Broadband Forum has published the latest release of its Open Broadband – Broadband Access Abstraction (OB-BAA) open-source project.
Building on previous releases, Release 4.0 offers enhanced functionalities to disaggregate the management of the optical network unit (ONU) into the cloud using virtualised OMCI message capabilities. A key accomplishment is the full support of OLT capabilities for white box solutions in the OB-BAA framework. This builds upon the ability of these devices to natively support standard interfaces. In turn this allows OB-BAA to seamlessly connect to any standard compliant access node design via the portfolio of standard device adapters available in the public distribution.
Its other notable benefit comes as it disaggregates the control plane functions and moves them into the cloud, therefore unlocking the control plane from the data plane of the OLT. This enables the ability for SDN management and control elements to dynamically steer traffic which is needed to deploy new services in an accelerated time frame and dynamically optimise them.
Tim Carey, OB-BAA project lead at Broadband Forum said: ‘As network automation continues to emerge at an accelerated pace, operators will need to think about how they make upgrades compatible with their currently deployed architecture to avoid the costly and disruptive practice of starting from scratch. That’s where OB-BAA Release 4.0 will help, by creating a network which delivers on the promise of next-generation broadband, while reducing service providers’ costs and protecting their investments.”
Mauro Tilocca (TIM), OB-BAA story team lead at Broadband Forum added: ‘Broadband Forum has a goal of developing industry-wide standardised solutions, and open source and open standards are the new pillars to support our community and this is a fundamental paradigm shift in the way Broadband Forum is delivering value to its stakeholders. Virtualised OMCI complements existing functions such as performance and configuration management, operators can now easily introduce white box solutions, and this subsequently offers a path from those that are vendor-aligned to a mixed vendor and white box evolution.’
Broadband Forum members directly involved in developing Release 4.0 included Nokia, China Mobile, TIM, BT, Altice Labs, Altran, DZS and Broadcom.
