AT&T has been working on a disaggregated network strategy for years now, but its efforts haven’t just been focused on the core of its network. The operator has also made significant headway decoupling enterprise hardware and software, giving it a leg up in the early SD-WAN market and allowing it pivot to meet demand for remote work solutions during the pandemic. Two AT&T executives told Fierce ecosystem development and collaboration with silicon providers like Broadcom is top of mind as it looks to push disaggregation even further.
The operator’s enterprise efforts are centered around two key pieces of hardware: its universal CPE and its remote access gear.
According to VP of Network Core Infrastructure Services Mike Satterlee, AT&T kicked off work on the former back in 2014 and launched the first version of its universal CPE in 2016. The whole idea behind it was to virtualize network functions and allow them to all sit on the same hardware rather than each requiring its own equipment. So, for instance, a virtual router could coexist with a firewall and an accelerator on a single piece of gear and new services could be added via a software upgrade.
This approach, he said, actually gave it a leg up in the early days of SD-WAN.
“One of the early successes we had with that was as we were coming out with this platform, SD-WAN was just starting to emerge as a technology. And we worked very closely with VeloCloud at the time as well as Cisco and others to virtualize those functions so that we could push those down as software to the universal CPE, which allowed us to get to market really quickly,” Satterlee explained. VeloCloud was acquired by VMware in 2017.
John Gibbons, AT&T’s AVP of Network Infrastructure Services, said the operator has between 40,000 and 50,000 universal CPE units deployed with customers. Vertical Systems Group hasn’t released its 2022 rankings yet, but AT&T held the number one position in the firm’s 2021 U.S. Carrier Managed SD-WAN Services Leaderboard.
Remote access
Beyond universal CPE, AT&T also provides white box remote access hardware, with around 140,000 of these units deployed to date. According to Satterlee, the remote access kit is “fully software defined,” meaning all customers need to do is plug it in and AT&T can apply the required policies and security and connect remote workers to a virtual private network.
“This was a really popular solution for customers during Covid,” he said. “One large financial institution, we were actually shipping pallets of equipment to them to allow their traders to be able to connect back into the infrastructure.”
As AT&T continues to push for more disaggregation across its network, Satterlee noted “It’s very important we have an ecosystem around this whole portfolio we’re developing.” To that end, he noted that as it explores different use cases, AT&T works with merchant silicon providers like Broadcom to ensure their chips can support the requirements of a telco environment. It also makes its white box specs public for manufacturers to use and works with vendors like DriveNets, Cisco, Juniper and Ciena on the network operating systems needed to run on the hardware.
“We’re truly separating hardware and software,” he concluded. “This was a play that was run by the hyperscalers, we’re just really applying it to the telco network environment.”