ZTE, carriers in China implement MEC pilots and plan for commercialisation in 2018

ZTE Corporation, a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, is implementing mobile edge computing (MEC) pilots and technical verification with China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom. The MEC technology is planned to be put into commercial use in 2018.

Since 2016, ZTE has launched MEC pilots together with China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom. ZTE and Ningbo Telecom cooperated on a campus network to implement local traffic offloading. In Beijing and Zhuhai, ZTE and China Mobile conducted a precise indoor positioning project.

In Ningbo, ZTE completed smart parking and smart park projects based on MEC and narrow band IoT (NB-IoT). Additionally, At MWC Shanghai 2016, ZTE demonstrated a 5G MEC-based virtual reality (VR) service together with China Unicom.

ZTE owns a complete set of MEC solutions, including core technologies and patents such as virtualisation, container, high-precision positioning, shunting and close-to-user content delivery network (CDN). The solutions cover multiple scenarios, including service localisation, local caching, Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and Internet of Things (IoT).

MEC technology integrates wireless network and the Internet, and adds computing, storage, and processing functions on the wireless network side. Open wireless APIs enable information exchange between the wireless network and service processing servers, which reduces transmission network pressure and allows carriers to process information more quickly on the base station side, provide differentiated services and improve users' video experience.

MEC technology is very important for 5G network development. ZTE and carriers also provide solutions combining MEC with NB-IoT or V2X. In addition, considering the network reconstruction prompted by 5G, ZTE provides an integrated 4G/5G MEC solution, supporting network slicing and providing users with a better experience.