Barcelona-Telecom Egypt and Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) announce the upgrade of Telecom Egypt's Cloud Core Network to be 5G ready. Telecom Egypt had gone live in September 2017 with Ericsson virtual Evolved Packet Core deployed on Ericsson's proven Network Functions Virtualization infrastructure (NFVI). The solution is prepared for 5G and enables Telecom Egypt to improve speed, efficiency, and agility both for operations of current business and when addressing new opportunities . The introduction of 5G is expected to result in many new services for consumers and enterprises, typically related to the Internet of Things. Using Ericsson's solution Telecom Egypt will be able to scale more easily the network differently for various services, as well as bring innovative services to market faster in response to changing consumer and enterprise demands. "The implementation of 5G ready core solution comes in line with Telecom Egypt's strategy to be ready for the future and demonstrates our strong and strategic partnership with Ericsson. We have chosen this solution from Ericsson to be ready when the time comes for 5G commercial launch in Egypt as we believe that the efficient deployment of the latest technologies enables faster rollout of new revenue-earning services to our customers." Said Adel Hamed, Telecom Egypt's CEO and Managing Director, Ericsson has delivered a wide range of its market leading telecom applications including IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Unified Data Consolidation (UDC), Signaling Routing (DSC/IPSTP), a complete virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) and virtual Service-Aware Policy Controller. The applications will be managed by the Ericsson Network Manager (ENM) while Ericsson Orchestrator and OpenStack based Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment are key components of the NFVi solution. Rafiah Ibrahim, Head of Ericsson Middle East and Africa said "Operators throughout the region are transforming their networks in preparation for 5G and IoT, and network functions virtualization (NFV) is a key component of a 5G Cloud Core network. Our NFV solution will enable Telecom Egypt core network to be 5G ready. This will rapidly address their subscribers ever-increasing demands and enable swift deployment of future innovative new use cases presented by 5G and IoT." Ericsson's system-verified NFVI solution follows ETSI architectural principles and consists of software and hardware products as well support and system integration services forming a pre-integrated solution for telecom operators. Live deployment of Ericsson NFVI signifies an important step for Telecom Egypt to transform its network in light of the digital transformation that is taking place in the Middle East. Together with the complete Ericsson virtual EPC and Policy control applications, including continuous delivery and deployment of software, it is serving millions of users with high-capacity mobile broadband, IoT and VoLTE as well as Wi-Fi calling services ready for launch today. Efficient rollout of new revenue-earning services is critical in an increasingly network-connected world.
