ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Masahiro Okafuji, President & CEO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it succeeded in a joint experiment to verify the reliability and service continuity of an open network for telecommunications carriers, conducted at Chunghwa Telecom Laboratories in Taoyuan City, Taiwan in collaboration with Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Hiroo Unoura, President and CEO; hereinafter “NTT”), ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Satoshi Kikuchi, President & CEO; hereinafter “CTC”), and Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Xinyi Road, Zhonzheng District, Taipei City; Yu Cheng, Director; hereinafter “Chunghwa Telecom”).

To respond to the dramatic increase in network traffic volumes resulting from the popularization of smartphones as well as the expansion of video and other Internet services, telecommunications carriers are required to provide networks that can be designed with a high degree of flexibility and at optimal cost.
Traditional network equipment integrates software and hardware, which prevents the user from expanding the function according to the use application, and the cost has increased in proportion to the increased communication traffic.
Therefore, the use of network equipment known as white box switches that allows the user to develop/choose their own software/hardware, and to freely combine the functions and capabilities that they require, thereby reducing costs, has begun primarily in the IT industry in North America.

In February 2017, ITOCHU, NTT, Chunghwa Telecom, and CTC concluded a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to conduct joint research and experiments in respect of white box switches in Japan and Taiwan.
ITOCHU provided technical support coordination, as well as business expansion support in Taiwan, while CTC provided support in optimizing white box switches, and NTT and Chunghwa Telecom collaborated on the technology. After simulating failures assumed to occur in telecommunications carrier network operations, it was confirmed that white box switches combine reliability with service continuity even in failure environments.

ITOCHU Corporation has been rolling out the latest IT technology for over 30 years, primarily in North America. Going forward, it will continue to develop new services that utilize technology by actively promoting the introduction of the latest technologies to Southeast Asia.