"Very knowledgeable and technically skilled. Huawei understood just what we wanted”
--Mr. Rizwan, Manager of Strategy & Technology CN,Telenor Pakistan

Pakistan has a very large and widely dispersed population of 173 million people. Its mobile penetration is less than 25%, which indicates huge growth potential. As the third largest mobile operator in Pakistan, Telenor needed to have the capacity to grow quickly and smoothly, but did not take the risk of buying excess capacity. They also wanted to ensure that the expensive long-haul transmission network was used effectively for voice traffic and not wasted on signaling, which was typical with their existing HLR system. The answer was a Huawei USC with its distributed architecture. 

Fast entry, but difficult to expand 

In order to enter the market rapidly, Telenor built a network that was connected by leased long-haul transmission lines. As their subscriber base grew, this arrangement proved to be very expensive to expand, difficult to troubleshoot and would not easily allow them to support new services, particularly increased data traffic.

With the subscriber base rapidly increasing, Telenor needed to expand the system capacity frequently. One of the barriers to easy expansion was the existing HLRs. These traditional HLRs require extensive planning and coordination for expansion and also require service interruptions, which impact user satisfaction. 

Build, expand or innovate 

In looking at alternatives to optimize the network, Telenor established the objectives of being able to quickly deploy new services and also reducing dependence on the long-haul signaling network to save long-haul transmission expense.

Because Telenor expects to expand market share quickly, while providing high quality service, smooth system expansion is a requirement and service can not be interrupted during process. Faced with expensive long-haul transmission expense, at first Telenor considered building their own long-haul signaling network. After careful consideration, Telenor found it was not feasible. First, the establishment of a signaling network needs a huge investment. Second, building the signaling network would waste the investment because their long-term goal is an All-IP network and so the signaling network will soon be replaced. The right answer was to reduce the dependence on the long-haul signaling network, which would take some innovative thinking.

In looking at the twin issues of growth and the impact of signaling traffic on the expensive long-distance lines, Telenor realized that a major component was related to HLR traffic. Because of the size limitations of the existing HLRs and the fact that there was substantial roaming traffic, many messages had to be exchanged between HLRs and other core network elements for most of the calls. If this traffic could be substantially reduced, it would have a major impact on the overall long-distance traffic.

Partnership with Huawei: Innovation solves multiple problems

Through communicating with many vendors, Telenor realized that the Huawei USC solution would resolve both the HLR size and signaling traffic problems. The Huawei USC distributed solution includes separate Front End (FE) and Back End (BE) components which can be deployed in different areas. In Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi, Telenor Pakistan deployed the Huawei USC with the effect that all call signaling can be done using local access with no impact on the long-distance network.

The Huawei USC solution uses the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) hardware platform and a distributed architecture. All the ATCA boards work in load-share mode which allows capacity to be easily expanded just by adding ATCA boards. This can be done while the system is online, without interrupting service. For Telenor Pakistan, a single USC is supporting 40M subscribers. It not only simplified the network, but also can meet the requirement of Telenor for the next 5 years.
 
Benefits follow 

Deploying the Huawei USC solution in different areas reduced the long-haul transmission resource. This optimization reduces Telenor Pakistan’s long-haul transmission signaling needs by 60%, and greatly enhances its network operation revenue. Also Huawei USC solution reduces the OPEX by 60% in areas such as power consumption and footprint expenses. With the Huawei USC solution, expanding capacity is very easy. During the expansion period, it doesn’t interrupt the service which significantly improves the quality of service. And it also can smooth evolution to subscriber data center convergence, and can integrate the entire network’s subscriber data. This lays a solid foundation for an FMC network.

Since the USC stores all the subscriber data, all the Business applications can access the USC to get subscriber data. Subscribers can enjoy service in any Customer Service Center (CSC) all over the country. For example, if a subscriber lost his SIM-card while traveling, he can get a new SIM card right away in the city where he is in now. 

Success in many areas 

The choice of a Huawei USC solution not only relieved pressure on the long-haul signaling network, but it also created dividends by simplifying operations, improving reliability and allowing new services to be added more quickly. In laying the foundation for converged services, Telenor also has positioned themselves to gain a larger share of the Pakistan market through better customer care and innovative services.