CenturyLink Buys Networking Assets From Active Broadband Networks

**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting mergers in March-April 2016.**

CenturyLink has acquired “certain strategic assets” of the company formerly known as Active Broadband Networks, a provider of software-based broadband networking.

CenturyLink said the purchase will help accelerate efforts to automate its network, move network functions into the cloud, and deliver software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) services to its customers.

Bill Corbin, CenturyLink’s senior vice president of strategic partnerships and channel operations, tells Channel Partners that more automation within CenturyLink’s network will bring services into the market much faster, “which is a key benefit for our partners.”

“Our partners will be able to consume and engage their customers in our network services in a similar way customers consume any cloud service, via robust APIs and portals,” he said. “CenturyLink’s transformation to a software-defined network will allow us to virtualize network functions and more quickly deploy services through our partners. Anything we do to improve CenturyLink’s services benefits our channel partners as it enhances the customer experience for their end users.”

CenturyLink is not acquiring any partners with the Active Broadband Networks asset purchase, Corbin said.

The telco giant announced its network virtualization strategy in October 2015 and is building an end-to-end network platform with SDN and NFV capabilities to deliver a self-service application with on-demand services.{ad}

“This acquisition provides us with people and technology resources that will help us continue to develop and implement our platform strategy and integrate SDN and NFV technology into our network,” said Aamir Hussain, CenturyLink’s executive vice president and chief technology officer. “Moving services into the cloud, particularly at the network edge, is essential as we continue to focus on providing our customers with a wide variety of virtualized network functions that help them more effectively manage their business.”

Earlier this month, Volaris Group announced that it had acquired Active Broadband Networks’ operations support systems (OSS) services business.