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Interview

Vol. 10 No. 11 Issue 106 November/2008

A Monthly Publication

www.zte.com.cn

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ZTE Continues Its CDMA Success Story —An interview with Ms. Li Jian, General Manager of ZTE’s CDMA products

Press Clipping

ZTE Silent Mode 6

ZTE Records Highest Industry Growth for Optical Networking Solutions in Asia Pacific

ZTE to Test Integrated Next Generation Network Solutions at GMI 2008

ZTE Strengthens LTE R&D Team by Involving 2,000 Experts

Maxis Selects ZTE to Help Subsidiary in India Develop GSM Network Infrastructure

ZTE Wins Exclusive WiMAX Deal in Africa

ZTE Supports Gemastik 2008 Advancing IT and Telecommunication Skills

Corporate News

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Leading Edge

The Business Case Towards LTE with SDR InnovationZTE can help operators minimize their investment requirements with a smooth evolution path to LTE with its latest SDR multi-technology base stations

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Boosting Operators’ Profitability through Customization and Quality ServiceBeing a leader in the CDMA industry, ZTE has been dedicated to offering professional services, fast response, custom-made products, and one-stop engineering service solutionsP15

Tech Feature

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Li Jian joined ZTE in 1997 and is now the general manager of ZTE’s CDMA products. She was the former chief of ZTE’s research institute in Nanjing and also the former general manager of GoTa products. During her term as the head of GoTa products, Ms. Li made outstanding contributions in such aspects as international marketing, standardization, the granting of IPR, completion of industry chain, terminal diversification and performance enhancement.

ZTE TECHNOLOGIESNovember 20082

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Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Huang Xinming

Editorial Director: Zhao Lili

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26ZTE, TELEVÕRK Team up to Build Wireless Broadband Network in EstoniaBased on the actual conditions of TELEVÕRK, ZTE suggested that the operator give up voice service, focus on data service, and concentrate its investment on building an EV-DO data network

Third Eye

28ZTE’s Handset Strategy: A Can of Worms for the Open Handset Market?Having cracked the market for operator own-branded handsets at the lower end of the range, ZTE’s impact on the market for high-end, open-platform devices will be fascinating to watch

Tech Feature

24Green Outdoor Cabinet Solution As the current FTTB architectures need an average of millions of nodes, no one can afford such a huge number of houses or rooms to store equipment in

Door to Multi-Vendor Device ManagementNetNumenTM UNMS provides operators with flexible and cost effective systems to monitor and control heterogeneous networks

TD-HSPA MXTM: The Key to Breaking the High-Throughput Bottleneck How to lower the cost per bit of data while increasing the network throughput has become a challenge for mobile carriers

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Case Study

ZTE TECHNOLOGIES November 2008 3

ZTE Records Highest Industry Growth for Optical Networking Solutions in Asia PacificIEC recognizes ZTE’s advanced optical networking RPR-embedded MSTP solution

Corporate News

ZTE to Test Integrated Next Generation Network Solutions at GMI 2008Interoperability tests will enable ZTE to demonstrate the compatibility, flexibility and stability of its next generation network solutions

ZTE has r eco rded ano the r s t e r l i n g i n d u s t r y s a l e s growth in the area of Optical

N e t w o r k i n g ( O N ) i n Q 2 2 0 0 8 , according to an Ovum report entitled “Market Share: 2Q08 Asia-Pacific ON”. The report shows that ZTE has the fastest ON annual sales growth in Asia Pacific, with an 8% market share, the 4th highest in the region. In Q2 2008, ZTE had 12% market share of

ON in the region, placing the company on the third spot among other ON providers.

Industry trend analysis in the Ovum report revealed that leading telecom operators in the region including China Mobile, Reliance, Bharti and Telkom Indonesia continue to enhance and expand their respective 2G network infrastructure. On the other hand, operators in developed countries are

actively upgrading their networks to cater for 3G services demand. The report added that during the first half of 2008, operators in Asia-Pacific invested 25% higher compared with the same period last year to upgrade their existing network infrastructure. In Q2 2008, Asia Pacific’s optical networking revenue increased by 19% quarter-on-quarter and 30% year-on-year.

(ZTE Corporation)

ZTE announced its participation in the GMI 2008 (Global MSF Interoperability) event held

by the MultiService Forum (MSF) to advance the development of Next Generation Networks (NGN). ZTE proved the interoperability capabilities of its IMS, wireless broadband access infrastructure and IPTV solutions in three of the five networked MSF GMI 2008 host sites around the world (The USA, China and the UK).

G M I 2 0 0 8 i s a w o r l d w i d e multi-vendor interoperability test environment organized by the MSF, where critical next-generation network

elements are verified in a number of practical scenarios. The event took place from October 20 to 31 this year, spanning several worldwide locations that include Verizon, NCS and UNH-IOL in the United States, a joint BT/Vodafone lab in the United Kingdom and China Mobile.

“ T h e G M I 2 0 0 8 i s a g r e a t oppor tun i ty to demons t ra te the compatibility, flexibility and stability of ZTE’s end-to-end wireless and IMS solution and to help accelerate the roll-out of next-generation networks”, said Mr. Kevin Y. Qi, Managing Director of ZTE (UK) Limited.

The MSF tests aim to provide equipment vendors the opportunity to validate key service concepts that leverage an IMS/NGN infrastructure and FMC network architecture. This year, for the first time integration of high speed wireless access technologies was included in the interoperability tests designed to prove MSF Interoperability Agreements for NGN. The interoperability verification tests feature session control, innovative wireless access tile, IMS-based IPTV, quality of service (QoS) control, service-oriented architecture (SOA), and location based services.

(ZTE Corporation)



Corporate News

ZTE Strengthens LTE R&D Team by Involving 2,000 ExpertsCompany showcases FDD-LTE and TD-LTE prototype solutions at P&T/Expo Comm China 2008

Maxis Selects ZTE to Help Subsidiary in India Develop GSM Network InfrastructureZTE chosen by the largest mobile operator in the Netherlands to provide HSDPA data cards for mobile broadband users

ZTE showcased a whole range of LTE prototype solutions at the P&T/Expo Comm China

2008, the most influential IT and communication event in Beijing, China from 21 to 25 October. The company highlighted at the show its commitment to contribute in the industry’s alternative

to migrate from 3G to LTE technology.

I n l i n e w i t h i t s commitment to develop LT E s o l u t i o n s , t h e company continues to inject investments in FDD-LTE and TD-LTE development initiatives by the talents of 2,000 experienced engineers specia l iz ing in GSM/CDMA and 3G technology

at its R&D facility. T h e c o m p a n y i s i n v e s t i n g 6

billion RMB to build a new R&D facility and production base in Xi’an, China that will primarily be focused on research initiatives on post-3G technology developments and creating new LTE solutions for its handset

business, demonstrating the company’s determination in helping the industry smoothly migrate into the next-generation communications era.

Backed by a large pool of R&D experts and injection of significant R & D f u n d s , Z T E i s a i m e d a t achieving its goal of developing and commercializing FDD-LTE solutions in the second half of 2009, and TD-LTE by 2010, both on a small scale.

At the P&T/Expo, ZTE demonstrated an FDD/LTE prototype and TD-LTE solutions among other advanced communica t ions equipment and products portfolio. It also showcased an FDD/TDD integrated solution developed using the world’s leading SDR software base station.

(ZTE Corporation)

ZTE has been se l ec t ed by Maxis, the largest mobile telecom operator in Malaysia

to help one of its subsidiaries in I n d i a , A i r c e l , t o e x p a n d G S M coverage in the country. The deal, which is worth US$400 mill ion, will help Aircel establish one of the most sophisticated GSM network infrastructures in India.

“It is a great opportunity for us to

be selected by Maxis to help enhance the GSM network of its subsidiary in India, one of the fastest growing telecom markets in East Asia. This agreement has given ZTE a valuable opportunity to contribute our strong expertise and technology to develop GSM infras t ructure in the local market,” said ZTE. “We have been successful in sustaining the strong growth of our wireless business

portfolio over the past three quarters. Today, we rank fourth globally in terms of GSM equipment shipment while continuing a leading position in the CDMA arena. With remarkable breakthrough in our GSM, WCDMA a n d C D M A b u s i n e s s e s , w e a r e confident to expand our business footprint in high-end markets in APAC and Europe.”

