Nokia leads Broadband Access Abstraction project

Nokia is taking a leading role in the Broadband Forum's new Broadband Access Abstraction (BAA) project, which seeks to drive the adoption of software-defined access networks through the contribution of open source software, uniting vendors and operators to ensure they are aligned with industry specifications to meet the needs of operators globally.

Specifically, the BAA project seeks to define a software reference implementation for an open BAA layer, which would eliminate dependencies on vendor-specific equipment and proprietary software functions by providing standardized interfaces and decoupling implementation from the underlying hardware.

Nokia is the first vendor partner to contribute open source code under the BAA project.

"By opening and standardizing the common, generic part of the network software, we avoid the need to re-write that same software for every technology, every vendor and every node. In turn, we can now focus our efforts on developing new applications and capabilities that make the network faster, better, and smarter: for example, converging fixed and mobile networks; fronthauling 5G over fiber-access networks, automating operations and building self-healing and self-optimizing networks," stated Federico Guillén, president of Nokia's Fixed Networks Business Group.