Scaling openness: a live discussion with TIP

As networks become more software-driven, the challenge isn’t building open systems. It is scaling them.

On this week’s Zero-Touch Live, Rakuten Symphony CMO Geoff Hollingworth spoke with Kristian Toivo, executive director of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), about what it takes to take openness from promise to production. They also covered why Rakuten Symphony has joined TIP to help accelerate these collaborative efforts.

📺 Watch the full replay now below.

Progressing from paper to production

Kristian described TIP’s evolution into an outcomes-driven community focused on commercially deployable results, with operators and vendors now collaborating on tested solutions versus theoretical frameworks.

“We’re proving that openness works. Not just in labs, but in live, deployable systems.”

The conversation dove into several areas where openness is already delivering tangible results, including:

• Transport, where open optical modules like Phoenix are already shipping and demonstrating how disaggregation delivers real-world efficiency.
• RAN, as open fronthaul and multi-vendor integration are proven as focus turns toward orchestration across mixed-generation networks.
• OpenWiFi, which is benefiting from an open-source software stack and cloud controller that is enabling flexible enterprise and MDU deployments globally.

A model for openness at scale

TIP’s collaborative workstreams are setting a model for how openness scales through horizontal cooperation, shared validation and results that reach the field. Geoff noted this pragmatic approach as a key reason Rakuten Symphony joined the expanding efforts.

“It’s not about alignment on paper, it’s about outcomes that ship.”

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