MWC: BT exploring 'cloud' mobile core concept with Stoke

U.K. telecom giant BT (NYSE:BT) has tapped small mobile gateway vendor Stoke to work on a new research effort to probe the possibility of merging wireline and wireless networks into a single unified IP architecture.

BT said it’s objective is to achieve advanced fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) between its retail and wholesale business units, but the scope of the project appears to be much broader, exploring whether the same network architecture can pull double duty on the wireless and wireline networks but also support more than one operator’s services.

The announcement put out by BT and Stoke today said Stoke would work specifically on integration aspects of long-term evolution’s (LTE’s) service architecture, the flattened IP services network behind the newest generation of mobile broadband networks. While BT doesn’t run any wireless networks itself, it has taken an active interest in the U.K.’s upcoming 2.6 GHz auctions, which would relaunch it into the ranks of wireless operators. But even if BT doesn’t pursue its own wireless network, it still has plenty at stake in the wireless and LTE markets, as Stoke director of product solutions and marketing Dan McBride pointed out: “As the largest wireline operator in the U.K. it would come as no surprise that all of the wireless operators’ traffic runs on BT’s network.”

With that objective in mind, BT will use Stoke’s SSX-3000 gateway to anchor a test to determine whether three or more network operators core’ networks can be consolidated onto a single architecture. In short, BT seems to be exploring the possibility of a ‘cloud’ mobile core, which could expand BT role in wireless from the wholesale transport of bits to the active management of its operator customers’ core network functions.

“This research with Stoke enables us to explore together the opportunity to develop innovative services for current 3G environments and opportunities for evolving the architecture to 4G,” BT director of research and technology Chris Bilton, Director said in a statement. “The program findings and vendor interoperability will provide invaluable insights to both of our companies.”
The project will bring in multiple vendors to supply the wireline routing and access and wireless core equipment in BT’s network, though neither Stoke nor BT named any other participants. In fact, McBride said he could reveal no details at all about the project as Stoke is under strict non-disclosure agreement regarding the research effort.

McBride, however, did point out that Stoke has been evolving its SSX-3000 to support many of the capabilities of the mobile core. Though originally configured as an aggregation gateway in high-traffic mobile broadband networks and a termination point for femtocells and WiFi FMC traffic, Stoke always intended it to function as any number of mobile IP gateways terminating, offloading and routing traffic from any source, whether femtocell, satellite ground link, or 3G, WiMax or 4G base station. After winning its first big contract with NTT DoCoMo (NYSE:DCM) in 2009, Stoke has racked up over several customers and trial wins and was on target to ship its 200^th SSX platform by the end of 2010. In the U.S., Stoke is in trials with AT&T (NYSE:T).

Stoke has been fairly methodical about adding functionality to the SSX. It introduced mobile data offload capabilities last year, and at Mobile World Congress this year it plans to unveil enhancements to the SSX that will extend other vendors’ data optimization, policy control and enforcement and content delivery network (CDN) capabilities from the core of the network all the way to the edge. According to McBride, the SSX is in a unique position in the wireless network, slotted right between the radio access network and the core. By coaxing optimization, policy and content delivery apps normally confined to the core closer to the subscriber they can be put to much better use, McBride said.

But Stoke still hasn’t announced the network core functions that would appear to crucial to BT’s convergence research program. In order to converge network cores, the SSX would have to support the packet data network gateway (PDN gateway) and serving gateway (S gateway) functions of LTE’s evolved packet core and the service gateway support node (SGSN) or packet data serving node (PDSN) functions of 3G networks. None of those capabilities are yet on the SSX’s spec sheet. But McBride said the potential to support core element functions is already built into the SSX, and stoke will formally commercialize them soon.