Rostelecom – Service Assurance for IP/MPLS and SDH Networks

Customer

The largest Russian communication and digital service provider, Rostelecom, serves 100 million subscribers and businesses across the Russian Federation. In 2017, Rostelecom had the nation’s largest market share in consumer broadband (39%), business broadband (37%) and Pay TV (32%).

Rostelecom’s IP/MPLS network integrates video, voice and data transmission services. It covers all regions of the Russian Federation, and maintains a presence in several foreign access points, including Stockholm, London, Hong Kong, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. It also maintains a network of data centers in Moscow, Kazan, Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Khabarovsk.

Challenge

The carrier serves a multitude of users over a wide geographic area, and a growing number of network events have encouraged Rostelecom to seek a solution that could better satisfy and manage the customer experience, ensuring the highest levels of service quality. This was especially important when supporting major public events that would create significant spikes in network usage.

TEOCO’s Solution

TEOCO was selected in 2014 to provide a unified solution for both Fault and Performance Management.

The project was deployed in three phases between 2014 and 2018. TEOCO’s Netrac solution replaced various ‘home-grown’ service assurance systems in use by local teams. At a later date, Netrac was upgraded to Helix Service Assurance. The Helix Performance Management and Fault Management solutions monitor Rostelecom’s IP/MPLS and SDH/DWDM entire nationwide network.

Operational measurements from different services and technologies are leveraged to create meaningful insights into network and service behaviors, reduce network downtime and preempt service degradations. A discovery solution and integration with the carrier’s trouble ticketing system were also part of the deliverable.

Value Generated

The Helix solution provides Rostelecom with unified, end-to-end control over service assurance for its nationwide IP/MPLS and underlying OTN backbone (SDH) networks. It helps Rostelecom to ensure service quality and ubiquity for all its multi-play services, and most importantly, allows them to deliver top service availability and network performance.

The Helix solution is being used by several groups at Rostelecom, including their Network (NOCs, Planning, CTO), Commercial (identifying frauds and inconsistencies) and Business Transformation departments.