Argela

Year of Establishment: 2004

Business Segment: IT Product % Software Services

Türk Telekom Share: 100%

Argela and its subsidiary located in Silicon Valley, Netsia, take the lead in the development of next generation telecommunications technologies, primarily the 5G ecosystem, by developing products and intellectual property with their R&D and innovation-oriented activities.

Next generation telecommunications technologies

Founded in 2004 and incorporated into Türk Telekom in 2007, Argela is headquartered in İstanbul. The Company, which also provides services with its offices in Ankara and İzmir, has a subsidiary called Netsia, which was established in 2008 in Sunnyvale, USA and still operates in Silicon Valley, Santa Clara.

Together with Netsia, Argela carries out R&D and innovation activities on next generation telecommunication technologies, and develops technology, products and intellectual property on 5G.

Argela develops solutions for telecom operators in the global market and for telecom companies, public and defence industry organisations in Turkey. The Company continued its activities to increase its recognition abroad and expand its customer portfolio in 2021, and it developed business partnerships in a number of countries such as the USA, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, the UK, Germany and Taiwan.

Argela creates added value both in Turkey and in the world with its patent applications and the intellectual property it has developed in the USA on next generation telecommunication technologies, and 5G technologies in particular. Within the scope of the sales and cooperation agreement signed between Argela, Türk Telekom and Juniper Networks Inc., the Company reached the point of generating financial value through product sales by taking its operations to a higher level.

Product and solution portfolio that adds value

Argela and its subsidiary Netsia take an active role in Broadband Forum (BBF), 3GPP, GSMA, Small Cell Forum and Silicon Valley based ONF (Open Networking Foundation), which include the world’s leading companies operating worldwide. Its activities in these organisations allow the Company to play a leadership role in directing technology and open-source development.

In addition to these activities, Argela carries out joint projects with many universities and companies within the scope of the European Union’s Horizon2020 and Celtic projects. The Company, which has contributed to the technological development of Turkey through these studies, also creates EU supported funding for R&D activities.

Argela’s portfolio includes programmable base station solutions (vRAN), software defined networks (SDN), network performance monitoring, subscriber analytics, customer satisfaction management, LTE base stations solutions, as well as software-defined fixed network access solutions and applications such as SEBA (SDN Enabled Broadband Access).

In 2021, within the framework of its Multi-Access Edge Cloud (MAC) architecture activities, Argela enabled the development of a basic edge cloud computing infrastructure called Türk Telekom Value Added Cloud Services Infrastructure Management Platform, which is compatible with NFV architecture and consists of opensource components, within the structure of Türk Telekom Group.

Value added cloud services such as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, which will be integrated into Türk Telekom’s infrastructure and will create additional income through the platform, are planned to be offered to public and general end users. Tests on the platform have been successfully completed and work is underway on its pilot product, which is planned to be implemented in the first half of 2022.

In addition to its innovative solutions in the field of telecommunications, Argela develops strategic projects in cooperation with defence industry organisations in the country. Following the completion of the first phase of the Fourth Generation Communication System Development (ULAK) project in 2018, which was signed between the Company and the Presidency of Defence Industries (SSB) in 2013, the second and final phases of the project came to the stage of completion. The second phase developments, which were completed in the last quarter of 2021, are scheduled to be delivered in the first quarter of 2022. Within the scope of the project, as of the end of November 2021, ULAK Base Stations provide service in a total of 755 Universal sites, of which 468 are in Universal Phase-1 and 287 in Universal Phase-2, and in a total of 976 commercial sites, 343 of which belong to Türk Telekom.

Another SSB project, the Domestic DPI Device Development project (DEFİNE) carried out with the stakeholders under the roof of OTAK Technology, in which Argela is also a partner, started with the contract signed at the end of 2019. The first phase including passive DPI features was completed in November 2021. The second phase, which will provide operator-grade active DPI features, is planned to be completed by the end of 2022.

In addition to all these, Argela’s joint work with a number of universities in Turkey includes next generation technology projects such as 5G, software-defined networks, virtualisation of network functions, cyber security, self-organising mobile networks and big data processing.

Rollout of open and smart 5G radio infrastructure in all operators

Türk Telekom, Argela and Netsia, have collaborated with Juniper Networks on technologies supporting 5G. As part of this cooperation, RIC (Intelligent RAN Controller) developments continue via Argela’s expert staff. Furthermore, the works are underway for the integration of RIC into Juniper’s product portfolio and joint innovation on Open RAN (Open Radio Access Network).

