Telefónica has begun deploying Accedian Networks’ performance assurance across its global footprint of mobile subscribers as well as its business and residential customers. Accedian's monitoring unifies visibility over Telefónica’s multivendor metro and backhaul networks.

Scott Sumner, VP of marketing at Accedian Networks, says Telefónica is leading in network functions virtualization (NFV) deployments using open architectures. “This is a first step for them, bringing a real-time feed to a central location to drive their software defined network (SDN) and NFV optimization levels,” he says.

Accedian’s software uses a centralized controller designed specifically for performance assurance to manage Accedian's own virtual network functions (VNFs). These VNFs include monitoring for quality of service (QoS), for VoLTE, for video streaming, and for voice and text messaging, among others.

The software includes APIs, using YANG data models and NetConf protocol, to tell the performance-monitoring platform when to make decisions. For instance, when there’s network congestion, the controller will react, zooming in on the trouble area and automatically providing more granularity.

The Accedian software is being rolled out in 10 countries for Telefónica, beginning in Latin America.

“In that case they’re replacing existing solutions,” says Sumner, adding that the older network monitoring equipment in Latin America only reports issues every 15 minutes, while Accedian’s software works on a per-second basis.

Accedian did something similar with SK Telecom six months ago, setting up real-time feeds from everywhere in the network with the same uniform instrumentation everywhere.