by Benedict Chua, Assistant Editor
T-Mobile (Poland) has deployed ONF’s Open Mobile Evolved Core (OMEC) open source platform in its production network. Specifically, T-Mobile Poland is using OMEC’s gateway control, user plane and billing components to deliver a Fixed Mobile Substitution (FMS) service to its customers. The OMEC components provide all the necessary features and standard 3GPP interfaces for interconnecting to T-Mobile’s existing base stations, mobility management entities and lawful intercept platforms.
The ONF launched OMEC in 2019, making available the first production-grade, disaggregated, control-user plane separated (CUPS), 3GPP-compliant open source mobile core solution that can run on containers, virtual machines or bare metal. It provides a cornerstone for the ONF‘s COMAC (Converged Multi-Access and Core) project, developed to bring convergence to operators’ mobile and broadband access and core networks. It is based on and paired with COMAC Reference Design, which is now available for ONF Member review and feedback.
T-Mobile’s OMEC deployment highlights:
- Complete connectivity, billing and charging capabilities
- 3GPP Release 13 compatibility
- Supports a large number of subscribers with a high-performance DPDK based dataplane
- Optimized for lightweight cost-effective fixed-mobile substitution service deployments
“Our OMEC deployment provides us with a lightweight packet core providing connectivity, billing and charging at scale for a large number of fixed mobile subscribers. By taking the bold step of embracing open source as part of a new approach for building and deploying solutions, we are realizing a much lower total cost of ownership, rapid customizability, and greater transparency than we can achieve using any traditional EPC,” said Michal Sewera, head of the EPC Shared Service Center at T-Mobile Poland.
ONF said T-Mobile’s deployment demonstrates how operators and supply chain vendors who are willing to embrace open source can deploy solutions with disruptive value propositions in record time. T-Mobile Poland’s pioneering project demonstrates the tremendous value of taking an open source approach to transforming networks and paves a path for other operators to follow.
“T-Mobile Poland, supported by Deutsche Telekom as a partner of the ONF, has been at the leading edge of developing, testing, and now deploying OMEC into a production network,” said Oguz Sunay , Chief Architect for Mobile, ONF. “This successful implementation demonstrates the power of community, the maturity of open source in the telco space, and the production worthiness of OMEC.”
ONF begins Open Evolved Mobile Core Project
ONF is also launching an Open Mobile Evolved Core (OMEC) project, leveraging its earlier work for its Central Office Re-architected as a Data Center (CORD) initiative, and serving as an ‘upstream project’ to the newly launched COMAC project.
The OMEC project, which is being developed in collaboration with Sprint, is built using an NFV (Network Function Virtualization) architecture that is optimized for Intel platforms and tested for scale. OMEC is compliant with the 3GPP architecture, includes the following EPC and Charging components:
- SGW-C, PGW-C (Includes embedded PCEF), SGW-U, PGW-U, MME, HSS, HSS Database, Diameter Capability, PCRF, Forwarding Policy Control SDN Controller, CTF, CDF, SGX Billing Router
- Operational tools, including CLI, Logging and Statistics Interface APIs to VNFs
- DPDK based traffic generator for testing S1u and Sgi user planes
- CI/CD tools for deployment automation for bringing up core network VNFs, associated networking, package installation, provisioning, and configuration.
