Huawei revealed it is working with 16 European operators, vendors, SMEs and academic institutions to establish a pan-European test bed to evaluate the potential of relevant technologies as part of the recently launched 5G Exchange (5GEx) project.
The vendor said 5GEx was established in early October and is one of the first projects of the European Commission-backed 5G public private partnership (5G-PPP). The research project aims to drive deployment of 5G infrastructure and services throughout Europe by developing multi-domain orchestration for software-defined infrastructure.
Huawei explained it will contribute to the 5GEx programme through its European Research Centre, and aims to assist in the creation of a multi-domain orchestrator prototype.
Ultimately, the 5GEx project aims to cut the time to market of new pan-European 5G services from 90 days to 90 minutes, Huawei stated. The project will achieve that by integrating multiple technologies to offer automated service provisioning, and also aims to spur economies of scale covering 5G technologies.
Huawei said a key element in achieving the goals of the research project will be to connect technically diverse test sites from a variety of vendors and operators. Those connections would aim to enable service providers to quickly deploy new on-demand, end-to-end infrastructure services, the company stated.
The first step towards achieving those goals will be to provide a real-world test environment to European researchers and industrial players that can work across countries and domains.
Huawei noted the 5G-PPP is expected to attract €3.5 billion ($3.2 billion) in private investment, which would add to the European Union's (EU) commitment to invest €700 million in the programme.
In September, the EU agreed a 5G research partnership with China that is expected to result in a formal industrial agreement covering joint research by the 5G-PPP and China's IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Association.
The 5G-PPP released its vision of the next generation networks at the Mobile World Congress in March, outlining what it believes will be the key drivers in the progression to 5G, the design principles of the next-generation technology, key technological components, spectrum considerations and a timeline towards commercialising 5G.
For more:
- see this Huawei announcement
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