Today, competitive, customer and regulatory pressures are pushing operators to squeeze every last bit of performance out of their existing copper infrastructures. New digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies such as G.fast put bit rates of 100 Mbps up to 1 Gbps within reach to help operators dramatically improve bandwidth and coverage.
However, adding new access technologies to increase ultra-broadband availability increases operational complexity.
Software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) help operators take advantage of higher-speed access technologies while controlling complexity and costs. Nokia's answer to introduce principles of SDN and NFV is software-defined access networks (SDAN), which enables operators to make smarter decisions and improve network performance. SDAN decouples select access network functions from their associated hardware so the network can be programmed and controlled centrally from the cloud. This approach allows operators to use remote configuration and intelligent automation to accelerate deployments of new access technologies and simplify management complexity.