ONF Operators Take Charge of Edge SDN

Eight leading operator partners of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) have come together to jump-start the commercialization of SDN technology at the edge of the network, including the last mile, by agreeing on reference designs that show exactly how components from multiple suppliers should be integrated. Of equal importance, the eight operators are pledging their own resources to do this, as well as stressing their determination to buy products built to match these reference designs. If they weren't already concerned, traditional systems vendors hoping that the proprietary technology status quo would last well into the #5G era should be very worried. The eight operators --  @ATT Inc. (NYSE: T), @China Unicom Ltd. (NYSE: CHU), @Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK), @Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT), @Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), @NTT Group (NYSE: NTT), @Telefónica and @Turk Telecom -- helped devise this new strategy plan for the #OpenNetworking Foundation , and provide unanimous board approval of it. #ONF believes this group represents enough market firepower and innovation to get the entire industry behaving in a new way, with the goal of getting open source technology into the market, and into communications networks, faster. "I think it is probably one of the first times that network operators have come together and shown resolve, as well as capacity, to invest in a technology beyond writing papers and doing specifications," says Patrick Lopez, vice president of networks innovation for Telefónica, in an interview. What's different is that "all the operators involved have skin in the game -- they are investing not only time and money and network but they actually have teams of people that are developing code, and writing open source code, basically showing what we, a group of major network operators, believe the value chain needs to evolve to. This is a strong signal to the market showing that beyond intent there is actual effort, progress and code being developed to show the way we would like networks to evolve."

https://www.lightreading.com/carrier-sdn/sdn-architectures/onf-operators-take-charge-of-edge-sdn/d/d-id/741709