NEC, Netcracker hold joint trial optical fibre network

NEC and Netcracker Technology have successfully conducted a trial, in collaboration with K-Opticom, for a system combining NFV and 10G-EPON technologies.

The companies said the trial verified for the first time ever that virtualized customer premises equipment (vCPE) can be successfully applied to 10Gbps Internet connections.

K-Opticom provides telecommunications services based on its independent optical fiber network. The company operates the “mineo” mobile phone service as a MVNO, and “eo denki,” an electric power retailing service for household use.

VCPE provides CPE and other top-layer functions, such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Network Address Translation (NAT), from data centers via the Internet.

Based on the results of this trial, further trials are being planned in preparation for the full-scale application of vCPE to 10Gpbs Internet services.

Takamitsu Fukunaga, SVP for K-Opticom, said communication traffic volumes for home-use connections are increasing year by year, and K-Opticom estimates that these traffic volumes will continue to grow.

“As a result, we are considering the provision of a 10Gbps service. We are engaged in continual efforts together with NEC to enable us to offer this service to our customers as soon as possible,” the executive said.

NEC senior vice president Shigeru Okuya claimed the trial with K-Opticom is the industry’s first of its kind to validate that vCPE can be applied to 10G-EPON.

“Moving forward, we will continue to proactively advance the development of solutions that contribute to the improvement of service quality for K-Opticom, and to make use of these results in providing SDN/NFV solutions globally,” Okuya said.