Huawei's 4G PCRF at BT-owned mobile operator to make way for cloud-native and 'converged' 4G/5G policy solution from US supplier.
Andrew De La Torre, group vice president of technology at Oracle Communications, conceded to Light Reading that one reason why BT picked the US supplier to provide its converged policy rules engine was because the UK incumbent was facing an "acute geopolitical situation."
De La Torre did not reference Huawei by name, but the Chinese supplier provides BT-owned EE with a PCRF (policy and charging rules function) for its 4G network. And according to guidance from the UK's National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), "high-risk vendors" (HRVs) should not provide various mobile core functions in 4G networks, including PCRF.
The UK government has also stipulated that all 5G equipment from HRVs, which include Huawei, should be gone from the UK's mobile networks no later than 2027.
Light Reading caught up with De La Torre after Oracle announced last week that BT, a long standing customer, had selected its cloud-native converged policy management system for rollout in the EE network.
De La Torre explained, however, that Oracle's first engagement with BT on the project was a year ago. He would not be drawn on speculating about when the system will see commercial light of day in the UK, but De La Torre – perhaps unsurprisingly as an Oracle man – argued that the supplier's "truly cloud native" and "agile" converged policy rules engine was pretty much a unique market proposition.
Laying converged ground rules…
The purpose of a "converged" policy system is to ensure that customer service experience is as uniform as possible when moving in and out of 3G and 4G coverage, and of course when straying onto 5G turf.
"As is the case with most of the operators we've been working with in the policy space, BT was looking to do something that is 5G ready," said De La Torre. "But you can't do that if you continue to maintain PCRF for 3G and 4G, and then bring in a 5G PCF [policy control function] from a different vendor. The problem then is you'll have to dual configure for the same subscriber, which is not as reliable to deliver similar service characteristics. It also creates an extra overhead."
Want to know more about 5G? Check out our dedicated 5G content channel here on Light Reading.
Other future-proofing elements were contributory factors that worked in Oracle's favor during BT's selection process, claimed De La Torre. "Should BT wish to implement an edge architecture in order to deliver low latency services, or route that into an enterprise customer, our policy platform already has the rules to configure those kinds of services," he said.
And any new ideas and concepts from BT can also apparently translate into network enhancements, something which De La Torre thinks Oracle is well placed to deliver through its flexible rules engine.