Telefonica is showcasing LTE video streaming and video call services over an end to end virtualized network at Mobile World Congress this week.
The demo, conducted in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent, involves a virtual radio access network (vRAN), virtual content delivery network (vCDN), virtual evolved packet core (vEPC) and virtual IP Multimedia Subsystem (vIMS).
It marks a major move to bring mobile networks towards the cloud and builds on Telefonica and Alcatel-Lucent´s cooperation agreement to accelerate the shift to NFV, the companies said.
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 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.
Such a design will allow the companies 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 leverages Telefonica’s UNICA architecture, key element of the operator’s virtualization path. UNICA’s strengths include its multitenant and multivendor compliance which will be key to Telefonica's network and business transformation initiatives which are aimed at achieving agility, innovation and efficiency, the companies said.
The demo will be conducted at Telefónica’s booth (Hall 3- Stand 3J20).