Tele Columbus is creating a converged interconnect network (CIN) built on Juniper’s Cloud Metro infrastructure and NEC’s xHaul transformation services to converge all its services onto a single, high-performance platform.
Tele Columbus currently reaches more than 3 million homes. As a full-service partner for municipalities and regional utilities, the company is actively supporting the fibre-based infrastructure and broadband internet expansion in Germany. To remain profitable, relevant and differentiated in a growing, highly-competitive market, the provider decided to move from its existing network architecture to an open architecture to gain flexibility, increased agility, optimised user quality of experience, as well as significantly improved return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership.
Following consultancy and comprehensive validations led by NEC 5G Transport Network Center of Excellence (CoE) in EMEA, Juniper’s Cloud Metro solution was selected to create a CIN that enables all consumer and business services to be managed and delivered more cost-effectively from a single infrastructure.
Sustainable expansion for the future was a key consideration. Juniper Networks’ ACX7000 Family products were selected thanks to their port speed options which can help customers grow in-place as their capacity needs increase, allowing easy transition from 100G to 400G with different choices of optics.
NEC is providing xHaul transformation services tailored to meet Tele Columbus’s business requirements. The services are based on its CoE’s global telecom expertise combined with local engineering support for Tele Columbus throughout design, deployment and operation, including training and optimisation efforts, to ensure that the introduction of the new platform enhances their service quality and competitiveness.
The network build and service migration will take a phased approach. The initial phase, data centres, network core and metro network, is underway, with plans to connect the first round of subscribers in the first half of this year. Ongoing phases will follow, leading to a complete, carefully-managed migration to cloud metro including automation for operational efficiency over time.
Michael Fränkle, Chief Technology Officer at Tele Columbus says: “German subscribers – as elsewhere – are already focused on the performance, scalability and reliability of digital services as those will become even more important differentiators in the future. In order to meet these expectations in the context of exponential data growth, we stepped ahead transforming our technology platform and by that shaping our business for the future. The Cloud Metro solution, the partnership of Juniper and NEC and attentive local support matched our needs and has shown us the value of simplicity, innovation and open, multi-vendor principles.”
Adds Brendan Gibbs, Senior Vice President of Automated WAN Solutions at Juniper Networks: “Juniper is thrilled to be selected by Tele Columbus as a new strategic vendor, working alongside our Global Alliance partner NEC. The business strategy driving Tele Columbus’s network transformation confirms that traditional, device-centric ‘retro metro’ network solutions are no longer fit-for-purpose. Our Cloud Metro solution is uniquely designed to overcome the overlapping pressures of service scalability, user experience demands, environmental considerations and operational cost efficiencies that are faced by today’s service providers.”
Concludes Hideyuki Ogata, General Manager of Service Provider Solutions Department at NEC: “NEC is honoured to contribute to Tele Columbus’s transformation journey in tight coordination with Juniper. The validation of Juniper’s Cloud Metro in our CoE lab has proven it as a robust, scalable and sustainable solution, and one of the essential pillars to NEC xHaul Transformation Services, to innovate our customers’ transport network to the next generation.”