Within the framework of the agreement, Netsia’s RIC technology will be developed by Juniper and integrated into Juniper’s orchestration portfolio. In this way, it will be possible to provide a secure and guaranteed service experience that enables end to end network slicing and orchestration, to service providers.

With its critical function that makes Open RAN technology operational, RIC enables smart control of sliced mobile networks over the cloud, bringing in increased efficiency and flexibility. This new slicing technology allows the desired capacity to be allocated to the desired base station by programming the base station virtually. As such, for instance, it will be possible to prioritise the first aid calls and rescue teams at times of disasters and to prevent failed calls by increasing the capacity of a certain region.

The cooperation with Juniper will strengthen the Open RAN and 5G ecosystem by rolling out the open and smart 5G radio infrastructure in all operators, especially Türk Telekom; and will enable operators to achieve numerous operational and commercial benefits, including increased performance, efficiency and scalability.

Broadband access technology of the future for fixed networks; Netsia BB Suite

Argela and Netsia develop solutions also for fixed internet providers. In this context, Netsia Broadband Suite, which enables the management of passive fibre optic (PON) broadband access networks based on software and edge cloud, has been made available for the use of fixed internet providers.

Netsia BB Suite was launched in Türk Telekom’s live networks in 2021. The product, which started to serve in three regions in İstanbul, is aimed to be rolled out throughout the country. In this context, Türk Telekom announced to the world with a press release, its goal of Netsia BB Suite solution to reach 1 million subscribers.

Netsia BB Suite has been put into trial in various domestic and international operators. In this context, tests in Taiwanese operator Chunghwa Telekom’s laboratories were completed, proving the product’s success in the course of open and standalone broadband solution. It is aimed to use the product in the operator’s live sites as part of the continuation of the work.

On behalf of Türk Telekom, a member of ONF Board of Directors, Argela and Netsia support the open source SEBA project, in which companies such as AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and NTT are contributors. Netsia, one of the 5 members of the ONF SEBA Board of Directors, has been representing Türk Telekom Group in the ONF Technical Board of Directors since 2018.

On the other hand, Netsia has been a member of BBF since 2019 as well. Virtualised fibre network solutions around the world are shaped around two main institutions. One is ONF, which Netsia is working closely with, and the other one is BBF. While ONF is strong on the ready-made open source software side, BBF, which has a large number of members worldwide, is more active in terms of standards. Netsia closely follows the developments in these two fields and aims to combine the strengths of both organisations from a technical point of view.

Argela continues to expand its geographical footprint and add value to its customers

Argela implements activities for the sales of NPM (Network Performance Monitoring) and CEM (Customer Experience Management) products abroad. In 2021, the Company continued its activities with the aim of expanding its geographical footprint and adding value to its customers.

Argela won the NPM/CEM tender opened by Ethio Telecom (Ethiopia), one of the largest mobile operators in Africa, and started acceptance tests in the last quarter of 2021. Having achieved a major success by winning the tender opened by Azerbaijan’s leading operator Azercell in 2019, the Company successfully passed the acceptance tests, and the product was put into use. Argela won Turkcell’s fixed voice network performance monitoring tender in 2021 and started the field installations of the project.

Argela’s NPM solution provides meaningful data to fixed and wireless service providers, enabling them to monitor end to end network performance, detailed customer behaviour and service quality and to maintain the service quality at a certain level as well. For this purpose, signalling and data probes have been developed for a number of protocols in mobile, fixed and IP networks.

The NPM solution enables effective use of network resources with end to end and real time visualisation of the network through probes that operate on a real time basis.

The CEM solution, on the other hand, provides meaningful analysis and behavioural information about customers’ experiences in networks such as voice, data access, data usage, and messaging. This solution, which allows operators to monitor the activity of their customers at an individual level in real time, is used for advanced analysis and, to accelerate and improve customer care services.

Development activities continue to make NPM and CEM products compatible with 5G networks. With the first phase development, NPM/CEM 5G was turned compatible with NSA (Non-Stand Alone) architecture. Probe software development studies continue for the 5G SA (Stand Alone) architecture.

Investments that will increase domestic and national solutions continue

Argela makes great contribution to the localisation of technologies used in Turkey. Among the most significant of these is the production of domestic DPI (Deep Pocket Inspection) device that was developed under the roof of Otak A.Ş., which was established at the beginning of 2019 by Turkish companies and in which Argela also has a 20% share.

With these works progressing under the name of DEFİNE project, it is aimed to develop a software which will be capable of operating in both active and passive modes, can be used in public and commercial communication transmission networks, offers enhanced security features, will analyse the traffic in detail on a package basis, will generate traffic-related meta data and forward the desired content to other devices.