ZTE Released 5G Core Network White Paper, to Promote Digital Transformation

Recently, ZTE officially released the 5G Core Network White Paper. Focusing on the topic how to improve operator’s competitiveness and reduce TCO in the 5G stage, it proposes 5G-oriented core network solution Cloud ServCore, and combined with standards and industry trends, it presents the technology route of 5G Core Network evolution and development.

In order to cope with the future explosive data traffic growth, massive device connections and emerging new services, 5G will change from the "technology centric" to "user experience centric", application scenarios will cover the Mobile Internet and Internet of Things (IoT), to achieve intelligent interconnection of people and everything, to achieve the vision of “accessing everything at anywhere and anytime”. To this end, in the white paper, ZTE says that 5G core network needs to have the following characteristics:

• Leveraging NFV/SDN technology to achieve network cloudification on the unified physical infrastructure
• The core network uses Cloud Native architecture to subdivide network functions into atomized stateless micro-service components. Through the flexible call and combination of components, network function reconstruction from the "network element silo" architecture to the "service silo" architecture is realized.
• Providing services in the form of network slice, achieving on-demand customization of service and network, to meet a variety of vertical industry requirements in the 5G era: VR/AR, autonomous driving &connected cars , factory automation, smart city, smart grid…
• The Carrier DevOps Builder provides closed-loop “0 touch” smart operation and maintenance (O&M) for network slice, to achieve automated design, development, deployment and O&M of slices.
• The introduction of Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) moves service anchor and computing capability to the mobile edge node, to achieve ultra-low-latency, high-bandwidth and real-time network information access

Currently, ZTE Cloud ServCore has been equipped with main features of 5G core network, achieving 5G Ready, such as microservice-based Cloud Native architecture; deployment in minutes and elasticity in seconds of network slices; DevOps-based agile O&M and capability exposure. Leveraging the Cloud ServCore, operators can let user experiencing service of the 5G era in advance.

As one of the leaders in network cloudification, ZTE has cooperated extensively with mainstream operators around the world and has joined many standard organizations and open source communities such as ETSI, 3GPP, ONAP, OPNFV, OpenStack, OpenDaylight and ONOS. Up to now, ZTE has successfully deployed more than 240 SDN / NFV commercial / trial offices worldwide. ZTE will continue to make important contributions to operator's digital transformation to 5G.