Barcelona, 24 February, 2014. Telefónica today unveils at Mobile World Congress, UNICA, a pioneering initiative that will provide the framework for the company’s global end-to-end virtualisation deployment and expansion plans for its network infrastructure. The project points to a paradigm shift in the way networks are designed and installed in an unprecedented move that uses existing virtualisation technologies. At the same time Telefónica continues to make in-roads into simplifying the provisioning access services in the home for the end user.

UNICA is new architecture for infrastructure teams where physical resources become virtual and are provisioned as such. Thanks to UNICA, Telefónica can address the logical re-grouping of resources needed to deploy a network infrastructure that extract maximum potential from new virtualisation technologies. UNICA exploits the capabilities of new generation data centres and use these as a means by which to design and deploy platforms and telecommunication services faster and extremely efficiently (Virtual Data Centre).

In this way, Telefónica moves towards becoming an open Telco model with a global network infrastructure on which multi-vendor platforms, features and services can be developed in standardised form. Telefónica believes the redesign of its network should be gradual and seamless and foresees an implementation start date of sometime in June 2014 to this end; the objective being to have more than 30 per cent of the company’s new infrastructures managed in accordance with this model by 2016. UNICA promises to offer real and permanent change for Telefónica’s network transforming the company into a true Digital Telco.

All this will reduce the time to market and accelerate the deployment of a new generation of services in the coming years, characterised by an overwhelmingly improved level of quality and personalisation given that critical mass will no longer be necessary for implementation.

Telefónica has led on standardisation for virtualisation since its inception, participating alongside other operators such as ATT or Verizon in key international forums on two of the most important standards - SDN and NFV. In addition, the company has worked with all equipment manufacturers to standardise interfaces with existing legacy networks and interfaces between data and control layers.

Telefónica, while actively involved in debates with open communities and standards bodies such as SDN, Openflow, OpenStack to improve existing solutions, it is also working on UNICA virtualisation proof of concepts with other industry players including: HP, NSN, Ericsson, Broadsoft, Cisco, Intel and Juniper to define best uses for this new technologies.

UNICA on the Stand at MWC

Bringing the customer closer to the new possibilities promised by UNICA, Telefónica demonstrates first hand, a number of practical cases of one of the proofs of concept currently underway in partnership with Huawei – one of Telefónica’s most advanced collaborators in this space - that is testing UNICA’s capabilities and performance requirements. All these case are showcased together with Huawei at MWC, one of the most advanced collaborators working with Telefonica to test the capacity, requirements and performance of UNICA.

Among the many capabilities offered by UNICA and on show at MWC is the idea of multi-tenancy (where the same basic solution works for multiple organisations) or NaaS (Network as a Service), using pre-installed templates to deploy virtualised equipment in real time and with integrated resource management.

In addition to Huawei in Spain, Telefónica is currently working on two other test concepts with NEC and Alcatel Lucent in the United States and Mexico, respectively to confirm proposed solutions are compatible with the core open virtualisation technologies (SDN, Open Flow or OpenStack) and align with standards set to ensure full functionalities as defined by Telefónica.

Virtual CPE or less equipment in the home

Telefónica’s virtualisation strategy also extends to the home. Virtual CPE means all customer devices and services can be mediated and provisioned virtually through the network without the need to install excessively technical equipment in the home and as such can move with the customer not the house with the added benefit of being able to detect faults more efficiently. This service is currently trialling in Brazil and will be ready for launch from the fourth quarter of this year.