(ZTE Corporation)


Corporate News

ZTE Wins Exclusive WiMAX Deal in AfricaCompany to help Mauritania establish its first ever WiMAX 16e commercial network

ZTE Supports Gemastik 2008 Advancing IT and Telecommunication SkillsInvolving 177 university representatives and technology users to the annual IT and telecommunication event

ZTE recently announced that it has clinched an exclusive contract from Chinguitel, a

telecom carrier under Expresso Telecom Group (ETG) to help Mauritania build its first 2.5GHz WiMAX commercial network. Under the agreement, ZTE will be providing core network equipment, wireless access devices, as well as various communication terminals for indoor and outdoor use.

Mauritania has a total land area of over 1 million square kilometers, and faces the Sahara Desert in the east and Atlantic Ocean in the west. With such a complicated geographical

landscape, it becomes highly important for telecom operators to establish a stable and efficient WiMAX network. After a thorough evaluation process, Chinguitel chose ZTE to exclusively provide Mauritania with the core network equipment to establish its first ever WiMAX 16e commercial network. In se lec t ing ZTE, Chingui te l i s leveraging ZTE’s advanced technology and expertise to help them establish a CDMA and WiMAX integrated network infrastructure, covering the whole area of Africa.

“It is a valuable opportunity to partner with ZTE in building the first WiMAX

commercial network in Mauritania. We are impressed by ZTE’s state-of-the-art technologies and pioneering visions, hence are confident that we can provide the African population with the most effective wireless and highly advanced communications platform to enjoy access of various wireless services,” said Mr. Elamir, CEO of Chinguitel.

(ZTE Corporation)

ZTE announced tha t i t had supported Indonesian ICT University Students Exhibition

also known as Pagelaran Mahasiswa Nasional bidang Teknologi Informasi dan Komunikasi (Gemastik) 2008, a national event held by the ministry of national education to advance the capability of University students through an IT and Telecommunication competition and seminar. About 177 university representatives, telecommunication technology users, and other parties interested in telecommunication research, technology, and application gathered and

participated in this event.The event was officially opened

by Bambang Sudibyo, Minister of National Education at the Telkom’s Institute of Technology (IT Telkom) in Bandung on October 24, 2008. The IT and telecommunication competition invites participants that will compete in five categories; Smartware, Logic, ICT Business, Application, and ICT Paper Submission. All activities related to Gemastik 2008 will run in the training centre, which was established as a result of a close cooperation between IT Telkom and

ZTE in the past two years. ZTE-IT Telkom Asia Pacific R&D

and Training Center was established by ZTE and IT TELKOM in April of 2006, providing telecommunication training especially for telecom operator customers, ZTE staff, and general public. Since 2006 ZTE had invested more than USD 2 million in the training center, providing the latest telecom equipment for training and research purposes including the technology in CDMA, WCDMA, GSM, NGN, ADSL, SDH, and DWDM.

(ZTE Corporation)


ZTE Silent ModeOctober 16, 2008 Source: The Economist

An emerging Chinese telecoms giant is growing steadily and stealthily

In the last quarter of 2007 there were three new entrants in the top ten list of mobile-phone makers. Most people know two

of them—Apple, maker of the iPhone, and Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry—but not the third: ZTE of China. Its worldwide market share went from 0.4% at the start of 2007 to 1.2% in the second quarter of 2008, according to Gartner, a consultancy. Last month it sold its 100 millionth phone. Its goal is to become the third-biggest handset-maker, behind Nokia and Samsung (it now lies in sixth place). Yet ZTE is easy to overlook, because of its distinctive business model.

Founded in 1985, ZTE chiefly makes networking gear, rather than phones. With prices for comparable products 25-90% less than those of its western competitors, ZTE has customers in over 60 countries. As Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel and other established telecoms-equipment makers have suffered, ZTE has thrived. Its revenues and profits increased by more than 50% in 2007. This year growth is also likely to be strong, for two reasons.

Export sales, which account for around two-thirds of revenues, continue to grow as poor countries expand the range and capacity of their mobile-phone networks. On October 13th, 2008, for example, ZTE announced a

$400m contract to provide equipment for a new network in India. At the same time ZTE will benefit from one of the largest telecoms projects in history: the construction of China’s much-delayed “third generation” (3G) mobile networks.

Behind ZTE’s emergence are the usual factors that have come to be associated with China’s economic rise, with a few twists. ZTE has benefited from the thousands of inexpensive and well-trained engineers coming out of China’s universities, many of whom are deployed at short notice to work on large projects in some of the world’s most difficult places. More fuzzy, but still important, has been ZTE’s

Press Clipping


ability to use help from the Chinese government to arrange cheap financing for its global customers, which often lack capital.

Beyond these broader factors, ZTE has done a good job of understanding how to pursue a low-cost strategy, and there is far more to it than merely producing cheap products. “ZTE is a strong technology company, but of a particular sort,” says James Liang, an analyst with Citigroup. ZTE focuses on making equipment that is cheap, reliable and unobtrusive.

In developed markets, makers of elaborate handsets such as Nokia, RIM and Apple have strong brands and fiercely loyal customers. This is a

mixed blessing for network operators: offering a snazzy new handset can help them attract customers, but many users are more loyal to their handset-maker than to their operator. ZTE, by contrast, keeps itself in the background. It supplies handsets on a “white label” basis to operators, which then sell them under their own brands. The name ZTE is nowhere to be seen. In keeping with its roots as a network-equipment supplier, it sees operators, not consumers, as its customers.

ZTE moved into the handset market in 2002, and handsets accounted for 22% of its revenue last year; it expects this figure to reach 50% by 2012. ZTE

does make some advanced handsets, but its strength is in combining low cost with a willingness to customise handse ts fo r the opera tors . For Australia’s Telstra, for example, it produced a “country phone”, with a pull-out antenna, which suits people outside cities who need highly sensitive receivers. Although ZTE supplies phones to big names such as Vodafone and Telefónica, most of its customers are in the developing world, where overall handset sales are growing by 16% a year. ZTE’s steady but stealthy rise reflects how much of the growth in telecoms is at the bottom of the economic pyramid.


Interview

—An interview with Ms. Li Jian, General Manager of ZTE’s CDMA products

ZTE Continues Its CDMA Success Story

Li Jian joined ZTE in 1997 and is now the general manager of ZTE’s CDMA products. She was the former chief of ZTE’s research institute in Nanjing and also the former general manager of GoTa products. During her term as the head of GoTa products, Ms. Li made outstanding contributions in such aspects as international marketing, standardization, the granting of IPR, completion of industry chain, terminal diversification and performance enhancement.

In a report published early this year, Yankee, a renowned American consulting company, chose ZTE as the most competitive CDMA

product supplier in Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. ZTE tops in four evaluation factors including existing installed base, price, technology and product portfolio.

According to a report by another American consulting firm EJL Wireless this August, ZTE dominated the CDMA market in Q2, capturing 10 of the 12 new CDMA contracts.

After strenuous efforts of eight years, ZTE has made great achievements in the CDMA field. ZTE has deployed 150 million lines of CDMA equipment, and it has remained No. 1 in CDMA base station shipment for several consecutive years. With a 1/3 market occupancy rate, ZTE tops the CDMA equipment market in China.

With a full-fledged CDMA product line and solid market foundation, ZTE is now embracing the opportunity from the reshuffling of China’s telecom industry. What preparations will ZTE make for this historic opportunity? How will ZTE continue its CDMA success story? With these questions in mind, ZTE Technologies’ journalist made an exclusive interview with Li Jian, General Manager of CDMA products of ZTE.

Journalist: ZTE has made impressive achievements in the CDMA field and has won the biggest share in the world’s newly-added market for two consecutive years. Could you please give us an introduction of the market scale and


global applications of ZTE’s CDMA products? What advantages do ZTE’s CDMA products have to make such achievements?

Li Jian: After eight years of strenuous yet effective marketing efforts, ZTE’s CDMA products have been adopted by 120 operators in more than 70 countries with a total capacity of over 150 million lines, making ZTE one of the leading CDMA suppliers in the world. For two consecutive years, 2006-2007, ZTE has been ranked as the No. 1 leader in CDMA base station shipment globally.

With successful CDMA network applications in China, India and Indonesia, ZTE has established a “golden CDMA triangle” in Asia Pacific. Moreover, it has made major breakthroughs in high-end mobile communications markets, including the United States and Europe. In China, ZTE tops the CDMA market with a 34% market share. In India, ZTE won the biggest share of the newly added CDMA market in 2007 and is now a major CDMA supplier for Reliance, Tata Teleservices and BSNL. In Indonesia, ZTE is also a mainstream supplier for many operators, including Telkom, Indosat, Smart Telecom and Mobile-8.

