1&1 Versatel overhaul targets new services and network expansion

As 1&1 Versatel marks its 25th anniversary, the German B2B communications service provider (CSP) is modernizing its legacy IT stacks to lay the foundation for the next phase of growth. In an interview with TM Forum Inform, Martin Fischer, Chief Technology Officer at 1&1 Versatel, shared how a recently automated order management system is supporting the operator’s expansion into the small- and medium-size enterprise (SME) sector and reducing operational costs.

1&1 Versatel is the fixed-line enterprise division of United Internet, which is led by Ralph Dommermuth who founded 1&1 in 1988 and entered the broadband market with the launch DSL services in 2000. Today, 1&1 Versatel provides fiber connectivity to corporate customers, including other carriers, as well as other telcos in Germany, including Telefónica O2 and Vodafone.

With over 65,000 km of optical fibre, 1&1 Versatel's network is one of the largest in Germany and is being continuously expanded. Firstly, the operator is targeting new corporate customers in business parks throughout the country. In addition, it also provides the fixed infrastructure for 1&1 Mobile’s 5G Open RAN network, which includes data centers, transport and fibre fronthaul connectivity. Together, this forms the basis for 1&1 Versatel’s growth plans.

5G and GPON opportunities

1&1 Versatel originated from acquisitions of German city fiber carriers in different regions. It provides point-to-point fiber to medium and large enterprises supported by historically customized IT stacks.

This has created a legacy of fragmented networks and disparate IT systems, which “was not the ideal basis for our goal for becoming a nationwide, synergetic, standardized and optimized network,” said Fischer.

In the context of the increasing demand for digitalisation in companies and the 5G rollout, 1&1 Versatel has a “huge opportunity” to expand from regional strongholds and “extend our network across the country”, he explained.

1&1 Versatel has built four “super core” data centers, and several central and distributed units (CUs and DUs) to supply nationwide locations with fiber fronthaul connectivity.

“With the DUs, we build points of presence in new areas where we haven’t been before,” he said, adding that this offers the chance to serve many more businesses.

1&1 Versatel is leveraging these active termination points to launch Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology to also address smaller companies.  In addition, the operator has started to introduce network orchestration and automation through an SDN Controller in the fixed access network, comparable to Open RAN capabilities in the mobile network.

IT overhaul for zero touch GPON

For the new GPON service, 1&1 Versatel needed to update its legacy IT stack that had traditionally comprised purpose-built tools for large B2B customers.

“Our OSS/BSS stack was not as flexible as we would like it to be. With the investment in fiber access and addressing SMEs, we needed more standardization to scale,” he said.

Here, 1&1 Versatel relied on TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA) as a guide and required ODA compliance for new suppliers. It also took “a rather agile” approach for iterative development, rather than following a “big bang” waterfall model.

For example, order entry involved physical pieces of paper until recently and now the order management process has been automated, reducing the time it takes an order to go into production from months to minutes.

Further updates to customer order management and a newly developed digital service order management system have enabled zero-touch automated provisioning for GPON services as soon as a customer plugs in their customer premise equipment, he explained.

Just this upgrade within the OSS transformation is expected to reduce the internal order cost per customer by 80%, Fischer said.

The new OSS/BSS stack currently supports the greenfield GPON services. 1&1 Versatel plans to grow SME services as well as extend the new system to its existing product portfolio for larger enterprises.

Cultural transformation

Fischer said that “it took a bit longer than expected” to get to a new OSS/BSS stack, but the project has laid the groundwork for further development because the telco made a point of getting all its internal IT stakeholders involved across the product lifecycle, from sales to network teams and customer service.

“We now have something that the people who work with it like …They understand the potential and they are enthusiastic to jump on it,” he said.

He also noted that the project is a “heavy transformation,” not just in technology but also in data and processes and for people at all levels of the organization. Getting everyone onboard with the changes was a key factor for the project’s success.

“People [across the business] needed to understand the benefit for them and to actively work on it. Otherwise, we would have developed something that they cannot use. This was absolutely key,” he said.