ADTRAN announced that to further its effort to deliver access networks that are open, programmable and cost-effective as carriers prepare to implement the foundations for 5G, it is focusing on developing its position in mobile access networks.
The company believes that realising the potential of 5G will require a number of steps. Firstly, service providers will need to deploy large numbers of radios closer to the network edge to support bandwidth-intensive applications; secondly, there will be a need for more transport-friendly Ethernet backhaul; and thirdly, it will be necessary to extend SDN/NFV to the 5G mobile network core via the access network leveraging software defined access (SD-Access).
ADTRAN stated that SD-Access for 5G, incorporating point-to-point (P2P) and point-to-multipoint (P2MP) next-generation PON, will constitute a key technology in providing the converged backhaul, fronthaul and ‘crosshaul’ networks needed to support high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity.
ADTRAN has pioneered the development of XGS-PON, 10 Gbit/s EPON and NGPON2 SD-Access solutions based on open reference architectures such as CORD, and is now focused on extending its position into mobile access networks leveraging the following technologies:
1. Multi-wavelength NG-PON2 as the infrastructure technology for delivering low latency, multi-Gigabit services for fronthaul, backhaul and crosshaul networks.
2. The open and scalable SD-Access architecture, ADTRAN Mosaic, featuring disaggregated physical network access elements and an open source SDN controller.
3. Fixed Access Network Sharing (FANS) capability, designed to allow access to be shared between multiple operators.
ADTRAN has also announced that it is contributing to the CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter) project, expanding its CORD-compliant portfolio and broadening the use cases to enable open principles to be applied over any network infrastructure and for any customer segment.
