Telefonica has partnered with the Chinese vendors ZTE and Huawei in order to bolster its 5G development.
ZTE has become a strategic partner of Telefonica via an MoU that will see the two firms cooperate on developing 5G technologies. The Chinese firm claims to be at the forefront of 5G technology globally, particularly in the fields of MIMO and beam forming technology.
The agreement will allow the firms to cooperate across multiple areas of the industry, including advanced wireless communications, cloud, IoT technology and network virtualisation architectures. The partnership will see the two firms capitalise on industry resources to expedite 4G-to-5G transition.
Huawei signed an MoU with Telefonica in November last year, and the two firms have now announced a 5G & NG-RAN joint innovation agreement covering loudRAN, 5G Radio user centric no cell, 5G core re-architect and Massive MIMO innovation projects.
The partnership’s goal is to augment spectrum efficiency and construct cloud-native architecture. The two firms have stated that the core focus of their partnership will be researching CloudRAN and evolving 5G Core architecture.
David Wang, president of Huawei Wireless Network, said: “Telefonica has certain insights about the future trends of the mobile network. Huawei is investing massively in the 5G key enabling innovative technologies.”
The Chinese firms are not the only vendors that Telefonica has partnered with as part of its 5G efforts. The Spanish operator has also signed an MoU with Ericsson. The companies will focus on development as part of two EU initiatives; the Advanced 5G Network Infrastructure for Future Internet Public-Private Partnership (5G PPP) and European Technology Platform for Communications Networks and Services.
