AT&T achieved its long-standing goal to virtualize 75% of its network functions with SDN, according to CTO Andre Fuetsch. Better late than never. 

The operator hit that target either three months early or nine months late, based on a series of confusing and previously contradictory executive statements. 

Quantifying AT&T’s progress toward this goal became a challenge at the outset of 2020, when the company’s declarations to that effect became mired in ambiguity. Within the span of a week in early January, AT&T said virtualization had reached 65% of its network and then 71% of its network at the end of 2019. 

The operator clarified those numbers after it appeared as though, based on its own public comments, that no progress was made in 2019. AT&T also effectively moved the goal posts, either intentionally or not, by framing the 75% goal as one it intended to reach “by 2020,” “in 2020,” and later “by the end of” 2020.

Nonetheless, a project and significant undertaking that began in 2014 has been achieved and, according to comments CFO John Stephens made earlier this year, it’s generating a savings of about 10% on network operation costs this year. AT&T previously cut those costs by about 6% during each of the last five years, he said. 

“We have been a vocal proponent and industry leader in making our network more software-centric. Our advances in cloud native virtualization, containerization, and hardware and software disaggregation allowed us to reach our software-based networking goal of 75% prior to the end of 2020,” Fuetsch wrote in a blog post this week. 

AT&T hasn’t said when or if it intends to reach full virtualization on its network, but myriad open source projects and AT&T’s forthcoming containerized 5G core running on Airship 2.0 will likely push it closer to that outcome. Advancements in 5G and continual network cloud deployments are all contributing to a more software-centric network for AT&T overall. 

The operator also this week provided an update on how its network has been impacted and responded to shifts in usage and traffic patterns through the first six months of the COVID-19 crisis. “We’re carrying more data than ever before. In fact, the AT&T global network carries more than 391.8 petabytes of data traffic on an average day,” AT&T Business CEO Anne Chow and Scott Mair, president of network engineering, wrote in a blog post. 

Core network traffic is up 20%, mobile voice minutes jumped 40%, and peak rates of text messaging have surged by 53% since mid-March, according to AT&T. However, in an odd but understandable twist, “mobile data volume has slightly decreased during COVID-19 since people are able to connect to their home WiFi throughout the day,” Chow and Mair wrote. 

AT&T said its capital investments, including acquisition of spectrum, and ongoing operations, totals more than $135 billion cumulatively since 2015.