Telefónica has renewed its existing agreement with Alcatel-Lucent, signing a new MOU to further the testing of NFV (network functions virtualization) technologies as part of the operator’s strategy to evolve its networking infrastructure. Telefónica has already tested Alcatel-Lucent’s Virtualized Service Router in its NFV Reference Lab using the OpenMANO NFV orchestration stack and is currently leveraging Alcatel-Lucent’s CloudBand™ platform to advance its NFV implementation.
According to Alcatel-Lucent, the completed testing showed outstanding results, reaching 100% line-rate performance which allowed data to be transported with zero losses. According to both companies, further testing which will be carried out in a production environment and will involve other elements of Alcatel-Lucent’s NFV portfolio, including the virtualized evolved packet core, virtualized Session Border Controller and the vCPE.
At this year's Mobile World Congress 2015, both companies jointly demonstrated Alcatel-Lucent’s mobile solution as part of a fully virtualized network, including the vRAN, vCDN, vEPC and vIMS. During the event, Telefónica also took part in a four-way video-conference using Alcatel-Lucent's virtualized mobile network including Voice-over-LTE(VoLTE).
Enrique Blanco Global CTO, Telefónica
We are pleased to continue our work with Alcatel-Lucent on the use of NFV technologies to transform future networks. We have already seen an outstanding performance in the testing of Alcatel-Lucent’s VSR, showing that it delivers comparable performance to hardware-based routers. Use of these technologies will open up new opportunities as we continue innovating to exceed our customer’s expectations.
Michel Combes, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent
As innovation leaders, Alcatel-Lucent and Telefónica are aligned on our goal to transform the future of mobile networks. We have a comprehensive portfolio of NFV technologies that can be used to optimize networks and meet the ever-growing connectivity demands of the future.