March 16, 2015 — LG U+ has teamed with Affirmed Networks, a global network equipment supplier of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) solutions for the EPC, to allow them to enable new networks and services upon NFV across both wired and wireless networks. According to LG U+: “We decided to build vEPC earlier in order to respond flexibly towards growing video traffic demands and customer’s various needs in IoT and 5G environment.” NFV is the technology to implement network functionalities upon virtual hardware separating from physical hardware. It enables to reduce cost and to add hardware resource flexibly by using COTS server instead of high cost legacy server.
In particular, an EPC based on NFV helps to reduce the complexity of the network configuration and support the mobility of flexible operation for different types of networks such as WiFi. As a result, it enables LG U+ to accelerate new network technologies including LTE-U (Unlicensed) introduced last year. LG U+ has already completed a trial test last year with Affirmed Networks, a company that has extensive experience with commercial network deployments for major global operators. LG U+ expects that it will be available to launch new services quickly through the early commercialization of this next-generation equipment and capabilities.
“We will do our best to enhance customers convenience by accelerating the preparation of infrastructure which efficiently and stably affords increasing traffic in 5G environment and devices in IoT environment where the traffic is 3 times as much as now” said Changgil Cho, CTO, LG U+. “NFV allows LG U+ to extend their leadership by accelerating the development and delivery of a new breed of service offerings both today as well as in 5G networks of the future” said Hassan Ahmed, Chairman, Affirmed Networks.