ZTE on Its Best Way to 5G

Release Date:2017-01-06 By Zheng Hong, Liu Shouwen Click:

 

In 2016, ZTE was named as a leader for its 4G LTE solution in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for LTE Network Infrastructure report, its cloud networks were widely recognized in the industry, and its award-winning Pre5G was commenced to go into commercial use. ZTE also kept ahead in its 5G research and tests. With significant improvements in technology innovation, market expansion and stable operation as well as great contributions to the industry, ZTE has established as a leader in the global wireless arena.

 

4G Leader in the Wireless Market

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is one of the most influential industry research reports. According to the latest Magic Quadrant, ZTE is a key player in the global 4G mobile infrastructure market. Objectively, this is a witness to ZTE’s fast growth and notable achievements in the wireless sector. Gartner says ZTE has become increasingly visible in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Feedback from CSPs includes praise for ZTE’s flexibility and responsiveness specifically during the initial rollout phase. Its recently improved marketing communications also help it gain visibility. According to the LTE eNodeB Assessment report released by the competitive analyst firm Current Analysis in December 2016, ZTE was promoted from a “Strong” rating in the previous year to a “Very Strong” rating, taking the lead in overall product rating. Recognitions from the two professional analysis firms have demonstrated that ZTE has won good market and analyst reputation and has established as a leader in the industry.    

      
In 2016, ZTE made a triumphant breakthrough with its wireless products in untapped markets such as Japan, Russia, Poland, Hungry, India, Indonesia, and Peru. ZTE’s performance in the 4G market was remarkable, with total shipments exceeding 25% of the global market share. ZTE has become the global fastest growing 4G supplier for four consecutive years. Technology innovation is one of ZTE’s core strategies. With innovative technical solutions and differentiated product series, ZTE has achieved outstanding performance in 4G market applications. ZTE continued to win 4G commercial network tests conducted by third parties and could build best networks for operators. ZTE helped China Mobile build a quality 4G network, which was awarded the ‘Best 4G Network of the Year’ by China Mobile. ZTE also helped China Telecom deploy a 4G network, which ranked first in network performance. In a third-party network evaluation organized by Guangdong Unicom, ZTE’s 4G network came first in performance. In a network rating by Guangdong Mobile, ZTE’s 4G EPC ranked first in customer satisfaction.

 

In overseas markets, ZTE helped Hutchison Drei Austria build a mobile network that was awarded the ‘Service Champion’ award in the most authoritative service value rating and was also rated as the best network in Austria by three professional evaluation agencies (Open Signal, CONNECT, and CHIP) within one year. ZTE deployed a 4G network for U Mobile, which was evaluated as the fastest 4G network in Malaysia through a third-party network test. In Panama, Movistar’s 4G network built by ZTE was awarded the best local network. In India, ZTE won the ‘best network supporter’ award by Bharti for its quality network delivery. In Indonesia, ZTE built an advanced mobile network for Telkomsel, who was awarded the ‘2016 Best Network Technology Provider’ by local media. In Pakistan, ZTE helped Mobilink build a 4G mobile network that secured the top spot in the local inter-operator benchmark (IOBM) test.

 

Pre5G Paving the Way for 4G-to-5G Evolution

With the explosive growth in demand for mobile broadband and internet of things (IoT) services, 4G networks are gradually confronted with two bottlenecks: capabilities and performance. To address these issues, ZTE was the first vendor to propose its Pre5G concept and series solutions in 2006. Pre5G enables operators to provide 5G-like performance and service experience upon their 4G networks.

 

As the bridge from 4G to 5G, Pre5G achieves a sixfold system capacity increase, a fivefold average bandwidth increase and a hundred-fold the number of connections per unit area. It involves not only the application of key 5G technologies with commercial capabilities (for example, Massive MIMO and UDN) on 4G networks, but also the enhancement of LTE-A Pro technologies in 3GPP architecture such as Massive CA, 256QAM, LAA, LWA, and NB-IoT. Pre5G allows for a smooth evolution based on existing 4G networks. This enables rapid network deployment at lower costs, thus greatly increasing cost-effectiveness. Through a combination of technologies including Giga+ MBB, Massive IoT, and network cloudification, ZTE can completely help operators evolve their 4G networks to 5G.


In February 2016, ZTE won the Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough award and Outstanding Overall Mobile Technology—The CTO’s Choice 2016 for its Pre5G Massive MIMO technology at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) held in Barcelona. The MWC 2016 hosted by the GSM Association (GSMA), is the world’s most influential gathering in the mobile communications industry, and the GSMA’s Global Mobile Awards represent the highest honor. In October 2016, ZTE again won the Best Wireless Broadband Innovation award for its Pre5G MIMO at the Broadband World Forum in London. Previously, ZTE’s Pre5G Massive MIMO had won several international awards from GTB, GTI, and Frost & Sullivan.


