Chris Rice, VP of AT&T Labs, explains carrier’s telecom software focus
AT&T has built up a strong reputation as an industry leader in advancing software platforms designed to bolster telecom operations, including the recent release of its open-source software dubbed Extensible Access Control Mark-up Language 3.0 policy engine into Apache Incubator status.
AT&T said the release is the first publicly available open-source version of XACML 3.0 and was designed to allow network and IT system managers to install policies that automate access to certain systems and information. The software code was initially released on GitHub.com, and has since moved to Apache Incubator status. AT&T said it was looking to soon attain full Apache Project status.
RCR Wireless News spoke with Chris Rice, VP at AT&T Labs about the latest XACML 3.0 release as well as AT&T’s broader view of the importance of software for the evolution of telecom networks.
AT&T’s software focus has included numerous open-source initiatives, including being a contributing member of the R Foundation, which has a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics; a board position with OpenStack; a supporter of ON.Lab’s Open Networking Operating System project; a collaborating builder with Cask on Tigon, which is built on Apache Hadoop and Apache HBase and designed to allow users to create streaming big data analytics applications to address business use cases; and the creation of Nanocubes, which AT&T said creates real-time visualization of large datasets with billions of data points that can be rendered in real time on a Web browser.
At the recent Mobile World Congress event, AT&T said it is in the process of moving its enterprise-focused VoIP and voice over LTE services into one network, which the company said will increase efficiency and improve voice quality. The carrier also said it plans to have 5% of the targeted 150 network functions virtualized and controlled with “our target architecture” by the end of this year, on its way to hitting its previous forecast of 75% control by 2020.
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