TeliaSonera has turned to Lucent Technologies to help manage its migration to IPv6, the next-generation Internet protocol. The pan-European mobile and fixed line operator, based in Sweden, will use Lucent software and services for its complete migration next year.

The migration will begin in Sweden and extend to all other subsidiaries in the Nordic and Baltic regions. TeliaSonera had 15,411,000 mobile customers, 8,312,000 fixed telephony customers and 2,017,000 Internet customers as of the end of 2004. Including its associated companies it had 51,359,000, 8,943,000 and 2,056,000 customers respectively. It has extensive interests in the growth markets in Russia, Turkey and Eurasia and its TeliaSonera International Carrier is a global provider of cross-border communications services.

Through a multi-year contract, Lucent will provide TeliaSonera with its VitalQIP IP Address Management software, including new workflow management technology, to automate and control the management of its existing IPv4 network and integrate support for its IPv6.

“From an engagement standpoint, TeliaSonera is quite a strategic customer, because, like BT, they are seen as a technology leader. They have done a lot of leading-edge projects,” said Baudouin Boreux, vice president, sales, Network Operations Software at Lucent. “This shows that we can bring both a technology and a services approach and we are happy to be part of their journey.”

Lucent Worldwide Services will provide strategic software consulting and deployment services, including IP acquisition and allocation guidance, IP configuration automation process design, security planning, and DNS and IPv6 knowledge transfer.

The project will be one of the first major IPv6 network deployments in Europe. “We will be doing a domestic implementation in the core countries of TeliaSonera and then we’ll roll out in other geographies as the project is completed,” Baudouin said.

IPv6 will provide a virtually unlimited number of IP addresses, which will be needed to support dramatically increasing numbers of phones, computers, cameras, personal digital assistants, portable music and video players, remote sensors and other emerging technologies. It also will improve performance and security.

Lucent’s VitalQIP IP address and network management solutions are part of Lucent VitalSuite network and service management software, which is used to simplify the management of both IP addresses and DNS and DHCP services. It uses a central repository for both IP versions, new address space allocation policies, name resolution and management of multi-vendor and multi-platform environments. Baudouin said that like most operators, TeliaSonera had built its own systems over time to handle domain services and other IP-related databases. Lucent will provide a centralized system that consolidates these functions onto one core system. While Lucent has other engagements for IPv6 migration, TeliaSonera is the biggest and most advanced so far.