SFR leads with all-IP to meet customer demands

French telecommunication operator SFR has a clear vision for meeting its customers’ changing needs with a converged fixed and mobile offering built on all-IP technology.

SFR Group is France’s second largest carrier with a presence in the country’s mobile and fixed communications markets. It faces fierce competition on both fronts with a competitive situation that is toughening as new mobile and ADSL players enter the arena.

SFR recognizes the challenges and has a vision for meeting them. “Customers want to experience the same services, voice or data, in a seamless manner, whatever media they use. The Internet is spreading everywhere, in all households, on all screens, at home and on the go,” says Pierre-Alain Allemand, Senior Executive Vice President Networks, SFR.

About Pierre-Alain Allemand

Pierre-Alain Allemand has been Senior Executive Vice President Networks for SFR since October 2008.

Prior to his current role, Pierre-Alain held a variety of senior management functions with operator LDCOM, in charge of establishing its long distance network. He was then in the Carrier Wholesale Division and Network Division as Director of the Data Business Unit starting in 2004.

Pierre-Alain was also Managing Director of Networks for Neuf Cegetel from 2006.

“Furthermore, new services, such as video streaming over smartphones, are creating more and more data traffic, which impacts on the capacity of our network and services platform” he adds.

To meet these changing consumer expectations, SFR has a three-pronged strategy.

  • Service Differentiation: firstly to differentiate itself in the eyes of consumers by providing a superior quality of service, selective services such as IPTV, and to integrate fixed and mobile IP services.
  • Interaction: secondly, the focus of SFR’s strategy is to put the Internet at the core of its customer relationships.
  • A focus on all-IP: lastly, SFR aims to improve efficiency by converging its fixed and mobile networks using all-IP technologies to reduce transport costs and meet rising bandwidth demand.

Clearly, all-IP sits at the heart of SFR’s plans. “All-IP is not a goal in itself, but a means to decouple network evolution costs from the traffic growth that is being created by flat-rate data tariffs. All-IP will also enable us to launch innovative services more rapidly and give customers an improved service experience with faster access to higher capacity,” says Pierre-Alain Allemand.

“Based on our experience in fixed networks, we are looking to all-IP to provide simplicity and a drastic cut in the network cost of ownership to answer the promise of mass market mobile broadband services.”

Evolution to all IP and LTE

To help achieve its goals, SFR has turned to its long-standing networks systems partner Nokia Siemens Networks to deliver an all-IP packet core solution, as well as an expansion of its mobile broadband coverage into rural areas. Leveraging the Nokia Siemens Networks LTE-ready network solution, the two companies will also begin an LTE technology pilot.

“The Nokia Siemens Networks solutions will help to increase capacity and to simplify the mobile Internet connectivity architecture, as well as provide a real evolution path to LTE. With the Nokia Siemens Networks partnership, we can enforce our roadmap for future products to cope with new customer demands,” concludes Pierre-Alain Allemand.