24 May 2017, Shenzhen, China – ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, today announced that it has jointly won the Global Telecoms Business (GTB) Infrastructure Innovation award with China Mobile Research Institute (CMRI), the network technology research base and service product development center of China Mobile. The award recognises the equipment architecture innovation behind the virtual broadband remote access server (vBRAS) solution developed to address the needs of China Mobile and which also saw the creation of a new model of joint Research & Development between operator and vendor. It is a successful innovation that puts metropolitan-area network (MAN) edge virtualisation into practice.

With all telecom operators are currently implementing network re-architecting, MAN edge virtualisation has become a critical problem in network transformation. As a leading global telecom operator, China Mobile proposed vBRAS architecture based on C/U (Control plane/User plane) separation and, together with ZTE, is taking the lead on the establishment of China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) industry standards for vBRAS based on C/U separation as well as equipment technical specifications and testing. It has standardised vBRAS interfaces based on C/U separation and completed technical verification lab tests.

This project technically verifies the feasibility of BRAS virtualisation in Tbit/s carrier-class MAN, and marks the accumulation of a great deal of experience in large-scale deployment and O&M for ten million users. Meanwhile, the project successfully implements the cloud centralised deployment of the control plane. Making full use of the powerful calculating capability of the cloud, a single rack can manage ten million users. The forwarding plane can use high-performance hardware to process services with high-bandwidth and low delay demands. Its single rack can implement Tbit/s forwarding.

With this solution, ZTE and CMRI have together solved the MAN network function virtualisation (NFV) difficulty in Novonet and accelerated the industrialisation of vBRAS based on the new architecture.

Mr. Hu Longbin, VP of Bearer Network Product Line, ZTE Corporation, says: “The solution implemented by CMRI and ZTE focuses on solving the dilemma in telecom industry development and management. It makes significant advances in bandwidth, service quality, access and reliability. The successful piloting of the solution establishes a standard in this field, which can be applied in a wide area.”

ZTE has been always dedicated into promoting software defined networking (SDN)/NFV standardisation and commercial deployment. In the future, ZTE will continue paying close attention to operator demands, enhance innovation investment, expand commercial practice, and assist operators in building new future-oriented network infrastructures.