PCC Deployments [362]: Smartfren [Indonesia] Uses ZTE for Integrated CDMA and LTE Control

ZTE announced it is ".. pleased to help PT Smartfren Telecom launch 4G LTE-Advanced network in Indonesia, giving users access to the highest-performance mobile broadband services. 

.. With ZTE's powerful Universal Subscriber Profile Platform (USPP), Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF), and Online Charging System (OCS) products, the core NEs of both CDMA and LTE networks are highly integrated to provide a unified user database and policy control and charging policies, allowing the LTE network to be deployed rapidly, facilitating maintenance and operation of 3G and 4G networks in the future, and lowering operational costs. Smartfren can take advantage of the sophisticated OCS system to launch flexible tariff packages in the market to attract upscale users with an urgent need for mobile broadband services". 

Related post - "Facebook Offers Free Messaging Through 18 MNOs" - here.

See "ZTE Supports Smartfren Launch 4G LTE-Advanced Service in Indonesia" - here.

ZTE to Use Radisys' Virtual MediaEngine to Accelerate HD Media Service Deployment

Radisys announced a "strategic partnership that will standardize Radisys’ MediaEngine™ virtualized Media Resource Function (vMRF) as the media processing solution for ZTE’s Value-added Services (VAS) and core network offerings in VoLTE, VoWiFi, video and IMS. By leveraging Radisys’ common media processing platform for all of its cloud-based offerings, ZTE is helping its customers accelerate the deployment of new interactive HD audio and HD video services, while reducing upfront capital expenditures and ongoing operating expenses".

Yang Wei, chief architect of core network deployment, ZTE Corporation said: “To enable our mobile operator customers’ transition to an NFV environment, ZTE is migrating its IMS solutions and VoLTE core network service offerings to a cloud architecture, driving an important requirement for virtualized media processing. Radisys’ vMRF delivers HD audio and HD video media processing and transcoding that are required by today’s increasingly multimedia-intensive applications.”

See "ZTE Selects Radisys’ Virtualized Media Resource Function to Power its VoLTE, VoWiFi, and Value-added Services" - here.

ZTE Demonstrated SDN Based OAM

ZTE announced that it has "successfully demonstrated a new OAM (operations, administration and management) solution based on SDN architecture today at the Broadband & TV Connect Asia conference in Singapore, showcasing industry-leading capabilities to help operators manage their mission-critical networks.

The new Elastic SDN IPRAN OAM solution, powered by ZTE’s Elastic SDN technology, enables operator to perform 90% of routine network OAM functions with one-touch control on mobile devices, generating at least 30% labor cost savings.

ZTE’s Elastic SDN technology can effectively help operators overcome these challenges. By integrating SDN network architecture and adopting virtualization technology, ZTE’s new OAM solution performs unified management on access layer and aggregation layer equipment using SDN controller. The new solution also supports plug-and-play and one-touch service deployment, reducing OAM workload for engineers and increasing their productivity". 

Unfortunately, I cant find the product at ZTE's site.

See "ZTE’s New SDN-based OAM Solution to Deliver Substantial Cost Savings to Operators" - here.

ZTE Demoed 3X Higher Throughput with Pre5G Base Stations

ZTE Corporation announced it is the "world’s first company to complete pre-commercial field testing of multi-user and multi-stream transmission on a Massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output) base station, setting new records in single-carrier transmission capacity and spectral efficiency.

Dr. Xiang Jiying [pictured], Chief Scientist, ZTE said: “ZTE successfully overcame the challenge of doing multi-user and multi-stream spatial multiplexing in a scattered-signal environment, clearing the main hurdle in the development of Massive MIMO technology .. Using ZTE’s proprietary pre5G multi-user/multi-stream spatial multiplexing technology, with user handsets based on existing 4G standards, the company’s Massive MIMO base station demonstrated peak data throughput that is more than three times that of traditional base stations, and average data throughput that exceeds conventional systems by at least five times"

Source:ZTE 5G White Paper (here)

Several major international telecommunications operators indicated they would deepen their collaborations with ZTE, after they were invited to attend the field test, noting the record-breaking results had exceeded their"

See "ZTE Pre5G Massive MIMO Base Station Sets Record for Capacity" - here.

New ZTE Patent: Policy Control Method And System For Converged Network

 
A new patent, by Tong Rui, Xiaoyun Zhou, Xiaoyun Zhou from ZTE was published.

