Huawei in Euro Initiative for Multi-domain Infrastructure for 5G Services

[Munich, Germany, Nov.23, 2015] Huawei and its European partners are joining forces to pave the way for a unified 5G European infrastructure service market with the 5GEx project launched on October 1.

The 5GEx initiative is among the first projects of the European 5G Public Private Partnership (5G-PPP) aimed at strengthening European 5G research and global cooperation to cope with future wireless demand. Huawei is playing a key role in this joint effort and will be leading the 5GEx prototype development.

5GEx, which stands for 5G Exchange, is a research and innovation project that will work toward the creation of 5G infrastructure and services spanning multiple countries by focusing on development of multi-domain orchestration for software-defined infrastructure.

To achieve this goal, Huawei is joining forces with 16 key European partners, including network operators, vendors, SMEs and academic institutions, to establish a pan-European testbed for evaluating relevant technologies. The company’s European Research Centre (Huawei ERC) will contribute to the 5GEx architecture’s design and development of the 5GEx multi-domain orchestrator prototype.

Infrastructure services will play a crucial role in making 5G a reality, as they are the foundation of all cloud and networking services. 5GEx aims to boost progress towards a European infrastructure service market integrating multiple operators and technologies offering fast and automated service provisioning, while also achieving economies of scale. The specific target is to reduce the time to market of new pan-European 5G services from 90 days to a mere 90 minutes. As operators across Europe operate in different countries and regions, 5GEx aims to enable collaboration to create infrastructure services spanning multiple countries.

Over the course of the project, various operators and vendors will host and connect technically diverse, perhaps even incompatible, test sites across Europe. The target of the system developed under the project will be to connect these sites, enabling service providers to deploy new on-demand, end-to-end infrastructure and services at the click of a button, and making these available to customers within a target time of 90 minutes.

As the first step, the 5GEx project will help European researchers and industrial partners test their 5G services and experiments, developed within the 5G-PPP framework and beyond, by providing them with access to a real world, cross-domain, cross-country platform.

The 5G-PPP, a joint initiative between Europe’s ICT industry and the European Commission, is expected to attract a total of €3.5 billion in private investment, boosted by €700 million in EU funding. Huawei has been at the forefront of this collaborative effort since its beginning, and is now contributing its expertise and global resources to some of the most future-oriented projects being implemented under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program.

Huawei ERC, which has grown constantly since its founding in 2007, plays a central role in the 5G-PPP framework and is currently participating in five EU-funded projects. The centre plans significant investments in experimenting and trials targeting vertical markets in digital society beyond 2020.

In addition to these, Huawei is forging ahead with other European 5G initiatives. The company is researching 5G technologies at Surrey University’s 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) in the UK, where it will invest £5 million as part of the $600 million it is committing to 5G research globally by 2018. It is also launching a 5G Vertical Industry Accelerator (5G VIA) and testbed together with Europe.

For more information: https://5g-ppp.eu/5gex/