NTT DOCOMO Anticipates NFV Rollout Starting in March 2016

NTT DOCOMO is planning for a commercial deployment of network functions virtualisation (NFV) technology its mobile network in Japan from March 2016.

At last week's Mobile World Congress, DOCOMO confirmed that it is working on NFV with three ICT vendors—Ericsson, Fujitsu and NEC.

NTT said Ericsson composes the system that controls the virtualized hardware, whereas Fujitsu and NEC compose virtualized EPC software.

"NFV, which has finally moved into its commercial phase, is no longer just a pie-in-the-sky idea," said Seizo Onoe, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at DOCOMO. "Through multi-vendor initiatives with Ericsson, Fujitsu and NEC and other leading vendors in the NFV domain, we look forward to putting NFV to practical use and thereby helping to accelerate the transition to a new era for mobile networks."

Anders Lindblad, Senior Vice President, Head of Business Unit Cloud and IP at Ericsson, said: "Ericsson is delighted to partner with DOCOMO to contribute to an advance effort for commercialization of NFV. By providing a platform for execution and orchestration of cloud services, we will contribute to enabling the realization of a virtualized network in a multivendor environment led by DOCOMO."

Jiro Otsuki, Corporate Executive Officer, EVP, Head of Network Business Group, Service Platform Business, Fujitsu Limited, said: "We at Fujitsu are delighted to be able to participate in the cutting-edge initiative to implement DOCOMO's network virtualization technology. We are moving forward on partnerships with DOCOMO and a range of other vendors, utilizing our technological capabilities that have a track record of support for the commercialization of mobile networks. Moreover, Fujitsu will provide the virtualization technology that paves the way for international standards so as to contribute to realizing the next generation of mobile networks."

Shunichiro Tejima, Executive Vice President of NEC, said: "NEC is delighted to be selected by DOCOMO as a partner for the development of their industry-leading network functions virtualization technology. NEC will aim towards the early realization of DOCOMO's virtualized EPC, while ensuring that telecom carriers around the world can fully reap the benefits of network virtualization by providing an open virtualization-based mobile core technology. In this way, NEC will continue helping telecom carriers to provide advanced communication services."

https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp