Medhat Elhusseiny (Indosat Ooredoo)
Indonesian telecommunications provider Indosat Ooredoo has partnered up with networking vendor Cisco in its first commercial deployment of segment routing over IPv6 (SRv6) technology to support the development of its 5G services across the country.
Partnering with Cisco, Indosat Ooredoo is working to transform its transport infrastructure into a state-of-the-art, programmable, 5G-ready network supported by IPv6 segment routing technology, known as SRv6, with network slicing.
According to Cisco, SRv6 intelligent routing functionality can enable deterministic routing paths to guarantee high quality and low latency on-demand services with the faster data connectivity and full automation needed to service digital communities throughout Indonesia.
It is anticipated that the new technology combination, along with Indosat Ooredoo’s wide fibre optic network expansions, will support the growing demand for mobile data consumption with the emergence of newer technologies like cloud computing and network slicing.
“We are excited with the launch of Southeast Asia’s first SRv6-based 5G-ready transport network together with Cisco to support Indosat Ooredoo’s digital transformation journey, addressing our consumers and enterprise customers’ needs for on-demand and scalable network requirements,” said Medhat Elhusseiny, Indosat Ooredoo chief technology and information officer.
“This is a major step in building our next-generation programmable transport network that is future-ready, scalable, with automated operations enabled by software defined network (SDN) and intelligent segment routing functions of SRv6.
“This will allow us to deliver fast, on-demand, high-quality low-latency connectivity services for 5G, cloud computing and IoT [internet of things] for both consumers and enterprises across Indonesia, establishing a strong foundation for 5G architecture moving forward to support Indonesia’s vision as a fully digital nation,” he added.
It is hoped that Indosat Ooredoo’s partnership with Cisco will – through SRv6 infrastructure – see the telco accommodate the emerging requirements of 5G use cases among many business segments and industries, including fixed and mobile broadband services, across Indonesia.
According to Sanjay Kaul, Cisco Asia Pacific and Japan service provider president, with the launch of SRv6 network programming, Indosat Ooredoo is pioneering the next phase of internet protocol (IP) networking through simplification and automation.
“With the capabilities provided by SRv6, Indosat Ooredoo, powered by Cisco, aims to support Indonesia as it continues its digital economic transformation to drive operational efficiencies, customer experience, as well as product and service innovation across their organisations,” Kaul said.
“Together, Indosat Ooredoo and Cisco can ensure a better network, digital experience, and a more inclusive future for all Indonesians,” he added.
The network upgrade comes roughly a month after fellow Indonesian mobile telco XL Axiata said it had wrapped up a year-long project in partnership with NTT to consolidate its legacy IT environment into a private IT cloud infrastructure.
The project was largely aimed at reducing XL Axiata’s total cost of ownership (TCO) for its IT infrastructure, along with accelerating cloud migration and improving workflow efficiency, time to market and resource agility.
Broadly, the project saw the Japanese-headquartered global systems integrator (GSI) implement a private IT cloud infrastructure for XL Axiata, which had several internal IT requirements that needed urgent virtualisation into a new self-sufficient cloud platform.
