Dr. Steven Wright, ETSI’s newly-elected Chairman of the NFV ISG, commented: “I congratulate the OPNFV founders on the formation of this new open source community supporting NFV. The NFV ISG’s mission is to facilitate the industry transformation and development of an open, interoperable, ecosystem through specification, implementation and deployment experience. The ISG recognizes the value of open source implementations to converge industry requirements and facilitate the development of the NFV ecosystem. I look forward to the future releases of the integrated open source infrastructure platform from OPNFV.”

AT&T Digital Life heads to Europe

AT&T is taking its Digital Life platform on the road. The company announced that Telefónica is trialing AT&T’s Connected Home tech in Europe. If it catches on, AT&T might end up expanding its global footprint with digital services instead of a buyout of a foreign CSP. There are certainly more services in the hopper: AT&T announced a new service for in-home healthcare, released research with Ericsson that highlights the desirability of connected vehicles, and purchased a popular YouTube network, Fullscreen, which will help the company create new-media synergies.

“We want our customers to have access to the best selection of digital products and services, and we believe that connected home services will provide consumers with greater convenience, control, and peace of mind,” said Michael Duncan, Telefónica Group Chief Marketing Officer.  “AT&T Digital Life is the best-in-class Connected Home platform. When you add Telefónica’s local market insights, trusted brands, and innovative operating businesses -- it is a winning combination.”

Market research is supporting AT&T’s CEM strategies as well. AT&T U-verse gained two more laurels from J.D. Power for its consumer internet and television service. According to the most recent study from the venerable market research house, AT&T U-verse is the highest ranked provider of internet and video services for residential consumers in the U.S.

Nokia Networks is on a roll

Nokia Networks has unleashed a flurry of news over the past month. First up is FutureWorks, a combination of big data, artificial intelligence, and process automation that auto-optimizes individual user session to deliver virtually perfect quality of experience (QoE). Then Nokia achieved FDD/TDD LTE convergence with China Telecom, which is a major milestone in carrier aggregation and LTE evolution. The company also announced its first commercial Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) solution that brings cloud technology to services such as Voice over LTE (VoLTE), debuted OSS-as-a-Service, and scored a network expansion and enhancement deal with T-Mobile.

“As operators look to take advantage of efficiencies that cloud-based networking can offer, hosting models cannot only help reduce the disruption of upgrade cycles, but also schedule expenditures to better match the ramp-up in network requirements,” wrote Jason Marcheck, head of Service Provider infrastructure and services at Current Analysis, in a recent press release. “However, hosted models are only as good as the remote delivery capabilities of the provider. Here is where Nokia Networks’ experience in delivering managed services from its Global Delivery Centers can help operators mine the full value out of its OSS as a Service model."