Turkcell Digitalized Voice With Mavenir’s Cloud-Native IMS Solution

Support for both VoLTE and VoNR on a common IMS core

Mavenir, the Network Software Provider building the future of networks with cloud-native software that runs on any cloud and transforms the way the world connects, has successfully deployed one of the biggest fully cloud-native IMS systems in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The deployment for Turkcell in Turkey evolves voice services for the 5G era with Mavenir’s cloud-native IMS, having successfully migrated all the voice call traffic from 11 million VoLTE-capable customers. Additional capacity also gives Turkcell room to support ongoing growth and is planned to expand to support 24 million 4G users out of a total subscriber base of 38 million.

Mavenir’s cloud-native IMS solution is a microservice-based architecture purpose built for fully automated cloud environments which has been deployed on Turkcell’s pioneering unified telco cloud. The microservices architecture allows operators to utilise the same IMS core for VoLTE and 5G voice and to deploy new services more quickly and efficiently. The solution can also be combined with Mavenir’s Rich Communications Services to offer customers advanced and interoperable messaging services to counter OTT apps. Mavenir is the global leader in VoLTE IMS¹ and a leader in voice and messaging services handling over 11 billion messages per day.

Microservices make it easier for an operator to expand and scale a service, as demonstrated by rapid growth in the number of Turkcell’s VoLTE-enabled subscribers supported by the deployment. The ability to spin-up large numbers of virtual machines also improves reliability and resilience as there is no single point of failure. The software-centric approach also increases operators’ agility: development, trialling, and deployment cycles are significantly quicker compared with legacy infrastructure based on proprietary hardware.

The unique value of the scalability of Mavenir’s cloud-native IMS was highlighted during the Turkcell deployment. In Turkey, families like to gather during the country’s Bayram national holidays. Telecoms traffic can also spike to the extent that outages have occasionally been known to occur. Due to the pandemic, a lockdown was announced just before the extended Bayram holidays in May and July 2021. Consequently, busy hour traffic was likely to double during the holiday periods according to Turkcell forecast. Thanks to the solution’s scalability, Mavenir could double network capacity within days of the government lockdown announcement, and traffic did spike but experienced no outages. Having successfully deployed the solution on its mobile network, Turkcell is also integrating Mavenir vIMS into its fixed network.

Dr. Gediz Sezgin, Chief Technology Officer of Turkcell, stated, “Our unified telco cloud and a virtualised mobile core are the foundations of Turkcell’s ambition to be first to market with industry-leading services for our customers. Virtualised IMS has been a critical network transformation milestone on our NFV journey and our roadmap towards 5G. With its any-cloud, software-oriented approach Mavenir has been a valuable partner.”

BG Kumar, President, of Mavenir’s Communication Services Business Group, said “Through our experience with Turkcell we are learning that support for both VoLTE and Voice over New Radio (VoNR), on a common IMS core, promises to ease the transition for operators as they plan the introduction of 5G. Cloud-native virtualised IMS provides continuity for voice services that risk being overlooked in a rush to move to 5G.”

Mavenir and Turkcell Group have a deep and multi-faceted partnership. In addition to the live deployment in Turkey, vIMS is also being deployed in Turkcell’s Lifecell subsidiary in Ukraine while deployment planning is underway with the Group’s BeST and KKTCell operations in Belarus and Cyprus, respectively.

In Turkey, Mavenir is also providing Rich Communication Services and RCS Business Messaging as well as a Dynamic Routing Solution, collaborating on the world’s first fully containerised Open RAN call over an O-RAN Split 7.2 architecture on Turkcell’s telco cloud.

Mavenir is exhibiting at Mobile World Congress 2022 in Barcelona, Spain at the Fira Gran Via in Hall 2, stand 2H60. Click here to find out more.

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 4 countries – Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, and Northern Cyprus. Turkcell launched LTE services in its home country on April 1st, 2016, employing LTE-Advanced and 3 carrier aggregation technologies in 81 cities. Turkcell offers up to 10 Gbps fiber internet speed with its FTTH services. Turkcell Group reported TRY35.9 billion revenue in FY21 with total assets of TRY70.7 billion as of December 31, 2021. It has been listed on the NYSE and the BIST since July 2000, and is the only NYSE-listed company in Turkey. www.turkcell.com.tr

About Mavenir:

Mavenir is building the future of networks and pioneering advanced technology, focusing on the vision of a single, software-based automated network that runs on any cloud. As the industry's only end-to-end, cloud-native network software provider, Mavenir is focused on transforming the way the world connects, accelerating software network transformation for 250+ Communications Service Providers in over 120 countries, which serve more than 50% of the world’s subscribers. www.mavenir.com

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¹ Source – Dell’Oro Mobile Core Network 4Q Report 20

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Turkcell evolves voice services for the 5G era deploying one of the biggest fully cloud-native IMS systems in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with Mavenir’s cloud-native IMS that supports both VoLTE and VoNR on a common IMS core.