March 1, 2018, Shenzhen, China - ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, and velcom, the Belarusian telecommunication operator deploy the first commericial 5G-ready virtual core network in Belarus. Due to superior technical results the project is one of the shortlisted nominees for the BEST NETWORK SOFTWARE BREAKTHROUGH award of the Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2018 (MWC).

The velcom’s 5G-Ready virtual core network  provided by ZTE is the world’s first fully virtual mobile core network. It is based on an open industry standard infrastructure, following Open Stack and Devops mechanism. This state of the art technology allows fast service deployment, both by default and flexible usage for upcoming 5G applications. It is also applicable with legacy networks such as 2G, 3G or 4G. Due to this pioneering accomplishment, new services like massive IoT, autonomous driving, real time VR and ultra-low latency applications will be possible.

The architecture is designed as a service-based architecture with loose-coupling, stateless and hierarchical design. Furthermore, it allows a seamless evolution to micro-service-based network slicing and open API architecture to meet the diversified service requirements of 5G. In addition, velcom is in the process of implementation of ZTE´s fully SDN based end-to-end IP+Optical elastic network solution, which provides high flexibility, efficiency and capabilities perfectly supporting the needs of 5G network.

Besides the excellent performance, substantial cost reduction and best user experience, the newest virtualized core network of ZTE allows velcom to be one of the first to launch NB-IoT services in Europe.

Christian Laqué, CTO of velcom states, “We were able to set up a cutting-edge technology as an open standard by implementing a flexible solution. Now we are ready to face upcoming requirements for future 5G applications by marginal upgrades. Therefore we will continue to be at the edge of innovation. This outstanding achievement is only feasible with a reliable and strong partner.”

Christian Woschitz, COO ZTE Austria, adds: ”5G is a significant gamechanger technology, which will have a revolutionary impact on the society. Our fully virtualized architecture implemented in velcom ensures a seamless evolution towards 5G as one of the first projects globally. I very much appreciate our stratgic partnership and I am looking forward to further project cooperations.”