T-Mobile Poland First to Deploy ONF Open Source EPC

T-Mobile Poland is the first carrier to roll out a “production-grade” open source evolved packet core (EPC) based on the Open Network Foundation’s Open Mobile Evolved Core (OMEC) platform. T-Mobile Poland is the first carrier to roll out a “production-grade” open source evolved packet core (EPC) based on the Open Network Foundation’s Open Mobile Evolved Core (OMEC) platform. T-Mobile Poland is using the OMEC gateway control, user plane, and billing components to provide “fixed mobile substitution” services to its customers, which is basically a wireless broadband product. The OMEC components include 3GPP-compliant interfaces that support connections into T-Mobile Poland’s existing base stations, mobility management services, and lawful intercept platforms. ONF and Sprint launched the OMEC platform last year. It’s a disaggregated, control-user plane separated (CUPS) mobile core that can run on containers, virtual machines (VMs), or bare metal. It uses NFV optimized for Intel platforms, and includes connectivity, billing, and charging; 3GPP release 13 compatibility; and is designed primarily for lightweight deployments and IoT applications. Sprint’s contribution included its Clean CUPS Core for Packet Optimization (C3PO) platform and other software that it donated as seed code to the project. Sprint launched its open source C3PO initiative in early 2017. The project combines Intel software code with Sprint’s software code and extensions. It uses a SDN-based architecture but has independent control and data scaling. The goal of the project is to create an SDN-based virtual EPC that can handle a bigger subscriber load without impacting speed. OMEC is also powering ONF’s Converged Multi-Access and Core (COMAC) initiative that launched the same time as OMEC. COMAC leverages SDN and cloud and is built on disaggregated RAN, fixed access, and CUPS-compliant core network components. It’s designed as an optimized stack that can aggregate a programmable access layer, a converged control plane, and a controlled user plane to support 4G LTE and 5G networks. The OMEC efforts are similar to a number of other open source platforms that have been launched to support the roll out of 5G services. AT&T, for instance, has been working with the Airship project to inject open source, cloud-control into its network assets. This has allowed the carrier to simplify its network operations and – more importantly – keeps open the door for the operator to integrate other open source infrastructure platforms. The Airship project was initially based on the OpenStack Helm project that launched in 2017. AT&T, SK Telecom (SKT), and Intel took that base and updated it to provide a number of loosely coupled, interoperable open source tools for automated cloud provisioning. Those companies last year contributed the code to the OpenStack Foundation as the Airship project. Airship was also central to AT&T revamping its AT&T Integrated Cloud (AIC) platform that it was using to power the ongoing software overhaul of its network operations. Amy Wheelus, who was VP of network cloud at AT&T before moving to her new role as VP of broadband and video systems at the carrier, explained that Airship allowed the carrier to fix some of the issues it was beginning to run into with that legacy platform. “It really allowed us to simplify software delivery and lifecycle management,” she noted. “That was one of the pain points with AIC and how we initially implemented those processes wasn’t ideal.” And the Linux Foundation’s LF Networking (LFN) group conducted a live demo of a Kubernetes-powered end-to-end 5G cloud native network at the recent KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America event. The videocall used a 5G network on stage that tapped into public and private clouds to connect a packet core network in Montreal, an IP-multimedia subsystem (IMS) core in the public cloud, and a 4G LTE lab in France. It was born out of LFN’s Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) project that allows for the testing, iteration, and a collaboration framework for common NFV infrastructure (NFVi). The OPNFV project also tapped into work from its Verification Program (OVP) that verifies the labs, infrastructure, and virtual network functions (VNFs), and the Linux Foundation’s ongoing work with mobile industry trade association GSMA under the Common NFVi Telco Taskforce (CNTT). The group is working with service providers to define and create VNF reference architectures for NFVi.