NSN on Monday said it showcased its Evolved Packet Core virtualization proof-of-concept at Korean mobile service provider SK Telecom.
The mobile broadband equipment vendor says the joint proof-of-concept for EPC virtualization with SK Telecom showed results for capacity scaling for both throughput and signaling traffic in connection with smartphone usage patterns.
SK Telecom selected NSN’s core virtualization concept based its Liquid Core architecture. NSN demonstrated a complete EPC solution in a cloud environment, including both virtualized Mobility Management Entity (MME) and virtualized S/P-Gateway elements.
Choi Jin-sung, executive vice president and head of ICT R&D Division at SK Telecom, said the telecom operator has now verified the feasibility of telco cloud technology and can now make plans for its future commercial cloud solutions for enhanced flexibility and operational efficiency.
NSN’s virtualized EPC helps telecom operators improve their competitiveness by rapidly introducing optimal services customized to its environment. As the solution can be deployed to off-the shelf commercial IT hardware, it helps operators reduce their Opex costs, deploy effective solutions, and easily run and manage the application.
The demonstration proved that handling both control and user plane traffic in the cloud is feasible and a viable option to meet the performance requirements of data traffic growth.
The other concrete benefits include reduced deployment costs to elasticity on demand, and from faster time-to-market to software investment protection, all of which greatly contribute to SK Telecom’s readiness for its future launch of the EPC on cloud solution.
