Exec: Verizon SDN Plans Include Wireless and Landline Networks

Verizon expects its transition to software defined networking (SDN) to begin at the network core and move outward to the network edge, said Verizon Vice President of Network Planning Brian Higgins. The SDN initiative will encompass Verizon’s wireless and landline networks, Higgins said. “We’re working on decomposing monolithic hardware and software bundles and separating functions to work on a software-based model,” said Higgins. The goal is to minimize operational costs and streamline the creation of new services. Verizon referenced five equipment vendors in a press release about its SDN initiative, including Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Juniper Networks and Nokia Networks. For vendors such as those, SDN represents a “model with less risk,” Higgins said. Higgins also noted that Verizon is currently working with more than 20 companies on proofs of concept related to the carrier’s SDN plans.

Additional announcements involving those companies will be forthcoming, he said. Verizon’s SDN announcement, coming on top of similar news from the nation’s other dominant carrier AT&T, suggests that the technology will find strong adoption industry-wide. Verizon’s plan to shift to SDN is driven, in part, by the need to support the Internet of Things, Higgins said. With the IoT, he said, will come “many millions of devices that have a higher volume of control plane [traffic] and very little payload.” As a result, he said, “we need to create an environment that allows us to create control plane elasticity independent from the bearer to enable us to handle those new traffic flows.”