AT&T has been the most dogged exponent of open source and commodity technology in the carrier network, from management and orchestration software to the boxes themselves. In recent months, it has revealed results of its multiyear tests of white box routers and switches, which could transform the capex and opex costs of its networks and allow it to build truly multivendor systems. Now the telco says it will go ahead with a deployment of 60,000 white box routers, to be installed in its cell towers “over the next several years”. That would equate to about one router per cell site (AT&T has 60,000 towers and 5,000 central offices). Andre Fuetsch, its CTO, and president of AT&T Labs, said in a…