WOW considers expanding NFV trials beyond biz services

Having announced field testing of Juniper Networks’ Cloud CPE network virtualization product in its business services division in late September, WOW is already contemplating the expansion of its NFV efforts into the residential realm. 

"The next 12 months is going to be learning and refining what we're doing and how we're doing it, and then my hope is that at that point we're full speed ahead around more than just business services," Eric Fligel, VP of engineering for WOW, told Light Reading. "I would expect over the course of the next 24 to 36 months to really see significant change from an infrastructure standpoint.

"Business services is getting a lot of the press and maybe some of the buzz, but I think it's much more than that ... It's really more the evolution of just the network in general," he added. 

RELATED: WOW field testing Juniper Networks NFV solution

Cloud CPE includes the Contrail cloud platform, Contrail service orchestration and vSRX virtual firewall. It gives broadband operators the ability to provide a portfolio of hosted services on-demand, including security, voice, Wi-Fi and software-defined networking (SDN).

WOW is currently deploying the virtualization product over its existing network infrastructure for business services, which presents a number of challenges, Fligel told Light Reading. 

"We have a major deployment of another vendor for our business services network infrastructure, and one of the key things for us was being able to programmatically and systematically orchestrate and provision across that equipment as well,” he said.