When IT Meets Telco: RAN as a Service

Abstract

Network virtualization functions (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) are changing the landscape of the telecommunications industry, particularly infrastructure and network systems of Telco operators with the introduction of cloud computing, paradigms of virtualization and software approaches. In this paper, we describe a demonstrator which shows how IT technologies reduce the time of deployment of a wireless infrastructure. In less than 60s, a wireless LTE network is available for connecting Smartphone's. In this demo, the eNodeB, virtualized using docker containers, is orchestrated by OpenStack heat.