Kazakhtelecom Picks UfiSpace to Reinvent Network

UfiSpace, the provider of open disaggregated networking solutions and JSC Kazakhtelecom, the national carrier of Kazakhstan, have announced the completion of multiple successful integrations with UfiSpace Disaggregated Cell Site Gateway (DCSG) and Distributed Disaggregated Chassis (DDC) solutions.

Last year, the operator initialized the testing of a disaggregated IP core network using UfiSpace's S9700 Series of core routers followed by UfiSpace's S9500 series of disaggregated cell site gateways.

The tests were dedicated to validating interoperability of new solutions within their current infrastructure and included testing for IGP routing, MPLS LDP, convergence for link failures QoS, Timing (SyncE, G.8275.1 T-BC clocking), system management and more.

"We are going through the most challenging times in modern history of our country, it is not easy to discuss new developments in technology. But as leading telecom operator not only in Kazakhstan but all central Asia we have to continue to innovate, scale, and bring world-class service to our customers," says Nurlan Meirmanov, Chief Innovations Officer at Kazakhtelecom. "We have been reviewing the disaggregation approach for our networks for the past few years. For us, as rapidly growing operator, it is especially interesting due to flexibility in new service delivery and reduced capital expenditure. Ourselves, we would not be able to complete the task. UfiSpace, IP Infusion and DriveNets were an outstanding support and helped us to prove readiness of disaggregated solutions for our infrastructure. Kazakhtelecom will focus on the strategy of network disaggregation and virtualization."

"We are humbled to be working with Kazakhtelecom who is striving to implement more innovation and openness within their network despite these challenging times," says Vincent Ho, CEO of UfiSpace. "We are confident that our disaggregated backhaul and core routers will allow Kazakhtelecom to enable their new 5G services with a more cost efficient architecture and bring more value to their customers."

UfiSpace S9500 series of DCSGs are fully featured cell site routers, which utilizes carrier-grade white box hardware capable of running open network software, such as IP Infusion's OcNOS, to enable a more cost efficient 3G/4G/5G mobile backhaul solution. The DCSG was introduced by industry advocate Telecom Infra Project's OOPT group in conjunction with leading global operators Vodafone, Telefonica, TIM Brazil, BT, and Orange.

"IP Infusion's best-of-breed DCSG solutions have enabled Kazakhtelecom to build flexible, high-capacity infrastructure, allowing them to introduce new services to subscribers throughout Central Asia with agility, while reducing total cost of ownership for the operator," said Atsushi Ogata, President and CEO of IP Infusion. "Our 20 years of experience in network routing, combined with the knowledge gained from servicing thousands of diverse customer networks, ensures we can meet the evolving requirements of mobile backhaul infrastructure."

UfiSpace's core router solution distributes traditional monolithic chassis components such as line cards, fabric cards, controllers and protocol software into separate building blocks consisting of disaggregated white boxes. UfiSpace's S9700 routers were the world's first DDCs to be accepted by Open Compute Project and deployed by tier-one network operators.

"We are glad to work with Kazakhtelecom, an innovative operator and one of the first to adopt a disaggregated network architecture in the region, and support the installation and testing of DriveNets Network Cloud solution," said Ido Susan, CEO at DriveNets. "DriveNets Network Cloud solution extends cloud attributes into telco-grade networks with a game-changing scale, economic model and service innovation. We are confident that our approach based on the OCP DDC conforms to Kazakhtelecom's strategy to build high-quality, high-scale core network and Kazakhtelecom can consider disaggregated solutions for additional use cases as the network evolves."