Korea Telecom and Alcatel-Lucent collaborate to virtualize functions

Korean telco KT and Alcatel-Lucent have announced a technical collaboration agreement to accelerate the adoption of network functions virtualization (NFV) in Korea.

The agreement will see Alcatel-Lucent provide three core services to the KT, including its Virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) systems to accelerate and advance service delivery capabilities, and its CloudBand platform to manage the NFV environment.

Alcatel-Lucent’s spin-in subsidiary specialising in software defined networking (SDN), Nuage Networks, will also provide its Virtualized Services Platform (VSP) to help consolidate and automate the network.

The collaborative effort with Alcatel-Lucent is seen by KT as an enhancement to its Giga Network, a project in which NFV will form the basis of new architecture development. KT hopes that Giga will increase efficiency, lower costs and increase cloud product offerings.

KT’s Head of Technology Infra Laboratory Centre, HongBeom Jeon, believes that its partnership with Alcatel-Lucent will drive further uptake of converged services, and deliver revenue generation capabilities.

“KT is happy to collaborate on our NFV proof of concept with Alcatel-Lucent who has been delivering open and integrated NFV and SDN products,” he said. “We expect this collaboration will help us create converge services for the Gigatopia era and develop new revenue generation models.”

Meanwhile, Head of Alcatel-Lucent Korea, Chi Il Yoo, echoes the market consensus on how carrier network virtualization initiatives, such as SDN and NFV, will enable future service delivery, reduce cost and increase efficiency.

“Alcatel-Lucent and KT share a vision of the strategic importance of virtualization and cloud infrastructure and service formation. We look forward to helping KT transition its EPC network functions to operate in an NFV/SDN environment,” he said.  “Combining vEPC, CloudBand and Nuage Networks VSP for SDN provides an innovative architectural model to answer the demand for next generation application workloads and to optimize CAPEX and OPEX for delivering KT’s mobile broadband services.”

The news marks another major partnership announcement from Alcatel-Lucent for its virtualized services. As reported by Telecoms.com last week, hosting provider OVH chose Nuage Networks as its SDN vendor of choice.