At MWC Shanghai 2019 (26-28 June), China Mobile Zhejiang and China Mobile Research Institute have announced that an intent-driven 5G transport network constructed with Huawei has been put into commercial use. The network is built based on slicing packet network (SPN) technology proposed by China Mobile.
China Mobile Zhejiang worked with Huawei to start researching 5G transport networks as early as 2016 and constructed China's largest pilot 5G transport network using SPN in 2018. So far, China Mobile Zhejiang has established nearly 1,000 5G base stations and successfully put the Network Cloud Engine (NCE) into commercial use, creating China's first commercial site for the intent-driven 5G transport network.
Yang Zhiqiang, Deputy Director of China Mobile Research Institute, and Kevin Hu, President of Huawei Data Communication Product Line, both delivered speeches at the conference. As well as reviewing key breakthroughs and progress, Mr Yang Zhiqiang said he hoped that the industry chain continues to make efforts to advance SPN deployment and evolution. Mr Hu Kewen said that the launch of the 5G transport network has kicked off large-scale commercial use of 5G in China and suggested that the experience China Mobile Zhejiang has gained constructing such networks will provide a valuable reference for the large-scale commercial use of 5G in China and around the world.
According to Zhou Ping, Deputy General Manager of the planning and technology department of China Mobile Zhejiang, existing equipment is being reused at the core and aggregation layers, and board capacity can be expanded on demand. At the access layer, 10GE/50GE access rings have been constructed to meet the massive data access requirements of 5G base stations. The total cost of ownership (TCO) for network construction has thus been reduced.
SPN is used to implement network slicing. Service level agreement (SLA)-based intelligent route selection is used to build a high-quality 5G transport network, providing SLA guarantees for vertical industries and supporting industry applications with high requirements, such as the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and the smart grid.
The use of NCE allows for automatic site addition and intelligent clock synchronization, improving both base station service provisioning efficiency and clock synchronization deployment efficiency by over 85%. In-situ flow information telemetry (iFIT) helps achieve fast faultdemarcationand location, greatly improving network O&M efficiency. The combined use of NCE and big data analytics facilitates intelligent O&M and the automation of the 5G transport network lifecycle.
