Telefónica and China Unicom joint approach on network virtualization

- Network Virtualization technologies are enabling technologies deemed to play a critical role in the next generation of telecommunications and to transform the business economics of the Communication Service Providers (CSP).
- CPE virtualization will bring enormous benefits for the end customer. Its simplicity and capacity to reduce breakdowns and incidents of the home equipment will provide flexibility, efficient maintenance and new-services rollout capability.
- Telefónica and China Unicom together are committed to contribute actively to standardization bodies in order to accelerate the development of Network Virtualization Technologies.

Beijing, Madrid –China Unicom and Telefónica have today published a whitepaper about their Joint Approach to Network Virtualization (www.layer123.com/download&doc=China-Unicom-Telefonica-Joint_Vision_on_Network_Virtualization).

Telefónica and China Unicom will bring together their technological capabilities and collaborate in fostering the development and standardization of Network Virtualization Technologies and the use cases that will impact in the Telco ecosystem such as the Virtualization of the Customer Premises Equipment (vCPE).

China Unicom and Telefónica know that transforming the current networks to achieve the flexibility and efficiency needed to attend the growing customer demand requires having SDN and NFV technologies in place.

So Telefónica and China Unicom are contributing to the different ongoing standardization efforts and want to encourage the networking industry to achieve rapid development of the two technologies.

China Unicom and Telefónica are working together in different uses cases such as the virtualization of the IP Edge, the virtualization of the mobile network and the mobile backhaul, and the virtualization of the CPE. All of them, with the aim to bring enormous benefits to the end customers in terms of simplicity and quick delivery of new services, while achieving efficient maintenance and reducing breakdowns.

“China Unicom considers operators are facing great challenges such as complicate, huge network, difficult to maintain and long time to provide new services, with the SDN and NFV technology, network virtualization will be a good way for us to solve these problems”, Mr Zhang Zhong Ping, director of technical department of China Unicom said.

“Telefónica sees the implementation of SDN and NFV technologies as a factor of our network infrastructure development strategy,” said Mr Enrique Algaba, Director of Network Innovation at Telefónica I+D – Global CTO Unit. “We expect that scheme for CPE virtualization we jointly propose will help us prove the viability of this technology and enable us to implement rollouts in a more flexible and reliable way coupled with low operating costs.”





About China Unicom

The Company, along with its subsidiaries, provides cellular and fixed-line voice and related value-added services, broadband and other Internet-related services. It has two business segments. The Mobile Business segment provides global systems for mobile communications (GSM) and wide band code division multiple access (WCDMA) cellular business in 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China. The Fixed-line Business segment provides fixed-line telecommunications and related services, domestic and international data and Internet related services, domestic and international long distance and related services in all 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China. For more information, visit China Unicom at http://eng.chinaunicom.com.



About Telefónica

Telefónica is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world in terms of market capitalisation and number of customers. From this outstanding position in the industry, and with its mobile, fixed and broadband businesses as key growth drivers, Telefónica has focused its strategy on becoming a leading company in the digital world.

The company has a significant presence in 24 countries and a customer base that amounts to more than 317 million accesses around the world. Telefónica has a strong presence in Europe and Latin America, where the company focuses an important part of its growth strategy.

Telefónica Global Resources is a global operating business unit of Telefónica. Its mission is to optimise the benefits from Telefónica’s scale while achieving further efficiency for the whole Company through activities such as simplification, standardization, streamlining and consolidation.

For more information about Telefónica, visit http://www.telefónica.com.