Rebuilding Network Orchestration for 2 Million Users at 100x Lower Operating Cost

At Deutsche Telekom, EnCoCo helped shape a self-maintaining network platform for FTTH and FTTB connections across millions of households. The technical challenge was substantial, but the more immediate problem was that the product vision was fragmented and the team lacked a shared direction.

Rather than stay confined to architecture, EnCoCo helped define and own the vision, align business goals with technical execution, and shape a plug-and-play, cost-efficient SDN platform built around Kubernetes on the edge, with cloud control components where they added leverage.

EnCoCo guided a diverse team of more than 15 engineers, from senior developers to junior hires and working students. Through mentoring structures, role-specific roadmaps, and regular design and review sessions, the team evolved from reactive execution into a more autonomous engineering organization.

On the technical side, the platform was rebuilt as a microservice-based architecture using Java, Go, and Rust, replacing the legacy monolith. Combined with Kubernetes orchestration on edge nodes and a split between latency-sensitive edge services and cloud control logic, this reduced complexity, improved scalability, and drove a 100x reduction in operational cost.

EnCoCo also created a plug-and-play onboarding system with hardware auto-detection and configuration, cutting setup time from hours to under five minutes. In parallel, they coordinated with partner teams to standardize workflows, shorten sprint cycles, and reduce international integration issues, resulting in a platform and team both capable of operating at telecom scale.