Within a few years, networks running 5G technology will be offering a vast variety of connectivity services to people, organizations, industries and machines, all with widely differing needs. These networks will connect everything, from smart home devices to self-driving cars and industrial robots. This will open new opportunities for operators to win business in other, vertical sectors through fixed-mobile integration, digital content and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Markets will develop rapidly. Operators will need to be able to respond quickly to adapt their networks and businesses to new trends and service needs. Services with development and deployment times measured in months will no longer be viable. Networks must be able to support the roll out of services in days or even hours – matching and surpassing the IT industry’s best practices.
Networks must be able to efficiently support radically different and more complex business models to enable the operator to swiftly change from competing with OTT players to partnering with them and sharing their success – and revenues.
Core networks have changed dramatically in recent years, becoming cloud based with virtualization technology transforming conventional servers, functions and entire networks. This has brought significant benefits to operators in the shape of greater flexibility and lower costs. Yet, if increasingly diverse demands are to be supported, further core network transformation will be needed.
By storing all data, including subscriber and session data, in a separate Shared Data Layer (SDL), cloud-based virtualized network function (VNF) machines can become stateless. This means the VNFs no longer need to manage their own data and will run only the required service business logic, making them easier and faster to develop. Stateless VNFs substantially simplify networks by moving network functions to a generic layer, making the architecture far more flexible.
Simplifying the core network in this way will bring many benefits to operators.
They will be able to innovate faster, matching OTT innovation cycles, coupled with telco grade reliability as a key differentiator. An open ecosystem around the core network will allow greater flexibility for third party services to use operator infrastructure. Operators will enjoy potentially unlimited scale and elasticity to meet the needs of the largest next generation converged networks. And all this will come with substantially lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
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With the Shared Data Layer at its heart, the new cloud-native core network will give operators flexibility to ensure sustainable business in a rapidly changing world and gain from the increased demand for high performance connectivity.