Vodafone in Final Phase of Major UK Backbone Network Upgrade

Broadband ISP and mobile operator Vodafone UK has revealed that they’re now entering the “final phase” of their multi-year Redstream Evolution project, which reflects the work being conducted to upgrade the backbone of their nationwide network and boost their capacity for future growth.

Redstream Evolution is the backbone network that transports all of Vodafone’s telephony, video, and data traffic around the UK over a nationwide highway of the latest fibre optic connectivity. Having previously managed three separate networks, the Redstream network will deliver a single Software Defined Networking-enabled (SDN), core Internet Protocol (IP) transport network for UK consumer and business customers.

All of the operator’s home broadband, mobile and business customers are now being shifted onto the same “ultra-high-capacity” backbone transport network, which they hope will be more cost-efficient and result in improvements to customer experience, new products and reduce the environmental impact of their operations.

The more adaptable and flexible infrastructure will also mean that content partners can host content in more strategic locations closer to the consumer, reducing the risk of buffering and lag when streaming. “It will also enable a differentiated approach to net neutrality“, albeit assuming Ofcom allows that (here).

Andrea Dona, Chief Network Officer at Vodafone UK, said:

“The massive growth in data-hungry consumer apps and business services, alongside ever-increasing internet usage, simply cannot be supported by traditional approaches to network management and capacity expansion. Data is subject to the same rules as road congestion – if the transport network gets congested, we can’t get where we want to be as quickly as we want to.

Redstream Evolution is a significant investment to modernise this critical link in our Vodafone network, creating a new express superhighway bringing more than enough capacity to deliver an amazing network experience for customers today, while also staying well ahead of future data traffic demands. This will be crucial as our home broadband customer base continues to grow, more of our business customers go through digital transformation programmes, and 5G and IoT usage rapidly increases the amount of data we use each day.

Operationally, the edge-based SDN design will allow us to partially decouple the data explosion and usage growth we’re seeing from the associated capital and running costs, through better, automated network and capacity management.”

The operator does have a network guide that explains a bit more about how they’re set up, although that was last updated in 2020 and does not appear to be reflecting all the changes that have been introduced via Redstone Evolution. We should point out that network upgrades like this are occurring right across the industry as operators adapt to the need for more capacity and flexibility in the wake of newer technologies like 5G, FTTP broadband and so forth.