Disaggregation is not a new concept; it is often a natural consequence of industry maturity and has been successfully adopted in a wide range of industries, such as in enterprise data centers.
Renowned Harvard Business School Professor and author Clayton Christensen said, “During the early stages of an industry, when the functionality and reliability of a product isn’t yet adequate to meet customers’ needs, a proprietary solution is almost always the right solution - because it allows you to knit all the pieces together in an optimized way. But once the technology matures and becomes good enough, industry standards emerge. That leads to the standardization of interfaces, which lets companies specialize on pieces of the overall system, and the product becomes modular. At that point, the competitive advantage of the early leader dissipates...”
Increasing pressure in the broadband world
The telecommunications industry is mature and as a natural consequence, service providers are seeking to disaggregate their networks to reduce costs, accelerate innovation, and leverage a multi-vendor ecosystem.
In today’s COVID-19 environment, high-bandwidth broadband is more important than ever as families work, learn, and play at home. Services such as video conferencing, video streaming, IPTV, and video surveillance have contributed to massive growth in subscriber connections and data usage. However, unlike utility companies that charge per electrical watt used for example, broadband service providers charge a flat monthly fee, resulting in eroding margins as Internet usage soars.
Key drivers for broadband access transformation
Transitioning to an open and disaggregated architecture is critical to:
-
Support massive growth in mobility and fixed line connections, data usage, and high-bandwidth services
-
Overcome network inflexibility and lack of agility due to vendor lock-in and long development and integration cycles
-
Reduce eroding margins and dwindling ARPU, while optimizing CapEx and OpEx
-
Bring new services to market quickly, such as new edge applications like Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, and new low latency enterprise applications
-
Enable broadband service providers to unleash rapid innovation with economies of scale
Open standards make disaggregated solutions possible
Broadband access disaggregation uses software for functions that formerly resided on legacy optical line terminal (OLT) boxes in a broadband network. By moving these functions from proprietary black boxes to software running on Telco Cloud that then control and manage multiple open and disaggregated “white-boxes,” service providers are able to disaggregate their networks to reduce costs and to eliminate the need for a single-vendor solution. Broadband access network disaggregation combined with programmability allows broadband service providers to move from legacy OLTs to white box hardware with SDN control and management.
Two industry organizations leading the change for open and disaggregated broadband access architectures are the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) and the Broadband Forum.
-
ONF has delivered the SDN-Enabled Broadband Access (SEBA™) reference platform built with open components and supporting virtualized access technologies, including PON, G.Fast, and more, to deliver residential broadband and mobile backhaul. ONF’s VOLTHA™ delivers a hardware abstraction layer for broadband access equipment, enabling the use of white-box OLTs.
-
The Broadband Forum has delivered Open Broadband-Broadband Access Abstraction (OB-BAA) to enable a standardized, automated, and accelerated deployment of cloud-based access infrastructure.
These open architectures are increasingly being leveraged to enable the transition to disaggregated broadband access, but these solutions require hardening. Much like Red Hat did for enterprises in bringing commercially deployable open source Linux solutions to market, Radisys is committed to ensuring solutions based on open broadband architectures are ready to deploy. For example, Radisys’ Connect Open Broadband is a network-hardened, software-defined Passive Optical Network (PON) solution that is based on the SEBA reference platform and that allows for a seamless introduction of the OB-BAA architecture.
Reducing costs and enabling a multi-vendor ecosystem
Arguably, the key benefit of broadband disaggregation for a service provider is reduced operational expenditure. With the legacy model, both CapEx and OpEx costs are passed on as a blended cost from a single vendor. With broadband disaggregation, CapEx costs go down as service providers are able to use white-box OLTs and merchant-silicon from a multi-vendor ecosystem. Broadband service providers can reduce OpEx by leveraging automation for one-touch or zero-touch provisioning for faster upgrades and better fault detection.
Initial global trials and deployments
Broadband service providers throughout the world are beginning to disaggregate their networks, with activity starting to take place in Europe and Asia.
A tier-one service provider has spoken publicly about its plans to deploy next-generation fixed broadband access using a combination of bare metal hardware, cloud technology, and open-source software. The company plans to deploy geographically distributed edge data centers to deliver broadband services to its subscribers. According to the company, the key benefits of this approach include scalability, efficiency, and reduced time-to-market
Many service providers around the world are trialing disaggregated architecture in their broadband networks to achieve the benefits of SDN and a multi-vendor ecosystem.
The future of broadband access networks
Disaggregated and open are beginning to define the way broadband networks are being deployed now and into the future. Broadband service providers are leveraging disaggregated components to reduce overall costs and to gain increased flexibility to accelerate introduction of new services, all while maintaining the highest quality of experience for their subscribers.
