The companies have developed an automated software testing platform that will allow the carrier to swiftly test and deploy software releases and services to its pan-European voice core infrastructures
In sum — what to know:
An integrated test solution: Vodafone has tapped Spirent to jointly develop a test automation platform for testing and validating all software, features releases, and updates to its voice core infrastructure
A fully automated pipeline: Running on top of an infrastructure spanning 160 nodes, the solution is fully automated and will throughout Vodafone’s lab-to-live lifecycle process.
Early tests show promise: According to Vodafone, early implementations show 75% reduction in software upgrade rollout times to its voice core infrastructure.
Telecom networks are complexly interconnected. A local failure emerging from a single point can strike distant parts of a network, degrading service quality across swathes of users.
The growing dependence on software makes the system even easier to break. Every small change made to a software can potentially introduce news bugs. A catastrophic failure can simply stem from a fleet of network equipment waiting to receive a delayed software update, or from receiving a buggy one.
Vodafone and Spirent are working together to address this vulnerability. The companies have co-developed a bespoke automated software validation platform for testing a soon-to-launch Vodafone voice service, that will ensure quality and compliance of all software, software release, and updates to Vodafone’s 5G voice core network in Europe.
According to Vodafone, the testing platform enables swift verification and validation of software updates pushed by 5G equipment vendors in its ecosystem before they are deployed into production. This allows the carrier to deploy new features and updates from vendors as well as pump out new services of its own to customers much faster than was earlier possible.
Key capabilities include rapid testing, quality checks, and automated CI/CD workflow. “Spirent’s solution is a new way of creating an automation pipeline, which includes the concept of testing the network comprehensively before anything is deployed,” said a spokesperson for Spirent.
Running on a 160-node infrastructure, the automated software testing solution is integrated into Vodafone’s existing continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipeline to deliver uninterrupted testing on condensed timelines.
Under the hood, the platform leverages three of Spirent’s key technologies: Landslide, for emulating and testing the concerned service; Velocity automation portfolio, which is built into the CI/CD/CT process and initiates and executes multiple pipelines 24×7; and VisionWorks that creates a birth certificate for the service and/or network function when its deployed into production, and then switches to a performance monitoring mode to assure the service over time.
The platform is fully automated and requires no manual intervention, Spirent told. It sits in the customer environment, and as a new software loads or a software update comes through, it fires off a set of smaller pipelines that does different types of checks on auto-pilot.
“What if you’re running tests for a certain service and something breaks? What happens next in terms of collection of artifacts and sharing that information with the right teams to get it fixed? All of those things are implemented as multiple pipelines within the entire automation framework, eliminating any guesswork and shortening response time,” they explained.
Embedded into Vodafone’s lab-to-live lifecycle workflow, it will automate deployment of new software releases every three months, as timed by vendors in most markets.
Vodafone claims that the platform makes it possible to roll out new software upgrades in just days — a process that typically spans months. In its early implementations, the company reported a 75% drop in time to release new infrastructure software updates. If that’s accurate, this can dramatically save time, allowing upgrades and features to reach customers much faster.
The solution, Spirent said, is however not exclusive to Vodafone. The network test and assurance service provider is in fact in talks with multiple customers at this time, and set to launch new packages shortly.
The partnership comes at a time when Vodafone is working to ramp up cloud-native 5G standalone (SA) deployment across Europe — an initiative which began in 2021 with the activation of the first ever 5G SA in Germany, and subsequently expanded to UK., Ireland, Italy, Portugal and other parts of Europe. The company said it anticipates a surge in software releases with its ongoing 5G SA expansion efforts across Europe.
Unlike 5G Non-Standalone (NSA), SA runs on a full 5G core which is architected to deliver speeds of 150 to 200 Mbps, ultra-low latency, and advanced network functions like network slicing. Being a more responsive network than 5G NSA, 5G SA supports a wide range of demanding applications like 4K streaming, high-quality video calls, online gaming, AR/VR applications, IoT, and industrial automation use cases.