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The project aims to upgrade Vodafone’s nationwide backbone network and increase its capacity to meet increased demands for a growing customer base
In the past, Vodafone has managed three separate networks to carry mobile, home broadband, and enterprise customer traffic, respectively. Now, the company’s new Redstream Evolution network will bring together all three services onto a singular Software Defined Networking (SND)-enabled, core Internet Protocol (IP) transport network for UK customers.
Redstream Evolution consists of 200 core sites throughout country connected by over 11,000km of optical fibre. By adding all customers onto the same network, Vodafone can benefit from economies of scale, resulting in improvements in customer experience as well as cost savings.
This multi-year backbone network upgrade is now entering its “final phase”, with mobile and broadband customers being moved off the old network in a phased manner. Enterprise customers will be moved “in the near future”, according to the operator.
The convergence of these three networks will ensure that customers do not experience congestion on the network and ensuring the infrastructure can cope with a future increase in demand.
According to Vodafone, data consumption across the country is increasing 50% year-on-year.
“The massive growth in data-hungry consumer apps and business services, alongside ever-increasing internet usage, simply cannot be supported by traditional approaches to network management and capacity expansion” said Andrea Dona, Chief Network Officer of Vodafone UK.
“Redstream Evolution is a significant investment to modernise this critical link in our Vodafone network, creating a new express superhighway bringing more than enough capacity to deliver an amazing network experience for customers today, while also staying well ahead of future data traffic demands. This will be crucial as our home broadband customer base continues to grow, more of our business customers go through digital transformation programmes, and 5G and IoT usage rapidly increases the amount of data we use each day.”
Vodafone says that UK customers’ mobile data usage has increased 300% since 2019. Simultaneously, businesses have increased consumption of digital and cloud-based services, thus requiring a reliable network.
How will network improvements affect the the UK’s telecoms industry? Join the ecosystem in discussion at this year’s live Connected Britain conference
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