Alcatel-Lucent signs agreements with Red Hat, Advantech and 6WIND to accelerate delivery of virtualized radio access networks

NEW DELHI: French telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent has signed an agreements with the industry-leading cloud software and hardware companies, Red Hat, Advantech and 6WIND, to accelerate the delivery of commercial virtualized radio access network (vRAN) products.

“Collaboration with these companies will enhance Alcatel-Lucent’s vRAN technology, working on the CloudBand NFV platform, ensuring that it will meet service providers’ large-scale performance and reliability requirements,” a statement said.

“With ever-growing consumer demand for video data applications, the expected growth of the Internet-of-Things and the advent of 5G wireless technology, service providers are looking to optimize their networks and enable new cost and operational efficiencies. Leveraging its expanded global collaboration with Intel and working with Red Hat, Advantech and 6WIND, Alcatel-Lucent will deliver a fully NFV-compliant virtualized radio access network that meets their stringent high-performance, high-availability cloud needs.,” it said.

Alcatel-Lucent is trialling its near-commercial vRAN with leading service providers in North America, Asia and Europe using a platform that consists of 6WIND, Advantech and Red Hat hardware and software.

In 2016 Alcatel-Lucent will expand these trials using the CloudBand NFV platform to onboard and manage applications,

“Working with Red Hat, Advantech and 6WIND we are accelerating the availability of our vRAN, giving operators the flexibility and efficiency they require on a large-scale to meet subscriber data demand into the future,” siad Glenn Booth, vice-president of Wireless Portfolio Management and Strategy at Alcatel-Lucent.

”Red Hat has been delighted to work with Alcatel-Lucent to enable communications service providers to move their applications and services to OpenStack-powered telco clouds in order to take advantage of NFV. Now, we’re pleased to bring OpenStack and open source innovation to Alcatel-Lucent’s vRAN solutions which are delivered to mobile operators through the CloudBand NFV platform,” siad Radhesh Balakrishan, general manager, OpenStack, Red Hat.

“On the road to 5G and the realization of IoT, collaborations will be essential to accelerate product innovation, speed deployment and deliver greater value to customers. We believe that the complementary technologies brought together in the Alcatel-Lucent vRAN ecosystem will enable a robust and reliable NFV-Infrastructure upon which service providers can truly innovate,” said Ween Niu, VP and General Manager of Advantech Networks and Communications Group.

“We are proud to collaborate with Alcatel-Lucent to enable critical large scale vRAN deployments for Mobile Operators. We are leading the migration to NFV deployments such as vRAN with our high performance software that ensures cost-effective virtual networking. Our integrated solution delivers large-scale performance and reliability with a future proofed investment,” said Eric Carmès, Founder and CEO of 6WIND.

Alcatel-Lucent is also working with a number of service providers to develop innovative NFV-based radio access network technologies. Additionally the company demonstrated its progress with China Mobile, Telefónica and Intel at Mobile World Congress in 2015 and announced the industry’s first live field trial of vRAN technology with China Mobile in July.