{"id":19156,"date":"2019-06-24T17:45:04","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T12:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.subex.com\/?p=19156"},"modified":"2019-06-24T17:45:04","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T12:15:04","slug":"5g-disrupting-communications-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.enki.studio\/test\/?p=19156","title":{"rendered":"Not just another \u201cG\u201d, how 5G is Already Disrupting the Communications Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the early days of any transformative technology, there\u2019s often an interesting mix of hype, anticipation and confusion.\u00a0 At risk of exposing my long tenure in telecom, I\u2019ll ask if anyone else recalls ISDN?\u00a0 In a 1994 article<\/a> in the Los Angeles Times, the author presciently said that ISDN \u201cis the first thing that’s going to come along that begins to give people a taste of what the future will be like.\u201d\u00a0 For those of us on the inside (I was at MCI at the time), ISDN stood for \u201cI Still Don\u2019t Know\u201d<\/em>!<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2019 and what\u2019s different is not only the technical advances themselves, but the pace of disruptive change.\u00a0 And yes, there is still confusion.\u00a0 If you have an AT&T phone in the US, and have noticed a 5G E<\/a><\/em> symbol, you know what I\u2019m talking about.\u00a0 But hey, this is not a post about confusion (that would be too easy for me).\u00a0 I\u2019d like to focus on 5G disruptions, but not the disruptions that you have likely heard about.<\/p>\n

The \u201cdisruptions\u201d that come to mind for many industry observers when it comes to 5G are faster speeds, significantly lower latencies, a dense communications matrix for IOT, mmBand spectrum, etc.\u00a0 Sure, there will be many headline benefits from 5G.\u00a0 What I find more intriguing about 5G is its role as a catalyst for change reaching far beyond the radio network.\u00a0 Let\u2019s briefly explore some of these.<\/p>\n

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Interested in knowing more about Capacity Management for future networks?<\/span><\/p>\n

Download the webinar recording<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The whole world is starting to look like a data center<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 Historically, operator networks are full of dedicated telecom equipment rack-mounted in central offices, wire centers, and customer points-of-presence.\u00a0 This contrasts with Web scale companies like Amazon, FB and Google who operate their networks from vast data centers full of commoditized hardware.\u00a0 There will come a time soon when the two worlds merge, and 5G is helping to accelerate this.\u00a0 A couple of key influences are 5G edge clouds and the emerging popularity of cloud-native applications.\u00a0 These are prompting operators to rethink their networks and where they locate compute, storage and network equipment to enable the super low latencies of 5G.\u00a0 Under the auspices of ONF, there is an project called CORD<\/a> (Central Office Re-architected as a Data center) and the sub-project M-CORD<\/a> which are loci for 5G virtualization and cloud-based initiatives like vRAN and vEPC.<\/p>\n

“Where ever you are on your 5G journey, Subex is an essential partner to help you plan, operate, secure and optimize your network.\u00a0 Our solutions will grow with you and guide you into the more open and automated future network.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Open everything<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 Speaking of open source, 5G and open source software are tightly intertwined.\u00a0 I recently attended the Linux Foundation Open Networking Summit<\/a> and many of the sessions were devoted to community projects focused on establishing 5G infrastructure and enabling 5G use cases.\u00a0 At the recent Big 5 Event in Denver<\/a>, the first day was devoted to an open source track.\u00a0 5G is the engine behind many early implementations of SDN and NFV.\u00a0 \u201cOpen\u201d doesn\u2019t just mean software\u2014so called \u201cwhite boxes<\/a>\u201d start as bare metal hardware with operator or community-sourced software & firmware that turn them into routers or CPE or even ROADMs!\u00a0 Why this trend?\u00a0 Operators are looking to community-driven innovation to accelerate delivery of advanced use cases, lower costs and avoid vendor lock-in.<\/p>\n

Start with use cases<\/strong> \u2013 Well, that\u2019s a novel concept!\u00a0 With 3G and 4G, there were clear expectations that simply enabling faster and more reliable mobile data would lead to various applications which leveraged that data.\u00a0 The industry has taken a different approach to 5G.\u00a0 At the Denver Big 5G Event, Ibrahim Gedeon, TELUS CTO, described 5G as \u201cthe first \u2018G\u2019 to be driven by use cases\u201d.\u00a0 These include AR\/VR for factories, industrial automation, massive IOT sensing, connected cars and telemedicine.\u00a0 5G is creating a rich mobile communications fabric with various speed and latency requirements that align with the specific needs of each use case. \u00a0Network slicing is another buzz-worthy aspect of 5G that allows operators to allocate portions of their networks to specific customers and use cases.<\/p>\n

Break it apart, then put it back together<\/strong> \u2013 In industry parlance, this is called disaggregation and convergence.\u00a0 Step 1:<\/em> Take key network functions like PCRF, HSS and MME and peel them from the monolithic platforms on which they are currently hosted.\u00a0 Step 2:<\/em> Apply NFV to virtualize the functions into VNFs and make them portable. Step 3:<\/em> Host the VNFs within converged platforms like COMAC<\/a>, which is an ONF project that combines mobile, access and core networks under one umbrella.\u00a0 This is part of a broader industry trend to package many telco functions and infrastructure components into massive all-in-one platforms.\u00a0 Another good example, of course, is ONAP<\/a>.\u00a0 For many of these initiatives, the race to enable 5G is a driving force.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve only scratched the surface of network and software trends that are precipitating extraordinary change in the communications industry.\u00a0 The world is becoming more complex, not less.\u00a0 Each promising new innovation usually has unforeseen issues that can increase costs and pose operational challenges.\u00a0 Early NFV implementations<\/a> offer such a cautionary tale.\u00a0 Where ever you are on your 5G journey, Subex is an essential partner to help you plan, operate, secure and optimize your network.\u00a0 Our solutions will grow with you and guide you into the more open and automated future network.<\/p>\n

As for ISDN, I guess we do know<\/em> now.\u00a0 It really did help usher in the modern data-driven era.<\/p>\n

To understand more on capacity management for future networks!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Download the webinar recording<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the early days of any transformative technology, there\u2019s often an interesting mix of hype, anticipation and confusion.\u00a0 At risk of exposing my long tenure in telecom, I\u2019ll ask if anyone else recalls ISDN?\u00a0 In a 1994 article in the Los Angeles Times, the author presciently said that ISDN \u201cis the first thing that’s going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19163,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[240],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5g"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.enki.studio\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.enki.studio\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.enki.studio\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.enki.studio\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.enki.studio\/test\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.enki.studio\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.enki.studio\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.enki.studio\/test\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.enki.studio\/test\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.enki.studio\/test\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}