26 February 2019, 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 has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the joint development of operator defined next-generation intelligent RAN (O-RAN) with China Mobile Research Institute at Mobile World Congress 2019 Barcelona.

Under the MoU, ZTE collaborates with China Mobile Research Institute to research and develop the architecture, interfaces, and use case scenarios of intelligent RAN under the O-RAN framework.

As per the MoU, ZTE and China Mobile Research Institute are committed to testing and verifying innovative technical solutions, promoting the implementation of O-RAN technologies. Moreover, they will jointly verify O-RAN innovative technologies in specific scenarios, such as radio fingerprint-based load balancing and cross-layer optimization of services.

As strategic partners, ZTE and China Mobile Research Institute will also showcase their collaboratively developed O-RAN achievements in exhibitions and contribute their O-RAN related findings to standard organizations together in the future.

Furthermore, ZTE and China Mobile have jointly demonstrated the AI-enhanced load balancing solution using O-RAN aligned architecture. The demonstration features Radio Fingerprint technology, which can predict cellular network loads and improve the timeliness and accuracy of load balance, thereby providing better user experience.

"The MoU with ZTE focuses on the software and hardware R&D as well as solution verification, exploring new network capabilities in the future," said Huang Yuhong, vice president of China Mobile Research Institute. "This cooperation will promote the maturity of O-RAN, laying the foundation to reduce the complexity of wireless network operation and maintenance."

"This MoU will deepen the long-term cooperation between ZTE and China Mobile. ZTE's network intelligent architecture and end-to-end network intelligence capabilities will greatly promote the research and implementation of open and intelligent networks," said Bai Gang, vice president of ZTE. "The open and unified intelligent architecture will help the industry form an ecosystem, jointly building flexible and agile networks to meet the diverse functionality and performance requirements in the future 5G network and beyond."

In collaboration with China Mobile Research Institute, ZTE will continue to explore the new technologies in artificial intelligence and machine learning for wireless networking, and actively participate in O-RAN related researches.