With the launch of a Terragraph field trial near Budapest, Hungary, Deutsche Telekom’s work through the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) is paying off.
Through its Magyar Telekom subsidiary, the operator is providing triple-play services to customers, according to Axel Clauberg, TIP chairman and vice president, IP End & Infrastructure Cloud at Deutsche Telekom.
The trial was announced at Mobile World Congress 2018 back in February but it wasn't yet live because the region lacked the required electricity to actually launch the trial, but that has since been rectified.
“For us, this is one of the best proof points” for the success of TIP, he told FierceWirelessTech, because it’s one step closer to an actual commercial deployment. Plans are underway to set up a second trial with a larger customer group. The idea is to feed the learnings back into the larger TIP community.
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Deutsche Telekom was one of the operators involved in Facebook-led Open Compute Project back in 2015. The Open Compute initiative showed what open collaboration could do for the software world, and DT was among those interested in seeing a more open system applied to the telco infrastructure rather than limited to data centers, for example.
Operators like Deutsche Telekom are looking to drive technology innovation but to do it in such a way that it doesn’t break the bank.
Sprint became the first U.S. operator to join TIP when it signed on earlier this year. Facebook launched TIP back in 2016 with the goal of bringing connectivity to unserved and underserved markets through the development of software-powered telecom infrastructure. The project has seen widespread traction among telecom players and counts 500 companies in its membership.
The group, which has 13 project groups spanning everything from backhaul to edge computing and Open RAN, is convening for a global summit in London on Oct. 16-17. Stay tuned, Clauberg said, for some key announcements about the status of TIP.
Article updated Oct. 8 to clarify the trial was announced at MWC but not yet live.