These achievements are mainly attributed to our defined product orientation and brand position. As far as four years ago, when ZTE just joined the world’s first CDMA camp, we set a grand objective of “becoming the No.1 leader in CDMA base station shipment within three years; making ZTE’s CDMA the No. 1 brand name in the world”.

Guided by this strategic objective, we have been constantly making technical innovations. While stabilizing and upgrading the performance of our first-generation CDMA products, we launched a series of All-IP CDMA2000 products and systems, three years ahead of the industry. These three

years witnessed ZTE’s growth into a leading CDMA supplier. With industry-leading technologies and fast response to customer needs, ZTE has won wide recognition among customers and has taken a prominent position in the global market.

J: We notice that ZTE’s CDMA products have not only been widely used in emerging markets, such as India and China, but also in high-end markets, such as Europe and the United States. What differential advantages do ZTE’s CDMA products offer in product solutions and service combinations?

Li Jian: CDMA is one of the product categories that ZTE has been dedicated to. Our products are successful for three major advantages: stable All-IP solution, GoTa, and product customization capability.

As I have just said, ZTE launched the All-IP CDMA2000 products three years ahead of the industry and provided the world’s first Ap interface commercial application and the world’s first IP-based Abis interface solution. With a thorough understanding of the All-IP technology, we have also accumulated much experience in saving transmission resources and power consumption, which can he lp to decrease the operator’s overall network investment.

GoTa is the world’s first CDMA2000-based d ig i t a l t r unk ing sy s t em, independently developed and launched by ZTE. It has become a killer application for CDMA operators. Perfectly blending professional features and public needs, GoTa is an effective weapon for operators in different competitions.

The customization capability shows ZTE’s strength in quickly responding to customer needs. I’ll give two examples to illustrate ZTE’s fast customization capability. This August we deployed an EV-DO wireless broadband network to

provide in-flight communications in the United States; this was the world’s first Air-to-Ground (ATG) CDMA network that ZTE customized for Aircell. Covering a space area of 9.3 million square kilometers with a radius of 250 kilometers, the network can solve top technical problems, for example the Doppler Effect resulted from high-speed flight. Now this network is providing EV-DO Rev. A data services for over 1,000 airplanes. ZTE also constructed the first 450MHz CDMA20001x EV-DO Rev. A commercial network in Europe; in merely three months, we customized wireless base stations operating at L- band for Czech Mobilkom a.s.

J: In recent years, ZTE successfully swapped the network equipment of all mainstream CDMA suppliers during the revamp of CDMA networks in some areas. Could you please share with us some information and cases about this?

Li Jian: ZTE has swapped 16,000 CDMA base stations throughout the world, among which 87%, or 13,000, were in China . Such successful swapping cases contribute to ZTE’s marketing achievements in CDMA.

ZTE has the richest experience in CDMA network swapping. Its unique coexistent dual-network pre-cutover solution enables the cutover of complicated commercial networks in a smooth, safe manner. In many countries, including India, Egypt, Jamaica, Mongolia, Algeria and China, ZTE swapped base stations of all mainstream CDMA equipment suppliers.

Especially in China, ZTE successfully swapped CDMA base stations of all other CDMA equipment suppliers in 14 provinces. During our project implementation this year, despite the disastrous earthquake centered in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province, ZTE overcame various difficulties and


Interview

completed network swapping in Chengdu according to the schedule.

After China Telecom takes over the CDMA network, more larger-scale network swapping implementations will be made in order to achieve a reasonable l a y o u t o f t h e C D M A n e t w o r k . Capitalizing on its rich swapping experience, ZTE will work together with China Telecom to expand the CDMA network coverage in China.

J: China Telecom will acquire CDMA network from China Unicom. What significance does this hold for ZTE? What plan does ZTE have concerning future cooperation with China Telecom?

Li Jian: After China Telecom takes over the CDMA network, i t will extend many of its advantages to the operation of the CDMA network. This will completely change the pattern of the CDMA industry and boost the development of CDMA in China and the world. As a leader in CDMA equipment and terminal in China, ZTE will play a more important role in the development of China’s CDMA industry. We believe ZTE is capable enough to make greater contribution to the fast development of

China’s CDMA industry.Concerning the cooperation with

Ch ina Te lecom, ZTE has made comprehensive analysis on such aspects as the status and equipment performance of the existing CDMA networks, network planning, network evolution, network construction procedure, and service development. Based on such analysis, we worked out a whole set of practical and scientific network construction solutions. China Telecom’s takeover of the CDMA network will bring good opportunities to ZTE, and we are very confident about participating in China’s CDMA constructions.

J: At present, many traditional CDMA suppliers have been cutting investments on CDMA, or even quit the CDMA market. Why does ZTE stick to CDMA? Will ZTE shift its business focus in the future from CDMA2000 evolution solutions to Long Time Evolution (LTE)?

Li Jian: There is a consensus in ZTE that the company shall be a firm supporter of CDMA. The fact that some other suppliers quit the CDMA market presents ZTE more opportunities

to expand its market shares. We are confident in our CDMA capability and we’ll work with our industry peers to keep the stable and healthy development of the CDMA industry.

The CDMA marke t wi l l keep growing quickly in India and China. According to the telecom research institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, China’s CDMA market will keep an annual growth rate of at least 33 % in the next several years and 150 million CDMA subscribers are projected by 2011. The existing customer base of Reliance and Tata is 40 million and 26.3 million respectively, and the two Indian operators add 1.5 million new subscribers each month.

In the future, ZTE will not decrease investments on the development of successive CDMA2000 evolution solutions. ZTE has spent a lot on R&D; it has been actively participating in the activities of standardization organizations and industrial organizations; and it has positively influenced the evolution and s tandardiza t ion of wire less communications technologies throughout the world.

At present, the standards of various systems are in constant evolution and optimization. In the 3G era, CDMA, TD-SCDMA and WCDMA all adopt the CDMA modulation technology; while in the 4G era, UMB, WiMAX and LTE all adopt the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) and Multi-Input and Multi-Output (MIMO) technologies; various systems are tending towards convergence. ZTE’s new generation soft base station adopts the multi-mode compatible architecture and can be smoothly upgraded to UMB/LTE, to realize a multi-mode base station and protect operator’s investments. This base station will be a major product of ZTE applied to China’s 3G and subsequent 4G network constructions.


Christophe de Saint-Martin, Chen Fan

The Business Case Towards LTE with SDR Innovation

12 ZTE TECHNOLOGIESNovember 2008

Introduction

The mobile telecom industry is facing new challenges with the rapid growth of data traffic; today, more than 100

million subscribers worldwide benefit from mobile broadband services over 300 live networks.

In order to increase their revenues, operators have to explore a variety of strategies to upgrade their networks, choose the right technology evolution path while lowering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

This paper studies how ZTE will help operators minimize their investment requirements with a smooth evolution path to LTE with its latest Software Defined Radio (SDR) multi-technology base stations.

Industry Trends According to Informa, global mobile

data revenues will increase 77% from 2007 to 2012 while global mobile data traffic will grow far faster, increasing more than 1000% over the same period. Driven by mobile browsing and video, this increased network traffic forecast is leading operators to reinventing their strategies and this explains why spectrum refarming and launching of new and potentially lower-cost systems are part of them.

Moreover, according to Analysys, LT E w i l l p r o v i d e s i g n i f i c a n t e f f i c i e n c i e s o v e r e x i s t i n g 3 G technologies. The cost per byte will decrease from €0.06 for WCDMA to €0.03 for HSPA and €0.01 for LTE; more than 450 million LTE subscribers are expected from 2010 to 2015 (see Figure 1); related revenues will reach 15% of market share in HSPA, EV-DO, 3G and Pre-3G, exceeding EUR150 billion globally by 2015 (see Figure 2).

Based on severa l d iscuss ions with operators and industry analysts’

forecasts, ZTE has taken into account these forecast in this study with a migration to LTE in 2012.

ZTE SDR Innovation and Benefits Based on the future challenges of

network evolutions, ZTE is offering operators a solution based on its newest SDR platform featuring powerful innovation, significant TCO reduction and future proof RAN solution.

