Turkcell’s Journey to Tomorrow’s Network with Odine & Red Hat

– Telco Cloud Empowered and 5G-Ready!

ISTANBUL, Feb. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Turkcell, Türkiye’s leading converged telecommunication and technology services provider, takes a step forward and continues its digital transformation by deploying commercial cloud-native infrastructure clusters with Odine utilizing Red Hat OpenShift.

Over the past two years, Turkcell has strategically directed all its core network investments towards virtualization, consolidating its position as a significant player in the EMEA region. This strategic deployment capitalizes on Turkcell’s previous achievements in transforming 75% of its core network through a unified virtualization platform.

Today, Turkcell’s network stands at the forefront of 5G readiness, with its underlying platform powered by Odine and Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes, showcasing its proactive approach to technological advancements. Leveraging 5G capabilities, Turkcell’s network is poised to deliver unprecedented speed, low latency, and enhanced connectivity to its customers, enabling transformative experiences and unlocking new possibilities in the digital landscape.

Currently, the platform efficiently manages a substantial traffic volume exceeding 14 Tbps, primarily associated with the mission-critical services of Turkcell’s core network. Turkcell, Odine and Red Hat completed the deployment of unified cloud-native infrastructure, with Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform supporting the rapid onboarding of containerized network functions, drawing on the experience the companies have developed over the last few years. Red Hat OpenShift is able to provide a scalable, flexible foundation for Turkcell Telco Cloud, an open solution designed to deliver reliability, automation and security features for deploying network functions.

Turkcell persists in its commitment to modernizing its current Red Hat OpenStack Platform environment, leveraging the expertise of Odine and Red Hat to help provide seamless upgrades. Demonstrating exceptional resilience, these upgrades proceed smoothly without any discernible impact on site traffic, underscoring Turkcell’s dedication to uninterrupted service delivery amidst operational enhancements.

Turkcell will also manage, automate and orchestrate the services over the virtualization platforms via a management and orchestration framework that Turkcell and Odine have already deployed. Additionally, Odine has extended the orchestration frame with Red Hat Ansible Automation where it provides robust container and native Kubernetes management, expanding to Red Hat OpenShift by automating the deletion, creation and healing of services.

“Turkcell has successfully modernized its infrastructure, paving the way for enhanced flexibility and cost efficiency in our digitalization efforts within the core network domain. Our commitment to innovation is evident in our deployment of cloud-native infrastructure, marking a significant milestone in our digital transformation journey. This journey enables us to unleash the full potential of digitalization, delivering automated, reliable, and faster services to our customers. Our journey towards tomorrow’s network has been greatly strengthened by our collaboration with Odine and Red Hat,” said Prof. Dr. Vehbi Çağrı Güngör, Chief Network Technologies Officer at Turkcell.

“The implementation of a unified cloud-native infrastructure is a critical step in Turkcell’s digital transformation journey and provides a strong foundation for sustainable success. We are proud to play a crucial role in their journey which will be one of the most significant milestones to achieve benefits and drive real business value from its digital transformation efforts,” said Alper Tunga Burak, CEO at Odine.

About Turkcell

Turkcell (NYSE:TKC; BIST: TCELL) is a digital operator headquartered in Türkiye, serving its customers with its unique portfolio of digital services along with voice, messaging, data and IPTV services on its mobile and fixed networks. Turkcell Group companies operate in 4 countries – Türkiye, Ukraine, Belarus, and Northern Cyprus. Turkcell launched LTE services in its home country on April 1st, 2016, employing LTE-Advanced and 3 carrier aggregation technologies in 81 cities. Turkcell offers up to 10 Gbps fiber internet speed with its FTTH services. Turkcell Group reported TRY26.0 billion revenue in Q323 with total assets of TRY149.2 billion as of September 30, 2023. It has been listed on the NYSE and the BIST since July 2000, and is the only dual-listed company in Türkiye.