform (SDP) functions, real-time analytics platforms and SDN orchestrator".

"The list of vendor partners is varied and interesting. Telefónica is working with Huawei Technologies, Alcatel-Lucent and NEC on proof of concept trials in Spain, Mexico, and the US respectively, while BroadSoft,Ericsson, HP and Nokia Solutions and Networks are also close partners. Other suppliers also working with the Spanish carrier include Brocade Communications Systems, Cisco Systems, Intel and Juniper Networks".

See "Telefónica Unveils Aggressive NFV Plans" - here.