Looking to scale to meet customer demands and ensure a stable, smooth and secure internet and 5G experience for subscribers, Italian operator Windtre’s has announced a major network refresh with Juniper Networks.
In its business, Windtre offers connections, energy and insurance products, and aims to ensure that more than 97% of its customers in Italy are covered with 4G/5G mobile services, while providing landline and internet from 20,000 points of presence.
Yet with increasingly advanced digitisation, Windtre said that it has seen a dramatic increase in network traffic which has resulted in the need for a network refresh to further expand its 5G capabilities. In Italy, for the past four years, the average daily mobile traffic among all carriers has increased on average 28% per year and traffic on fixed networks has increased between 8.5% to 19.9% per year.
In addition, increased use of streaming services by mobile and internet customers has meant that Windtre needed to create a reliable, high-performance core and edge infrastructure that can scale to meet customer demands and ensure a stable, smooth internet and 5G experience.
Transforming the IP edge network to a distributed services architecture is the first planned phase of a network refresh designed to deliver greater capacity on the network, supporting more mobile customers, devices and traffic. Following this, Windtre is planning to upgrade its IP core network, internet gateways and network termination points starting from mid-2025.
The upgrade is using technology from Juniper Networks which is, together with its partner Sirti Digital Solutions, supporting Windtre in migrating to a distributed services architecture for its IP edge followed by an IP backbone refresh to ensure greater network capacity for Windtre’s services and improved resiliency.
Essentially, the Juniper solutions will be used for scalable growth, multiservice agility and security, with a readiness for 400GbE. Specifically, Juniper Networks PTX Series Packet Transport Routers will be used as the spine gateway nodes to allow easy scaling of the whole POP architecture.
Juniper MX960 and MX10004 routers are being deployed as broadband network gateway (BNG) leaf nodes, allowing evolution toward a disaggregated approach with a separate control plane running as cloud-native application and the user plane component continuing to run on Junos OS on a dedicated hardware platform, using Broadband Network Gateway Control and User Plane Separation (BNG CUPS) architecture.
In addition, to MX Series Routers, ACX Series Routers will be deployed for the aggregation of the PoP’s low-speed connections while Juniper Networks SRX Series Firewalls integrating networking and security into a single platform will see use in performing Carrier Grade Network Address Translation (CGNAT) in Windtre network to preserve its IPv4 addresses and efficiently support more subscribers and devices.
Windtre is also upgrading Juniper MX960 routers with new line cards to support higher traffic volumes and security requirements, while preserving the investment in Juniper solutions and operational experience.
The company’s CTO Carlo Melis said: “Windtre is committed to enhancing the quality of our network to deliver unmatched customer experiences. The latest collaboration with Juniper allows Windtre to dynamically scale our infrastructure and maintain the robust performance that customers expect. This major upgrade is a crucial step toward our strategic goals for 2025 and beyond, preparing us to seamlessly integrate advanced capabilities enabled by the 5G standalone network.”
Stefano Andreucci, head of service provider for Italy and South Europe at Juniper Networks, added: “Juniper Networks is proud to support Windtre on this transformative project. Juniper’s technology is built to effectively scale and meet the demands of Windtre’s large subscriber base but also anticipate future growth and service needs.
“This project exemplifies our mission to provide robust network infrastructure, equipped with the latest networking advancements to aid better security and efficiency, ultimately making every connection count.”
