ZTE Built Customized NGN/IMS Service System for Portugal AR TELECOM

1　 Background

AR Telecom was set in 1999, and mainly lived for providing enterprise and individual customers with digital TV service, broadband service, ADSL, VPN, dial-up access service, video conference, traditional voice and data service. In 2005, AR Telecom was purchased by Portugal SGC group, becoming its wholly-owned subsidiary telecom company for developing Portugal market. AR aims at becoming the first telecom carrier who uses its own network in Portugal.

AR Telecom focuses on its business in Lisbon and Porto the bridgeheads of Europe high-end telecom market. After 2004, AR tired to further develop its service in Europe market, and then lots of problems occurred at the same time——Nortel’s PSTN switch and Moto’s CMTS used by AR cannot meet the requirements of new user’s Triple-Play service, which directly leads to small market share. Therefore AR Telecom at that moment urgently needed cost-effective solutions to help them to develop new services and enlarge market share.

2　 ZTE Solution　　　　　　　

AR Telecom paid great attention to NGN technology since the end of 2004, and it expected a customized NGN solution helping its new service development. In this process, a suitable partner who can customize AR a successful network is very important. After cooperating with ZTE, AR get further understanding of its own requirements, in other words, it customized its own network and chose a suitable partner. After NGN construction, currently AR is one of the most competitive Triple play service providers in Portugal. The extensive demands for multimedia service bring AR more opportunities.

AR Telecom customized new services attract customers. As ZTE NGN use an open platform, it gives lots of conveniences for AR to customize services and use terminal equipment flexibly. In this cooperation, ZTE customized AR Europe-based NP service (Number Portability Service), ISDN supplementary service, Timeslot division, and 64K unlimited call services. In considering traditional SME customers, AR at the same time developed individual users as well. As a matter of fact, the strategy of AR is correct. Half year after the services are implemented, with sound development trend, AR’s local VOIP user number has exceeded the local biggest carrier PT (Portugal Telecom).

ZTE Solution Highlights:

●  Individualized network solution

●  End-to-end dual host backup, support multiple protocols, dual networks and planes, supporting multiple user terminals

●  Customized multimedia service: NP service (Number Portability Service), etc

3　 AR TELECOM Customer Benefits

●  Develop new services and user groups

●  Enhance local market and achieving more markets

●  Obviously enhance new service capability and provide triple play service

●  Update equipment, reduce costs for operation and maintenance

●  Share global NGN network deployment experience

4　 Customer Quote

"AR Telecom is commercially using the ZTE NGN system since September 2007. The system includes two SS10 SS1b soft switches, two MSGs 7200 one UP10 service’s platform and one MT-10 system for Lawful Interception.

Since the beginning of the project, AR Telecom put some requirements and opened several issues in order to customize the platform according Portuguese regulations and specifications. Apart of some ongoing developments, the overall performance and stability have been considered satisfactory."

——AR TELECOM NGN TEAM