DoCoMo announces partnerships with Ericsson, Fujitsu, NEC
Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo announced plans for a commercial network function virtualization deployment on its network beginning next year, on its way toward tapping NFV to power virtualized services across its mobile network.
As part of this push, DoCoMo announced partnerships with Ericsson, Fujitsu and NEC to help with the virtualization deployments. Those partnerships will see Ericsson work on an orchestration system to control the virtualized hardware; with Fujitsu and NEC set to develop virtualized evolved packet core software. DoCoMo explained the partnerships will highlight the collaborative benefits expected from NFV platforms.
“NFV, which has finally moved into its commercial phase, is no longer just a pie-in-the-sky idea,” said Seizo Onoe, EVP and CTO at DoCoMo, in a statement. “Through multivendor initiatives with Ericsson, Fujitsu and NEC and other leading vendors in the NFV domain, we look forward to putting NFV to practical use and thereby helping to accelerate the transition to a new era for mobile networks.”
DoCoMo has been one of the leading telecom operators in pushing virtualization across its network. The carrier was an initial founding member of the Linux Foundation’s Open Platform for NFV project, which formed last year in a move to develop a “carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services.”
U.S.-based telecom operator AT&T announced this week that it remained on track to have 75% of its network functions virtualized by 2020, with plans to have 5% of the 150 network functions targeted virtualized and controlled with “our target architecture” by the end of this year.
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