Cisco Transport Manager

Headquartered in Budapest, Hungary, Magyar Telekom Group (formerly Matáv) is the country's leading provider of telecommunications and Internet services. Its lines of business provide comprehensive telephony services, with market leadership in mobile telephony, Internet and business data communications, and over 80 percent market share in fixed-line telephony services.

The Magyar Telekom Group brand represents the beginning of a new communications era for Hungary, following several international acquisitions and creating the T-group and brand. Their "T" Group includes T-Online Hungary, T-Com Hungary, T-Systems, and others. As a global player, Magyar Telekom also leverages its close relationship with its parent company, Deutsche Telekom Group, to expand its influence throughout the European Union (EU).

To implement its strategy to serve international markets, over the last few years Magyar Telekom upgraded its existing optical backbone to increase capacity and simplify provisioning and management. As a service provider, achieving and maintaining high service availability is a top priority. The new network had to be reliable, with room for continuous growth in bandwidth and customers over the next few decades. After careful consideration, Magyar Telekom chose Cisco ONS 15000 Series optical networking platforms as the foundation of its Dense Wave-Division Multiplexing (DWDM)-based long-haul and metro network services. The optical backbone complements existing Cisco 12000 Series routers in service points of presence (POPs) located throughout the country.

Over this network Magyar Telekom delivers three types of service:

To compete in the newly deregulated EU telecommunications market, Magyar Telekom must deploy and manage these transport services as cost-effectively as possible. Therefore, its criteria for selecting Cisco as its optical network vendor included an evaluation of the element management system (EMS), Cisco Transport Manager software. The software had to be reliable, scalable, and support standards-based northbound interfaces for integration with its existing Operations Support System (OSS) components. It had to include fault management capabilities that support its goals for high service availability.

To date, Magyar Telekom has a three-loop optical network in place, and a fourth loop under construction. The network reaches every major city in Hungary, with optical connections to neighboring countries. The fourth loop dedicated to the new 10-Gigabit government service is being built primarily with Cisco ONS 15454 Multiservice Transport Platforms (MSTPs).

"Cisco Transport Manager is more than an EMS, it's also a network management system," says Laszlo Voros, systems engineer in the Network Operations Center at Magyar Telekom. "The domain-level view lets us quickly set up circuits using the central A-to-Z provisioning feature." Voros also likes the intuitive user interface, logical information management, and mapping. Role-based access control supports a strict change management process.

Cisco Transport Manager software provides management services for approximately 100 optical elements in the Magyar Telekom network. It streamlines management tasks by supporting all Cisco optical transport platforms in a single console. The fault management capabilities allow Magyar Telekom to achieve very high availability, because the software gathers performance data from all optical elements and aggregates it into one place. For example, it identified an increase in electrical current in a module, giving the management team advance notice to replace it before it failed, helping Magyar Telekom to avoid service interruption.

Using the Cisco Transport Manager CORBA interface, Magyar Telekom has begun integration with its existing OSS. Today, it delivers data to the Magyar Telekom inventory management system for centralized tracking of its highly distributed networks. Plans are underway to upload fault data to an existing fault management system, simplifying and speeding Magyar Telekom's detection and response processes. The integration process has gone smoothly, without a single call to Cisco technical support.

By offering services that have the Cisco Powered Network designation, Magyar Telekom attracts large enterprise customers-including the NIIF and the Hungarian Prime Minister's office-with Cisco networks. "Magyar Telekom can offer them better integration and faster problem resolution because everyone has Cisco gear," says Voros. "Our centrally managed network foundation lets us deliver greater service flexibility at more competitive prices than we could with our former optical network."