Nokia has reached an agreement with China Unicom for a three-year extension of its exclusive partnership to supply its large-capacity core router platform, the 7950 Extensible Routing System (XRS).
In 2014, China Unicom selected the 7950 XRS family to build a more intelligent, flexible and scalable core network with the ability to meet future capacity demands and support the country's national broadband plan.
China Unicom initially deployed the 7950 XRS into metro networks in six provinces – Beijing, Shandong, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Inner Mongolia and Qinghai – and this year plans to scale out to an additional four including Heilongjiang, Henan, Zhejiang and Hunan.
The deployment supports China’s national broadband strategy, launched in 2013. The Broadband China initiative aims to invest $182 billion to boost the speed and quality of Internet services across the country. The aim is to reduce the digital divide by providing businesses and urban and rural citizens with national broadband coverage by 2020.
Nokia's 7950 XRS platform delivers the scale, efficiency and versatility required so China Unicom can address the full range of core networking requirements with room to also meet capacity demands well into the future.
The 7950 XRS platform addresses the full range of core networking requirements, including Internet routing, IP Peering, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), data centre interconnect and infrastructure services, according to Nokia.
In addition, the XRS is based on a highly programmable network processor-based architecture that provides the capabilities required as cloud service requirements evolve. The XRS supports open interfaces that software defined networking (SDN) controllers can use to program the network through mechanisms such as OpenFlow, NETCONF/YANG, PCE-P or BGP/LS.
"We are honoured to continue our work with China Unicom in the CR-B core router segment," said Mike Wang, head of the joint management team of Nokia Networks China and Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell, commonly known as ASB. "Leveraging the Nokia 7950 XRS platform, China Unicom gains the bandwidth, flexibility and programmability necessary to manage its growing networks and to better meet the needs of the country's ambitious broadband strategy."