Unified base station platform (MicroTCA)

ZTE took the strategic decision to build its new SDR base stations on a recent technology released late 2006 based on the advanced MC technology uTCA. It is built on an open, modular and scalable MicroTCA platform which offers operators the following savings: ■ ZTE’s SDR base station required

only 8 modules compared to 12 needed for a traditional Macro NodeB, thus offering 33% OPEX

Figure 1 LTE subscribers evolution forecast

Figure 2 Revenue share forecast by technology

savings as less maintenance is needed for operators.

■ uTCA platform is based on open standards, offer ing over 10% CAPEX savings in hardware.

Green power: lower power consumption

ZTE’s SDR base station adopts the unique digital pre distortion (DPD) and Doherty PA technology to reach a PA efficiency of 40%. The high-efficiency PA considerably reduces the power consumption of RF modules, which means over 50% OPEX savings for operators. These benefits also contribute to the environment conservation by reducing the CO2 emissions.

Smaller footprint ZTE’s SDR base station offers a

distributed architecture based on a BBU and several RRUs, limiting the equipment room space needed; ZTE outdoor Macro RRU, ZXWR R8840, is only 19 liters in volume, 16.5 kg in weight. ZXSDR BBU B8200 is 2U height, standard 19 inches in width and is the smallest BBU with largest capacity in the industry.

The Macro SDR base stations have small footprint, offering 25% OPEX savings compared to traditional base stations; as a result, no additional site rentals are proposed.

Future proofness ZTE’s SDR base station is capable

of meeting the requirements for multi-bands and mixed networking of GSM/EDGE/CDMA/WCDMA/HSPA/LTE and can operate over a wide frequency range from 850MHz to 2100MHz. With ZTE’s advanced design, most of the hardware in SDR base station is the same and can migrate among 2G, 3G and LTE through software upgrade. Thanks to the open uTCA platform, ZTE’s SDR base station can easily

Leading Edge

Forecast of LTE subs. increasing start up in 2012

[Source: Analysys Research, 2007]

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

500

450

400

350

300

250

200

150

100

50

0

Subs

crib

ers(

milli

ons)

[Source: Analysys Research, 2007]

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2015 2014 2015

Forecast of LTE revenue in 2015 over 15%

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

3G LTEHSPAEV-DO3GPre-3G

13ZTE TECHNOLOGIES November 2008

handle the large capacity requirements the HSPA+ and LTE brought up.

As a result, ZTE’s SDR base station offers a smooth evolution path to HSPA+ and LTE: Only RU modules are needed to upgrade to HSPA+, and only a new base band board addition and a software upgrade are needed to evolve to LTE; over 80% CAPEX savings are offered compared to a traditional design requiring heavy hardware changed to evolve to LTE.

By offering future proof platforms, ZTE warranties operators that the initial investments will be preserved, thus enabling a faster return on investment with a time-to-market solution.

ZTE SDR Business Case Study Based on SDR major benefits such

as reduced footprint, limited power consumption and unified MicroTCA platform and its unmatched future proofness, this business case study compares a mobile network evolution through GSM-UMTS-LTE based on a Macro SDR solution with a traditional Macro NodeB solution.

Assumptions and parameters In this study, an operator owns a

network with 1100 legacy GSM base stations and plans to deploy 1100 new WCDMA base stations in 2 years (400 in 2009 and 700 in 2010). In 2012, all new 1100 base stations will be upgraded into LTE while GSM service will be stopped. 2009-2010 ■ 400 new WCDMA base stations

installed in 2009 and 700 in 2010 ■ 100% of existing sites, towers,

antennas and feeders are reused SDR case: swap of legacy GSM base stations in 2009 Traditional case: co-location of legacy GSM and new WCDMA base stations; need of new combiners, power supply and batteries

Figure 3 Mobile network evolution with ZTE SDR base station

Figure 4 Mobile network evolution without ZTE SDR base station

Figure 5 From UMTS towards LTE through GSM/UMTS with ZTE SDR

2012■ Upgrade of 1100 WCDMA base

stations into LTE ■ GSM service is stopped SDR case: only LTE/WCDMA base stations are present Traditional case: swap of legacy GSM base stations; co-location of new LTE base stations and existing WCDMA base stations

Swap costs are not taken into

consideration in either of the scenarios.

The smooth evolution path towards LTE

Figure 5 shows how ZTE’s SDR base station can smoothly evolve from a UMTS to a GSM/UMTS dual mode configuration in a first step, by only adding a GSM hardware module with a software upgrade.

In a second step, when GSM service


is stopped, a LTE hardware module is added while only a software upgrade is performed to configure a UMTS/LTE mode.

Business case output CAPEX savings

After a comparable level of CAPEX in early deployment, the savings take off dramatically in year 2012 when LTE is smoothly introduced with SDR solution. SDR software upgrade offers over 42% CAPEX savings to operators compared to a LTE upgrade on a traditional base station based on hardware and software add-ons.

With LTE introduction, NodeB equipment together with Installation & Commissioning (I&C) costs can be decreased by 80%. OPEX savings

The OPEX savings continue to grow linearly to reach over 26% savings 9 years after the initial roll-out. Those savings are met with decreased site rentals fees, lower power consumption

and limited Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs. TCO

The introduction of SDR base stations allows operators to reduce not only CAPEX, such as equipment costs, network, transport or I&C, but also OPEX, like site rentals, power consumptions, leased lines and O&M. As a result, the TCO savings based on this study reach over 35% only 4 years after the initial roll-out.

The study shows also that 80% of the TCO savings are mostly met in 3 areas:■ Site rental (43% of TCO savings) ■ Equipment price (NodeB) (26% of

TCO savings) ■ Power consumption (11% of TCO

savings)

Conclusion With a very strong and innovative

R&D department, ZTE allocates over 10% of its budget to R&D. Today, nearly 16,000 employees are dedicated to R&D, among which 4,000 focus on

mobile wireless technologies. ZTE i s a p ioneer in the SDR

technology development and was proud to showcase industry’s first SDR base station during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2008. The SDR Base station is a significant milestone leveraging ZTE’s wireless mobile experience based on over 260 mil l ion l ines deployed worldwide. It is built on an innovative open, modular and scalable MicroTCA platform. With only a software upgrade, it can be implemented on multiple technical standards including GSM, WCDMA/HSPA, CDMA2000 1X EVDO and WiMAX. Therefore, operators can easily expand, manage and maintain their communications systems while effectively reducing TCO.

In September 2008, ZTE’s SDR base station won the InfoVision award in the New Product Innovation category during the Broadband World Forum Europe 2008 in Brussels, Belgium, thus reinforcing ZTE’s position as a market leader in network innovation.

This study demonstrates that ZTE’s SDR base station solution, compared to a traditional Macro NodeB solution, offers over 26% OPEX savings 9 years, 42% CAPEX savings only 4 years, and 35% TCO savings 4 years after the initial roll-out.

Leading Edge


Boosting Operators’ Profitability through Customization and Quality ServiceHan Chengyan

According to Michael Porter, t h e w o r l d - r e n o w n e d master of competi t ive strategy, the three generic

strategies available to enterprises for gaining competitive advantage are: cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. Such strategies have also become ZTE’s business creed. ZTE believes that innovation is the essence

of differentiation and customization. In order to help operators deliver differentiated products and services, ZTE needs to constantly explore the market and customize products and services.

Customization CapabilityFaced with an inferior position in

the 2G market and the challenges from

the leading European and American vendors in the 3G field, ZTE broke away from the traditional wireless networking scheme using macro and micro base stations and put forward its innovative idea of “Operation and Maintenance (O&M) Factory” using the Base Band Unit and Radio Remote Unit (BBU+RRU). The BBU+RRU solution helps operators significantly


Tech Feature

decrease capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenditures (OPEX).

ZTE is the first vendor in the world to provide the SIM-enabled CDMA mobile phone. It launched the first All-IP CDMA2000 system in 2004 and built the world’s first IOS5.0-based All-IP CDMA2000 commercial network in April 2006. To date, ZTE has commercialized 21,000 All-IP CDMA2000 base stations, ranking first in the world.

In 2007, ZTE customized the CDMA system equipment using the Air-to-Ground (ATG) spectrum for Aircell, a US-based provider of airborne communications. This project made ZTE the first vendor in the industry that supports the Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) spectrum of the United States. The commercialization of the Aircell network in 2008 marked the first successful application of the CDMA2000 EV-DO air broadband technology. ZTE has demonstrated not only its fastness in CDMA product development but a lso i ts s t rong customization capability.

