The Power of a Standards-based Operator Cloud Demonstrated at Network X

The CloudCO demonstration to be led by the Broadband Forum at this year's Network X will show how network operators can unlock network efficiencies and new service delivery from a disaggregated and virtualized software-defined broadband network.

CloudCO's service delivery automation focus is fundamental for operators to help reduce their operational costs to manage an overall end-to-end broadband deployment. The CloudCO demonstration highlights the benefits of standardized multi-vendor interoperability across all the network layers. Physical and virtual network functions can interact seamlessly, and support common services deployed across different network elements and regions.

Key use cases in this year's demo include dynamic secure homeworking, virtual OMCI integration, and Automated Intelligent Management (AIM) with Quality Attenuation measurements detecting network congestion triggering dynamic session steering. In addition, fundamental use cases to this year's demo include zero-touch high speed internet set-up and delivery, control plane and user plane separation, network and domain orchestration, network disaggregation and cloudification with both Broadband Forum and Open Networking Foundation (ONF) deployment models.

"The CloudCO demonstration brings together many vendors and proves that the Broadband Forum provides network operators with the right architectures, use cases, and supporting standards and open-source software that enables a true multi-vendor choice," said Broadband Forum Technical Chair Lincoln Lavoie. "This year our focus will be on how broadband services are evolving from not just delivering connectivity but focusing on delivering the right QoE that subscribers demand," Mr Lavoie continued.

Platinum sponsors Ciena, Nokia, and Radisys are joined by participating companies Altice Labs, BISDN, Capgemini, University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), Netsia, OutSys, UfiSpace, and Zyxel. As in previous years, the testing and integration was carried out by the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), an independent provider of broad-based testing and standards conformance solutions for the networking industry.

"Our members will be demonstrating a real live demo of the operator cloud environment powered by interoperable Broadband Forum open standards," said Broadband Forum Vice President Strategic Marketing and Business Development Craig Thomas. "The CloudCO Demo is a multi-vendor environment that demonstrates many areas of our work around SDN/NFV, OB-BAA, and the access and transport network, including network cloudification and disaggregation."

CloudCO brings IT, enterprise, and data center innovations, such as software-defined networking, virtualization, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and microservices-based architectures, into the broadband networking domain based on Broadband Forum's standards. This fundamental architecture shift has proven to bring scalability and best of breed technologies from different hardware and software providers to enable network automation. It ensures that physical and virtual network functions can interact seamlessly and seamless management of end-to-end broadband deployments.

To see the live demo, visit the Broadband Forum Member Pavillion - Stand E8 at Network X on October 24-26 in Paris, France.

About the Broadband Forum

Broadband Forum is the communications industry's leading open standards development organization focused on accelerating broadband innovation, standards, and ecosystem development. Our members' passion ? delivering on the promise of broadband by enabling smarter and faster broadband networks and a thriving broadband ecosystem.

Broadband Forum is an open, non-profit industry organization composed of the industry's leading broadband operators, vendors, thought leaders who are shaping the future of broadband, and observers who closely track our progress. Its work to date has been the foundation for broadband's global proliferation and innovation. For example, the Forum's flagship TR-069 CPE WAN Management Protocol has nearly 1 billion installations worldwide.

Broadband Forum's projects span across 5G, Connected Home, Cloud, and Access. Its working groups collaborate to define best practices for global networks, enable new revenue-generating service and content delivery, establish technology migration strategies, and engineer critical device, service & development management tools in the home and business IP networking infrastructure. We develop multi-service broadband packet networking specifications addressing architecture, device and service management, software data models, interoperability and certification in the broadband market.

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