ZTE Corporation, along with China Unicom and Beijing Jiaotong University, has introduced the industry's first trusted spectrum sharing solution based on the blockchain technology in the RAN sharing scenario. Meanwhile, the three parties have announced the establishment of “China Unicom-ZTE-BJTU Blockchain Application in RAN Sharing Joint Innovation Lab” and jointly released White Paper on 5G Blockchain Technology.

The trusted spectrum sharing solution introduces the blockchain technology into the wireless mobile network. By virtue of the distributed ledger, multi-party consensus and tamper-proof features of the blockchain technology, the operators’ key information, such as the spectrum resources and device status, is stored on the blockchain node to achieve fairness, visibility and reliability. As the industry's first demonstration, the solution has been verified in a commercial 5G network of China Unicom with current network data.

“Underpinned by the joint innovation with ZTE and Beijing Jiaotong University, China Unicom has completed the first application demonstration in the existing network,” said Mr. Chi Yongsheng, vice president of China Unicom Research Institute. “Moving forward, the three parties will continue to cooperate deeply and promote the application in more domains, such as user trust, terminal trust, network trust and data trust in RAN sharing scenarios.”

“ZTE is committed to providing China Unicom and China Telecom with a high-quality 5G sharing network,” said Mr. Zuo Luo, deputy director of ZTE Strategy Planning Department. “In a co-construction and sharing scenario, it is urgent to establish a data-oriented, network-oriented, fair and trusted network system based on the evaluation data, to accurately reflect the construction, O&M, service operation and usage of the co-construction and sharing network.” 

The release of the industry's first trusted spectrum sharing solution based on blockchain technology in the RAN sharing scenario shows that the blockchain technology has entered into a practical stage in the field of communication technologies. Moving forward, China Unicom, ZTE and Beijing Jiaotong University will continue to deepen their cooperation and further explore the integration of the blockchain technology and network technology in the 5G industry.