At present, Pre5G has been highly recognized in the industry and widely deployed by operators worldwide. In 2016, ZTE cooperated with China Mobile by pre-commercially deploying Pre5G Massive MIMO in 90% of provinces in China. In September 2016, Pre5G Massive MIMO was put into commercial use in scale by Softbank in Japan, which became the world’s first commercial Massive MIMO system.  In December 2016, Indonesia’s largest mobile operator Telkomsel announced the commercial use of its Pre5G network. ZTE also worked with Telefonica Group and H3G to run Pre5G Massive MIMO trials respectively in Spain and Austria. Using the Pre5G FDD Giga + MBB solution combined with key multicarrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO, and 256QAM technologies, ZTE successfully completed tests with a speed of over 1 Gbps in Malaysia, Belgium, Hungry and Austria. All these paved the way for Pre5G FDD commercialization. To date, commercial use and field tests of Pre5G related products and solutions have been undertaken by operators in China, Japan, Korea, Austria, Singapore, Spain, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. They will be more widely deployed around the world in 2017.

 

Forerunner in a Cloud Network Era

Responding to the network function virtualization (NFV) trend, ZTE has made outstanding achievements with its quality cloud-based network products. The company has become a forerunner in the cloud network era.


In February 2016, ZTE cooperated with VimpelCom, a multinational operator group, to build the industry’s largest commercial vEPC network across five countries. This network supports the convergence of 2G, 3G, and LTE networks. In the Digital Transformation and the Role of the Virtualized Core Network released by Ovum, VimpelCom’s vEPC project was specially studied and recommended as a classic case.


In June 2016, ZTE’s virtualized core network (vCN) was awarded the Best Core Network Product at the 5G World Summit held in London. This award honored ZTE for its role as a brave, outstanding future network advocator and leader in the new telecom era.
In October 2016, the RCS network built exclusively by ZTE for China Mobile was put into commercial service. Serving 100 million users, this network has become the world’s largest commercial vIMS/RCS.

 

In November 2016, ZTE’s Cloud Works solution won the NFV Innovation of the Year award from Telecom Asia, one of Asia’s most authoritative telecommunications publications, spotlighting its leading position in the network functions virtualization field.


To date, ZTE has deployed more than 100 commercial cloud core networks and PoC trial networks around the world and has established in-depth cooperation with global mainstream operators such as Vodafone, Telefonica, VimpelCom, Deutsche Telecom, Bharti Group, Telekom Austria Group, Telenor, and China Mobile.

 

5G Pioneer with Leading Technologies

As one of the world-leading 4G telecom equipment and solution providers, ZTE has always been committed to technology innovation. ZTE takes 5G as its future core strategy, investing over 1 billion yuan (100 million euros) into 5G research and development every year.


Based on its comprehensive layout, ZTE has invested heavily in key 5G technologies. ZTE’s 5G research covers network architecture, multi-antenna technique, high-frequency communication, IoT convergence, and new services such as D2D, M2X, and URC. ZTE also proposes innovative 5G  unified air interface (UAI) and cloud aware soft-network (CAS) technologies based on its Massive MIMO, MUSA, FB-OFDM, Virtual Cell, and SLA. The UAI enables unified, flexible, and configurable 5G air interfaces, while the CAS provides cloud-aware soft network architecture for 5G. These leading technologies have been widely accepted in the industry. The MUSA proposed by ZTE is the only one multiple access solution in the industry that uses spreading codes in the short complex domain to enable high-load multiple access without the need of scheduling. The solution is of great significance to 5G large-capacity IoT scenarios in the future.


ZTE has maintained industry-leading position in the 5G technical validation and product development process. In September 2016, ZTE took the lead to complete the first phase of China’s 5G test. ZTE outperformed other vendors in both the number of test items and the test progress, and obtained the 5G technology R&D test certificate issued by the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group. 

    
5G will be an open ecosystem in the future. ZTE is now working closely with multiple players in the industry in a joint effort to create abundant 5G experience. At present, ZTE has signed 5G strategic cooperation agreements with operators worldwide such as Deutsche Telecom, Telefonica, Softbank, Korea Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom. ZTE has also become a member of the EU’s Horizon 2020 dedicated to the 5G innovation and research. Moreover, ZTE has been included by Deutsche Telecom in the list of the first 5G innovation lab partners.

 

Tomorrow never waits. ZTE will continue to invest in the wireless market, implement the M-ICT strategy, and explore business opportunities in MBB, 5G, IoT, SDN, NFV, and big data. ZTE will also lead a healthy development of the wireless communication industry, make constant innovations, and create win-win cooperation with operators worldwide.