Türk Telekom, a pioneering company in Turkey for information and communication technologies and Juniper Networks, a leader in secure, artificial intelligence-driven networks signed a groundbreaking collaboration agreement for 5G technologies, the Turkish company said in a press release Wednesday.

With the agreement, the Radio Intelligent Controller (RIC) technology belonging to Netsia, a subsidiary of Türk Telekom Group company Argela in the U.S., which provides new generation network solutions, will be further developed and integrated into Juniper’s orchestration portfolio.

The aim is to lay the foundation for service providers to deliver a secure, assured service experience enabled by end-to-end networking slicing and orchestration.

The cooperation of the two companies, which opened the way for Türk Telekom to export technology to the world, also includes technology production and development for 5G and new-generation communication solutions for service providers, which are at the top of the global agenda in the telecommunications field.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Türk Telekom CEO Ümit Önal said: "With our comprehensive cooperation, we have taken another concrete step demonstrating our determination to export technology to the world."

Önal said that the company is presenting the achievements of Turkish engineering to the world.

Saying that they have been working for a long time on cutting edge RIC technologies that will play an active role in setting global 5G standards, Önal noted: “The software developed by Netsia provides high capacity, scalable, flexible, personalized network and service solutions for the mobile communication needs of the future. We have achieved a strong synergy with the combination of Netsia's know-how and productization capacity with Juniper's strong customer network and geographic reach.”

He said Juniper and Netsia are already looking for ways to extend this collaboration to the SDN-enabled broadband field.

“As Türk Telekom Group, we are incredibly happy to offer our products, which are the achievements of Turkish engineering, to the world,” the Turkish company’s CEO added.

Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim, also speaking on the cooperation said: “Juniper believes that assuring the right service experience is key to the next decade of 5G applications. Development and integration of world-class RIC technology brings this vision another step closer by enabling the combination of end-to-end network slicing and the power of AI-driven service experience.”

He added that the dynamic collaboration with Türk Telekom and Netsia is founded on shared principles of an open approach to technology development, the fundamental importance of disaggregation and programmability and the drive toward a cloud-native infrastructure from the telco cloud into the services edge and radio networks.

“In short, our organizations agree that the cloud is the network and the network is the cloud,” Rahim said.

With its critical function that makes Open RAN (Open Radio Access Network) technology operational, RIC enables intelligent management of sliced mobile networks over the cloud. It provides increased efficiency and flexibility. This new slicing technology allows the desired capacity to be delivered to the desired base station by virtually programming it. This way, it will be possible to prioritize calls of first aid and rescue teams during disasters and to prevent unsuccessful calls by increasing the capacity of only a certain region.

Global 5G ecosystem

The cooperation will strengthen the Open RAN and 5G ecosystem and open smart 5G radio infrastructure to all operators, especially Türk Telekom, the company statement said, emphasizing that it will bring many operational and commercial benefits to operators, including increased performance, efficiency and scalability.

Türk Telekom aims to deploy Juniper's products and solutions into its ecosystem as of the end of 2021 to support all new generation Open RAN and 5G deployment. To accelerate the integration of RIC technology into Juniper's product portfolio, Netsia's expert technical staff will also be transferring permanently into the Juniper team.

Juniper Networks challenges the inherent complexity that comes with networking and security in the multi-cloud era “with products, solutions and services that transform the way people connect, work and live,” as the company describes.

It simplifies the process of transitioning to a secure and automated multi-cloud environment to enable secure, AI-driven networks that connect the world.

Founded in 2004 to develop solutions for today's and tomorrow's high-tech needs in the telecommunications industry, Argela joined Türk Telekom in 2007. Argela, together with its Silicon Valley subsidiary Netsia, is conducting R&D (research and development) and innovation activities related to the next generation of telecommunication technologies. Argela develops strategic projects in cooperation with defense industry organizations in Turkey and provided added value both in Turkey and in the world with its intellectual property and patent applications made in the U.S., especially for 5G technologies.

Netsia, which was founded in 2008 as a 100% subsidiary of Argela, is operating in the U.S. as a R&D company specializing in the latest network solutions.