Abstract:

A policy control method for a converged network comprises: in a roaming scenario, after learning that a user equipment (UE) accesses a mobile network through a wireless local area network (WLAN) access, a visited policy and charging rules function (V-PCRF) establishing a subsession serving WLAN Offload when establishing an S9 session to a home policy and charging rules function (H-PCRF), and carrying a WLAN Offload instruction. With the present document, the WLAN offload data can be distinguished from data routed back to an EPC network in the roaming scenario, thereby delivering policy control for the WLAN offload data.

See "Patent application title: Policy Control Method And System For Converged Network" - here.

PCC Deployments [306]: BSNL [India] to Use ZTE PCRF

Zia Askari reports to Telecom Drive that "India’s biggest service provider, Bharat Sanchar Nagam Limited or BSNL is all set to enhance its data services with the help of a Policy and Charging Rules Function or PCRF solution by Chinese telecom equipment major, ZTE" - See also "BSNL Plans to Offer New 4G Services for Indians by March 2015" - here.

Anupam Shrivastava [pictured], Director Consumer Mobility, BSNL said: “As part of our strategy to overhaul our data services offering, we have finalized on ZTE’s PCRF solution. This will provide us great data handling capabilities. We followed our tender process for this solution and ZTE has emerged as the winner. We are likely to commission this solution by next month and ZTE should be able to complete the installation by August” 

See also "Follow-up: Does BSNL (India) Use DPI?" - here.

See "BSNL to use PCRF solution by ZTE and overhaul its data services" - here.

[Update 63: Sandvine PCRF/DPI Compatibility] PCRF - DPI Compatibility Matrix

The DPI-PCRF compatibility matrix (here) was updated with the following:

• Sandvine's new PCRF was added (see "Sandvine Will Compete on PCRF Projects" - here), right now supporting Sandvine's PCRF
   
• In addition, Sandvine updated me that its DPI product also supports PCRF products from Ericsson, Huawei, Netcracker, Oracle, Orga Systems and  ZTE
   
• Housekeeping - product links and some other updates  

[The Economist]: Use of DPI for Internet Censorship

"Belarus, Ethiopia, Iran and many others are believed to use “deep packet inspection” to look into internet users’ communications for subversive content, aided by hardware from, among others, China’s Huawei and ZTE. Obligingly, internet users who know they are being watched are more likely to exercise self-censorship in the first place".

See "Internet controls in other countries" - here.

ZTE Announces Smart Pipe Solution

ZTE Corporation announced the "..debut of ezFlow, a national broadband network smart pipe solution.. ezFlow allows operators to operate and manage broadband networks efficiently, increase profits, reduce costs, and improve services for customers .. ezFlow, network capacity can decrease or split increasing traffic to reduce network pressure. The solution meets customer needs and provides differentiated services. In addition, it meets traffic operation requirements for different phases of national broadband development through smart pipe deployment and four-dimension traffic strategy. This aspect features expansion of traffic scale, activation of traffic value, decreases traffic costs and mines traffic content"

"ZTE’s national broadband network solution has been widely applied in global network construction including: Brazil, England, Ethiopia, Italy, Malaysia, South Africa and the Republic of Belarus".

Like in many similar announcements by Chinese and other large vendors, the web site does not have any additional information on the solution.

See "ZTE Debuts Broadband Smart Pipe Solution at Africa Digital Summit" - here.

IETF Draft: Device-based Real-time Video QoE Improvement

A new IETF draft by Bhumip Khasnabish (pictured) and Gerard Fernando both from ZTE (US) suggest how to improve video QoE without network intervention.  

Abstract 

"This draft describes a method for improving the quality of experience (QoE) for real-time video and other multimedia services using features and functions of the end-point only, that is, without requiring any upgrade to the network transport infrastructure. Any upgrade to the network transport infrastructure not only incurs significant costs, these are also time consuming and technology- dependent. Therefore, these QoE improvement mechanisms are significantly more attractive to both network operators and service providers".

"This document defines a common set of QoE parameters that are applicable for HTTP, Websocket or RTP sessions .. In order to improve quality it is common practice to focus on improving network infrastructure (bandwidth increase, etc.). However, our proposal enables improvements in quality by utilizing transport independent QoE management".

See "End-point based Multimedia QoE Management" - here.

