Customer Success Story
Brunei accelerates its digital economy with Unified National Networks deploying a Juniper transport network
Brunei Darussalam, on the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia, is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Its government is hard at work to fuel economic growth and enrich the quality of life for its 450,000 residents through digital transformation. To that end, it created Unified National Networks (UNN) to accelerate the nation’s progress to a more connected future.
UNN offers fixed and mobile connectivity, local and international connectivity, and cloud and data center services over a Juniper network.
Overview
| Company | Unified National Networks |
| Industry | Service Provider |
| Products used | MX960, SRX5800, ACX2200, Security Director |
| Region | APAC |
1 year
to build an all-new network to support Brunei’s smart nation vision
11th
fastest mobile services in the world (June 2022, Speedtest)
93,000
homes and 300 local entities connected
3000-kilometer
fiber network in a 5700-square-kilometer country
Realizing the vision of a smart nation
UNN was formed in 2019, when Brunei consolidated the infrastructure of the country’s three mobile and Internet service providers. After creating a wholly new organization and engineering a brand-new network, UNN is delivering wholesale telecom services.
“We are empowering a digital society in Brunei,” says Dr. Steffen Oehler, CEO of UNN. “Everything we do, including selecting the right technology, helps the nation’s economy, residents’ personal lives, and the educational sector.”
It has been a massive undertaking.
“Modernizing the network while carrying services is like changing the engines on the plane during flight,” he says.
UNN is refreshing the network from core to edge, developing a telco cloud to deliver fixed, mobile, and ICT systems, and implementing new business and operational systems. It shut down the country’s old 2G network, upgrading hundreds of mobile base stations, and is preparing to launch 5G services in 2022 based on market demand.
The digital foundation for a smart nation
“UNN is operating the only network infrastructure in Brunei, and our services must always be accessible,” says Oehler. “We need a modern, reliable, high-capacity network.”
UNN chose Juniper networking not only for resiliency, scalability, and advanced capabilities, but also the partnership. “Juniper helped us think about how to efficiently meet growing data volumes and make the migration without disruption,” says Oehler.
With Brunei a several-hour flight from major Southeast Asian countries, Juniper’s local presence was also key.
“We are jumping from the past to the future in a very short time,” says Oehler.
UNN is modernizing its core, provider edge, and aggregation networks with Juniper to meet Brunei’s growing digital needs. Juniper MX960 Universal Routing Platforms provide high scale, density, and space efficiency for UNN’s 100-Gbps backbone and edge networks. Juniper SRX5800 Services Gateways deliver next-generation firewall, advanced threat protection, and carrier-grade network address translation. Compact, hardened ACX2200 Universal Metro Routers provide metro Ethernet and radio access network aggregation services.
Delivering on Brunei’s digital master plan
UNN provides the largest fiber and mobile coverage in the nation, reaching 90% of the populated areas and roads. It offers wholesale local and international connectivity and cloud and data center services while partnering with customers on e-commerce, IoT, and other digital initiatives.
UNN’s high-quality network services support Brunei’s strategic vision to create a dynamic and sustainable economy and a better quality of life through world-class education, readying the nation for change while maintaining the country’s cultural values.
As Brunei progresses on its vision of a smart nation, future-proofed Juniper networking solutions help protect its investment and uphold its commitment to provide a quality of life that is aimed to be among the top 10 nations in the world by 2035.
The Products
MX960
The SDN-enabled MX960 Universal Routing Platform is a high performance, carrier-grade, multiservice edge platform with unprecedented scale for service provider and cloud applications. The MX960 enables inline MACsec support without performance penalties on 10, 40 GbE and 100 GbE, and delivers 12 Tbps of system capacity in a 12 slot chassis supporting dense 100 GbE, 400 GbE interfaces. Similar to the other MX Series Universal Router Platforms, the MX960 has extensive carrier-grade capabilities.
SRX5800
The massive performance and scalability of the SRX5800 next-generation firewall make it ideal for securing large enterprise data centers, service provider infrastructure, and public sector networks.
ACX2200
The ACX2200 is a 1U hardened router with four copper 10/100/1000-Mbps interfaces, four copper/fiber GbE ports, two GbE SFP ports, and two 10GbE SFP+ ports. It is ideal for IP-RAN deployments.
Security Director
Centralized security management, network-wide visibility and analytics, and unified policy orchestration secure your network and expand Zero Trust from the edge into the data center.
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Published July 2022