During the initial 5G deployment phase, the roll-out of 5G NR services will require an upgrade of the existing mobile networks with respect to the capacity, speed, and latency requirements. Fixed-wireless access solutions are expected to be deployed to specific areas as an alternative or complementary technology concerning FTTH. New products and solutions will be developed together with customers to gain deeper insights into the demands of specific industry verticals and to leverage the unique capabilities of 5G and Edge Cloud.
In parallel, many areas will be continuously evolving concerning adjacent technologies such as LTE-A Pro, software and cloudification of networks. Platforms like NFV, SDN, fixed-mobile convergence will also further evolve, as well as automation (management & orchestration), big data analytics and artificial intelligence.
The 5G vision and deployment build in this broader context to ensure a consistent overall 5G perspective. It is based on two distinct but closely related pillars, 5G Technology Evolution, and 5G Innovation.
5G Technology evolution
The new 5G network architecture needs to evolve towards a distributed, cloud-based production model. This model can use commodity “white label” hardware and a virtualization middleware with relevant network and service functions deployed as software on-top. Already today, technologies such as Edge Cloud, NFV/SDN, Software-Defined Access, or Cloud RAN are gaining more relevance.
The most significant advantage of a cloud, software-based service architecture is the possibility to quickly deploy, monitor, scale and complete related functions. This should be achieved in a highly automated way together with other tasks along the product lifecycle such as testing and integration. Both flexibility and automation have a tremendous impact on time-to-market, quality, efficiency, and adaptability towards consumer demand.
Establishing the virtual platform
The future networks will continue to deliver enriched connectivity services towards consumer and enterprise customers. New offered solutions will be built using the advanced capabilities provided by the distributed infrastructure and additional enhanced software-based enablers. Examples of those enablers include Network Slicing, precise positioning, low latency computing, AR/VR platform functions, managed quality of service, and provisioning and billing-related capabilities.
To allow solutions to be developed efficiently, it is critical that these enablers can be re-used flexibly and efficiently. This will be achieved by a modular, microservice-based architecture of relevant network components and platforms which expose their respective functionality via well-defined APIs to requested solutions. The portfolio of facilitators, which can be considered as a virtual digital platform, needs to evolve over time to meet future demands. This modular service-based architecture will support the separation of specific functionalities and allow re-use by other solutions in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
5G Mobile Operators need to ensure that such a virtual digital platform will satisfy the demands of innovative products and solutions in terms of availability, quality, cost, and effectiveness of use. Their portfolio should build a virtual platform upon which solutions are developed. This will also need to include developer tools, SDKs, shared development, and test environments to make the productivity more effective and improve speed to market for the new 5G solutions. These developer tools and SDKs should also have a degree of commonality across the industry with open source software gaining ground to support this approach.
5G Innovation benefits
The needs of consumers and different industry sectors are highly diverse and extremely demanding. Hence, Telecom Operators will not be able to develop from day one sufficient expertise and resources to satisfy all market requirements for 5G products and solutions. 5G Operators will be able to identify and implement the most use cases, but they will not be able to support at once all opportunities enabled by the 5G ecosystem.
Therefore, it is imperative for a 5G Operator to select and drive those solutions generating the highest value for the end users. Customer expectations towards costs, time-to-market, quality, and agility will be met based only by leading technology, providing modular and re-usable enablers, and combined with a highly automated lifecycle.
Still, 5G roll-out will require massive investments to meet growing traffic and capacity demands. Regulatory obligations should also be taken into account concerning geographical and population coverage, speed, latency constraints, and installation requirements. It will be more than challenging for the selected new 5G products and solutions built by the Telecom Industry to generate the needed revenue and margin growth.
At the same time, visibility is needed to the additional 5G use cases and solutions of scale to systematically fill the revenue gap. Therefore, new and innovative approaches to capitalize on the 5G network assets are crucial for the substantial development of 5G systems.
