Open Network Featured Article

Software-defined networking (SDN) is on a rise, and though it's not quite as fast-rising as its direct cohort network functions virtualization (NFV), it's still got a lot of upward momentum behind it. One of the world's great names in mobile networks, Orange, is turning to another great, AT&T (News - Alert), for a little open source help in driving its own SDN operations via AT&T's Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy (ECOMP) platform.

AT&T originally built ECOMP, reports note, as a means to offer an accessible way for developers and other mobile operators to driver further development of cloud-based systems and SDN offerings. Orange (News - Alert)'s use of ECOMP, meanwhile, dovetails well with an earlier announcement that the duo would be actively engaging in collaboration efforts to produce more open source and standardization systems for NFV and SDN alike.

ECOMP itself, meanwhile, offers a slate of systems to help give developers more tools to work with to create the platforms to be used in the future. Having points to work from in the earliest going means faster development time and the ability to get more product out into the market. The consumer, meanwhile, gets an improved network experience as the network itself can better learn and scale to meet needs. Given that AT&T has reportedly seen data traffic increase fully 150,000 percent in just the space between 2007 and 2015 alone, it's obvious that more needs to be done to make a better network experience, and tools like SDN can be part of that equation.

AT&T's senior vice president for domain 2.0 architecture and design Chris Rice (News - Alert) commented “ECOMP is a stake in the ground. It's a declaration that networks of the future will be software-centric, that they'll be faster, more responsive to customer needs, and more efficient. Orange's decision, as one of the leading international carriers in the world, is a great endorsement of that approach.”

Some might wonder here why AT&T is essentially giving away the keys to the kingdom, and one angle might explain it all: the first-mover advantage. By offering a platform from which everyone else can develop, and offering it on a no-charge, open source basis, AT&T ensures that its tools are the ones used to build the future, and thus AT&T can work to develop accordingly. When your drill is the one used to make the tunnel through the mountain, you become, by default, the first one through the mountain. That also offers a lot of bragging rights, and bragging rights become marketing copy fairly quickly.

There's a lot of advantage to what AT&T is doing here, and if it improves everyone's network experience, that's going to be so much the better. With 5G coming in the next three years or so, we'll all have a lot to look forward to. Until then, it's developments like this that keep the current network up and running, and AT&T's at the front of the pack.