The Rise of Virtual CPE
1/27/2015As NFV strategies evolve from tests and trials to production telco networks, expect to hear a lot about virtual CPE (customer premises equipment) rollouts during 2015.
As NFV strategies evolve from tests and trials to production telco networks, expect to hear a lot about virtual CPE (customer premises equipment) rollouts during 2015.
Yes, that is definitely an additional benefit. I stayed at a high level with my original comments. But we implemented a variety of scenarios for vCPE including modular, dynamic, downloadable/removable/upgradeable:
- diagnostics/operations tools and functions
- application related functions (example: home energy management, ehealth, etc.)
- home network monitoring/management functions (as you describe)
But one of the critical factors is the firmware/software architecture on the CPE to support this kind of modular, dynamic software environment that is envisioned with NFV (i.e. in my view, NFV in the CPE/network edge is not just about removing some functions from the CPE like NAT or firewall and running on general purpose servers at the edge, but is also about using the processing capacity and network/connected functionality of the CPE as an extension of the network edge server capacity).
1. capex (scalabilty, cost savings, etc.)
2. opex (efficiency improvements, cost savings, etc.)
3. service velocity and agility (time to market for new services or feature/function improvements for existing services)
Plus vCPE allows SPs to deploy NFV in a somewhat isolated, limited, controlled portion of their networks and operations. This reduces the broad range of downstream, upstream and sidestream implications or accompanying changes that would have to be handled in parallel along with the vCPE deployment itself as compared to deployment of NFV in other aspects of their networks.