AT&T’s White Box Cell-Site Routers Go Into Production Carrying Live Traffic

AT&T says its cell-site white box routers are in a large-scale production test carrying live network traffic. “This is a first for us, and we believe a first for the industry,” said Andre Fuetsch, CTO at AT&T. “Next year, we’re going to start installing these routers in several thousand towers. We think this approach will help support and accelerate the mobile 5G era.”At the Open Networking Foundation’s (ONF’s) Connect conference today, Fuetsch explained that the routers will be installed at cell towers in AT&T’s wireless network, where they will direct the data traffic flowing back and forth between customers and the internet.Traditionally, AT&T bought these routers from a handful of vendors, and the equipment was highly specialized and came with specialized software. But the company decided to change the model, designing its own open hardware to create white box routers that would run open source software. Going live with these white box routers is the culmination of work that AT&T has been doing throughout 2018.