Ericsson has announced it has successfully demonstrated an NFV proof of concept with Japanese operator NTT DOCOMO.
Ericsson activated its virtualised Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) on another vender’s orchestration platform, while a vEPC from another vendor successfully activated on Ericsson’s orchestration platform.
The PoC is part of NTT DOCOMO’s process of evaluating the possibility of an open NFV architecture.
Seizo Onoe, Executive Vice President and CTO at NTT DOCOMO, commented: “Thanks to collaborative efforts in the mobile network industry, NFV is soundly moving toward practical realisation, rather than just ending up as a pie-in-the-sky dream. I am delighted that we have confirmed the feasibility of NFV through multi-vendor initiatives with… top ICT players.”
Håkan Djuphammar, Head of Technology, at Ericsson’s Business Unit Cloud & IP, added: “The successful PoC exercise showcases the possibility for the operator of deploying NFV on a broader scale. By using this technology, telecom operators such as NTT DOCOMO are able to build global standard agile networks and speed up their new service introduction.”
According to a Mobile Europe and Juniper Networks survey conducted this summer, operators are playing “a wait and see game” with more than 50 percent saying work on NFV was still confined to lab tests.
Last month, Telekom Austria’s Serbian subsidiary announced it is trialling virtualised IMS services for residential and business customers.
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