Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) has tapped Ericsson and Cisco Systems to virtualize network to enhance agility and programmability from network slicing.

Investment in simplification of its nationwide network and infrastructure will support Vodafone Hutchison Australia to become more agile, innovative and pro-active to introduce new services to market.

Improvement in mobile customer engagement experience and cut in Opex and Capex spending are the other main benefits from virtualization.

The deal represents the first major collaboration between Ericsson and Cisco on Telecom Cloud infrastructure.

Ericsson and Cisco are the existing providers of core and routing functions for Vodafone Hutchison Australia.

“The transformation into a virtualized environment allows us to introduce new applications to drive innovation and improve customer services and user experience,” said Kevin Millroy, chief technology officer of Vodafone Hutchison Australia.

Vodafone Hutchison Australia can start launching advanced services such as Internet of Things (IoT) by making investment in the new infrastructure.

Ericsson Hyperscale Datacenter System and software components such as Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment, Ericsson Cloud Manager, Cloud SDN controller; and Cisco WAN Automation Engine, Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO), Cisco IP Network VNFs including IOS XR 9000v and Cloud Services Router 1000v are part of the joint architecture solution

Vodafone Hutchison Australia, in 2014, selected Ericsson to replace and upgrade its core network, including virtual EPC and virtual IMS/ Voice over LTE.