Telefonica and Cisco have joined forces to set up an advanced testing platform to jointly explore and capitalise on the benefits of converged IP and optical networks.

Both companies aim at improving efficiency and cost savings by unifying the planning, management and engineering of optical network layers and IP network layers thanks to the convergence of IP and optical networks with IETF standards.

Over the next two years, Telefonica and Cisco will be jointly using Cisco’s WAN Automation Engine software which automates and optimises the WAN network, provisioning flexible SLAs and creating a better user experience. Telefonica will be leveraging the Cisco Open Network Architecture comprised of the Evolved Services Platform (ESP) and Evolved Programmable Network (EPN), combining both hardware and software and including virtual network fuctions (NFV), software-defined networking and advanced orchestration functionality.

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