INSIGHTS / News

• Zeetta Networks awarded landmark EU funding for cost-efficient optical metro networks for 5G backhaul.
• The winning proposal is a collaboration of 21 leading organisations and telecoms firms.
• This innovative three-year project, METRO-HAUL, is part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 Programme.
• The €7.78m project will offer solutions to the anticipated capacity increase of 5th Generation mobile networks.

The METRO-HAUL consortium, where Zeetta Networks is a partner, has been successfully awarded a €7.78m EU funding to investigate cost-efficient optical metro networks to meet the challenges of 5G backhaul. The bid is a collaborative project comprised of 21 partners representing the “who’s who” in the European Telecoms industry; led by BT, and including Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Ericsson, Nokia, and research hubs across Europe, such as University of Bristol and Fraunhofer Institute.

The planned project, METRO-HAUL, will advance the integration of optical technologies significantly with the aim to design and build a smart, cost-effective, optical metro infrastructure able to support increased traffic originating from diverse 5G access networks. This will address the anticipated capacity increase of 5G and issues such as mobility, low latency, and high bandwidth. This infrastructure will also be designed to support a wide variety of 5G applications with a special emphasis on services across industry verticals.

METRO-HAUL will carry out proof of concept validations of its networking solution culminating in a final demonstration of actual 5G and vertical services across the test-bed. The research will have a lasting business impact with the developed software to be released as a public repository while the project will actively participate with relevant standardization bodies, promoting the tested solutions to the wider community.

“We are very proud to have played a key role in this successful EU funding bid and to be collaborating with such a group of leading researchers, Tier 1 telecoms operators, innovative SMEs, and influencers in the 5G space.  This three-year project scored very highly with the judging panel recognising its importance and the huge implications it brings to the telecoms industry and the verticals they support.

“This project is another validation ofZeetta’s growing global profile and positions our software-designed networking technology as a highly innovative solution enabling programmability in both current and future networks.”

— Vassilis Seferidis, CEO of Zeetta Networks

Find out more about Zeetta Networks advanced networking software on the website or follow on Twitter via @ZeettaNetworks.