China Unicom also announced the launch of its edge cloud service platform
BARCELONA- Chinese telecommunications operator China Unicom has announced the launch of large-scale edge cloud field trials in collaboration with a number of partners including ZTE, Intel, Baidu and Tencent.
China Unicom said that it will carry large-scale trials and pre-commercial deployments in 15 provinces and cities across China; the deployments will take place in campuses, stadiums and parks, among other venues.
China Unicom has cooperated with ZTE, Intel, Tencent and other partners to build an edge cloud testbed in Tianjing. ZTE said that the development and validation of edge vCDN, edge transcoding and edge intelligence analysis services are in progress at the Tianjing testbed.
ZTE highlighted that the integration among 5G networks, cloud computing, big data, VR and AI, is becoming the key basic infrastructure of digital transformation in several industries. “Global telecom operators are working on network re-architecture and transformation. Edge cloud can meet the service experience requirement of lower latency, higher bandwidth and localization, and improve network use efficiency,” the Chinese vendor said in a statement.
China Unicom’s edge cloud service platform is built based on servers using Intel Xeon scalable processor family, along with DPDK, SR-IOV and other optimization technologies. The telco said that its edge-cloud platform will provide differentiated network capabilities and services in vertical industries.
“Operators in 5G era will have more opportunities to expand value-added business, transforming to integrated end-to-end services provider. One of the key point of China Unicom’s network transformation is to bring high bandwidth, low latency and wide connection down to the network edge,” said Shao Guanglu, EVP of China Unicom.
“China Unicom has built deep cooperation in edge-cloud area with industrial partners including Baidu, Tencent, ZTE, and Intel. In the edge-cloud massive trials, China Unicom hopes to cooperate with more industrial partners, with focus on HD video, VR/AR, industrial IOT, internet of vehicle, among other services,” he said.
“In recent years, ZTE and China Unicom have worked together on network exposure capability, standardization evolution, end-to-end application verifications. In the future, ZTE will further deepen its cooperation with operators and partners in the vertical industries to promote the reshaping of 5G-oriented smart networks, and to make joint efforts to embrace the 5G era,” said Zhao Xianming, president of ZTE Corporation.
Regarding the future evolution of 5G networks in China, Werner Schaefer, Intel’s VP and general manager, network platforms group and communications service provider sales, said that Intel is working with its Chinese partners in order to accelerate the deployment of 5G technology in the Chinese market.
