AT&T’s network of tomorrow continues to evolve to deliver world class network services and meet customer needs. Data automation, collaboration on networking standards, open APIs, open-source tools, software-defined network enable us to utilize 5G technologies that power our world.
Open
networking
AT&T continues to lead the charge to unlock the power of 5G for consumers and businesses. 5G’s wide range of services, applications, and spectrum will result in a much more complex array of choices and parameters in the network. Because of this complexity, we are transforming the way we build and operate our networks.
An Open RAN-enabled and Machine-Learning-driven 5G network will introduce a new era where mobile communications empower global economic infrastructure and enable new capabilities within an enterprise, between businesses, and for consumers.
AT&T is a founding member of the O-RAN Alliance, a world-wide community of more than 300 operators, vendors and research and academic institutions working towards more intelligent, open, virtualized and fully interoperable mobile networks. We’ve participated in several major open source initiatives, all designed to support openness, visibility/security, maximize speed and accelerate innovation while controlling costs.
Network
virtualization
At AT&T, our network is built to address rapidly changing customer needs and the evolving nature of communications and entertainment. By shifting the control of the network from hardware to software, what we call “Network Virtualization,” we are giving customers more control of their network services.
An open, software-centric network enables AT&T to respond rapidly to any new demand on the network and enables a much more agile, dynamic network that can elastically scale to meet our customers’ demands. Our core network is 100% under software-defined control, as are many other areas of our network.
What’s more, our 5G mobility core is fully cloud native and powered by our industry-leading Network Cloud platform. Microsoft recently acquired the Network Cloud technology and is using it as the basis for its new Azure for Operators platform. In the future, we’ll run and manage our 5G mobility core network workloads on the new Azure for Operators hybrid cloud platform.
AT&T Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) will enable AT&T to quickly create dynamically routes data traffic across multiple wide-area network connections. This allows business customers to expand their current highly secure network with lower-cost broadband connections.
From 5G
to the next G
The journey to the next decade has begun, and AT&T is among those leading the path to 6G. Although 5G technology has just begun delivering a revolutionary array of advanced applications for consumers, businesses, and governments, it is not too early to prepare for what comes next in this technological journey. As we look ahead, 6G represents an even greater opportunity to extend wireless solutions into almost every facet of human and machine interaction.
AT&T is at the center of R&D and standards development related to Beyond 5G technologies. As a founding member the Next G Alliance, we are helping develop the roadmap and envision related technologies for the Next G. We also supported the launch of the University of Texas at Austin launched a 6G research center.
