ZTE has announced that company has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with China Unicom on Software Defined Network (SDN)/Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Both parties aim to build-on current SDN/NFV network development trends through collaborative innovation, implement SDN/NFV applications, and promote the next-generation network construction for China Unicom, meeting customers' demands, and promoting network transformation, business innovation, and service upgrade.

China Unicom has been proactively promoting the SDN/NFV industry process. The voice over long term evolution (VoLTE) service project based on virtual evolved packet core (vEPC) and virtual IP multimedia subsystem (vIMS) architecture sponsored by China Unicom for NFV proof of concept (PoC) was successfully completed in October 2015. This project comprehensively verified the SDN/NFV-based end-to-end VoLTE services, promoted the NFV process, and practiced the network as a service (NaaS) concept advocated by China Unicom.

In accordance with the new-generation network, CUBE-net, proposed by China Unicom and the strategic cooperation agreement signed by China Unicom and ZTE, both parties will cooperate using open-source technology, application scenarios, product requirements, service applications, and market development of SDN/NFV technologies, generate research results meeting network evolution requirements and lay a solid foundation for long-term and sustainable partnerships. China Unicom and ZTE will work together with open-source communities, requirement analysis, solution and product development, test verification/PoC, and commercial pilot office deployment for SDN/NFV. In addition, China Unicom and ZTE will continue research and propose draft standards and patent applications, jointly apply for and undertake national key research projects, and share the achievements in the SDN/NFV field. 

Following the SDN/NFV-based network reconstruction strategy for developing the next-generation networks, aiming to build an elastic, cloud-based, and open network, ZTE has proposed an ElasticNet architecture and solution integrating the Cloud and Pipe.