China Mobile and Alcatel-Lucent are showing their progress in the development of network functions virtualization (NFV) for mobile operators at Mobile World Congress. Using Alcatel-Lucent’s virtualized proof of concept LTE radio access network (RAN) Baseband Unit (BBU)  and its virtualized evolved packet core (vEPC) in a multi-vendor environment, the companies are demonstrating voice and video calls with VoLTE capable handsets.

The multi-vendor cloud network includes, Alcatel-Lucent’s virtualized proof of concept LTE RAN BBU and vEPC. 

Virtualized LTE RAN BBU uses COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) parts including hardware components, software components and commercial LTE protocols. The solution was developed as part of the Cloud-RAN (C-RAN) program initiated by China Mobile. Alcatel-Lucent and China Mobile signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop C-RAN in 2011.

Alcatel-Lucent’s vEPC is operating with other virtualized core network functions in a multi-vendor environment.  This will be onboarded, managed and orchestrated within the virtual environment by the latest version of Alcatel-Lucent’s NFV platform - CloudBand™ 2.0.

China Mobile operates a large scale TD-LTE overlay network and is driving NFV for the creation of a greener, more agile and efficient network.