Alcatel-Lucent S.A., has signed collaboration agreements with the cloud software and hardware companies, Red Hat, Advantech and 6WIND, to accelerate the delivery of commercial virtualized radio access network, or vRAN, products. Collaboration with these companies will enhance Alcatel-Lucent's vRAN technology, working on the CloudBand NFV platform, ensuring that it will meet service providers' large-scale performance and reliability requirements. With ever-growing consumer demand for video data applications, the expected growth of the Internet-of-Things and the advent of 5G wireless technology, service providers are looking to optimize their networks and enable new cost and operational efficiencies.

Leveraging its expanded global collaboration withIntel and working with Red Hat, Advantech and 6WIND, Alcatel-Lucent will deliver a fully NFV-compliant virtualized radio access network that meets their stringent high-performance, high-availability cloud needs. Alcatel-Lucent is trialling its near-commercial vRAN with leading service providers in North America, Asia and Europe using a platform that consists of 6WIND, Advantech and Red Hat hardware and software.