MENLO PARK, Calif., Jan. 8, 2020 - The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) today announced that T-Mobile (Poland) has achieved production roll-out of the ONF’s Open Mobile Evolved Core (OMEC) open source platform. It is the industry’s first deployment of a production-grade open source Evolved Packet Core (EPC).
The ONF launched OMEC in 2019, making available the first production grade, disaggregated, control-user plane separated (CUPS), 3GPP-compliant open source mobile core solution that can run on containers, virtual machines or bare metal. It provides a cornerstone for the ONF‘s COMAC (Converged Multi-Access and Core) project, developed to bring convergence to operators’ mobile and broadband access and core networks. It is based on and paired with COMAC Reference Design, which is now available for ONF Member review and feedback.
With OMEC, operators like T-Mobile Poland can take control of their networks. T-Mobile’s deployment demonstrates how operators and supply chain vendors who are willing to embrace open source can deploy solutions with disruptive value propositions in record time. T-Mobile Poland’s pioneering project demonstrates the tremendous value of taking an open source approach to transforming networks and paves a path for other operators to follow.
T-Mobile Poland is using OMEC’s gateway control, user plane and billing components to deliver a Fixed Mobile Substitution (FMS) service to its customers. The OMEC components provide all the necessary features and standard 3GPP interfaces for interconnecting to T-Mobile’s existing base stations, mobility management entities and lawful intercept platforms.
“Our OMEC deployment provides us with a lightweight packet core providing connectivity, billing and charging at scale for a large number of fixed mobile subscribers. By taking the bold step of embracing open source as part of a new approach for building and deploying solutions, we are realizing a much lower total cost of ownership, rapid customizability, and greater transparency than we can achieve using any traditional EPC," said Michal Sewera, head of the EPC Shared Service Center at T-Mobile Poland.
“The T-Mobile rollout of OMEC for Fixed Mobile Substitution service is an important milestone for open source-based solutions for operator networks. Intel has been a driving force and key contributor behind OMEC and NFV optimizations for Intel platforms,” said Pranav Mehta, Vice President of Systems and Software Research at Intel Labs. “OMEC is optimized to leverage powerful performance and security enhancements, essential for 5G, and available in Intel Xeon processors, network adapters and switching technologies, including Data-Plane Development Kit (DPDK) and Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX).”
T-Mobile’s OMEC deployment highlights:
- Complete connectivity, billing and charging capabilities
- 3GPP Release 13 compatibility
- Supports a large number of subscribers with a high performance DPDK based dataplane
- Optimized for lightweight cost-effective fixed-mobile substitution service deployments
“T-Mobile Poland, supported by Deutsche Telekom as a partner of the ONF, has been at the leading edge of developing, testing, and now deploying OMEC into a production network,” said Oguz Sunay , Chief Architect for Mobile, ONF. “This successful implementation demonstrates the power of community, the maturity of open source in the telco space, and the production worthiness of OMEC.”
More Information on OMEC can be found here:
- OMEC Project
- Video of T-Mobile, Intel, ONF and Sprint discussing OMEC and the value of an open source core at the ONF Connect 2019 conference.
- OMEC will be featured in the ONF Booth at the 2020 Mobile World Congress in February, stand 1E11
OMEC in Context of ONF’s COMAC Project
OMEC is an integral building block for ONF’s COMAC (Converged Multi-Access and Core) open source project. COMAC leverages SDN and cloud principles to create both converged access and converged core capabilities as part of a holistic platform. Built on disaggregated RAN, fixed access, and CUPS-compliant core network components, COMAC’s target architecture is a highly optimized stack aggregating a programmable access layer, a converged Control Plane and a converged User Plane, supporting both LTE and 5G.
The OMEC CUPS compliance LTE core plays an integral role in facilitating the development of the COMAC platform. The first release of the COMAC architecture is specified in the COMAC Reference Design, available now to ONF members.
About the Open Networking Foundation:
The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is an operator led consortium spearheading disruptive network transformation. The ONF Is now recognized as a leader for open source solutions for operators. The ONF first launched in 2011 as the standard bearer for Software Defined Networking (SDN). Led by its operator partners AT&T, China Unicom, Comcast, Deutsche Telekom, Google, NTT Group and Turk Telekom, the ONF is driving vast transformation across the operator space. For further information visit:https://opennetworking.org
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