Moscow, Russia, Tokyo, Japan and Westborough, Massachusetts, USA - September 4, 2017 - Rostelecom, NEC Corporation and Netcracker Technology announced today that the first proof of concept (PoC) interoperability test for transport software-defined networking (SDN) in the Russian Federation has been successfully completed. Rostelecom is Russia's leading long-distance telecommunications service provider.

In the PoC, optical networking equipment from Huawei, NEC and Nokia, as well as their corresponding domain SDN controllers, were managed by an umbrella transport SDN controller provided by NEC/Netcracker. This new hierarchical approach to transport SDN provided complete end-to-end control and visibility, automating operations across three separate optical multivendor domains.

Cloud applications and IoT services are driving rapid bandwidth growth, resulting in the need for networks to scale more dynamically. It is also driving the need to accelerate service creation, deployment and restoration times. Rostelecom recognized the opportunity to meet this need through transport SDN. It also used this opportunity to put to test the true multivendor promise of virtualization.

The PoC was designed to test the scenarios mentioned above. The multivendor aspect was addressed by selecting Huawei, NEC/Netcracker and Nokia. The umbrella transport SDN controller provided by NEC/Netcracker provided a unified multidomain view, thereby increasing network agility, end-to-end visibility as well as rapid provisioning and restoration capabilities.

With these elements in place, Rostelecom network users can self-select new, on-demand transport services that are provisioned automatically and optimized dynamically according to bandwidth and network performance requirements.

The PoC also demonstrated significantly reduced service ordering, configuration and activation process times, cutting what used to take months to just hours. This reduces opex and results in simpler configuration processes. Based on the demonstration, service restoration after a fault can drop to an average of just several minutes.

"Together with equipment vendors Huawei, NEC/Netcracker and Nokia, Rostelecom proves transport SDN's ability to reduce costs and improve network automation," said Alexey Sapunov, Rostelecom Senior Vice-President for Technical Infrastructure. "By using NEC/Netcracker's multidomain transport SDN controller, which managed multiple underlying domain controllers, Rostelecom was able to eliminate vendor lock-in and lay the foundation for a true multivendor infrastructure."

"NEC is proud to successfully complete the first multivendor transport SDN PoC in Russia. It proves the maximum performance to service providers across all transport layers with this multidomain, multilayer and multivendor transport SDN solution that optimizes network traffic and automates configuration," said Akihiro Sakurai, Managing Director of JSC "NEC Neva Communications Systems," NEC Corporation's subsidiary in the Russian Federation. "This proof of concept proved the ability to provide end-to-end network automation and control."

"Networks need to undergo a significant transformation and we are excited that the demonstration results showed our Multilayer SDN Controller's ability to simplify and automate complex networks," said Aloke Tusnial, Chief Technology Officer of SDN/NFV Business at Netcracker. "By proving interoperability across multiple optical vendors, NEC/Netcracker is helping service providers like Rostelecom to fundamentally rethink their network design and level of automation."

"Huawei TSDN provides automatic discovery of resources, automatic service provisioning and recovery, and RESTful NBI to 3rd party orchestrators to achieve multidomain network unified control. This PoC test proved Huawei Transport SDN service automation and NBI openness," said Jin Yuzhi, President of Huawei Transmission Network Product Line. "Beyond that, Huawei has been developing the NCE (Network Cloud Engine) to streamline the end-to-end operation process on the network planning, management, control and analysis functionalities which will provide significant OPEX reduction."

Demetrio Russo, Nokia Vice-president of the East Europe Market said,

"The PoC proves once again that networks based on the Nokia 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) platform are open to automated Optical Service creation and operation even in multivendor environments, by using the Open Abstract SDN APIs of the Network Services Platform (NSP). The NSP platform, our flagship SDN controller, provides world leading service providers like Rostelecom with a unified and more efficient way to automate, optimize and assure network services across multiple network layers, physical/virtual infrastructure, as well as networks from multiple vendors."

About Rostelecom

Rostelecom (www.rostelecom.ru) is one of the largest national telecommunications operators in Russia and Europe. The Company operates in all segments of the telecommunications market and covers millions of households in Russia. Rostelecom is an undisputable leader of the broadband and pay-TV markets in Russia with over 12.6 million fixed-line broadband subscribers and over 9.5 million pay-TV subscribers, over 4.6 million of which are subscribed to Rostelecom's IPTV services. In the first half of 2017, the Group generated RUB 145.6 billion of revenues, RUB 46.2 billion of OIBDA (31.7% of revenue) and RUB 6.0 billion of net income. The Group is a market leader in providing telecommunications services to government bodies and corporates of all levels. Rostelecom is an important innovator that provides solutions in the field of E-Government, cloud computing, healthcare, education, security and housing & utility services. The Group's stable financial position confirmed by its credit ratings. Rostelecom was assigned 'BBB-' and 'BB+' international credit ratings by Fitch Ratings and Standard&Poor's respectively, and AA(RU) by ACRA.