Oracle scored another major operator win for its converged network policy management software, announcing Monday that Vodafone UK will implement it for the carrier’s 5G standalone core and non-SA networks.
Vodafone’s mobile and fixed networks serve 18 million customers in the U.K. As of June, the operator had 5G service in 124 locations in the U.K., with 4G coverage reaching more than 99% of the population.
The new deal adds to Oracle’s count of operator 5G core customers, which already include Dish’s greenfield SA 5G build in the U.S. and BT’s 4G and 5G network for operator EE in the UK.
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Oracle said it’s already actively working with Vodafone on the detailed design and planning for deployment of the vendor’s cloud-native Converged Policy Network Function in the 5G network. Oracle’s converged policy management is comprised of the 5G Core policy control function (PCF) and the policy and charging rules function (PCRF).
BT has touted Oracle’s policy control function as a way to smoothly and quickly transition to and introduce new 5G services, while Dish has highlighted the vendor’s role in enabling network slicing capabilities.
The same looks to hold for Vodafone in the UK.
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In terms of interest that Oracle’s garnering, Andrew Morawski, SVP and general manager at Oracle, noted that the company is seeing increased momentum in the market for 5G SA core solutions, as operators gear up to support enhanced services that enterprise and industrial sectors are spurring.
“Market leading operators like BT, Dish Wireless, and now Vodafone are increasingly recognizing the need to build the most capable and feature rich 5G networks they can, taking a multivendor approach to ensure they’re using the best solutions in the market to achieve success,” Morawski told Fierce via email.
Flexible policies for network slicing, tailored services
For its telco offerings, Oracle’s focused on the control plane components of the 5G core, or what it views as “the brains.”
When operators shift to standalone (SA) 5G, low-latency is an important capability while network slicing is one of the features talked up as a way to monetize 5G with the ability to partition portions of the network to deliver specific levels of performance or quality based on user or application needs – such as latency for gaming, or bandwidth or security.
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Policy control function capabilities from Oracle come in so operators can put flexible policies in place to ensure the right network resources are served to users, while both minimizing the use of finite network resources and maximizing the quality of experience, according Morawski.
The product dynamically routes low-latency applications to their network edge while also taking into consideration slice-specific information and data analytics.
“Policy plays a critical role in the network slice selection, mapping services to slices and providing tailored quality of service and experience depending on the configuration of the slice,” he said.
Since operators won’t take a cookie cutter approach to network slicing, a key feature is adaptability to deliver differentiated services, whatever the slice setup may be.
For example, he said an operator could opt to deploy with a multitenancy approach, where one policy control configuration is used for multiple slices. Or “some operators may choose to have dedicated policy for each slice or maybe a subset of slices given different potential requirements or resource needs, redundancy” and so on.
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The software helps enable any of the options and gives operators choice and flexibility to securely manage domain-specific policies, with the result of more personalized customer services.
Oracle’s software also gets to a granular level for the policy framework, he noted, to the end that it can manage individual services across slices.
To create policies and figure out how and under what conditions subscribers and applications are using network resources, the Converged Policy Control Function relies on network, subscriber and service information. So if Vodafone has a large variety of services its offering, adaptable polices ensure individual needs for their customers and services can all be met.
“It also supports the ability to configure large numbers of these policies within the network to deliver a truly tailored service experience for Vodafone’s customers – even when they consume a wide range of different services,” Morawski said.
That could be broadband applications like connecting smart devices, utilizing live streaming or AR/VR gaming, for example, or enterprise IoT.