ATT has been talking a big game about open source, whitebox and driving real change in service provider markets. We saw announcements this week that suggest that there is real momentum behind them.
Link: AT&T Deploying White Box Hardware in Cell Towers to Power Mobile 5G Era – http://about.att.com/story/att_deploying_white_box_hardware_in_cell_towers.html
Link: Network AI: AT&T’s Framework for Its Open Source Efforts That Will Drive our Software-Defined Network in 2018 and Beyond – http://about.att.com/innovationblog/att_framework
Some Thoughts
- Whitebox to be used in a thousands of edge locations is a mixed blessing for the wider market.
- increases production volumes
- but limited use cases
- Legacy vendors will be disappointed to lose this opportunity for easy money. Single vendors solutions make a lot of profit margin on the “fries with that” part of the carrier networks.
- Drives growth in whitebox market mean vendors are losing control of production capacity and mindshare among other operators.
- Using the same pattern over & over doesn’t make the software enterprise ready. Its focussed on narrow use cases
- Are we seeing trickle down from MSDCs ? Say, a 5-year lag before we see them enter the market
- ATT seems willing to contribute back to open source, and form communities. If this continues, then the project could reach critical mass.
Leave a Reply