Multivendor networks came a big step closer last year when the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), one of the most important open source initiatives in the telecoms world, announced its Open Mobile Evolved Core (OMEC) platform at Mobile World Congress. Now, it has a commercial deployer, in the shape of T-Mobile Poland, the first carrier to go public with a “production-grade” evolved packet core (EPC) based on OMEC. The operator is following what is likely to become a common pattern in open networks – deploying OMEC not in its main mobile broadband network, but to support a new service, fixed wireless (which it labels ‘fixed mobile substitution). As with proprietary virtualized EPCs (vEPCs), it is seen as lower risk to deploy…