Telstra's mobile network goes all IP, for 2G 3G and LTE

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 27 September 2011 16:15

Business IT - Networking

Ericsson says that it and Telstra have created a world first by installing an all IP core network that carries data not only for Telstra's new LTE network but for its existing 2G and 3G networks.

According to Ericsson, the evolved packet core (EPC) network it has supplied to Telstra "enables the mobile broadband traffic carried in Telstra GSM, WCDMA/HSPA and LTE access networks to be seamlessly handled by the same core network nodes, resulting in an improved mobile broadband experience for consumers."

Mike Wright, Telstra's executive director of network and access technologies, said: "This is the complete network solution that we envisioned over five years ago: a common and efficient core network supporting traffic from any source across our evolving GSM, WCDMA and LTE access networks."

While it gets nowhere near the publicity accorded to the headline-grabbing speed increases offered by LTE - and before it HSPA+ and earlier upgrades to cellular radio technologies - the evolved packet core is an equally important component of the end-to-end network that mobile operators need to meet the growing demand for mobile bandwidth, at ever lower costs per bit.

According to an Alcatel-Lucent white paper, published last year, "EPC promotes the introduction of new innovative services and the enablement of new applications'¦EPC is essential for end-to-end IP service delivery across LTE. As well, it is instrumental in allowing the introduction of new business models, such as partnering/revenue sharing with third-party content and application providers'¦The introduction of the EPC and all-IP network architecture in the mobile network has profound implications on mobile services, as all voice, data and video communications are built on the IP protocol."

Alcatel-Lucent listed these "profound implications" as being: "the interworking of the new mobile architecture with previous mobile generations (2G/3G); scalability required by each of the core elements to address dramatic increases in the number of direct connections to user terminals, orders of magnitude of bandwidth increase, and dynamic terminal mobility [and the] reliability and availability delivered by each element to ensure service continuity."

The evolved packet core was introduced into the 3G specification at the same time as LTE and enhancements to HSPA+ with Release 8, published in March 2009. The whole package is known as the Evolved Packet System (EPS).

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