Alcatel-Lucent Signs MoU With Telefonica Sign To Test NFV

(RTTNews) - French telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA (ALU) Wednesday announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Spanish telecom group Telefonica S.A. (TEF, TDE.L), under which the companies will test network functions virtualization or NFV technologies as part of the operator's strategy to evolve its networking infrastructure.

The work will focus on enhancing network performance and efficiencies to support ever-growing demand for flexible connectivity.

Alcatel-Lucent noted that Telefonica has already tested Alcatel-Lucent's Virtualized Service Router in its NFV Reference Lab using the OpenMANO NFV orchestration stack. The results reached 100% line-rate performance which allowed data to be transported with zero losses. The companies will continue testing other elements of Alcatel-Lucent's NFV portfolio in the coming months.

The company noted that the new MoU renews and expands the companies' February 2014 agreement which announced the application of Alcatel-Lucent's CloudBand platform to advance NFV implementation.

Under the new agreement, Alcatel-Lucent and Telefonica will investigate how mobile networks can be transformed to meet demands being placed on them by the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and increased customer connectivity.