AT&T IP domain goes to Cisco, ALU, Juniper — including the 4G core

AT&T (NYSE:T) is keeping its suppliers on their toes as it gradually reveals its domain strategy. Today it announced three — not the promised two — vendors for its wireline and wireless IP core and transport domain.

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU), Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR) will share the distinction of being the designated suppliers for AT&T’s future IP, Ethernet, MPLS and evolved packet core (EPC) equipment, though AT&T has repeatedly stressed being a domain vendor doesn’t necessarily guarantee network contracts.

The domain covers all of the equipment used to forward and route IP voice, data and video traffic across AT&T’s extensive collection of networks. That encompasses 880,000 route miles of fiber-optic cable, carrying an average 18.7 petabytes of traffic every business day. But the domain also includes AT&T’s future EPC, the central IP network linking the tens of thousands of long-term evolution (LTE) base stations in its planned 4G network. Typically wireline and wireless cores are kept distinct, but unifying them under a single domain may signal AT&T’s intent of creating a single core and transport network that links its disparate access technologies.

That approach could have dictated the vendors that AT&T ultimately selected for the domain. Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco routers already populate AT&T’s network, and in the case of Juniper and ALU, the same IP routers used to transport and aggregate wireline traffic are the same routers on which they’ve built their EPC functions. It’s possible that the same Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router platform could be used a multiple service router in AT&T’s U-verse IPTV network, as a IP router in AT&T’s wireline and wireless transport and backhaul networks, and as service gateway or packet data network gateway (P-gateway) in AT&T’s LTE EPC.

The odd man out in such a scenario is the largest IP vendor of them all, Cisco. While Cisco is maintaining a packet core portfolio built off its routers, its major presence in the EPC is through its recent acquisition of Starent Networks, which has developed a purpose-built set of gateways for 3G and 4G networks. Also, just because AT&T has named three vendors to handle the domain doesn’t mean all three vendors will supply equipment for each portion. Cisco and Juniper may be tasked to supply Ethernet, IP/MPLS gear, while Alcatel-Lucent supplies the EPC — or any of numerous combinations.

Alcatel-Lucent does appear to have an inside track with the 4G core, though, as AT&T named ALU as a radio domain vendor. Alcatel-Lucent will be able to supply an end-to-end solution from cell tower to P-gateway while the others will not.