Professional Project ManagementBeing a l eader in the CDMA

industry, ZTE has been dedicated to offering professional services, fast response, custom-made products, and one-stop engineering service solutions. Based on advanced tools and mature project O&M experience

in the CDMA field for over 10 years, ZTE is able to deliver total solutions involving network planning, project implementation, and managed services. To quickly meet customers’ needs, ZTE has also worked out an overall hardware deployment and swapping solution for operators. ■ Set up an efficient project delivery

team headed by the Project Manager (PM) with Project Management Professional (PMP) certification; organize and establish support teams inc luding the ne twork swapping requirement analysis team, project implementation team, and quality assurance team;

■ Stock up in advance and guarantee timely arrival of equipment to meet the operator’s requirement for fast network swapping; swap Network Elements (NEs) in different sites simultaneously to ensure the project is completed on time;

■ Adopt a safe seamless network swapping scheme combined with the redirected cutover mode and the field-proven overlapping coupler solution to ensure the network elements are smoothly swapped at a time;

■ Improve u se r expe r i ence by optimizing network performance; pre-optimize cutover and use professional ZXPOS network optimization solution to quickly improve the network performance;

assign specific people to help the operator with service operation.

Quality ServiceKey account service has been seen

as the litmus test of an operator’s service capability. A well-developed key account system can help the operator significantly improve service quality delivered to larger clients.

For a three-dimensional network, the drive test data or fixed-location test data show only the status of the tested nodes, while the statistical data from the network management system show the status of the whole network instead of individual nodes. It is necessary to have a record that shows the real-time status of both individual users and the whole network. Therefore, a Call Detail Trace (CDT) system has been introduced to meet this requirement. The CDT system records the key data collection and call processes. Network optimization engineers can check the CDT data to analyze each call failure or get overall information of the network.

ZTE has successfully deployed the CDT system for China Unicom’s Hainan Branch. This system provides such functions as fault detection, performance monitoring, and network guarantee. It can implement special management on resources and services related to large clients, make regular reports on their network performance and service experience, and thus guarantee the delivery of quality service to them. By using the advanced network optimization technologies and highly flexible application software, the CDT system significantly improves transparency in network O&M and transforms the traditional KPI-based network O&M into user experience based O&M, thus guaranteeing quality service for large clients while bringing considerable economic benefits to operators.


Li Tao

Exploring a Safe Broadband Blue Ocean for Carriers

With the expansion of Internet-based services, users are facing the increase of serious

security problems. This poses a pressing need for network security products and therefore drives rapid growth of the network security market. In 2007, the overall sales revenue of network security products in China, including firewall, VPN, IDS/IPS and the related service but excluding software products and service, reached RMB 6.375 billion, an increase of 18.8% over the previous year. As predicted by CCID Consulting, the scale of network security product market in China will keep growing, with revenue of over RMB7.5 billion in 2008. Also according to the CCW Research, the sales for China’s network security market are expected to reach RMB8.1 billion in 2009.

The huge need for network security products presents new opportunities for fixed-line network carriers. They can lead the development of the network security industry by delivering beyond basic network services that can solve network securi ty problems, thus transforming into integrated information service providers.

Establishing a Secure Operation Platform

As security threats to Internet are changing and have a complex nature, more and more enterprises and organizations expect their IT systems to run smoothly around the clock.

The major concern of telecom carriers is how to solve broadband network security problems, which is also the determinant of winning more market share in broadband business. They can launch featured safe broadband services to compete with their rivals. With the cost-efficient small-sized security products, they can deliver professional security service to online subscribers, helping boost customer loyalty and increase the ARPU.

Telecom carr iers can promote varieties of new data services, such as broadband e-commerce and broadband experience, only when subscribers believe that data over broadband are secure enough not to be wiretapped. Leveraging unique advantages in capital, network resources, technologies in the fields of transmission, data communications and surveillance, and long-term stable service provisioning, telecom carriers can take the lead in

the network security field, producing a revo lu t ionary in f luence upon the traditional business mode and development of the entire network security industry.

T h e r e f o r e , Z T E u n v e i l s i t s manageable, operational and scalable broadband security services based on a secure operation platform, strongly protecting the successful transformation of telecom carriers.

Core Value of Secure OperationThe Unified Threat Management

(UTM) gateway tailored by ZTE for telecom carriers provides various security functions based on a centrally managed platform. It is integrated with many security services necessary for enterprises, such as anti-virus, firewall, and intrusion detection, which can be flexibly and easily managed. ZTE’s UTM secure gateway service features central ized management, s imple deployment, easy maintenance, and wide coverage.

Centralized managementThe UMT Center can manage

security policies, service functions and logs & reports for a batch of UTM


Tech Feature

Figure 1 ZTE’s UTM secure gateway

gateways, helping telecom carriers guarantee high value-added security consulting service.

Simple deploymentThe two commonly used deployment

solutions (router mode and transparent mode) basically cover the majority of application scenarios. The multiple pre-defined security policy packages help engineers quickly get started with security policies.

Easy maintenanceThe UMT Center allows telecom

carriers to perform service change, log collection and statistics analysis on a remote terminal, greatly reducing maintenance work.

Wide coverageThe UMT Center provides a wide

array of security services including firewall, anti-virus, VPN, intrusion prevention, web information filter and spam filter to address the network security needs of enterprises at low cost.

With a secure operation platform, telecom carriers can help high-end users rapidly deploy manageable services such as VPN, anti-virus gateway and intrusion prevention, and charge proper fees for these services. Through the market segmentation and differentiated services, they can shift their focus from the broadband access market to multiple services provision and thus transform into multi-service providers. Moreover, they can provide the managed service for small- and medium-sized enterprises that are not well capitalized. For example, the leased UTM secure gateway service allows these enterprises to enjoy professional SOC security consulting service at low cost. Once a telecom carrier sets up a unified security platform, the small- and medium-sized enterprises can select complete or partial security services as they like. They can

flexibly add or change security functions on the platform, which makes the work of security management personnel easy while reducing operation costs.

Application ScenariosZTE’s UTM secure gateway (see

Figure 1) provides a complete range of security functions that can be flexibly configured, meeting the information security requirements of different enterprises and organizations.

For medium- and la rge-s ized enterprises, ZTE’s UTM secure gateway prevents hackers and viruses by the firewall and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and greatly cuts spam messages using the filter.

For smal l - and medium-sized enterprises, ZTE’s UTM secure gateway uses the firewall to restrict and record Internet surfing by employees, and uses the control function of the P2P/IM instant communication software to control and record the employees’ actions that affect their working efficiency such as BT download and MSN/QQ chat. Furthermore, the UTM secure gateway can use traffic shaping to guarantee network bandwidth for core services of the enterprises.

Internet

Carrier

Enterprise A

Enterprises WLAN PC

Enterprise B

AS

WLAN

PC

AS

Secure Operation Platform Device Surveillance

System Upgrade

Policy Management

Log Analysis

Security Report

Security Warning

Firewall

Anti-virus

VPN

Intrusion Prevention

Web Information Filter

Spam Filter

For school education systems, ZTE’s UTM secure gateway uses the anti-virus protection and web information filter to effectively protect against virus and malicious information attacks.

For chain enterprises, ZTE’s UTM secure gateway sets up secure channels in the public network through VPN for data transmission and uses the firewall and anti-virus software to guarantee the security of intranets.

For the governments and financial institutions where both extranets and intranets are easily attacked and infected, ZTE’s UTM secure gateway protects external web servers through the firewall and IPS and protects intranets via the anti-virus tools.

With many years of construction practice in the network security field, ZTE put forward the innovative concept of building a secure broadband value-added service platform, opening up new opportunities for carriers to promote broadband services. The UTM secure gateway provides security protection for broadband networks while driving the growth of broadband-based value added services, helping carriers sail bravely against waves in the broadband blue ocean.


TD-HSPA MXTM: The Key to Breaking the High-Throughput BottleneckJiang Chun, Wen Gang

It is predicted that China’s mobile communications market will attract 300 million new subscribers in the coming th ree years ,

continuing to maintain a high growth rate. As more users are moving from voice to data and video activities such as mobile podcast and video download, the throughput of mobile systems may become a bottleneck in the expansion of data services. How to lower the cost per bit of data while increasing the network throughput has become a challenge for mobile carriers.

