Turkcell and Affirmed Networks Successfully Deploy the Largest Commercial Virtualized Network in the EMEA Region

ACTON, Mass., Feb. 6, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Affirmed Networks, the leader in virtualized mobile networks, today announced with Turkcell that they have jointly deployed one of the largest virtualized mobile networks in the EMEA region. The network currently supports more than 35 million mobile broadband subscribers and carries over a terabit per second (Tbps) of customer traffic across the region.

In February 2018, Affirmed Networks announced they had been selected by Turkcell as a partner providing virtualized network infrastructure for the operator's network transformation initiative designed to streamline costs and drive revenue growth. A key goal of Turkcell's network transformation initiative was to embrace a next-generation mobile architecture and to quickly begin experiencing the cost savings and service agility that accompany the deployment of a virtualized network.

Supporting this strategic initiative, Affirmed Networks provided the operator's virtualized GiLAN solution as well as Turkcell's complete "Unified Telco Cloud" platform over the past year. Turkcell's centralized cloud utilizes Red Hat OpenStack Platform, the carrier-grade distribution of the open source, massively-scalable infrastructure framework for building hybrid clouds, and supported by Red Hat Ceph Storage. Additionally, Affirmed Networks also provides Turkcell's Data Optimization solution, which represents one of their largest NFV deployments. Today, the Turkcell network provides a wide variety of services including data optimization, CGN, DPI and control plane services that include VoLTE, PCRF and AAA.

Working together, Affirmed Networks and Turkcell have successfully delivered on the goals for the initiative, resulting in one of the most extensive live, commercial virtualized mobile networks in the EMEA region. It provides Turkcell with several transformative business benefits that have helped the operator drive its leadership position in the industry. Specifically, these benefits include an accelerated ability to deliver new services to market, and significant CapEx reductions required to build and operate Turkcell's next-generation network infrastructure. 

According to Gediz Sezgin, Turkcell's CTO:  "We initially selected Affirmed Networks based on their innovation in the area of network transformation and virtualization and their work with some of the world's largest operators. Our decision has been reinforced many times throughout the deployment, as we were continually impressed by the speed in which we were able to move from testing to roll-out; a process that took as little as four months for us to virtualize the critical services required for the success of the project."

Turkcell believes that their ability to deliver new services is the result of having a production-ready network that allows them to quickly move services to production more efficiently than ever before.  This has resulted in a reduction of at least three months for delivering new services compared to the experience in their legacy network.

Realized capex savings also significantly enhance Turkcell's ability to compete in the market. By eliminating their legacy capital-intensive hardware network infrastructure, the company has been able to significantly reduce the cost of their network, providing both flexibility and competitive advantage.   

As a result, Turkcell's virtualized network reduces both overall cost and time-to-market, greatly enhancing  the ability to deploy new services, such as IMS,  much sooner.

"Turkcell has achieved an industry leading milestone and we are honored to have been their trusted partner through each stage of this impressive transformation," said Hassan Ahmed, Chairman and CEO, Affirmed Networks. "Many factors were key to the success of this initiative. Turkcell began with a powerful vision and clear objectives for the virtualization of their mobile network. We combined our accomplished teams with key learnings and best practices from deployments we have completed with other top operators globally to implement this network quickly."

As part of the ongoing strategic partnership between the two companies, Affirmed Networks will continue to support Turkcell, helping to oversee the day-to-day operations of the network for the next three to five years.

Affirmed Networks has more than 90 customers across five continents, including some of the world's largest and most innovative operators.

About Turkcell
Turkcell is a digital operator headquartered in Turkey, serving its customers with its unique portfolio of digital services along with voice, messaging, data and IPTV services on its mobile and fixed networks. Turkcell Group companies operate in Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Northern Cyprus, Germany. Turkcell launched LTE services in its home country on April 1st, 2016, employing LTE-Advanced and 3 carrier aggregation technologies in 81 cities. In 2G and 3G, Turkcell's population coverage in Turkey is at 99.61% and 97.94%, respectively, as of December, 2017. Turkcell offers up to 1 Gbps fiber internet speed with its FTTH services. Turkcell Group reported TRY17.6 billion revenue in FY17 with total assets of TRY34.0 billion as of December 31, 2017. It has been listed on the NYSE and the BIST since July 2000, and is the only NYSE-listed company in Turkey. Read more at www.turkcell.com.tr.

About Affirmed Networks, Inc.
Affirmed Networks has achieved significant attention as its Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) solution has become the standard for the world's top mobile operators. Currently, the company has been deployed commercially, including in Tier 1 and Tier 2 mobile networks, and is engaged in many trials worldwide. For more information, please visit: www.affirmednetworks.com.

Red Hat and Ceph are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other counties.  The OpenStack Word Mark is either a registered trademark/service mark or trademark/service mark of the OpenStack Foundation, in the United States and other countries, and is used with the OpenStack Foundation's permission. Red Hat is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the OpenStack Foundation, or the OpenStack community.

SOURCE Affirmed Networks

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