NTT Docomo Virtualizing the Mobile Packet Core with Cisco

Did you know in Japan, 90% of mobile phones are waterproof because youngsters use them even in the shower?

Did you know that Japan consists of over 6,800 islands?

Did you know Japan suffers 1,500 earthquakes every year.

In Japan Mobile data traffic grew 92% in 2012 and 66% from 3Q 2012 to 3Q 2013, according to Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

According to the GSMA estimates for Machine-To-Machine (M2M), ten countries account for 70% of all M2M connections as of year-end 2013, comprising China, the US, Japan, Brazil, France, Italy, the UK, Russia, Germany and South Africa.

So what is the problem? Well as you can see the people of Japan will take and use their mobile devices anywhere and at any time. The country is geographically dispersed, and earthquakes occur all of the time (mostly very small). All along the amount of mobile traffic is growing at an astounding rate with no signs of slowing down, with the M2M industry just beginning. So what is an operator like NTT Docomo supposed to do?

What’s the solution? NTT Docomo has been testing the Cisco Evolved Services Platform (ESP). The Cisco ESP is a comprehensive virtualization and orchestration software platform that creates, automates and provisions services in real time, across compute, storage and network functions, to deliver desired business outcomes for applications running across multiple domains and facilitates the shift to new business models. It allows NTT Docomo to deliver prepackaged services from a flexible pool of resources that can be reused and personalized for each customer, automatically and on demand. With the Cisco ESP, NTT Docomo can confidently automate innovative new cloud service offerings, efficiently harnessing their network and data center assets and helping to reduce their current operating expenses up to 45 percent, while accelerating new revenue growth at up to five times their current rates. This platform supports faster and more effective ways to facilitate agile business processes and innovation, for a better return on investments (ROI).

A part of the ESP is the Cisco Quantum Virtualized Packet Core (Quantum vPC), the industry’s most complete, fully virtualized EPC (Evolved Packet Core) that works in conjunction with the new Cisco Evolved Services Platform (ESP). Quantum vPC virtualizes ALL of the capabilities of the Cisco Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 5000 Series and can run on the Cisco UCS Blade Server or other x86 processor blade servers.

The combine functions of the Cisco ESP and Quantum vPC allow NTT Docomo to:

Automatically absorb expected and unexpected mobile traffic peaks as they occur

Simplify the network to lower OpEx and TCO

Use virtualization to turn capacity on and off when needed

Deliver consistent, high-quality services to users

Use analytics to see exactly what’s going on across their network at any time

Make their business more agile and responsive to market dynamics

Deploy new services faster with lower costs and far less risk

Kelly Ahuja, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mobility Business Group of Cisco, said: “We would like to commend DOCOMO for their continued work on innovations in business and technology in mobile communications. We are delighted to collaborate with DOCOMO toward the realization of a virtualized mobile Internet architecture. It is exciting to see a world leader in mobile industry being fully committed to virtualization in their network architecture where and when it makes sense for their customers. ”

“NFV is highly expected to change the ecosystem of network industries,” said Seizo Onoe, Executive Vice President and Chief Technical Officer at DOCOMO. “But without a high degree of collaboration among the players, such hopes could end up like pie in the sky. Therefore, I am delighted that we can successfully collaborate on PoC with Cisco.”

Key Facts:

NTT Docomo POC configuration included:

Cisco Evolved Services Platform (ESP)

Cisco Quantum Virtualized Packet Core

Cisco UCS

Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Forecast

Cisco Prime Fulfillment

Cisco Catalyst 4900