Openet: NFV based PCC Deployment by NA Tier1 (AT&T?)

Openet announced that a ".. Tier 1 North American wireless operator successfully deployed Openet Policy Manager in a virtualized environment to support 2G, 3G and 4G LTE networks. The deployment supports more than one million transactions per second and aligns with the operator’s goal to adopt architecture consistent with network functions virtualization (NFV). Openet has incorporated substantial features within its latest policy engine to maximize the benefits of a virtualized network solution, with virtual Policy installations in over 10 datacenters serving more than 100 million customers".

So what is the difference between a "traditional" policy server software and NFV-based implantation? Openet marketing explains:

"It’s true that bare metal Openet Policy Manager deployments support COTs hardware. What’s new is the abstraction of hardware and software, such that Openet Policy manager instances can be deployed from anywhere in the operator’s network, data center or end-user premises, without the need to interrupt services, perform manual integration with existing systems, or install new or additional hardware. All these are benefits of NFV, though PCRF virtualization is of course but one step toward full NFV". 

As for the anonymous customer - among Openet's North American customers are Bell Canada (see "Bell Canada Uses Openet, NSN and ALU for Shared Data Plans" - here) and Telus (see "Telus  Selected Openet" - here).

AT&T wireless with its 109M subscribers (end of Q3, 2013)  is often mentioned by company's executives (see "Openet - Why AT&T Changed its IPad Service plans?" - here), although never announced publicly.

My readers may speculate if the ambiguous statement above ("over 10 datacenters serving more than 100 million customers') refers to AT&T or not.

See also "AT&T Tests Openet & Cisco for LTE: Session based Pricing, Speed Tiers" - here.

See "Tier 1 North American Carrier Selects Openet for World’s First Virtualized Policy Solution" - here.