BARCELONA, Spain, March 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobile
World Congress 2015 -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and
NYSE: ALU) is to demonstrate how wireless operators can use its
virtualized radio access network technology to dynamically meet
changing market, customer and environmental demands, while also
taking advantage of dramatically enhanced network performance and
lowering costs.
Alcatel-Lucent's NFV-based vRAN technology has been installed at
Mobile World Congress 2015 in support of demonstrations on its own
booth (3K10 in Hall 3) and the stands of its technology partner
Intel and customers China Mobile and Telefonica.
Alcatel-Lucent's vRAN will be available for customer trials
during 2015 and for commercial operation in 2016.
The demonstration at this year's Mobile World Congress further
underlines Alcatel-Lucent's strategy of collaborating with industry
leaders such as Intel, China Mobile and Telefonica to accelerate
industry adoption of next-generation technologies as it strives to
meet demands for capacity, performance and efficiency being placed
upon it by the growth of new wireless devices.
The introduction of Alcatel-Lucent's vRAN platform comes just 12
months after it announced an agreement with Intel – at Mobile World
Congress last year - to collaborate on NFV development.
- The vRAN comprises a virtualized baseband unit (vBBU) that uses
general purpose servers with Intel®
Xeon® processors to deliver
cost-savings and increased network performance.
- Alcatel-Lucent has a long-standing co-development agreement in
place with China Mobile to deliver mobile ultra-broadband
innovations. At Mobile World Congress 2014 the companies
demonstrated the progress of the Cloud-RAN program. At this year's
event China Mobile will showcase the advances they have helped
deliver in both mobile and NFV networks.
- Alcatel-Lucent also announced a co-innovation agreement with
Telefonica at last year's Mobile World Congress, focused on driving
industry adoption of NFV. Telefonica will demonstrate the
Alcatel-Lucent vRAN solution on its booth as part of an
ambitious example of an end-to-end fully virtualized network
running at Mobile World Congress 2015.
The demonstration of vRAN underlines Alcatel-Lucent's proven
experience in wireless networks and in virtualization. In 12 months
it has announced the virtualization of a wide range of network
functions, including evolved packet core, IMS, Content Delivery
Network and service routing technologies. The company's NFV
leadership is underpinned by the participation its CloudBand NFV
platform in over 30 customer projects, an NFV ecosystem of over 60
members and extensive Nuage Networks SDN capabilities - including
the launch of the Virtualized Networks Services (VNS) in 2014 -
which further build on Alcatel-Lucent's strategy of delivering a
complete range of networking solutions for a software-driven
world.
Dr. Chih-Lin I, Chief Scientist of China Mobile Research
Institute said: "vRAN is a successful commercial instance of C-RAN.
Since CMRI introduced the C-RAN concept to the industry 5 years
ago, we have been working closely with Alcatel-Lucent to develop
innovative solutions towards Greener and Softer future radio access
networks. Our joint work in NFV, and specially in this case, on the
vRAN, will help operators to smoothly evolve and meet growing
customer demands with a more efficient and effective network
structure."
Enrique Blanco, Global CTO of
Telefonica said: "Alcatel Lucent is a great partner for providing
innovative solutions as part of Telefonica Virtualization Strategy,
and the collaboration in our Journey to 5G that included vRAN
solutions will allows us to deploy more efficient networks and as a
result the best opportunities for our customers."
Ken Rehbehn, Principal Analyst,
451 Research, said: "Virtualizing the RAN promises significant
benefits for mobile operators. When deployed with appropriate
transport technology, the approach reduces deployment complexity,
boosts radio performance and drives network efficiencies. Joint
demonstrations by key stakeholders -- operators and vendors --
signal the importance attached to this radio access deployment
approach and serve as key proof points of progress."
Glenn Booth Senior Vice President
and General Manger of Alcatel-Lucent's LTE Business Unit: "A
virtualized RAN will allow operators to take a big step toward 5G
and benefit from the advanced features and efficiencies enabled by
LTE-A. By teaming on this technology, Alcatel-Lucent, Intel and
China Mobile have been able to very quickly develop a comprehensive
solution that will allow operators to evolve their networks more
efficiently and effectively."
"We see tremendous value in bringing the benefits of Network
Function Virtualization to the radio access network (RAN) to help
operators reduce their operating expenditures and implement new
service capabilities," said Sandra
Rivera, vice president, Datacenter Group, general manager,
Network Platforms Group, Intel Corporation. "Through our global
collaboration agreement with Alcatel-Lucent, we have made great
progress in the development of a vRAN solution that demonstrates
our combined capabilities. The Alcatel-Lucent vRAN will allow
operators to take advantage of economies of scale to help them meet
the growing needs of their customers in the most flexible and
effective way."
About the vRAN demonstrations at Mobile World Congress
2015
Alcatel-Lucent will show how its comprehensive hardware
and virtualized mobile ultra-broadband access portfolio will help
any operator optimize deployment at any site to leverage new
efficiencies.
Alcatel-Lucent has a complete vRAN system on its booth including
the virtual baseband unit (vBBU) and virtual content delivery node
– part of a virtual content delivery network - and will also
leverage a virtualized Evolved Packet Core - the vEPC - all on the
same virtualization platform. The vBBU runs on general purpose
servers with Intel® Xeon® processors which are connected to remote
radio heads located at the Alcatel-Lucent, Intel, China Mobile and
Telefonica booths enabling a four-way videoconference.
Demonstrations will show:
- How by virtualizing content delivery nodes operators can cache
content closer to subscribers at the vRAN site level to reduce
latency and dramatically improve video streaming quality.
- How Alcatel-Lucent's vRAN will allow operators to add and
reduce call processing capabilities to dynamically react to
changing traffic conditions.
- How Alcatel-Lucent's vRAN can help cope with equipment hardware
failure more efficiently and minimize network outages via real-time
management of virtualized applications. An outage on a traditional
distributed RAN architecture may take hours to resolve, needing
site visits, whereas a vBBU can be restored in minutes
Visit Alcatel-Lucent at Mobile World Congress at Booth
3K10 in Hall 3 of the Fira Gran Via, Barcelona.
Intel and Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in
the United States and other
countries.
About Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE:
ALU)
Alcatel-Lucent is the leading IP
networking, ultra-broadband access and cloud technology specialist.
We are dedicated to making global communications more innovative,
sustainable and accessible for people, businesses and governments
worldwide. Our mission is to invent and deliver trusted networks to
help our customers unleash their value. Every success has its
network.
For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on:
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the
Alcatel-Lucent blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow
the Company on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.
To view the original version on PR Newswire,
visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alcatel-lucent-demonstrates-how-its-virtualized-radio-access-network-technology-will-transform-ultra-broadband-mobile-access-300043205.html
SOURCE Alcatel-Lucent