Digicel integrates BroadForward STP and DRA for unified 3G, 4G, and future 5G signaling
Digicel adopts BroadForward Diameter Routing Agent (DRA), replacing legacy systems. The BroadForward DRA, alongside the STP, enhances signaling traffic routing and interworking across Digicel’s Caribbean and Central American markets.
Digicel delivers mobile communications, business solutions, media and entertainment, and digital services to consumers and business customers in 25 markets across the Caribbean and Central America.
“Next to 4G, which remains the dominant broadband cellular network technology in the Caribbean, we continue to support 2G and 3G.”
Miguel Calvo Vervaet, Group Director, International Business and Wholesale at Digicel
The DRA has been deployed on the GSMA award-winning BroadForward converged signaling architecture. This multi-technology signaling architecture has greatly facilitated Digicel to replace standalone SS7 and Diameter-based network functions. By design, the solution provides mobile core network functions for 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G routing, interworking, security, and number portability. Each deployed product therefore can call upon on-board support for protocols such as Diameter, SS7, SIP, ENUM, RADIUS, and HTTP/2.
According to GSMA Intelligence in 2022 “Mobile connectivity in the Caribbean is a growth industry with 28 million unique mobile subscribers, a market penetration of 63.7 percent”, while “a large number of users are still relying on legacy mobile technologies [such as 2G and 3G]”.
Miguel Calvo Vervaet, Group Director, International Business and Wholesale at Digicel, said, “Next to 4G, which remains the dominant broadband cellular network technology in the Caribbean, we continue to support 2G and 3G. It is a great benefit to have both the BroadForward STP and DRA running on the same multi-technology software architecture, which allows for ongoing, innovative development and modern deployment.”
BroadForward CEO, Taco Schoute added: “More and more mobile operators are looking for ways to replace 2G, 3G and 4G network functions with our solution, which unlike most legacy products, offers continued development and a path to the future, and includes support for 5G. The BroadForward converged signaling architecture which runs our STP and DRA, as well as 5G functions such as SEPP and SCP, gives our customers exactly that certainty of a future-proof investment.”
