In its continued quest towards ushering in latest available technologies to provide added convenience and streamlined services to customers, du has started the journey towards Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) by successfully conducting internal tests. When fully deployed on the existing state-of-the-art 4G LTE network, NFV will provide du’s enterprise customers with tighter integration of hardware and software leading to offering more value added services, reduced time required to provide a service and at more competitive costs. du is the first company in the Middle East to successfully complete the tests of this relatively-new network technology.

NFV (Network Function Virtualisation) offers a new approach to design, deploy and manage networking services. NFV decouples network functions from proprietary hardware appliance so they run in software. NFV utilises standard IT virtualisation technologies that run on high-volume services, switch and storage hardware to virtualize network functions. This means that du’s enterprise customers in future will have the option of either being able to run multiple services in a faster and more efficient manner, using possibly - just one device while the backend computing services (such as firewall, load balancer etc.) will reside at du’s data centres; or continue to have both software and hardware at customer premises more efficiently.

Saleem AlBlooshi, Executive Vice President - Network Development & Operations, du, said: “We are always eager to consider new technologies which not only streamline our network operations but more importantly – deliver a superior and simplified user experience to our customers. We are excited about Network Function Virtualisation and the successful tests paves the way forward for further validation and future deployment. We will continue our journey towards an enhanced experience based on the latest and best available technologies.”

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