ZTE takes the lead in completing China Telecom’s 5G SA core network commercial equipment performance test

5 March 2020, SHENZHEN, CHINA - ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, today announced that it takes the lead to pass the industry’s first 5G SA core network commercial equipment performance test organized by China Telecom. ZTE becomes the first vendor whose equipment runs strictly with required performance for 48 hours. This test verifies the processing performance and stability of the 5G SA system and lays a solid foundation for the commercial deployment of the 5G SA network.

Based on the R15 protocol, this performance test involved four mainstream equipment vendors, and employed the unified third party meter to simulate terminals and base stations. The test adopted the decoupling mode and the performance test model that are closer to the actual services in the existing network, fully reflecting the actual performance of NEs in commercial use. In addition, vendors were required to comprehensively and thoroughly verify the powerful performance, flexible ecological adaptability and expandability of the cloud-native full-service 5GC pure software network, and the commercial feasibility of the cloud network and service-based software, in terms of software deployment, resource utilization and large capacity performance.

In the test process, important factors, including the correctness of the entire system process, resource usage of monitoring devices, CPU usage, user-plane packet loss rate, and control-plane message success rate, are all strictly verified.

In addition, China Telecom innovatively proposed to construct recognition rules by using the prime-modulus method to comprehensively test the DPI capabilities of 5G core network devices of various vendors. For the first time, ZTE has proved the strong forwarding performance of the virtualized UPF forwarding plane. Providing applications with diversified bandwidth and latency in the 5G era, this product is a commercially available forwarding plane product for the synergy of cloud and network, thereby facilitating the digital transformation of networks.

As a strategic partner, ZTE has actively participated in the verification organized by China Telecom. Since July 2018, China Telecom has organized top telecom experts to work with vendors to solve various problems with the new architecture and new protocols. ZTE and China Telecom have completed a series of verification, including end-to-end system functions, 4G/5G interoperability, EPS Fallback, terminal chip IODT and inter-vendor interface interworking. The two partners have also developed and improved various 5G SA specifications, thereby effectively promoting the maturity of the 5G SA industry chain, and ensuring the large-scale deployment of the 5G SA. ZTE is a provider of advanced telecommunications systems, mobile devices and enterprise technology solutions to consumers, operators, companies and public sector customers. As a part of ZTE’s strategy, the company is committed to providing customers with integrated end-to-end innovations to deliver excellence and value as the telecommunications and information technology sectors converge. Listed in the stock exchanges of Hong Kong and Shenzhen (H share stock code: 0763.HK / A share stock code: 000063.SZ), ZTE sells its products and services in more than 160 countries. To date, ZTE has obtained 46 commercial 5G contracts in major markets, such as Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (MEA). ZTE commits 10 percent of its annual revenues to research and development and takes leadership roles in international standard development organizations.