To solve this bottleneck problem, ZTE launches i ts patented Time Division-High Speed Packet Access MX (TD-HSPA MXTM) technology. It can help carriers exponentially increase the cell throughput through software upgrade without additional investment in hardware, thus guaranteeing the provision of quality data services.

Technical Features The TD-HSPA technology offers

higher data throughput than other 2G/3G wireless technologies using the same bandwidth, as shown in Figure 1. As the number of data subscribers increases, the capacity of the TD-HSPA system would be a bottleneck for further expansion of data services. Generally, 6 of the 9 current available TD frequencies (15MHz bandwidth) are used outdoors, and the other 3 frequencies are used indoors. Since 70% of wireless data services occur indoors, the indoor capacity constraint is more prominent.

To solve this problem, ZTE rolls out its proprietary HSPA MXTM technology to considerably increase data throughput of the TD-HSPA system without adding carrier resources, modifying users’ terminals, or changing network planning. It is a cost-effective solution to the frequency constraint problem in dense urban areas and hotspots.

ZTE’s HSPA MXTM technology has the following features:

High throughputThe HSPA MXTM technology can be

used both indoors and outdoors. It helps to increase the system throughput by 1.8 to 2 times when deployed indoors and by 1.3 to 1.5 times when used outdoors.

Self-adaptivenessThe system can determine whether

to use the HSPA MXTM technology according to the specific application environment. For example, when there are many active subscribers in a cell, the HSPA MXTM function is activated to guarantee the cell throughput; when there are few active subscribers, the

Figure 1 Comparison of data throughput on 2G/3G wireless technologies

function is disabled.

Software upgrade The HSPA MXTM technology is

implemented on by software upgrade without any alternation to terminals and network planning.

Application PrinciplesThe principles of applying the HSPA

MXTM technology indoors and outdoors are different. For the outdoor application, ZTE’s HSPA MXTM algorithm and the Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) principle combined with the TD smart antenna technology are used. In the case of outdoor macro cell coverage, as subscribers are separated in space using the beam forming function of the smart antenna, ZTE’s HSPA MXTM algorithm can be used to enable reuse of radio resources for subscribers, i.e., to make a full reuse of frequencies, timeslots and code channels for different subscribers, as shown in Figure 2. HSPA MXTM helps to increase the data throughput 1.4 times higher than that of the standard HSPA system.

For the indoor coverage, ZTE’s HSPA MXTM algorithm and the SDMA principle combined with the TD multi-path technology are used. As subscribers are separated by the indoor floors and walls, ZTE’s HSPA MXTM algorithm and multi-channel indoor coverage technology can be used to enable reuse of radio resources for subscribers (see Figure 3). The HSPA MXTM technology is more suitable for indoor application,

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

W HSPA C Rel.ATD HSPA TD HSPA MX


Tech Feature

because the system throughput can be almost doubled. Therefore, the adoption of the HSPA MXTM technology can better address the indoor throughput requirements of enterprise and home mobile data users.

The cell throughput can be increased in several ways, such as adding new devices and introducing new technologies like 64 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (64QAM) and Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO). The upgrade costs and throughput gain vary with the method used. Table 1 shows that ZTE’s HSPA

Table 1 Comparison of different methods for cell throughput increase

64QAM MIMO Equipment Expansion HSPA MX

System StandardTD/WCDMA/CDMA2000

TD

Cell Throughput Increase

5 to 10% 20 to 50% Uncertain 80 to 100%

Equipment Addition No No Yes No

Impact on Terminals Yes Yes No No

Change to Network Planning

No No Yes No

Change in Standards Yes Yes No No

Upgrade Costs Medium High High Low

MXTM has great advantages over other methods in terms of upgrade costs and throughput gain.

Case StudyWe’ll take the deployment of the

HSPA MXTM technology inside a building in Beijing as an example. The building is 60 meters high with 16 floors above ground and 3 floors underground. The signal isolation between the floors in this high-rise concrete building is about 20dB. The building is divided into two cells: Cell 1 and Cell 2. To cover the

Figure 4 Indoor coverage in a multi-floor building

whole building, 3 R01s are deployed in Cell 1 and 4 R01s are deployed in Cell 2 (see Figure 4). The site type is O1 and 1 HSDPA timeslot is configured.

Cell2

Cell2

Cell1

11F-15F

6F-10F

B3F-5F B3F-2F

3F-7F

8F-12F

13F-16F

B1 Equipment

Room

Building 1 Building 2

11F-15F

6F-10F

3F-7F

8F-12F

13F-16F

B1 Equipment

Room

Building 1 Building 2Building 2

The test is conducted in two parts: before HSPA MXTM is deployed, it is difficult to handle voice and data traffic simultaneously, because the configuration of 1 HSPA timeslot can only provide a cell throughput of 560kbps and 12-channel voice subscribers; after HSPA MXTM is deployed, both voice and data traffic can be handled, with the data capacity reaching 1008kbps while voice capacity remaining unchanged. The test results prove that HSPA MXTM technology helps to increase the system throughput by 80% without any alteration to terminals and network planning.

ConclusionTo satisfy the need of fast-growing

3G data services, ZTE launches the innovative HSPA MXTM technology based on ZTE’s great R&D strength and proactive product planning. Taking into full consideration the service demands, spectrum efficiency and feasibility, HSPA MXTM will certainly help carriers build cost-effective and advanced networks and will make a great contribution to the global information construction.

Figure 3 Indoor HSPA MXTM application principle

Figure 2 Outdoor HSPA MXTM application principle

Frequency

Time

Powerdensity

1.6 MHz

TS0

Carrier 2

Carrier 3

TS1 TS2 TS3 TS4 TS5 TS6DL DL DL DLUL UL UL

5 ms

DwPTS UpPTSGP

DL

Carrier 2

Carrier 3

DL

0

:

15

Carrier 2

Carrier 3

DL

Frequency

Time

Powerdensity

1.6 MHz

0

:

15

TS0

Carrier 2

Carrier 3

TS1 TS2 TS3 TS4 TS5 TS6DL DL DL DLUL UL UL

5 ms

DL

BBU

RRU

Fiber

Ceiling Antenna

UE 3

UE 4

UE 1

UE 2

Carrier 2

Carrier 3

DL

Carrier 2

Carrier 3

DwPTS UpPTSGP

DL

BBU

RRU

Fiber

Ceiling Antenna

UE 3

UE 4

UE 1

UE 2


Sun Mingzhong, Zhang Jian, Zhang Qiang

Overview

Telecommunications networks are a combination of multiple service networks (voice, data and video) and service supporting networks (fixed, wireless, transmission and SS7 signaling networks). Network resources are closely related and dependent

to each other to provide services corresponding to each resource included in the network. There are heterogeneous deployments in these service networks, partially or completely utilized by multiple vendors. Each vendor has designed the Element Management System (EMS) for his own specialized network equipment deployed in the market, so different services and resources have different Operation Management Systems (OMSs).

The legacy network management architecture has heterogeneous EMS for each independent network element. These distributed EMSs have the following disadvantages:

Lack of interoperability With the lack of interoperability between EMSs, the network resources

cannot be assigned and managed uniformly. This non-uniform network

—ZTE’s Integrated Network Management Solution



Tech Feature

management influences the network management efficiency.

Non-uniform user interfaces The legacy Network Management

Sys tem (NMS) has no s tandard interfaces. The non-uniform user interface increases the work overhead due to multiple monitoring systems and users have to login to multiple EMSs respectively to monitor and control the statistics data and other related operations.

Different network management data definitions

The heterogeneous EMSs designed by different vendors have different data definitions for the same type of network elements. Therefore, the final content and presentation is also heterogeneous, and as a result leads to the inconsistency in measuring overall network statistics.

High CAPEX and OPEX The legacy NMS has mult iple

distributed EMSs to manipulate and manage services. This distribution of EMSs results in the duplication of resources and incurs high Capital Expenditures (CAPEX) and Operating Expenditures (OPEX).

Therefore, it is concluded based on the above analysis that a new network management system is in urgent need to solve the problems of poor maintenance and high operation costs.

ZTE's Integrated Network Management Solution

T h e r e h a v e b e e n c o n t i n u o u s research and improvement for the network management system for the service networks. After many years of research and practice, ZTE rolled out its integrated network management solution, NetNumenTM UNMS, which is based on the TMN model to fulfill present industry demands and support

Figure 1 ZTE’s integrated network management solution

the requirements of the technology transforms.

