Network virtualization promises to play a key role in FirstNet offerings, future service innovations

AT&T officials decided to pursue this approach after recognizing the remarkable growth in consumers’ demand for bandwidth—although consumers were not willing to pay more for service—and that trying to keep pace with this demand in a hardware-centric networking environment would be difficult, Chokshi said. A software-centric networking model is “a lot more scalable than physical, proprietary appliances,” he said.

This approach lets AT&T to utilize new methods to introduce redundancy and resiliency in the network, as well as implement security initiatives, Chokshi said. AT&T also has realized other benefits by making the migration to a more software-centric network, he said.

“The secondary aspects are around the unit cost,” Chokshi said. “The unit cost would significantly drop, because we don’t see a linear relationship between bandwidth growth and revenue growth—bandwidth is growing a lot faster. Customers are looking for greater bandwidth at the same or cheaper price [than they have today]. How do you keep up with that model? This allows us to do that.

“The third important thing is innovation. What we experienced is that the software companies and the technology companies that are utilizing software have a greater ability to innovate–the innovation cycles are faster. You hear a lot about agility. You hear a lot about agile development. You hear a lot about dev ops. Those are some of the things we do to bring these capabilities forward.”

Indeed, this innovation capability promises to be critical to the FirstNet system and its public-safety subscribers, particularly as new capabilities are introduced that are designed to help local first responders improve their decision-making efforts during an emergency response.

Hansen Chan, a product marketing manager at Nokia, echoed this sentiment, noting that programmability of an SDN controller “allows you to response reactively or proactively to a situation … The possibilities are boundless, because of the programmability of the network.”

Gary Spedaliere, a member of the technical sales support team at Dali Wireless—a manufacturer of in-building solutions—said he believes network virtualization will impact the way in-building coverage is provided to first responders. Eventually, a server could be located in the building that is connected to the broader software-defined network, he said.

“If we do that, when an enterprise customer has to provide public-safety coverage, they put in a computer, a server,” Spedaliere said. “What that means is—provided that we can supply the required integrity, the required cybersecurity—that you will have full flexibility over what goes into that building and what goes out of that building.

“I suspect that some of the management of that server will rest with the operator, AT&T. I suspect that some of it will rest with the local public-safety agency. And I suspect that none of it will reside with the enterprise owner—that’s not going to happen. What we’re going to see is a cheaper way to provide better, more flexible in-building coverage when somebody needs an occupancy permit.”