With the impetus and significant funding from more heavyweight operators, prpl Foundation is accelerating delivery of the carrier-grade Open-Source stack for Broadband CPE, prplWare, for release by year-end.
prplWare is an Open-Source stack that harmonises Broadband CPE interfaces with Open Standard APIs, serving as base implementation for Operator CPE firmware. This software stack drives the deployment of In-Home Services such as Wi-Fi Alliance’s EasyMesh standard or Broadband Forum USP.
It also comprises a Hybrid Application Environment also named Life Cycle Management (LCM) for enhanced and flexible field operations to implement App Store with the paradigm of “write once, deploy many” and software architecture based on containers. To accomplish this, prplWare offers standardised high-level APIs based on Broadband Forum standards (e.g. TR-369, TR-181) and a first version of low-level API for easier App deployment and easy portability.
This approach offers multiple advantages such as better quality, room for innovation at the application level or operational benefits, for example, the ability to maintain critical services during software updates.
Together, the prpl Foundation membership have committed funding to deliver the prplWare roadmap with bi-monthly milestones and a significant new release at the end of 2021. This new release will be used by operators for their next-generation devices. SoftAtHome, with over a decade of experience in CPE software, was chosen as the primary code developer and code maintainer for prplWare.
prpl Foundation, the community-driven consortium dedicated to harmonising home network architecture, will accelerate service provider capabilities. Its 40 worldwide members contribute to work programs delivering open-source reference implementations of common infrastructure. The prpl Foundation welcomes new members to collaborate with the open-source CPE community.
Dr. Leonard Dauphinee, prpl Foundation president, explains, “Our members are playing a vital role in overcoming home networking challenges much more quickly than if they tried to achieve this alone. It is critical to have a community driven by operators in the software stack addressing common challenges in the home network. A standard framework for a carrier-grade software stack matches the needs of CSPs that also enables them to differentiate services and add software onto it as required,”
As end-user expectations continue to rise, the momentum of meshing and orchestrating devices in the home will accelerate innovative hybrid features leveraging both the Cloud and embedded software.
Comment on this article below or via Twitter: @IoTNow_OR @jcIoTnow
