Deutsche Telekom (DT) joins the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) as a Partner

DT commits to drive the development of carrier grade cloud-based access on CORD® (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter) and ONOS® (Open Network Operating System)

MENLO PARK, Calif., July 20, 2017 – The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) announced today that Deutsche Telekom (DT), Europe’s leading telecom operator, has joined the organization as a full Partner Member. Partner membership demonstrates the highest tier of support and investment in the ONF. As an operator-led consortium, each operator taking a partnership position with the ONF represents the apex of endorsement and the most significant way an operator can help drive the ONF’s mission and impact.

The ONF is the recognized leader taking innovative approaches to blending Cloud, SDN and NFV technologies to build next-generation solutions for operators leveraging network disaggregation, white box commoditized hardware and open source software. These solutions come packaged as pre-integrated distributions that are transforming the economics of building complex operator networks, driving both cost savings while enabling new innovative end-user services. Solutions are available for modernizing the most significant segments of operator networks, including:

• fixed access,
• mobile and wireless access,
• mobile core,
• datacenter and
• packet-optical backbones.

It is the ONF’s 200+ members that make possible the breadth of solutions now available. The ONF’s Open Innovation Pipeline makes it easy for vendors to work with the ONF to identify operator use cases, introduce their unique contributions into solutions, and take those solutions into operator trials. In this way vendors benefit by identifying new markets, leveraging the work of the broader community to reduce R&D costs, and speeding time to market by riding the wave of operator consumption of ONF solutions.

“DT has set up the internal Access 4.0 program dedicated to CORD, ONOS and bare-metal hardware,” said Walter Goldenits, CTO at Telekom Deutschland. “We believe that these open source projects are at the forefront of a promising movement that enables our industry to manage the data growth in the most efficient way. Our partnership is a commitment to support ONF’s mission and making it a success.”

DT is joining AT&T, China Unicom, Comcast, Google, NTT Communications and Verizon as the leading operators guiding the ONF in its mission to drive innovation in operator networks while transforming business models across the industry. These seven operators provide steering, guidance and investment to lead the consortium.

“We are thrilled to add a major global European operator as a top-level ONF partner,” said Guru Parulkar, executive director of ONF and Stanford Platform Lab. “The addition of Deutsche Telekom complements our operator leadership with a valued European perspective, endorsing our vision and providing a notable indicator of our growing impact worldwide. We are deeply appreciative of the commitment DT is making to the ONF, and conversely we are committed to ensuring DT’s success with its ambitious plans for CORD and ONOS.”

Further Growth in Operator Leadership

In addition, the ONF is broadening its Board of Directors with representation from Asia and from the cable industry. Both the telecom operator China Unicom and the U.S. cable operator Comcast have joined the ONF’s board, which marks yet another milestone for the ONF and will help extend its reach to drive transformation across the broader ecosystem of worldwide operators, their networks, supply chains and businesses.

About ONF

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is an operator led consortium spearheading disruptive network transformation. Now the recognized 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 Communications and Verizon, the ONF has now merged operations with ON.Lab to create a single organization driving vast transformation across the operator space. With operations now completely merged, the legal merger of ONF and ON.Lab is expected to be complete in late 2017. For further information visit http://www.opennetworking.org/.

About Deutsche Telekom

Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies, with some 165 million mobile customers, 28.5 million fixed-network lines, and 18.5 million broadband lines. Deutsche Telekom provides fixed-network/broadband, mobile communications, Internet, and IPTV products and services for consumers, and information and communication technology (ICT) solutions for business and corporate customers. More information is available at https://www.telekom.com/en.