INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY: ISSU

MTN South Africa has achieved global and regional milestones through its collaboration with Ericsson, marking the world’ s first automated In-service Software Upgrade( ISSU) on an Ericsson Packet Core Gateway with a collocated Packet Core Firewall, and Africa’ s first ISSU on a production node with active user sessions.

MTN South Africa completed a Container-as-a- Service Rolling Upgrade live on the Cloud Core Policy Controller( CCPC) with zero downtime, demonstrating the robustness of MTN South Africa’ s cloud-native infrastructure.

MTN South Africa has successfully modernised its core network with Ericsson, in accordance with the core network modernisation agreement signed under MTN Group’ s MTN Unified Cloud Acceleration( MUNA) principles and objectives.

The modernisation brings a range of benefits to South Africa’ s mobile infrastructure including reduced latency, enhanced data throughput and a strengthened overall user experience, providing more reliable and seamless connectivity across the country.

As part of the modernisation, MTN South Africa deployed cloud-native Packet Core and user management functions from the dual-mode 5G Core solution on Ericsson’ s Cloud Native Infrastructure Solution( CNIS) in an expedited timeframe in the first half of this year. In addition to the rollout of the new cloud-native functions, MTN South Africa and Ericsson also upgraded a range of other functions that will continue to be hosted on virtualised infrastructure powered by Ericsson NFVI.

The modernisation project has delivered significant early achievements. MTN and Ericsson achieved a world-first by completing the first ISSU of an Ericsson Packet Core Gateway node with a collocated Packet

Core Firewall. This upgrade took place seamlessly, with no interruption to 2.52 million active user sessions and 40 Gbps of data flowing through the network. The modernisation also delivered the first Ericsson Packet Core Gateway ISSU in the Africa market.

This initial deployment has been expanded with the addition of Ericsson’ s cloud-native Cloud Core Policy Controller( CCPC) on its network, further strengthening the partners’ commitment to enabling Digital Transformation and automation in South Africa and across the continent. This cloud-native evolution empowers MTN South Africa to transform its legacy policy control systems, driving enhanced flexibility, scalability and operational efficiency.

The CCPC, in its first configuration as a Policy and Charging Rules Function( PCRF) in Africa, enables MTN South Africa to implement real-time dynamic policies for 5G non-standalone. Additionally, the CCPC supports the Policy Control Function( PCF) for 5G, ensuring MTN South Africa’ s readiness for the introduction of the 5G standalone core.

MTN South Africa also reached a key milestone in its automation journey by successfully executing a Container-as-a-Service Rolling Upgrade( CaaS-RU) on the Cloud Container Distribution( CCD), which was upgraded seamlessly with zero disruption while the CCPC was handling approximately two million active sessions. The achievement demonstrates the robustness of MTN South Africa’ s cloud-native infrastructure and aligns with industry best practices for zero-downtime deployments.

Solomzi Mnyaka, General Manager Network Services Engineering & L2 Support at MTN South Africa, said:“ Building on our shared achievements with Ericsson to date, the core network modernisation and expansion marks an important step in our on-going journey to build a modern, future-ready network for South Africa.” p

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