Case Study » Telstra’s Mobile Signalling Network

Faced with capacity constraints due to increasing demand for text messaging, Telstra called upon Unico to create a cutting-edge solution.

A team from Unico vastly increased the signalling capacity of Telstra’s mobile network by moving a large portion of the traffic from legacy signalling channels to state of the art IP-based SIGTRAN channels.

The MINT (mobiles intelligent number translator) system developed by Unico currently handles 60 percent of text messages to Telstra mobiles, with plans to move the remainder of SMS and voice traffic by mid-2007.

Telstra’s impending capacity constraints required tight timeframes. Through a marathon effort, Unico’s team completed design, coding, integration, testing and deployment in less than a year.

Russell Williams, Unico’s General Manager of Strategy and Business Development, compared the project to “changing an engine on a 767 jet at 37,000 feet. We’re changing one of the engines and need to ensure that the plane keeps running and doesn’t fly around in circles.”

The new technology developed by Unico greatly simplifies the network by converting a proprietary hardware and software solution to a standard IP-based software solution.

Unico’s work also creates operational savings for Telstra. “The capacity of the old pipes were so low that it required 36 individual machines spread all over Australia. The new model has just four machines. The bottom line is that it’s simpler, easier to manage, has much higher capacity and has fewer points of failure,” Williams said.

Unico built the required protocol layers on top of Sun Microsystems’ SCTP stack, which Sun introduced as a standard component in the Solaris 10 operating system. As one of the first mission-critical signalling implementations to use the stack, Unico worked closely with Sun to iron out issues and prove its robustness in a production environment.

“This was a Telstra first. It was the first platform in Telstra’s network to use this new SIGTRAN standard, so they put a huge amount of scrutiny into compliance testing to make sure it could do the job.”

The success of the project was witnessed on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day (2005/2006) when the Telstra network successfully handled a record 27 million text messages.

According to Williams, the project has created positive flow-on effects: “The MINT application was the first one and it’s flowing on to the rest of the Unico platforms, as business cases and capacity demand. It has given Telstra the confidence to deploy SIGTRAN on several other platforms. It has been leading edge for both us and Telstra.”