Argela

Year of Establishment: 2004

Business Segment: IT Product % Software Services

Türk Telekom Share: 100%

Thanks to their extensive experience in the telecom field and dynamic R&D processes, Argela and its Silicon Valley subsidiary Netsia, develop innovative technologies and intellectual property rights for the future of communication, as well as solutions specific to current needs.

5G and beyond communication technologies

Founded in 2004 and incorporated into Türk Telekom in 2007, Argela conducts R&D and innovation studies on next generation telecommunication technologies and develops technology, products and intellectual property in the field of 5G, in collaboration with its subsidiary Netsia operating in Santa Clara, USA.
Argela provides solutions for telecom operators in the global market and for telecom companies as well as public and defence industry organisations in Türkiye. Having developed business partnerships in various countries including the USA, Azerbaijan, the UK, Germany and Taiwan, the company continued its activities to increase its international presence and expand its customer portfolio.

Innovative products and solutions

Argela and Netsia take an active role in organisations which include the world’s leading companies operating worldwide such as the Broadband Forum, 3GPP, GSMA, Small Cell Forum and Silicon Valley-based ONF. Their involvement in these organisations provides Argela and Netsia opportunities to take on leadership roles in technology-driven initiatives and open-source development projects.

Argela's portfolio consists of solutions and applications such as network performance monitoring, subscriber analytics and subscriber satisfaction management, softwaredefined fibre broadband access, as well as software-defined networks, virtualisation and end to end orchestration infrastructure solutions. The company is also involved in the domestic and national base station ULAK and the domestic DPI device project DEFİNE.

Argela’s joint collaborations with several universities in Türkiye include projects focused on developing next-generation technologies such as 5G, software-defined networks, virtualisation of network functions, drone/UAV tracking systems, cyber security, self-organising mobile networks and big data processing.

MAC: Multi-access edge cloud and orchestration architecture of the future

5G and beyond networks and applications will require higher bandwidth, lower latency and dynamic orchestration. In order to meet these requirements, Argela started phase-1 works to develop the multi-access cloud and orchestration solution, Argela/Netsia MAC.

SEBA, vOLTHA, ONOS components within the MAC infrastructure, which has a holistic and open architecture consisting of multi-access edge clouds and end to end orchestration components, and open-source End to End Orchestration (ONAP) projects that manage all these components are executed under the roof of Open Networking Foundation (ONF) and Linux Foundation. World's leading operators, including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, NTT, Telefonica and Türk Telekom contribute to these developments.

Transforming the operators' switchboard offices into data centres equipped with Commercial Off-theShelf (COTS) hardware, MAC will allow for the delivery of both mobile and fixed services from the same switchboard while enabling dynamic management of all edge clouds and components within a centralised structure. Thus, MAC will enable operators to rapidly provide new services to their subscribers.

Netsia Broadband Suite: Broadband access technology of the future for fixed networks

Argela and Netsia are developing Netsia BB Suite, which provides next generation management of passive fibre optic broadband access networks (PON) for internet service providers. By managing PON broadband access networks through software and cloud, the product offers advantages to fixed internet service providers, such as device manufacturer independence, rapid deployment of new services and singlepoint integration with operator systems.

Netsia BB Suite, which was launched in three regions in İstanbul on the Türk Telekom network in 2021, is now servicing in 14 regions. The initial expansion plan for Netsia BB Suite, which set out with the goal of reaching 1 million users, involves extending its coverage to three new cities and a total of 30 regions throughout the country. In order to ensure supply and competitive advantage, the number of different brand/model devices supported by the product has been increased, and ecosystem expansion efforts continue with new device integrations.

Acceptance testing of Netsia BB Suite is ongoing in various domestic and international operators’ laboratories and live test fields.

NPM/CEM: Argela continues to work on the 5G transformation of its core network product range

NPM (Network Performance Monitoring) platform delivers meaningful data to both wired and wireless service providers, enabling them to monitor their end to end network performance and service quality effectively. Throughout the year, Argela has been diligently working on expanding the platform to encompass 5G networks. The company successfully deployed its newly developed probe software on the Türk Telekom 5G NSA (NonStandalone) network, while continuing to develop probe software for the 5G SA (Standalone) network in early 2023. It is aimed to activate the first phase outputs at the Türk Telekom 5G laboratory. With this development, the product will not only measure the performance metrics of 5G networks, but also operate in different environments, including cloud systems with virtualisation support.

