ZTE announced that it is implementing mobile edge computing (MEC) pilots and technical verification trials with major carriers China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom, ahead of plans to deploy the technology commercially in 2018.
ZTE stated that it launched MEC pilots in collaboration with China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom during 2016. Specifically, it worked with China Telecom company Ningbo Telecom on a campus network to implement local traffic offloading. In addition, in Beijing and Zhuhai ZTE and China Mobile conducted an indoor positioning project. ZTE also carried out smart parking projects leveraging MEC and narrow band IoT (NB-IoT) technology in the city of Ningbo.
Additionally, At MWC Shanghai 2016, ZTE demonstrated a 5G MEC-based virtual reality (VR) service in partnership with China Unicom.
ZTE noted that it has developed a suite of MEC solutions that encompasses core technologies and patents spanning areas such as virtualisation, container, precision positioning, shunting and close-to-user content delivery network (CDN). ZTE also provides an integrated 4G/5G MEC solution with network slicing capability. The solutions are designed to address multiple scenarios, including service localisation, local caching, Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and Internet of Things (IoT).
MEC technology integrates wireless networks and the Internet and implements computing, storage and processing functionality on the wireless network side, while open APIs enable data exchange between the wireless network and service processing servers. This allows carriers to reduce the load on the transmission network and process information more quickly at base stations, improving efficiency and services to end users.
- In June 2016 at MWC Shanghai, ZTE and China Unicom demonstrated a MEC solution for 5G based on cloud-aware, soft-network architecture. ZTE displayed an integrated solution featuring its QCell indoor coverage and MEC products designed to enable big data applications.
- Earlier in 2016, ZTE and China Mobile showed a joint 5G-oriented network architecture and network slice prototype system that utilised the latest generation Intel Xeon processor. The prototype system featured 5G network function componentisation and requirement-based orchestration and enabled dynamic 5G applications network slices including for mobile broadband (xMBB), IoT and MEC.
