Polish operator Orange this week said it is teaming up with Amdocs on a trial of AT&T’s Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management & Policy (ECOMP) platform for software-defined networking.
According to a Monday press release, Orange Polska will be testing the platform on its network, with assistance from Amdocs as the technical integrator. The pair said the goal is to assess the platform ability to initially provide virtual services in Poland and later globally across Orange’s 28-country footprint.
Orange said its move to test the platform comes in the context of “skyrocketing” demand for network capacity and a push toward network function virtualization (NFV) ahead of 5G.
“Virtualization of the network is an inevitable process. By testing ECOMP at Orange Polska, we are preparing ourselves to become a software-driven company,” Piotr Muszyński, Orange Polska vice president of Strategy and Transformation said. “In the future, these cutting-edge technologies will give customers completely new possibilities, such as the ability to self-activate and deactivate services, or to enjoy flexible rating, based on the time they consumed the service. The operator, on the other hand, will receive tools that allow real-time adaptation to meet the customer needs.”
And Orange isn’t the only operator interested in ECOMP.
In December, Bell Canada announced it was testing the AT&T platform to create and manage software-defined networks.
AT&T’s ECOMP platform gives providers the ability to design and operate software-centric networks running virtually rather than on traditional physical hardware. AT&T has said these virtualized networks provide benefits to operators in the form of increased scalability and adaptability. The carrier has committed to releasing that platform as open source software alongside the Linux Foundation in the first quarter of this year.
“It’s exciting to see the communications industry coalescing around ECOMP,” Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation, said. “ECOMP is the most comprehensive and complete architecture for VNF/SDN automation we have seen. AT&T has had this platform in production for over two years now. This technology is unique in that it’s both disruptive and battle-tested. We can’t wait to host it at the Linux Foundation and open it up to the broader developer community.”
Filed Under: IoT • IIoT • Internet of things • Industry 4.0, Infrastructure