The second largest mobile operator in Thailand, dtac, announced today that it has selected products from Nokia’s IP/optical portfolio to prepare for software-defined network (SDN).

The Thai operator claims that its network will eventually be able to deliver broadband mobile access to more than 40 percent of Thailand’s population.

In order to keep up with the increased data demand, dtac needed a new core network that could handle the interfaces and programmability to support its migration to SDN.

Nokia’s 7950 Extensible Routing System (XRS) and the 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) will replace dtac’s existing core routing and infrastructure to help lay that foundation. The deployment also includes Nokia’s security gateway for dtac’s LTE network.

The 7950 XRS supports interfaces that software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) controllers can use to program the network through various methods like OpenFlow and network configuration protocol (Netconf).

Nokia 1830 PSS brings programmability to optical transport and integrated troubleshooting capabilities.

This deal could be big for Nokia seeing that network buildouts have slowed down quite a bit, affecting the company’s sales.