Telefónica Tests Virtualized CPE with NEC in Brazil

Telefónica, in partnership with NEC, is kicking off the first field trial of virtualized customer premise equipment (CPE) in Brazil.

The trial, which gets underway this month, aims to simplify the home equipment installation process by virtualising and moving functions from the equipment installed in the customer's home to Telefónica's network. The solution, based on a prototype developed by Telefónica I+D, with contributions and integration by NEC, enables certain IP functions to be shifted away from the residential gateways (the equipment installed in the customer's home) towards the carrier's own network. As a result, end users will experience rapid service deployment and improved network operation and maintenance benefits.

Telefónica and NEC will be conducting a series of field trials in Brazil, where Telefónica provides broadband access services to millions of homes and businesses with the objective of having a solution ready for deployment by July of 2014.

"NEC is a leader in SDN and NFV solution development, having provided the world's first commercial SDN product," said Mr Kazuya Hashimoto, Executive Vice-president, Carrier Solutions EMEA, NEC Europe. "NEC's vCPE solution provides an open and flexible networking topology that simplifies network management, proactively addresses performance and contributes towards the high availability of Telefónica's services."

"Telefónica sees the implementation of SDN and NFV technologies as a factor of our network infrastructure development strategy," said Mr Enrique Algaba, Director of Network Innovation at Telefónica I+D ? Global CTO Unit. "We expect this pilot scheme will help us prove the viability of this technology and enable us to implement rollouts in a more flexible and reliable way coupled with low operating costs."

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