ALU and Huawei flag NFV solutions

Network vendors Alcatel Lucent and Huawei have both made announcements around Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) ahead of next week’s Mobile World Congress, where new network architectures like NFV and SDN (software defined networking) will be the subject of much discussion and, Telecoms.com understands, some big news from the operator community.

Huawei has pulled back the curtain on Cloud Edge, an umbrella brand for its NFV suite, which includes virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC), virtualized Multi-Service Engine (vMSE) and Cloud Management and Orchestration (MANO).

Cloud Edge forms part of Huawei’s previously announced, ten-year network evolution roadmap, dubbed SoftCOM.

Meanwhile Alcatel-Lucent announced its own suite of NFV solutions, including EPC, IMS and a virtualized RAN.

The last of these will be displayed at MWC in partnership with the world’s largest operator, China Mobile, the firm said today.

China Mobile’s stand will feature a VoLTE and video demo running over Alcatel Lucent’s proof of concept virtualized RAN as well as its vEPC, as part of a multi-vendor, cloud-based network, the firms said.

“China Mobile and Alcatel-Lucent have a long history of working together to deliver innovative solutions that push the boundaries of telecoms and our work on NFV is no exception,” said Dr Chihlin I, chief scientist at China Mobile’s Research Institute.  “Here we are demonstrating how a cloud network environment can help us deliver services faster and better to even greater numbers of people. This will help us meet the explosion in demand for mobile data and allow us to innovate even further with new service offerings.”