China Mobile Shanxi and Huawei jointly implement world's first large-scale cloud-based BNG deployment

[Xi'an, China, June 22, 2018] China Mobile Shaanxi and Huawei have jointly carried out the world's first large-scale commercial deployment of cloud-based BNG. This commercial deployment marks a smooth upgrade from the traditional BNG solution to the Cloud-based BNG solution, which carries 100,000 users and 300,000 sessions on the live network and paves the way for large-scale global deployment. This success is another key milestone for China Mobile Shaanxi following its pilot use of the world's first Cloud-based BNG with CU separation in 2017.

China Mobile Shaanxi started to implement the Million Broadband Strategy from 2016. The home products based on the wired broadband and home video effectively facilitate market development, and the number of broadband subscribers was increased from around 600,000 by the end of 2015 to around 2.2 million. The fast service growth presents traditional BNGs with major challenges, including uneven resource utilization, slow service rollout, and complex O&M demands. Over the past year, China Mobile Shaanxi and Huawei have jointly explored the deployability of Cloud-based BNG in the telecom cloud architecture. Additionally, the two partners have formed a roadmap for CU separation evolution (centralized control plane on the cloud and diversified forwarding planes) based on real-world scenarios.

In 2018, China Mobile Shaanxi verified the large-scale commercial use of the Cloud-based BNG solution in two phases, aiming to form replicable baselines for commercial use capabilities. The verification covers large-scale user service bearer, geographical redundancy, and interconnection with peripheral systems. In phase 1, the cloudified control plane was added, and the traditional BNGs on the live network were directly upgraded to the physical forwarding planes of the Cloud-based BNG. This allows large-scale user services to be delivered without hardware changes. In phase 2, the control plane was upgraded to support geographical redundancy, ensuring carrier-class reliability in large-scale commercial use.

China Mobile Shaanxi's move to put Cloud-based BNG into large-scale commercial deployment is a key step for China Mobile’s cloudification and serves as a major investment in metro network transformation for each province and city. Through cooperation with Huawei, China Mobile Shaanxi aims to strengthen innovative exploration of future networks and develop China Mobile's cloud strategy.