[ABI]: Optimization as a managed Service to Reach $2.5B by 2017

  

According to new research by Aditya Kaul (pictured), practice director of mobile networks, ABI Research "Optimization is expected to become a larger component of the mobile network managed services portfolio going forward .. optimization as a managed service to account for 10% of the total network managed services market by 2017. The market opportunity for optimization as a managed service is estimated to be $2.5 billion by 2017"

"ABI Research expects the large infrastructure vendors [the reports covers Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei and ZTE] to soon start providing dedicated monitoring and optimization on an on-going basis from their Global Network Operations Centre’s (GNOCs). While some of the network optimization elements are already provided today, the service and customer experience optimization is where the opportunities lie"

See "Optimization as a Managed Service will be 10% of Total Network Managed Services Market by 2017" - here.

KPN Belgium Enables Differentiated Services with ZTE

 
ZTE Corporation announced that "... KPN Group Belgium .. will deploy ZTE’s packet switched CN equipment which supports unified radio access .. ZTE helps operators to build a smart pipe that supports service differentiation and traffic distribution, and enables a flexible policy mechanism. This will help KPN deliver differentiated services, further enhancing its service innovation capability and network competitive strength".

At the end of Q2 2012, KPN Belgium had 4.4M subscribers and ~19% market share (see chart).

See "ZTE Partners with KPN Group Belgium to Deploy Packet Switched Core Network" - here.

[ABI Research]: 4G Drive Mobile Core Spending (+19% for 2012)

A new report by Aditya Kaul (pictured), practice director of mobile networks, ABI Research concludes that "Despite cut-backs in network equipment spending by mobile network operators this year due to the economic climate, purchases of mobile core gateway equipment for packet core networks are set to increase 19% from 2011 to more than US$1.2 billion in 2012 .. Mobile gateway spend for 4G networks will account for approximately 60% of the total in 2012".

"The vendors benefiting from the increase in EPC spend include the five major wireless network equipment vendors (Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens Networks, and ZTE), as well as router vendors such as Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks. The Big Five will continue to dominate, although Cisco is gaining some market share".

See "Mobile Core Gateway Spend is a Bright Spot in a Gloomy Mobile Infrastructure Market" - here.

[Analysys Mason]: NMS Market - $4.7B in 2011, $6.4B in 2016

A new report by Glen Ragoonanan (pictured), Senior Analyst, Analysys Mason finds that "The worldwide market for network management systems was worth USD4.7 billion in 2011 and will grow at a CAGR of 6.5% to reach USD6.4 billion in 2016 .. LTE and optical national generation access (NGA) networks are the two main technology investments that will inject growth into the network management systems (NMS) market".

".. Growth in the business services NMS market will be tempered by policy management deployments, which communications service providers (CSPs) will use to manage large volumes of IP traffic on high-speed LTE and NGA networks".

"Growth in the NMS market will be slow in 2012. Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and ZTE have already reported poor half-year results. However, growth will return in 2013 as communications service providers (CSPs) deploy new network technologies and IP services in order to maintain competitiveness".
See here.

[Heavy Reading] - More on the PCRF/DPI Market

    

Ray Le Maistre (pictured) published some more details from  the recent Heavy Reading report on the PCRF/DPI market (see "[Heavy Ready]: 2011 Policy Management & DPI Market Reached $1B; TEMs Gain Higher Share" - here).

"In the policy server market, we believe that the major telecom equipment vendors saw faster growth, as a whole, than specialist vendors. ... Much of the momentum for these major vendors has come from their position as suppliers of core network equipment such as GGSNs, which has pulled through a lot of new policy business," notes the report's author, Heavy Reading Chief Analyst Graham Finnie"
 
"Those same large vendors, plus the likes of Cisco [here], Hewlett-Packard [here] , Juniper Networks, Tellabs [here] and ZTE now account for more than half of the policy server and deep packet inspection (DPI) sector covered by the report, a market that was worth more than $1 billion in 2011 and which is due to grow to about $2.7 billion by 2016 .. most specialists are also seeing robust growth"

See "Policy Specialists Squeezed by Vendor Giants" - here.

