Operators and vendors are starting to pick up what the Telecom Infra Project is throwing down. The effort, which Facebook launched in February 2016, is now a bonafide industry alliance with hundreds of active member organizations. Technology prototypes tested and validated by the group are now commercially available and being deployed in multiple networks.

New deployments and trials of TIP technologies are underway with increasing demand from operators and vendors, the group announced today at the TIP Summit. Rakuten Mobile and Dell are joining the community and plan to contribute reference designs for disaggregated architecture in 4G LTE and 5G environments. Rakuten will initially focus on the OpenRAN and OpenRAN 5G New Radio (NR) project groups while Dell intends to participate in TIP’s Disaggregated Cell Site Gateway (DCSG) sub-group.

TIP is also expanding its community lab program with a dozen labs now actively testing, validating, and integrating new features for use in operator networks. Facebook is opening the first integration-focused labs in Los Angeles and Menlo Park, California; Telefónica is launching the first TIP continuous integration, continuous deployment (CI/CD) software lab in Madrid; and Sprint plans to open a lab focused on OpenRAN 5G NR in Overland Park, Kansas.

The community labs are a “unique element of what TIP really is and its purpose,” said Attilo Zani, executive director of TIP. “It’s a crucial kind of crux where collaboration within our community of operators, and vendors, and the entire ecosystem of our members actually physically get together.”

The community labs are “very different” than other industry associations because TIP is determined to “make things work in lab settings,” said David del Val, CEO of research and development at Telefónica and a TIP board member. That framework provides a heightened level of confidence that TIP’s “proposals of open disaggregated systems” will actually work in live network deployments, he said.

“It works quite well because when you put together a bunch of engineers that want to make something together, magic happens,” del Val said. These labs begin by bringing participants together to determine the scope and expectations of what they want to achieve. Once the lab sources the necessary materials and the hardware arrives, all of the active members in the lab come together to start configuring to the specifications, he explained.

“When you see the expertise that the other operators have it’s very synergistic because they talk our same language and we appreciate each other very much what we know. It’s a new experience,” del Val said.

TIP’s OpenRAN initiative is considered the most mature of TIP’s projects as operators are deploying the specifications in the field. Vodafone last month announced that it started trialing the technology in the United Kingdom, and the operator already demonstrated the technology in South Africa and Turkey.

“We’re agnostic when it comes to the technologies that we incorporate in our project groups so when it comes to looking for a specification to create a product in the OpenRAN space we’ll look around to see if there’s something pre-existing,” Zani said.

“We are not at all defensive with anyone else,” he noted. “We’re not looking to own a space in any way so we’re open to working with 3GPP, ETSI, and other organizations to take a specification, work it through a set of requirements, and define a solution.” Once it’s tested in a lab, participants provide feedback to the writers of the specification to make necessary changes, he added. “ I think that process makes us a little different.”

Another more mature development is the DCSG group within the Open Optical Packet Transport group. Telefónica this week announced that it will be commercially deploying the technology at scale in Germany and one unnamed country. Five new lab trials are also on tap with Airtel, MTN, TIM Brasil, and Vodafone, according to TIP.

As TIP approaches its fourth year of existence, del Val noted that much of the work is still in the beginning stages. “The whole value chain, the whole technology stack of telcos needs innovation,” and that requires momentum on access, transport, operations, and support, he said.

“I think we need to continue working for a few years until we have this ambition of a fully disaggregated network from end to end where innovation really happens at the speed it is happening in other areas of computing or elsewhere in the internet,” del Val said.

To that end, TIP announced a series of new project groups that aim to build new opportunities in WiFi, open cellular frameworks, Open RAN 5G NR, vRAN fronthaul, open box microwaves, and non-terrestrial connectivity. TIP has also expanded its collaborative efforts with the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) to foster advancements on hardware (TIP’s primary focus) and software (ONF’s primary focus). The cross-alliance collaboration started earlier this year with a relatively narrow focus, but the organizations are now eyeing more expansive opportunities where their work intersects.

When Facebook announced the formation of TIP it was positioned as an expansion of its efforts in the Open Compute Project (OCP) but with an eye on telecom networks. Since then Facebook has faced elevated and sustained criticism about it business practices and policies. While those issues fall outside the purview of TIP or OCP, Facebook’s involvement raises questions about how members can compartmentalize the seemingly conflicting narratives.

Facebook is an “important member” of TIP and its role is as impactful as other top-tier members of TIP, Zani said. “I don’t see any problem at all relative to them being involved with TIP,” he said.

“For us, it’s quite positive that they are involved,” del Val said. “We are all big companies and we all face criticism at some point or another. So ... that’s part of being a big company.”

He added: “Facebook is now undergoing some, you know, public scrutiny but from the point of view of the work that we do at TIP that’s not an issue.”