Orange Polska collaborates with Amdocs on ECOMP Platform

• Orange to test AT&T’s ECOMP platform in Poland
• Will create new vCPE services for residential customers
• ECOMP seeks to automate the complexity of VNFs
• Orange plans a roll-out across its global footprint

AT&T’s open source SDN control platform moves ahead at a steady pace. No new operator’s have signed on-board since Bell Canada joined the US telco and Orange in December, but today we learn that Orange is now going ahead with a trial of the ECOMP (Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management & Policy) software platform, via its Orange Polska subsidiary and with the help of Amdocs as technology integrator. The objective is to assess ECOMP, initially for virtual services in Poland, and then globally across the Orange footprint – which covers 236 million customers in 28 countries.

Orange Polska is conducting a number of tests with Amdocs to support the preparation and creation of a set of new virtual Customer Premises Equipment (vCPE) services for residential customers. A significant part of the vCPE features will be moved to a cloud environment and managed by the ECOMP platform. The tests will validate the capabilities and potential benefits of an ECOMP deployment within the Orange network.

“Virtualisation of the network is an inevitable process; by testing ECOMP at Orange Polska, we are preparing ourselves to become a software-driven company,” explained Piotr Muszyński, VP of Strategy and Transformation at Orange Polska. “In the future, these cutting-edge technologies will give customers completely new possibilities, such as the ability to self-activate and deactivate services, or to enjoy flexible rating, based on the time they consumed the service. The operator, on the other hand, will receive tools that allow real-time adaptation to meet the customer needs.”

AT&T to the decision to release its ECOMP platform to the open source community, via the Linux Foundation. According to John Donovan, Chief Strategy Officer at AT&T, ECOMP facilitates “the most sophisticated, comprehensive and scalable software-centric network in the world.” ECOMP is a virtual network functions (VNF) automation platform that consolidates the complexity of all their individual VNFs in an SDN environment, ultimately allowing operators to more quickly add new services and features. It appointed Amdocs as its integration partner to help encourage other telcos to adopt the platform, with its big hope is that ECOMP will become an industry standard.

“Amdocs brings unique expertise to early day ECOMP projects like ours because of their early involvement and commitment to AT&T’s ECOMP project,” said Alain Maloberti, SVP of Orange Labs Networks. “They participated in the development of the platform and they have a deep understanding of how to onboard network services and functions with ECOMP.”

Amdocs says its support is an opportunity for Orange to gain experience in building and integrating next-generation solutions using ECOMP. Orange will leverage this project to better understand the impact on jobs and processes, and how ECOMP can facilitate activities of network designers, engineers and operators. It will also help Orange understand how ECOMP can reduce the time it takes to introduce new NFV technologies and services.

“Always an innovator, Orange was the first service provider to join AT&T in its efforts to standardise NFV and SDN platforms and we are excited to be their partner in integrating open source ECOMP for the first time into a live cloud environment and demonstrating the first of many NFV applications,” said Anthony Goonetilleke, President of the Amdocs Product Business Group.