Orange Tested The ECOMP Of AT&T

Orange telecom recently tested the Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy (ECOMP) virtualization platform of AT&T. AT&T has thus been successful in releasing the ECOMP technology as open source software to more communications and telecom industry. AT&T has committed to release the technology in conjunction with Linux foundation and now the fist service provider to join their ECOMP technology is Orange.

Chris Rice, AT&T’s senior VP, earlier stated that, “ECOMP is a stake in the ground. It is a declaration that networks of the future will be software-centric, that they will 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.”

Senior VP of Orange Labs Network, Alain Maloberti, said that the service provider plans “to start experiments with ECOMP firstly in a lab environment, to be followed by a field trial as part of our On-Demand Networks program.”

Orange and AT&T are experienced in the virtualization process. In July, they made an agreement to work together on new open source projects related to NFV and SDN. It aims to make new standards that carriers can understand as they launch virtualization in their networks.

Orange and AT&T are set on new goals with the agreement that aim for reduction in cost, increase in operational efficiency, and simplification of technological integration. They also said that they would find out forums of standardization of the industry to move the standardization process forward.

AT&T Business Solution’s senior VP of offer management and service integration, Roman Pacewicz, said that Orange is about influencing the industry involved in standardization of their virtual technology. Pacewicz said, “We don’t think we’re moving fast enough as an industry and we want to put more adrenaline in it.”

Service providers can add features quickly and reduce the cost of operations with the ECOMP. Business and service providers get more control of their network services and new services can also be created by the developers.

ECOMP is a part of AT&T’s goal of virtualization of their network by 2020. AT&T virtualized 5.7% of their network in the last year and by the end of this year, the company plans to virtualize 30% of its applications by migrating them into a private cloud. AT&T adopted its software centric vision with the increase in demand for network capacity.