China Mobile and Alcatel-Lucent claimed on Monday to have conducted the industry’s first field test of a virtualised radio access network (vRAN) using network functions virtualisation (NFV) technology.
China Mobile has also struck a software-defined networking (SDN) deal with the vendor’s U.S.-based Nuage subsidiary.
The NFV field test saw China Mobile deploy Alcatel-Lucent’s vRAN solution, which consists of a virtualised baseband unit (BBU) that runs on industry-standard servers, at the 442-hectare campus of Tsinghua University, Beijing. The trial provided indoor and outdoor mobile coverage that was able to scale network resources based on real-time fluctuations in demand.
"The vRAN technology will allow us to deliver new efficiencies across our network as our customers’ data demands change and more devices connect to our network. We are interested to see how the deployment of Alcatel-Lucent’s vRAN will help us to smoothly evolve our networks to meet these demands,&q uot; said Chih-Lin I, chief scientist of the China Mobile Research Institute.
In a separate announcement, China Mobile has deployed Nuage’s SDN technology in its private cloud infrastructure.
The deal covers Nuage’s Virtualised Services Platform (VSP), which is designed to dramatically improve the agility of data centre networks by automating and centralising control over several data centre network services across multiple sites (see chart).
"By combining open source software with Nuage Networks’ VSP, China Mobile is replacing and surpassing its previous legacy architecture in terms of power, sophistication and choice," said Nuage CEO Sunil Khandekar. "It will change the way China Mobile operates internally and, ultimately, the cloud services they can provide to customers."