Argela continues its development activities on the adaptation of the CEM (Customer Experience Management) platform to 5G, which provides meaningful analysis and behavioural information about subscribers' experiences such as voice, data access, data usage, messaging on telecom networks. The company enhanced its platform by developing the CEI (Customer Experience Index) algorithm, which scores each subscriber's experience on the network services they use throughout the day. This enables the measurement of subscribers’ experience on mobile networks on a daily basis, with the aim of improving customer experience. Argela initiated the Network Data Analytics Function (NWDAF) project, which is a standardised network function by 3GPP. The purpose of this project is to provide the essential data and analytics required for automation and network performance on 5G core networks. The product that will emerge as a result of this project will possess performance management and capacity utilisation estimation/ planning capabilities on 5G networks, thanks to its artificial intelligence supported analytics. In addition to performance management on the 5G network, this product will play significant roles in terms of service quality and customer experience management as it will be integrated with the NPM/CEM platform.

The EIR (Mobile Device Identity Management System) platform, which Argela included in its 5G development roadmap in 2022, is used to register and manage mobile devices and is being developed in line with the 5G architecture. The product was installed and integrated into the Türk Telekom 5G laboratory in the autumn of 2022, and the basic service flows of the product were successfully tested.

Projects being carried out with the Presidency of Defence Industries (PDI)

Along with its innovative solutions in the telecommunications sector, Argela develops strategic projects in cooperation with domestic defence industry organisations. The company and Aselsan signed the Fourth Generation Communication System Development (ULAK) project in 2013, and after the completion of its first phase in 2018, the second and final phase was completed at the end of 2022. As part of the project, ULAK base stations provide services in a total of 851 universal sites, with 467 in Universal Phase-1, 287 in Universal Phase-2, and 97 in Universal Phase-3, as well as in a total of 1,157 commercial sites, of which 451 are owned by Türk Telekom as of the end of December 2022.

As a PDI project, Argela is collaborating with stakeholders under the OTAK Teknoloji umbrella to develop a domestic DPI device named DEFİNE. The project started with a contract signed at the end of 2019, and the first phase, which includes passive DPI features, was completed in November 2021. The first two stages of the second phase, which will enable active DPI features at the operator level, were completed in 2022. Professional service support will be provided in the subsequent phases of the project.

Drone/UAV Tracking Control and Traffic Management Systems Project

In 2022, Argela launched technological advancements and proof-of-concept (PoC) studies for cloud-based, artificial intelligence supported drone/UAV tracking control and traffic management systems. As part of its R&D activities, the company applied for a patent in the USA (USPTO) to protect the intellectual property related to drone/UAV tracking control and traffic management systems that it designed.

Argela, in partnership with Türk Telekom and Cappadocia University, successfully concluded the phase-1 of the UAV Innovation project for the development of drone/UAV tracking control and traffic management systems (UTM). The control of drones/UAVs over Türk Telekom live LTE network, transmission of data packets, data transfer speed and data transmission tests were successfully conducted.

Argela, closely monitors the drone/UAV airspace regulation and architectural studies in the USA and Europe, and held meetings with the General Directorate of Civil Aviation, led by Türk Telekom, regarding the Drone/ UAV Tracking, Control, and Traffic Management System that can be implemented in Türkiye. In this context, Türk Telekom, General Directorate of Civil Aviation and Argela formed a UTM working group.

Within the scope of the regulations planned to be released in the future, Argela has started planning Türk Telekom eSim PoC trials and UAV Innovation project phase-2 in order to enable the use of LTE communication infrastructure by drones/UAVs.

Professional service for Juniper Networks

Regarding the patent and software rights of the RIC (RAN Intelligent Controller) project developed by Netsia, the License and Collaboration Agreement and Professional Service Agreements were signed between Juniper Networks and Türk Telekom on November 5, 2020. The contracts, which were initially signed for a period of two years, have been extended until the end of 2022 with the agreement of the parties involved. Argela provides support to Juniper Networks through a development team of eight in accordance with the Professional Service Agreement signed between the two companies. The main objective of RIC is to bring software-defined controllability to the RAN as in the case of the journey to 5G, and to use radio resources in the most efficient manner. xApp/rApp, which are applications that will run on the RIC, can provide solutions to usage scenarios required in the network.