BenefitsThe integrated network management

solution provides operators with flexible and cost effective systems to monitor and control heterogeneous networks. It has the following benefits: ■ Unified management of multi-

vendor devices The major driving and leading

benefit of integrated management is the unified management of heterogeneous networks. This integration provides a single point of login and monitoring of all types of network elements for an underlying network. Operators can get the information about the relationship between multiple EMSs and perform the correlated operations. The unified management leads to consistence of daily operations of telecom networks. ■ High fault management efficiency

NetNumenTM UNMS has a unified alarm management capability, so it is possible to perform the correlation of alarm related to the whole network and get the statistics of the whole network. It is easy to obtain and resolve the network performance and failure related issues based on the daily statistics. Moreover, root failures that may affect the whole network can be traced and rectified in time. Therefore, fault management efficiency of the whole network management system is greatly enhanced. ■ Strong extensibility

NetNumenTM UNMS offers strong extensibility because of its unified and standard interfaces connectivity. Whenever a network is expanded and a new EMS is added, it is only necessary to develop an interface with the UNMS and make small changes to the UNMS functions. The new EMS then could be connected smoothly to the existing UNMS.

System architecture

NetNumenTM UNMS incorporates the unified fault management and performance management for multi-vendor devices. It consists of the Fault Management Subsystem (NetNumenTM FMS), Performance Management Subsys tem (NetNumen TM PMS) , Security Management (NetNumenTM SM), NetNumenTM Portal, NetNumenTM Reporter, Gateway (GW), FM Adapter and PM Adapter, as shown in Figure 1. ■ NetNumenTM FMS: It implements

unified fault management of the whole network through the FM adapters. The FMS module handles the alarm data collected by the corresponding adapter from all the subsequent EMS networks and then sends the result to the FMS client. Therefore the simultaneous log in opera t ions to mul t ip le EMSs are transformed into single login operation with the unified architecture.

■ NetNumenTM PMS: It is responsible for unified performance management of the whole network through the PM adapters. The PMS module processes the information collected through the corresponding adapter from all the subsequent EMS networks and then sends the result to the PMS client. Moreover, it has a communication interface with FMS to send the threshold-crossing alarms

NetNumenTM UNMS

NetNumenTM

FMSNetNumenTM

PMS

A AA AA

Transport Network, Core Network, Wireless Network,Data Network, …

Net

Num

enT

M S

M

GW GW

Trouble Ticket System

Service QualityManagement

Inventory Managem

ent

GW

A A A A

Net

Num

enTM

Porta

l

NetNumenTM

Reporter


Figure 3 NetNumenTM PMS System Model

Data Collection-Adapter

Data Processing

Data Presentation

NetNumenTM PMS Server

NetNumenTM PMS Client

Transport Network, Core Network,Wireless Network, Data Network, …

CORBA FTP DB …

triggered by PMS to FMS.■ N e t N u m e n T M S M : I t i s a n

administrative tool to manage authentication and authorization of users, roles, privileges for FMS and PMS to implement the necessary security and validation of operations.

■ NetNumenTM Portal: It provides the Single Sign On (SSO) function, allowing a single point of access to the NetNumenTM FMS, NetNumenTM PMS and NetNumenTM Reporter.

■ FM Adapter: The entities marked with red A symbols in Figure 1 is the FM adapters responsible for EMS alarm data collection, format conversion and preliminary data filtration.

■ PM Adapter: The entities marked with blue A symbols in Figure 1 is the PM adapter responsible for EMS performance data collection and format conversion.

■ GW: I t serves as an external interface adapter for FMS and PMS. With the help of these GWs, FMS exchanges resource data with the Inventory Management (IM) system and dispatches trouble tickets to the Trouble Ticket System (TTS) for fault recovery. Similarly, PMS sends performance analysis data to the Service Quality Management (SQM) system through the gateway for relevant analysis.

■ NetNumenTM Reporter: It is a report management tool that receives alarm data from FMS and performance data from PMS, and that generates custom-made fault statistics reports, performance statistics reports and performance trend reports.

Independent deployment of FMS and PMS

NetNumenTM FMS and NetNumenTM PMS have flexible architecture to be deployed separately as two standalone systems depending upon the use

requirements. ■ NetNumenTM FMS

Figure 2 NetNumenTM FMS architecture

Data Collection-Adapter

Data Processing

Data Presentation

NetNumenTM FMS Server

Transport Network, Core Network,Wireless Network, Data Network, …

NetNumenTM FMS Client

CORBA SNMP DB TL1 …

3. The adapter at the data collection layer collects performance data from

FMS has a layered architecture consisting of data presentation, data processing and data collection layers, as shown in Figure 2. The adapter at the data collection layer collects alarm data from the lower EMSs. The FMS server at the data processing layer performs the necessary processing such as data filtration, compression, correlation analysis, and root cause determination. Therefore, the maintenance staff only needs to focus on the root problems, which helps to reduce their maintenance work.

FMS decreases the quantity of maintenance consoles by enabling the unified alarm supervision and processing for devices incorporated in all specialized networks from multiple vendors. Monitoring of the entire network is supported through a single interface. Network fault determination and processing is speeded up and users can recover the fault in time. The passive maintenance technique triggered by customer complaints is thus changed to a preventive method and the impact of service failure is improved greatly. ■ NetNumenTM PMS

PMS also has unified but layered a rch i t ec tu re cons i s t ing o f da t a presentation, data processing and data collection layers, as shown in Figure

the lower EMSs. The PMS server at the data processing layer analyzes the performance data, provides performance analysis reports and performance trend reports, and also predicts performance bottlenecks. With the help of the performance reports, users can make a horizontal comparisons, figure out the potential flaws and faults in different regions and finally provide guidance for routine maintenance, network optimization and capacity expansion.

When a performance threshold is reached, PMS can trigger threshold-crossing alarms and send them to FMS, timely notifying the users that remedial measures should be taken.

Conclusion ZTE’s Ne tNumen TM UNMS i s

an integrated network management solution developed after in-depth analysis, research and examination of present telecom network operation and maintenance difficulties. Therefore, it is a powerful weapon for telecom carriers to increase network operation efficiency, lower maintenance costs, increase subscriber satisfaction and enhance market competitiveness, and meanwhile it helps the carriers open the door to multi-vendor device management.


Tech Feature

More and more broadband network nodes are getting c l o s e r t o t h e c u s t o m e r premises in order to increase

bandwidth. The shorter the copper wire loop the higher number of nodes will be required. The current Fiber-to-the-Building (FTTB) architectures need an average of millions of nodes. No one can afford such a huge number of houses or rooms to store equipment in. The only way out is outdoor cabinet that is small enough to be hanged on the wall or pole.

Green Outdoor Cabinet Solution

Peng Qiang


Previously, most of the access nodes were indoor nodes, which needed big offices to house them. Now we install the access nodes in outdoor cabinets so that only a small space is needed, and the cost of land will be lowered. If we continue to move the nodes closer to users, wall or pole mounted cabinet can be used, and there will be no cost for space and land. As land is becoming an increasingly precious resource, these smaller outdoor cabinets will bring huge cost savings. Meanwhile, more land will be used for plantation development, which is beneficial to our environment.

Planning Outdoor Cabinet Solution In order to simulate the indoor

environment, the outdoor cabinet design takes into account such factors as safety, temperature control, long-distance monitoring, and power-cut protection. Cabinet based on such design will conform to the telecommunication standard. Considering the requirements of different environments, ZTE provides a series of outdoor equipment with different capacities.

An outdoor solution is planned mainly according to the volume-quantity model of FTTB/C nodes. The volume of most of the nodes is less

than 96 ports; that of some nodes is between 96 ports and 192 ports; and some big FTTC nodes need several hundreds but usually less than 896 ports. Nodes with more than 896 ports will be placed in room bases.

Therefore, two kinds of outdoor cabinets were p lanned to house mini DSLAM or Multiple Dwelling Units (MDUs). ZTE defined them as the OUT80 and OUT50 series. The OUT80 has a maximum capacity of 96 ports while the OUT50 can support up to 192 ports. The big cabinet, OUT40, was also developed to support up to 896 ports.

When the OUT80 works together with ZXDSL 9806H, a mini DSLAM from ZTE, it is very easy to put this compact outdoor equipment on the wall of a corridor, so that people passing by will not be disturbed. The OUT80 can also be hung on a pole close to a building, or hung under the eaves.

As we know, fan is widely used in outdoor solution. Adjustable fan technology brings great energy savings to the outdoor nodes. The speed of fan can be automatically adjusted according to the environment temperatures, decreasing the energy consumption.

