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Colt Technology Services and Proximus recently announced they have collaborated to trial a new proof of concept designed to enhanced carrier to carrier automation.
During the trial, the companies successfully provisioned network services between the UK and Belgium, enabled by Proximus' new Wholesale E-Access service and Colt's on-demand Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform. This allowed NaaS-to-NaaS control using a programmatic application programming interface (API) API-to-API interface between the separate network architectures, proving that software defined network managed services can be set up across multiple networks in an automated way. They can also be managed and flexed in near-real time.
Colt and Proximus trial
The trial between Colt and Proximus was based on the MEF Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) Sonata Business APIs designed to streamline and enhance carrier-to-carrier automation. MEF is a non-profit industry forum made up of 191 different global network, cloud, and technology providers collaborating to define new NaaS offerings. Together, the members develop standards, certifications, and APIs that accelerate automation and empower enterprise digital transformation throughout the ecosystem.
MEF LSO Sonata Business creates a service-agnostic approach for inter-provider service automation that can be adopted and replicated across all carriers. The capability will increase further collaboration across service providers in the industry and will benefit not only the service providers but will also be beneficial to customers with quicker implementation and reducing provisioning errors.
MEF providers who have adopted this API framework include Verizon, Orange, Telia, Zayo, PCCW and Lumen.
A digital ecosystem
For Proximus, MEF’s E-access is a key step towards a digital ecosystem enabling end-to-end NaaS and becoming a full digital service provider, with the ability to add extra features such as universal customer premises equipment and virtual network functions.
Colt, will see benefits such as reducing delivery times and creating a more connected customer experience for its customers.
This isn’t the first application programming interface (API) partnership for Colt. It was one of the first to partner with AT&T to provide its business customers the ability to place automated orders for Colts ethernet services.
AT&T customers were also able to validate site addresses, check service availability, get a quote, and place automated orders on Colt’s network which saw improvement in ordering times.
The use of API capabilities has been developing in the telecommunications sector now for some years and is gaining momentum.