China Unicom has launched a live trial of Nokia's Virtualized Services Router for around 5,000 residential broadband subscribers.
The trial in the province of Shandong involves the delivery of residential broadband over an agile network based on virtualized network functions.
China Unicom is using Nokia VSR as a virtualized broadband network gateway (BNG) for residential subscriber management functions.
The operator plans to migrate massive BNG services to the virtualized platform as part of an initiative to transform its metro server edge.
China Unicom plans to extend the trial to other parts of the network over the next two years as it moves to the next phase of the trial, which will incorporate the delivery of IPTV services.
"We are proud to be a part of China Unicom's initiative to evolve its metro edge to a cloud-centric architecture,” Nokia head of IP routing and packet core Sri Reddy said.
“The Nokia VSR provides delivery of broad and rich virtualized IP edge applications with superior performance and enhanced scalability. Upon completion of this network transformation project, China Unicom will ensure increased operational efficiency and deliver a superior customer experience for its subscribers."