A recent report issued January 2 2013 by market intelligence specialists Current Analysis (CA), which conducted a comprehensive evaluation of ZTE’s EPC in terms of architecture functionality and performance has ranked company’s EPC SGSN/MME solutions as a “leader” in terms of overall capacity.
 
The CA evaluation was a multi-dimensional evaluation of EPC products from multiple mainstream vendors.
 
The report was titled “ZTE ZXUN uMAC/ZXUN xGW, Product Assessment” and was written by Glen Hunt, Principal Analyst, Transport and Routing Infrastructure. The report formed part of the Evolved Packet Core product class assessments published in January 2013 by Current Analysis Inc, a leading market intelligence company based in the USA.
 
The ZTE uMAC, a control plane NE for LTE/EPC networks, has better performance than most other vendors’ products as a result of its enhanced advanced telecom computing architecture (ETCA). The ETCA provides ultra-high capacity and integration and fulfills exponential growth requirements of mobile broadband networks.
 
According to the report, “ZTE’s uMAC delivers support subscriber capacity of 20 million, and session (PDP contexts) capacity of 40 million, all of which are class leading for the solutions compared. These capacities are important for an operator looking to keep infrastructure investments at a minimum while still growing its 3G end-user base.”
 
In addition, the ZTE EPC deployed on Austria’s H3G network was evaluated in 2012 by European communications publication, CONNECT, and named as the best network in German-speaking areas for the second consecutive year.
 
“ZTE’s powerful R&D strength is the cornerstone of our high-performance products and high-quality networks,” said ZTE Core Network Product Line CEO Liu Jianhua. “We are dedicated to innovation and refinement, and to being the value partner of operators in the LTE/EPC field.”
 
As of Q4 2012, ZTE EPCs had been deployed in over 35 commercial contracts and more than 100 trial networks across the globe. ZTE works with several mainstream operators including Vodafone, KPN and Telenor.