AT&T and Colt are claiming a significant breakthrough in next-generation service development with the news that they have achieved SDN interoperability.

The two operators have tested and trialed what they describe as a "standard application programming interface (API) infrastructure" that enables SDN architectures from different network service providers to interoperate.

The official announcement is confirmation of the Light Reading report from October 12, when Colt Technology Services Group Ltd discussed the development but did not identify its partner (though SDN community talk suggested it was AT&T). (See Colt Boasts Multi-Operator SDN Service Breakthrough.)

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) regards SDN interoperability as critical to its service development plans. Talking today at the MEF16 event in Baltimore, Josh Goodell, vice president of AT&T Network On Demand, said that federating SDN services is critical to the giant operator, as its enterprise customers increasingly expect services to be rolled out globally, not just across the US.

Goodell pointed to SDN federation as "an area we believe there is going to be a lot of opportunity, by taking the value proposition we have within our own footprint and expanding it outward."

The AT&T exec included SDN federation in a trifecta of things the industry needs to tackle in order to fully exploit SDN and NFV capabilities for the development of new services, with the other two being a better VNF-onboarding process, and open universal CPE to support virtualized functions at the edge.

— Ray Le Maistre, , Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading