20 April 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 the completion of live network verification of the industry’s first OLT built-in multi-access edge computing (MEC) , in partnership with the Liaocheng (Shandong) Branch of China Unicom and Zhongtong Bus.

In the verification, the MEC was deployed downward to the OLT in the Internet of vehicles (IoV ) remote driving scenario. The verification results show that the real-time video backhaul latency during driving and the delay of the communication between the vehicle control electrical system and the control center can be both reduced by more than 92% with the measured latency reaching the millisecond level. That well satisfies the latency requirements of less than 10ms for smart transportation .

In the live network verification, ZTE and China Unicom deployed a 5G network in standalone mode at Zhongtong Bus plant to achieve 5G coverage for main roads in the plant, and connected ZTE’s 10G-PON OLT cards in China Unicom’s equipment room to the ONT in the plant control center, so as to deliver high-bandwidth and low-latency wired network access.

Meanwhile, the OLT was plugged with built-in blade cards to deploy the 5G user plane function(UPF), which enables rapid forwarding of service data flows via the local UPF, and provides end-to-end millisecond latency guarantee to remote-controlled vehicles and the control center of Zhongtong Bus.

Moreover, the verification introduced the IT capability into the access office (AO) through the OLT built-in MEC function, which satisfies the requirements of experience-sensitive services. It is also a typical application scenario of ZTE’s Light Cloud solution. The results fully indicate that ZTE’s Light Cloud solution is well poised for the commercial deployment of MEC.

The verification marks the beginning of the joint innovative practice of ZTE, China Unicom and Zhongtong Bus’ in 5G+PON convergence, expecting to achieve end-to-end, high-bandwidth and low-latency communication of 5G and fixed network users.

"Edge computing of 5G services has become an industry trend, and MEC deployment will be more flexible and diversified,” said Wang Xinbin, deputy general manager of the Liaocheng (Shandong) Branch of China Unicom.“ In this verification, the MEC was deployed on the OLT in the AO to achieve flexible local forwarding of service data flows, minimize the service path latency, and offer a new solution to the application of smart transportation services."

Moving forward, ZTE, China Unicom and Zhongtong Bus will further be committed to in-depth cooperation in automatic driving, high-precision positioning, vehicle-infrastructure cooperation, and other application fields based on the OLT built-in MEC. 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.