Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG are among the six leading carriers that joined the Open Compute Project this week in a bid to extend its mission of improving data center efficiency to the telecommunications sector. Their work will be coordinated under the umbrella of a dedicated sub-program with the dual objective of developing new low-cost equipment and rallying the vendor community behind the effort.

The OCP Telco Project is a natural extension of the separate internal initiatives that the providers launched in recent years to replace the expensive proprietary gear currently powering their networks. Verizon Inc. reportedly started moving towards commodity switches in 2014, while AT&T revealed a few months ago that large sections of its environment already rely on homegrown hardware assembled by white-label manufacturers. The four other carriers in the program all have all been working on similar projects for some quite some time.

The main motivator behind the trend is the need to address the growing bandwidth requirements of wireless devices, which are expected to generate twice as much traffic as desktops and other traditional end-points in 2019. A large portion will come from emerging types of connected electronics like smart appliances that present the added challenge of varying communications patterns. Some continuously transmit data in real-time, while others only interact with the outside world occasionally, a factor that is raising the need for entirely new broadband networks.

The hardware produced as part of the OCP Telco Project will provide the backbone of that future infrastructure if its six founding carriers have their way. The group is set to receive the help of Equinix Inc. and networking consultancy Nexius Solutions Inc., which become Open Compute members in conjunction with the launch of the initiative to support its mission. The number of external backers will likely expand considerably over time as more vendors move to capitalize on the opportunity.

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