SAN JOSE, Calif. — CableLabs subsidiary Kyrio is launching an interoperability lab, specifically for testing software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV). The lab will be located in both CableLabs’ locations in Louisville, Colo., and Sunnyvale, Calif.

The interoperability lab, which was announced at the NFV World Congress held here today, will be open to hardware vendors, software vendors, and all NFV/SDN ecosystem partners.

CableLabs CEO Phil McKinney, who made the announcement during his keynote address, said that the interoperability lab is being run by CableLabs’ for-profit subsidiary Kyrio so that it can attract vendors and service providers that are outside the cable ecosystem.

“We are running it under Kyrios so it can be open to anyone,” McKinney said. “We want to bring the community together to get this deployed.”

Interestingly, CableLabs is also hosting an OPNFV plugfest at its Louisville headquarters May 9 to 13. The group is hoping to attract SDN vendors and software developers to its headquarters to work on interoperability of the OPNFV platform.

Earlier this year, CableLabs rebranded its three-year-old for-profit spinoff NetworkFX as Kyrio. CableLabs, a non-profit group made up of cable operators around the globe, created a spinoff so it could develop and sell some of its services to other players in the telecom space. So far, Kyrio has focused on things like security and Wi-Fi testing. It has also piloted a Wi-Fi roaming hub targeted at Wi-Fi providers.

CableLabs has been working on SDN and NFV since 2012. In particular, the non-profit has been looking at how to virtualize the Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS). It’s also been exploring virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE) that will help cable operators deploy services faster and simplify the home network.