Everything you always wanted to know about the prpl Foundation, its organisation and its deliverables
The prpl Foundation is an open source community. If you want to understand its goals, organization, technical details and long term objectives, you are in the right place
The prpl Foundation is an open-source, community-driven, collaborative, non-profit organisation. It serves to foster innovation and speed up the time-to-market for broadband operator solutions designed for the connected home.
Our diverse ecosystem – which includes everything from chipset vendors to service providers – is bridging the gaps between the large number of technologies found today, including the different generations of Home Gateways/Customer Premises Equipment (CPE), chipsets and software platforms to transform operator-driven Internet Home Gateways into an easy-to-deploy and easy-to-manage Service Platform. The prpl Foundation delivers the bedrock for future innovation.
By bringing companies from across the embedded device ecosystem together, the prpl Foundation ensures greater collaboration, standardization and an open source platform within the industry. Through a united framework that includes standardized Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Certification programs, operators can enable greater scope for innovation for end users and the entire industry.
Our members are titans within their respective industries, meaning we are in the best position to understand the needs of the sector. Our members are Broadband Operators, chipset makers, CPE providers, and Software vendors. We continue to welcome new members from across the ecosystem to ensure our approach is to the benefit of all.
At the heart of prpl lies a collaborative culture of creativity, problem solving, and a desire for interoperability across all platforms. We are challenging the boundaries found in a proprietary landscape and facilitating a new environment where innovation thrives.
The prpl Foundation thrives on overcoming new challenges and supporting new opportunities for innovation. Our Working Groups’ passion and consistent workflow ensures the common software baseline we have developed will support the digital society of the future.
The prpl Foundation has seven work groups which are set up to develop and deliver specific projects. Governance of these Working Groups comes from the Steering Committees and Board of Directors. There is also a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) which is the executive forum tasked to execute all technical aspects of projects and initiatives approved by Prpl’s Board of Directors (BoD) and formalised and discussed by the Product Steering Committee (PSC). There is also a Marketing Committee in charge of promoting the activities of the Foundation.
Open source solutions require less front-end investment, and can ensure faster project starts, more flexible development processes, and greater community support. Members and developers can all have their say on developments to ensure all devices remain interoperable, reducing the number of commoditized proprietary solutions on the market. The support provided by prpl’s open source-devoted community can also ensure faster time-to-market for innovative products and services.
An open API, also called a public API, is an application programming interface made publicly available to software developers. Open APIs are published on the internet and shared freely, allowing the owner of a network-accessible service to give universal access to consumers. Low-level APIs are utilized for easy portability on new chipsets, while high-level APIs are for service portability.
prplOS software sits in between a high-level API (service layer) and low-level API (hardware layer). prplOS takes all the requirements from the operators and then solutions are found to implement those requirements in a way that is feasible, which in essence is a software stack.
prplOS is supporting in speeding up the time to market as this is gathering all the individual requirements from operators and implementing them into an open-source mode. prplOS is combined with prplMesh and LCM to create prplWare
The prplMesh software stack is an open-source implementation that normalises the Wi-Fi management stack both at the hardware level (low level API) and at the service level (High level API). It enables the customization of specific Wi-Fi services, so end-users or Operators can choose any smart Wi-Fi application, adding value and enabling them to select the most suitable services.
prplLCM is a platform-independent solution that enables Service Providers to securely manage the individual life cycles of containerized software components. Orchestration of apps and microservices can be managed from the cloud via industry-standardized tools such as Broadband Forum USP. prplLCM opensource solution is working on prplWare and RDK-B.
prplWare is enhanced open-source software designed to comprehensively integrate all prpl Foundation components within a single, unified solution. Capable of running on all of prpl’s reference hardware platforms, prplWare’s open-source nature embodies the full value and ethos of what the Foundation offers.
Certification is a critical process for verifying that APIs remain stable and services are delivered in the same way between different certified devices. The prpl Foundation provides a certification plan test for automated certification. Certification results are reviewed by the prpl Foundation Certification Review Committee. The certification program enables CPEs to run any prpl certified application.
In 2023, prpl laid the foundation for a high-level API platform that will allow a standardized management of containers. This means that an application operating on a network can be containerized and put on the platform using the same standardised APIs. They have developed a system with LCM, high-level APIs, and containerization that enables the quick porting of applications.
Demos featuring the prplOS and prplware integrated hardware, which will enable all the necessary components, were showcased at last year’s prpl Summit in Paris. Later, in October, Bitdefender demonstrated the integration work that allowed them to port this application to entirely new hardware in just 24 hours.
Last year, prpl successfully launched a long-time planned program for prpl owned reference boards. SoC vendors and solutions providers have responded well to this program. They have since delivered first designs and have now moved onto designing new boards with new technologies. On the deployment side, prpl is currently largely deployed with its prplWare version for instance on Orange networks (Jordan or Morocco) or its prplMesh instances in different countries.
In the coming years, we expect to see significant advancements in the field of application environments, alongside the management and maintenance of the ecosystem. It will be prpl’s mission to remain at the forefront of Access – whether this will be 10G, 25G, or beyond – while accommodating the growing trend towards Artificial Intelligence (AI). With prplWare expected to become commonplace in the future, we will also make sure the portability of the solution is increased, enabling more people to use the solution.
The prpl Foundation’s Working Groups are currently working on a number of developments for the wider industry. We are already seeing prpl reference platforms being upgraded to cover advancements in Wi-Fi, including Wi-Fi 7. As this technology advances, prpl will look to enable a Wi-Fi 7 Multi-AP ecosystem using both prplOS, prplMesh, and RDK-B. Application development is a focus of the prplLCM working group, paving the way to service innovation for Operators. This ecosystem will also be able to support current advancements seen in the realm of GPON embracing XGSPON.