How Equinix Metal Helps Orange International Networks Pop Up New Telco Cloud POPs in Under Two Weeks
When it comes to expanding a telco network that is already among the world's largest, there is the classic way and the Metal way.
The classic way is to add Points-of-Presence (POPs) by acquiring new servers, deploying network functions on them and implementing the orchestration services necessary to make everything run smoothly. This approach may take many months, and it requires the telco to manage and upgrade the hardware indefinitely.
The Metal way is to leverage bare metal servers that are available via an as-a-Service (aaS) model to implement a new PoP. With this strategy, the telco can get up and running in a new location in just a couple of weeks, on demand.
Orange International Networks is doing things the Metal way as it works to grow its telco cloud footprint and maintain its position as a leading telco provider across the planet. Here's the role that Equinix Metal dedicated cloud plays in that story, and what all of this means both for the teams who manage Orange International Networks and the wholesale and B2B customers who benefit from them.
The fast-changing telco landscape
To understand why innovating is so important for a telco provider like Orange, it's worth taking stock of just how much the telco landscape has changed in recent years.
Telco networks are nothing new; they have been around for decades. But over the past five years or so, telcos have faced pressure to innovate in major ways. The shift from 4G to 5G networking, the rise of cloud based services like SD WAN, SSE, or CDN means that telcos must deploy a host of new network functions and services.
At the same time, to maintain efficiency and maximize reliability, telcos are increasingly taking advantage of cloud-native deployment models. That means they're running network functions in containers rather than directly on bare metal or using virtual machines.
In short, although the services that telcos provide may not have changed much from end-users' perspective, the way they deliver those services has changed tremendously as a result of the cloud-native computing revolutions.
Gaining momentum with Equinix Metal
Orange has already shifted toward a cloud-native approach to network service delivery. However, to provide even better solutions to both enterprise and other communications or content providers who purchase network connectivity and value added services from Orange using a wholesale or enterprise model, the company is investing in expanding into new regions by adding POPs.
In the past, creating a new POP would have required setting up physical infrastructure in a new location, then provisioning it with the software necessary to power network operations – a . But by working with Equinix Metal, Orange has been able to leverage in some Equinix data centers and infrastructure to add POPs to its telco cloud POPs. That initiative, which began in 2022, has allowed Orange to grow its presence in some European countries.
Using Equinix Metal servers means that Orange to host network functions doesn't need to acquire its own hardware or set up a new facility to expand its network. "We're able to grow very quickly," Idir Fodil, Director of Strategy, Transformation and Performance of Orange International Network, explains.
In addition, relying on Metal dedicated cloud infrastructure to provide the hardware means that Orange's engineers don't have to worry about hardware management. "We can focus on the software part and network connectivity of our offerings – evolving our stack, adding more services, optimizing our orchestration and so on," Fodil says.
And Orange is able to do all of this while retaining full control over the infrastructure that powers its networks. Although the servers are provided by Equinix Metal, the fact that they're bare-metal servers gives Orange the ability to provision and manage them as it requires. In that respect, Fodil says, Equinix Metal provides capabilities allowing us “to keep full control which is mandatory for us," he explains.
Happier employees, happier customers
In addition to helping Orange expand its Telco Cloud POPs footprint efficiently, which is advantageous from a business perspective, leveraging Equinix Metal infrastructure has delivered benefits for Orange employees and customers alike.
For employees, the strategy means that tedious hardware maintenance is no longer a major task in the context of network services hosted on Metal hardware. "They don't have to fixate on managing hardware and facilities," Fodil explains. Instead, they can direct their energy toward initiatives that "provide more value for our customers," like delivering new services.
Customers, meanwhile, benefit from an Orange presence in more locations, which in turn improves service quality for customers in those regions. The expected latency for Orange services hosted in their Telco Cloud POPs, is under ten milliseconds and Equinix Metal-based POPs is fully providing this impressive Service Level Agreement.
Conclusion: Doubling down on telco modernization
As networking technology continues to evolve, it's a safe bet that telcos like Orange will continue to have many opportunities to make their services even better and more efficient.
But it's also a safe bet that they'll always need hardware to power their networks – and that the harder it is to set up and manage that hardware, the slower telcos will be able to innovate. That's why we're pleased that Equinix Metal is able to offer solutions that solve the challenges surrounding telco hardware, while still providing the level of control that telcos need to run high-performing, high security networks.
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