The 5G core presents Communication Service Providers (CSPs) with a ready platform for innovation. Changes in software design, cloud-native architecture, and scalability for 5G core services can help CSPs achieve hyperscaler-like agility and capabilities. Simultaneously achieving improved network performance and better reliability seems like a tall order. Ultimately, innovation is the key to help CSPs monetize their investments while improving services, noted Mike Hawley, Nokia’s head of packet core research and development.
“The most important innovation are the ones that enable any new services to run, so CSP can profit from their investments,” said Hawley.
One key innovation involves a change to the consumption model of core services. CSPs migrating from on-premises facilities to the Software as a Service, or SaaS model can realize enormous savings. CSPs no longer must build out expensive infrastructure which goes underutilized, but still needs regular care and feeding to operate optimally. This switch from capital to operational expenses helps CSPs scale and tailor network services depending on demand, resource availability, and need.
“Here, network software will be operated by Nokia and hosted on public clouds, releasing CSPs from network operations activities like upgrades, expansions and maintenance,” said Hawley.
Core networks are highly complicated yet must operate with resilience and rock-solid reliability. Adopting the SaaS model for core deployments enables CSPs to simplify their network implementation and operations, moving away from customized, siloed software deployment running on costly and complex on-premises infrastructure. With less focus on managing core services, CSPs can direct resources to develop new business opportunities and qualitative improvements to the end user experience to provide more value. CSPs can use SaaS to speed services to market on-demand, enabling faster time to value for new network services.
Network slicing presents another key innovational concept for the 5G core. 5G network slicing enables CSPs to tailor specific service characteristics for specific customers – “mini-networks,” as Hawley describes them, each with dedicated profiles designed to support unique service level agreements (SLAs) depending on the customer’s specific needs. Slices can be custom-designed and programmable for different services.
“5G network slicing enables connectivity with deterministic characteristics for bandwidth, latency and security. A slice’s characteristics are guaranteed. It fine-tunes connectivity for all kinds of use cases,” said Hawley.
Machine Learning (ML) is an essential element of this advanced network intelligence and automation. ML can detect what’s happening on the network. What’s more, ML can help to predict failures before they happen, empowering operators to fix those service issues before they ever cause disruption for end users.
Machine Learning also makes digital twins possible. A digital twin is a copy of a real object, simulated down to the smallest degree. Nokia is exploring the use of digital twins in network operations. Network operations teams can make changes in simulation on the digital twin, validate them, then deploy the network changes once success is assured.
This drive towards improved network intelligence and customized services also demands new levels of network automation. Hawley noted that thousands of variables across 5G core elements must be configured and maintained. It’s simply too complicated to manage manually – network automation must be used to handle it. That automation can help CSPs manage network slicing reliably, consistently, and perhaps most importantly, more efficiently than ever.
“This level of automation is a game changer and allows CSPs to rapidly target and serve new customers, creating new revenue streams,” said Hawley.
The telecom industry is moving towards agile, DevOps-driven models to deliver network components, the same software delivery model used so successfully by webscale companies. But CSPs face a challenge: their networks are fundamentally multi-vendor. CSPs must juggle relationships with multiple software vendors and must those accommodate integration issues and efforts.
Nokia’s solution for this challenge is Delivery Operations, or DelOps. This concept marries the Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) principle central to DevOps with a more flexible integration process designed to be optimized for each environment, with design, deploy, test, and operate phases. DelOps uses network automation to manage this complexity.
The migration to 5G ultimately enables CSPs to leverage its more open design. Application Programming Interface (API)-based services provide an essential framework to enable new services and improve existing ones such as Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), autonomous vehicle communication, long-distance medical care, and industrial control.
Nokia’s Network-as-Code effort embraces this concept of openness by enabling developers to use a simplified API, combined with secure network access, to create new services. Network-as-Code essentially abstracts the complexity of 5G core operations to expose new functionality more easily.
“API standardization and software development kits open a door to innovation because now many developers can actually create new services. This opens a whole new world of potential for network and application evolution,” said Hawley.
Network-as-Code provides the ability for developers to create service chains comprising several discrete software functions together.
“Advanced service chains are built on distributed as-a-service resources, like Google Maps, Twilio, and others. Developers take these and create meta-services by linking them through simple API calls. Network-as-Code is an extreme simplification of 5G core capabilities. It turns the 5G core into another distributed as-a-service resource,” Hawley said.
Explore more at Nokia’s Cloud Packet Core page.
