Kuwait’s Zain Group has announced the Middle East’s first demonstration of proof of concept for network functions virtualization (NFV).
The demo uses Ericsson’s virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) and virtual IP Multimedia Subsystem (vIMS) solutions.
The objective is to demonstrate cloud use cases that enable Zain to have faster time to market, offer high-quality user experiences and easily deploy ICT services such as Voice over LTE (VoLTE), Machine to Machine (M2M), Rich Communication Services (RCS) and enterprise solutions.
The Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment and Ericsson Cloud Manager are based on OpenStack, OPNFV and ETSI MANO, allowing operators to deploy Ericsson's and other vendors' hardware and virtualized software products.
This helps operators allocate network resources more flexibly, simplifies network configuration and delivers operational and capital expenditure savings, Ericsson said in a statement.
The announcement was made at the Zain Technology Conference held in Bahrain.