- RtBrick said network disaggregation adoption is stymied by lack of skills and operator confidence
- RtBrick is trying to help operators gain confidence with a try-before-you-buy approach
- Deutsche Telekom is RtBrick’s largest customer, but the vendor is also seeing growing disaggregation interest from smaller ISPs
The idea of fully disaggregating hardware from software is appealing for many telcos, but lack of skill in managing such networks is a big adoption barrier, according to RtBrick.
RtBrick Strategy VP Richard Brandon told Fierce the problem is more human than technical, stemming from a “concern of skill shortages” as well as lack of leadership support to move disaggregation forward.
“People [are] conservative you know and they’ve got their jobs at stake. They’re used to having one place to go and point a finger if there’s an issue,” he said, adding the industry – and consumers in general – are accustomed to “consuming stuff in one way.” While RtBrick focuses on disaggregation for edge routing, specifically the Broadband Network Gateway (BNG), Brandon's comments echoed those made about one of the key challenges around open RAN in the wireless market.
Brandon likened disaggregation to selling a TV operating system to a customer and then telling them they have to buy the screen from another vendor. It’s no surprise people can be “a bit uncomfortable” with the concept.
That’s why RtBrick this month launched a free trial of its disaggregated routing software as a virtual machine. “You don’t need to buy the hardware to test it. You can run it in this virtual environment, you can figure out whether your APIs will work and you can get some confidence in it,” he said.
Telco interest in disaggregation has steadily rose in the last two years. Analysys’ Mason’s 2025 Open Network Index found 36% of operators have a strategy for adopting open network architecture, up from 22% in 2024. Roughly 62% are either working on or planning an open operating model, which the firm said is often more challenging to implement than open architecture.
Analysys Mason also noted many operators are struggling to develop the skills required to tackle open network operations, much like they are with regards to company AI adoption.
RtBrick’s largest customer is Deutsche Telekom, one of the first Tier 1 operators to express interest in network disaggregation. DT has rolled out disaggregated software to nearly all of its 900 central offices in Germany, said RtBrick CTO Hannes Gredler, noting that software helped DT’s provisioning flow, network telemetry and can support AI/ML applications in the network.
“Essentially [it’s about] trying to optimize two dimensions at the same time, both capex and opex strength,” said Gredler.
Other operators considered disaggregation frontrunners are AT&T and Comcast, with both using DriveNets to transition their core networks to cloud-native architecture. But it’s not just the big guys who are interested in disaggregation. RtBrick has “quite a few” small, regional ISP customers that typically only have about tens of thousands of subscribers, Brandon said.
“We thought they’d look at it and go no, we definitely want the whole turnkey system, but actually they’ve been early adopters for us as well,” he said. Regional customers include Austrian ISP CityNet and German operator WOBCOM.
Perhaps the reason smaller ISPs are so interested in disaggregation is because “they’re not as well serviced by the big vendors” and “they’ve got more skill sets to pull everything together because they don’t have such a big operation,” said Brandon.
This story was updated to clarify CityNet is an Austrian ISP and that WOBCOM is another one of RtBrick's regional ISP customers.
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