Savings from Outdoor Cabinet Solution

The cost savings from the green outdoor broadband solution can be looked upon from the following aspects: equipment rooms, materials and power of DSLAM and accessory equipment.

We will take the X project as an example to illustrate the cost savings. The X project needs 5,000 FTTB nodes, and on average each node has 48 ports. Assuming that the average area of these nodes is 15 square meters, a total indoor area of about 75,000 square meters is needed. If the price is 1,000 USD per square meter, the equipment rooms will cost 75 million USD. If the rental price is 100 USD per month, renting the rooms for a year will cost 6 million USD. On the contrary, millions of USD can be saved if the operator adopts the outdoor solution.

Furthermore, the outdoor cabinet solution minimizes the total external dimensions. The small equipment will save lots of materials, including materials of rack, power supply unit and other accessory components, and will have less power consumption compared with the scenario where big equipment is installed in indoor rooms.

Table 1 The development tendency of cabinets

Indoor officeBig office neededHigh cost of land

Outdoor cabinetSmall space neededLow cost of land

Wall/pole mounted cabinetSmaller space neededZero cost of land


ZTE, TELEVÕRK Team up to Build Wireless Broadband Network in EstoniaJiang Yun

Case Study

TE L E V Õ R K , a w h o l l y owed subs id ia ry o f an E s t o n i a n s t a t e - o w n e d e n e rg y c o m p a n y, r u n s

one of Estonia’s largest backbone communication networks. At the e n d o f 2 0 0 6 , T E L E V Õ R K w a s awarded a 450M license in Estonia, and constructed a high-speed data service network that covers the entire country. Currently, TELEVÕRK has the highest growth rate of wireless broadband subscribers in Estonia.

Individualized SolutionThe Estonia telecommunications

infrastructure is the most advanced in Eastern Europe. The country h a s a d v a n c e d f i x e d n e t w o r k infrastructure and a wireless voice pene t ra t ion ra te o f over 100%. E-government and E-commerce have become common place in Estonia, e.g. more than half of the drivers pay for parking via their mobile phones.

There are already quite a few mobile operators in Estonia. The wireless voice sector has almost reached saturation, while wireless da ta se rv ice has a huge marke t potential. Wireless data service has a higher Average Revenue Per Unit


Figure 1 The increase of subscribers during the first 100 days

developed 9244 subscribers in 100 days. The number of subscribers increased at a rapid rate (Figure 1).

As for December 21, 2007, the

data services. ■ Advanced network technologies:

The network uses 3G technology t o e n a b l e h i g h s p e e d , g o o d coverage and mobility.

■ Successful commercial mode: The tariff packages are simple and clear, and the prices of ZTE’s terminals are reasonable.

IP-based Abis Estonia, where Skype was founded,

leads Europe in basic IP network development. TELEVÕRK has limited E1 resources, but its IP backbone network has complete coverage and high quality and is capable of covering sites without E1 transmission resources. ZTE’s IP-based Abis solution makes full use of TELEVÕRK’ existing transport resources, saving network investment and shortens network construction period.

In the phase I network, 54 out of 95 nationwide base stations use IP-based Abis solution. It is the first time that IP-based Abis has been put into commercial use on a large scale. IP-based Abis provides another means for transport between BTS and BSC.

(ARPU) than wireless voice service, and is the greatest profit growth opportunity for emerging operators.

Based on the actual conditions of TELEVÕRK, ZTE suggested that the operator give up voice service, focus on data service, and concentrate its investment on building an EV-DO data network, so as to enhance network quality and attract more wireless data subscribers.

The coverage of wireless data service needs to be large, but in hot spot cities there is a concentration of subscribers and a large volume of data. So it is critical for the network to provide flexible configuration and highly dense coverage. ZTE’s All-IP EV-DO equipment, which features high integrat ion, large capacity, flexible networking and low power consumption, met TELEVÕRK’s requirements. After strict tests, ZTE was chosen by TELEVÕRK to build up a state-of-the-art EV-DO data network in Estonia.

Quick Subscriber GrowthTELEVÕRK began a l locat ing

numbers on June 20, 2007. During the first 10 days, the operator had allocated 3000 numbers, and had

number o f ne twork subscr ibe rs had reached 12439, meeting the operator’s goal of developing 12000 subscribers before 2008. In a country with a population of 1.34 million, i t w a s b e y o n d t h e e x p e c t a t i o n o f T E L E V Õ R K t h a t n e t w o r k subscribers could have increased at such a high speed. TELEVÕRK’s good growth momentum can be attributed to the following reasons: ■ Clear market position: Avoiding

competition in the mature voice market, the operator focuses on developing high-speed wireless


ZTE’s Handset Strategy: A Can of Worms for the Open Handset Market?

Third Eye

September 2008, Tony Cripps, from market research firm Ovum


The clear l eader in TD-SCDMA devices in its home market, ZTE’s ambition a b r o a d i s t o b e e v e r y

operator‘s best friend, leveraging its huge technical resources and scale to drive high-end functionality right across the handset spectrum. Having cracked the market for operator own-branded handsets at the lower end of the range, ZTE’s impact on the market for high-end, open-platform devices will be fascinating to watch.

ZTE’s Status Quo―Whatever You Want, Whatever You Like

Ovum recently spoke with ZTE’s handset management about the Chinese t e l ecoms equ ipmen t p rov ide r ’s burgeoning cellular devices business, both in its home market and elsewhere.

ZTE’s growth in the handset markets has been rapid. From 15 million units shipped in calendar-year 2006, the company is on course to ship 50 million in 2008―over 100 million since it started the business in 1998―making it the clear global number six handset provider by volume. That’s no mean feat for a Chinese handset manufacturer which was virtually unknown outside its home market two years ago.

More than 80% of these are co-branded with and customized for its operator partners, including major scalps such as Vodafone, Telstra and Reliance, as well as China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom at home. ZTE perceives its flexibility in meeting operator customization requirements on a huge scale as a key to this success.

In i t s home market , ZTE is a frontrunner in 3G devices and a clear

leader in TD-SCDMA, owning more than 30% of the total market. For the most part, though, ZTE’s impact on the handset market outside China has tended to focus on low-end and mid-range handsets, where it is doing very good business in both emerging and mature markets.

To date, its overseas 3G activities have focused on the buoyant market for USB modems for laptop PCs. ZTE is very proud of this business, which it has said is now on track to ship over 6 million such devices by the end of 2008 and which it expects to expand to around 20 million by the end of 2010, despite the rapid emergence of embedded 3G modems.

Opening a New Window on Microsoft Handsets

But being a volume supplier of low-end and mid-range handsets was never going to be enough for ZTE. With operator and public interest increasingly directed towards high-end, Internet-capable devices, it was only a matter of time until ZTE looked to boost its profile through targeting that market.

That breakthrough now looks to have happened. ZTE will begin shipping Windows-Mobile-powered devices with Vodafone next year and there are signs of other such deals. Indications are that these will seriously undercut similar devices from other manufacturers, as a result of ZTE’s scale.

HTC is ZTE’s main competitor in this segment, although it cannot r ea l ly be cons ide red a r iva l i n overall scale. While other OEMs have adopted Windows Mobile, they

have either lacked the scale to truly build momentum for the platform, even if adopted by operators (e.g. E-ten, Inventec), or have lacked the commitment to drive the platform deep into their portfolios (e.g. Samsung, Motorola). ZTE could potentially do both.

Whether it will or not remains to be seen. ZTE’s desire to please operators is something of a double-edged sword in terms of the depth of commitment it can bring to Windows Mobile.

Is Linux a Diversion Even If Operators Demand It?

Instead of committing fully to Microsoft technology for its open-platform devices, ZTE confirmed that it also plans to support Linux to meet operator demand for such handsets. Which variant or variants ZTE plans to support is as yet unclear. What is clear, however, is that ZTE is putting considerable resources behind its Linux project.

The same canno t be sa id fo r Symbian. While ZTE said it was interested in Symbian―especially in terms of its competitive cost to manufacturers relative to Windows Mobile or Linux―it has not yet put any serious R&D effort behind the OS, citing Nokia’s near monopoly of the Symbian handset market (outside of Japan, at least).

Interestingly, Symbian’s trajectory towards open source does not by itself appear to be enough to cajole ZTE to alter its stance. We’re guessing that operator demand could change this, although such a project would take at least two years to bear fruit.

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