In September 2018, China Telecom launched the SA 5G Core trial, through which ZTE demonstrated its expertise in this technology. ZTE was the first company to conduct a 5G call based on the decoupling of three levels—hardware, virtualization software, and virtualized applications—with an SA architecture, to achieve bidirectional 4G-5G interoperability, and to perfect the comprehensive function testing of AMF/NSSF/NRF/SMF/AUSF/UDM/PCF/UPF.
Liu Jianhua, General Manager of ZTE's CCN Products division, confirmed that "ZTE will continue its active collaboration with China Telecom by participating in new 5G technology research, specification development, and new testing, thereby helping to achieve the large-scale commercialization of the 5G network. It will also contribute to building a new generation of high-speed, high-capacity intelligent communication network infrastructure."
This testing is based on the latest version of the 3GPP specification, which includes Service-Based Architecture (SBA), mobility management, session management, PCC and QoS policy control, Xn interface switching, N2 interface switching, security management, network slicing, bidirectional 4G and 5G interoperability, VoNR support, and other service functions, as well as manual and automatic scaling, reliability processing, and other virtualization functions.