ZTE's ZOOMs (DPI/PCRF) Solution Customer List

    

A year ago ZTE launched ZOOMs, a DPI/PCRF solution (covered here). The solution's web page has been updated recently, and now includes a list of ZTE customers deploying the ZOOMs:

"Till 2011Q2, ZOOMs has already been deployed in dozens of countries, including China Mobile, HongKong CSL [here], Indonesia PT Smart, Germany KPN E-PLUS, Montenegro Telenor, Portugal ZAPP, Malaysia DiGi, French OMT, etc.

See "ZOOMs: ZTE Optimized Operation and Management System" - here.

"ZOOMs solution includes the following 4 parts:

• Intelligent Deep Packet Inspection Gateway xGW (inbuilt DPI)
• Dynamic Policy and Charging Control (PCRF/SPR)
• Intelligent User Behavior Analysis System (UBAS)
• Mature Online/Offline Charging System (OCS/OFCS)

"Use dedicated DPI hardware index chip, to reduce performance degradation of GW system caused by DPI. GW performance degradation is less than 30% under DPI function. Use SPI, DPI, HPI and other packet inspection technologies. More than 300 types of protocols could be identified."

[Calcalist] Oracle and Platinum about to Acquire Comverse

  

Once again Calcalist has news about the long-time anticipated acquisition of Comverse Technology.

Today, the site reports (here, Hebrew) that in a joint deal, valued at $2B (30% above market price) Platinum will acquire the group's holdings in Verint and Starhome (following the previous acquisition of Ulticom) and Oracle will buy the company’s billing and value-added services business units (known as "Comverse" and includes the company's Mobile Internet Gateway product line. See "Oracle Shopping List - Comverse as an Entry Pass to the Telecom Space - GLG News" - here).  

Calcalist also says that the previous proposals from Huawei and ZTE (see "Comverse: New Bids from ZTE and Huawei; Ulticom Sold" - here) were rejected, assuming that the Israeli and US governments will not approve the acquisition, due to national security concerns.

Comverse: New Bids from ZTE and Huawei; Ulticom Sold

   

According to the Israeli business site, Calcalist (story here, Hebrew), both ZTE and Huawei have submitted proposals to purchase Comverse, based on valuation of over $2B.

Comverse is current market cap is $1.5B.

Previous rumors stated Oracle, IBM, Amdocs or HP as potential buyers (see - WSJ: "Several buyers, including Oracle are eyeing the assets of Comverse" - here).

One of the Comverse group's companies, Ulticom, has agreed to be purchased by private-equity firm Platinum Equity LLC for about $90M (see WSJ report - here)

100G Announcements for DPI Products

 

At least two vendors already announced support for 100GE interfaces on their DPI capable core switches. In both cases it is not clear id DPI is available with the newly supported 100G interfaces, and to what total capacity.

Alcatel Lucent was the first (see "Alcatel-Lucent Adds 100G Interface to the 7750 Service Router" - here) and now ZTE is announcing the new ZXR10 8900E, which "In terms of core chip architecture, the ZXR10 8900E switch series supports up to 640Gbps of switching capacity per chip and 960Mpps L2-L7 packet processing capability, and thus is able to fully meet the processing capability of 100G and 40G ports. "

See "ZTE Rolls Out New Generation Core Switch for Ultra-Wide Bandwidth Carrier Networks" - here.

ZTE's previous generation model - ZXR10 8900 - (here) has a DPI Service Model - "DPI service module is designed for checking services via deep packet inspection technology instead of sending packets out directly. Deep Packet Inspection technology identifies traffic accurately, and implements control and statistical analysis. It provides rich control and QOS policies for customers to help them to make the best use of network resource and realize differentiated service based upon user and service, and implement data Stat on the basis of traffic, port and vlan as well. ".

The new model, 8900E, does not yet have a spec page.

DPI Deployments (19): CSL [Hong Kong] Uses ZTE's ZOOMs to Optimize Network

ZTE reports in its ZTE Technologies magazine that CSL is using its ZOOMs solution to "control and management functions such as smart user behavior analysis, smart service billing, smart service bandwidth management, and smart service access control" - see more on ZTE's ZOOMs - here.

See "Hong Kong's CSL Optimizes Network Management with ZOOMs" - here and "World's First Dual-Band LTE Commercial Network Deployed by ZTE and CSL in Hong Kong" - here.

The article explains the 3 stages of implementing the solution:

1. P2P service control and management - reduce congestion caused by P2P applications
2. User internal service resource management - control resources based on per subscriber policies, including quota and parental control  
3. In-depth service control and management - analyze network performance and subscriber behavior