Verizon’s SDN Work About Applications, Not Numbers

You can count Verizon as unimpressed with rival AT&T’s push to virtualize 75 percent of its network components that can be virtualized by 2020. During an interview at this week’s MWC Barcelona event, Mike Haberman, vice president of network engineering at Verizon, questioned the significance of AT&T’s progress. “What does the 75 percent mean,” Haberman said, noting that the number really does not mean anything without context of how that virtualization is helping customers or improving network performance. AT&T recently stated that it had virtualized the software control of 65 percent of its core network functions by the end of 2018, on its way to that 75 percent control by next year. AT&T, it should be noted, has said that it’s running its mobile 5G network and its FirstNet first responder service both as virtualized applications with full software control. Haberman’s comments echoed those of Kyle Malady, executive vice president and CTO at Verizon, who recently stated that Verizon has been quiet about its use of SDN mostly because it’s been “hard to define what it really means.”