Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent to show Broadband World Forum how virtualization is done

Kit vendors Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent are to use Broadband World Forum in London’s Excel Centre to demonstrate the practicalities of SDN and virtualized functions.

Ericsson will exemplify, in a series of demonstrations and interactive exercises, how the virtualization of end-to-end network infrastructure will create the right foundation for Wi-Fi Calling. Meanwhile, at the same show, Alcatel-Lucent will set out to demystify concepts like Universal TWDM (time and wavelength division multiplexing), G.fast, Vplus, Gigabit home systems and end-to-end services.

Their joint mission is to bring the abstracts behind NFV to life for an audience of both technical and commercial buyers. As virtualized networks become a commercial reality, it will become increasingly important to popularise the concept, according to Ben Agnew, the director of the Broadband World Forum: “The Proof of Concept zone will be bigger than ever before,” said Agnew. Though the virtualization of telecoms is inevitable, work needs to be done to make it easier to respond to the demands of interoperability, the technical challenges operators face and the dynamic needs of traffic and services, according to Agnew.

As cloud computing and telecoms merge, the event will set out to show the more technically minded the practicalities of getting the most out of NFV, while commercial staff will benefit from a roadmap for mainstream adoption, according to Håkan Djuphammar, head of technology at Ericsson’s Business Unit for Cloud & IP. The goal is to accelerate the use of real, deployable virtualization systems, he argues. “The Ericsson demo shows how NFV opens up new deployment options, since NFV adds scalability and geographical distribution of functionality,” said Djuphammar.

In September Ericsson and mobile telco Entel Chile demonstrated Latin America’s first data transmission over combined 2600 MHz and 700 MHz spectrum bands in a commercial network. The trial proved that over-the-air LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation can run at 250Mbps.

“Mobile broadband is opening up a world of opportunities,” said Nicolas Brancoli, VP of Ericsson Latin America. Ericsson claims forty per cent of the world’s mobile traffic now runs over Ericsson equipment.

Visit the world’s leading conference and exhibition focused on fixed mobile convergence – Broadband World Forum 2015 – in London on 20-22 October.