ZTE Offers Up Its 5G Transport Network Scheme

As we pointed out a week or so ago,  we can now expect the technology marketing spotlight to fall more on things like the 5G transport  network and less on the radio bits which, if the rate at which 5G technology vendors and telcos are announcing successful trials and ‘firsts’ with 5G New Radio is to be believed, is increasingly a done deal.

Now the real fun starts

The 5G the early movers are going to deploy is non-stand-alone and runs across the existing 4G RAN and core. It is basically a sped-up (slightly) and capacity multiplier for mobile broadband as we pretty much know it.

The shiny 5G which is supposed to ‘really’ provide the ‘transformational’ capabilities promised – endless bandwidth and vanishingly small latency, network slicing and so on – will likely require a highly automated network based on NFV and SDN and that’s where the next level of competition is going to occur.

So enter ZTE. If Huawei represents (in the main) the Chinese push into radio, ZTE wants to stake a claim in the transport network, in the teeth, it must be said, of growing hysterical opposition in the US to it getting anywhere and challenging US leadership.

It’s the latest step has been to set out what it intends to advance to meet 5G transport requirements, which it has done with a white paper, “Meeting 5G Transport Requirements With FlexE.”―Telecom TV