– Telefonica, in collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent, will show LTE video services using an end-to-end virtual network.
– The demo, incorporating Telefónica´s Unica Infrastructure using HP OpenNFV Platform, including carrier-grade HP Helion OpenStack, is a major move to bring mobile networks towards the cloud .
Barcelona, 26 February, 2015.- Telefónica and Alcatel-Lucent are showcasing LTE video streaming and videocall services over an end to end virtualized network including virtual radio access network (vRAN), virtual content delivery network (vCDN), virtual evolved packet core (vEPC) and virtual IP Multimedia Subsystem (vIMS) at MWC 2015.
The end to end virtualization of mobile networks represents a major move to the cloud and builds on Telefonica and Alcatel-Lucen´s co-creation agreement to accelerate the shift to Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). NFV enables the agility, efficient use of resources for rapid scaling and delivery optimization for services like video over LTE to innovate in new services offerings and accelerate massive scale deployments.
Telefonica is embarking in a major network and business transformation through UNICA, Cloud and Virtualization, and seeking a solution that allow to rapidly start to collect the benefits expected from this change: agility, innovation and efficiency in an unprecedented magnitude. Telefonica has a vision of a common infrastructure to serve both Telco and Service Platforms requirements (VNFs, Virtual Network Functions) – and that this common infrastructure will be cloud based.
Telefonica UNICA’s approach provides a realistic path to this convergence. This is the foundation for a Network-IT convergence with single infrastructure asset moving forward. Last but not least we also believe this architecture is a key tool to improve business agility and efficiency, and to address new revenue streams and business segment like Enterprise cloud services.
This demonstration leverages Telefonica’s UNICA architecture, key element of Telefónica’s virtualization path, and reveals the results and next steps of that vision in close collaboration with HP and Alcatel-Lucent, showing one of the strengths of UNICA: its multitenant and multivendor compliance.
Telefonica and Alcatel-Lucent are showing a carrier-grade virtualized mobile portfolio that is hardware independent – by the separation of functional software from the underlying hardware. This will allow it to leverage industry initiatives such as OpenStack, to operate with NFV platforms including management, orchestration, infrastructure and networking elements, many of which are provided by HP.
The demo, at Telefónica’s booth (Hall 3- Stand 3J20), will show how having the content delivery application closer to the edge can dramatically improve end-user experience. And more importantly the virtualized RAN using general purpose servers proves its feasibility and advantages in moving forward to 5G.
The virtualized network includes:
- A virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) that comprises a virtualized baseband unit (vBBU) to deliver cost-savings and increased network performance.
- Velocix virtualized Content Delivery Network (vCDN) – an advanced digital media delivery platform fully equipped to minimize the cost of carrying over-the-top content and to launch new, revenue-generating premium content services, achieving a highly differentiated performance level and growing delivery or origin capacity in minutes.
- A virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) that performs the authentication, mobility and session management of subscribers and the services they access, as well as the creation of and connectivity to services within the operator’s network and to the wider Internet on a massive scale, all with the quality and performance subscribers demand.
- A virtualized IMS (vIMS) solution – a cloud communications platform that delivers a rich portfolio of multimedia services over IP networks with the best LTE user experience:
VoLTE, high quality video, integrated IP messaging, and app and web embedded communications.
This is just an example of the Telefonica development philosophy for Cloud, NFV and SDN, having an architecture solution that integrate products and solutions which allow a distributed cloud architecture, that is open to prevent vendor lock in, carrier grade, environmentally friendly, reliable, and secure.
About Telefónica
Telefónica is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world in terms of market capitalisation and number of customers. With its best in class mobile, fixed and broadband networks, and innovative portfolio of digital solutions, Telefónica is transforming itself into a ‘Digital Telco’, a company that will be even better placed to meet the needs of its customers and capture new revenue growth.
The company has a significant presence in 21 countries and a customer base of more than 341 million accesses around the world. Telefónica has a strong presence in Spain, Europe and Latin America, where the company focuses an important part of its growth strategy.
About Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU)
Alcatel-Lucent is the leading IP networking, ultra-broadband access and cloud technology specialist. We are dedicated to making global communications more innovative, sustainable and accessible for people, businesses and governments worldwide. Our mission is to invent and deliver trusted networks to help our customers unleash their value. Every success has its network.
For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow the Company on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.
Further information:
Telefónica S.A.
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Tel: +34.91.482.38.00
