Driving manual is not an option with 5G (Reader Forum)

5G networks are setting a generation of improvements in motion for both consumers and businesses with a wide range of new use cases from gaming and the metaverse, to driverless cars, robotics and Industry 4.0.

Customers are demanding a lot: ultra-low latency, dynamic bandwidth, intelligent and high availability services. To achieve this, communications service providers (CSPs) should evolve towards software-centric networks, and automated operations. This transformation will enable CSPs to manage the entire lifecycle of 5G network services more efficiently, from planning and design to orchestration, activation and assurance.

The need for automation

At full scale, 5G networks will ultimately need to support the delivery of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dynamic services provisioned in real-time across physical, virtual and cloud-based domains. The resulting complexity simply will not be manageable using manual processes. Automation is essential.

The key challenge for CSPs is that their traditional operational support systems (OSS) were built to handle pre-defined, static services. They rely on customized software and require significant manual effort for managing services. Not only can operational processes like planning and activation take months, resulting in a poor customer experience, but the customized nature of legacy OSS makes them expensive to maintain and difficult to create new services, which ultimately limits differentiation.

This legacy approach is not sustainable for 5G. Yesterday’s technologies aren’t suitable for managing and operating tomorrow’s dynamic services, which is why CSPs are evolving toward cloud-native operational systems that are based on open standards and driven by models, catalogs and business intent.

Where should CSPs start with automation?

CSPs’ operational environments encompass multiple networks, data, support systems, and processes. Determining the best place to begin implementing automation in this environment isn’t easy, but there’s a mantra many of our customers embrace: You can’t automate what you can’t see.

To intelligently plan and scale their buildouts, many CSPs are starting their 5G journey with real-time network inventory management. By using federation technology to unify inventory data from multiple legacy OSS and other data sources, CSPs can create a “single source of truth” for the 5G network — a dynamic inventory that maintains operational data for all network — and service-related resources. This accurate, comprehensive view of physical resources such as routers and patch panels, virtualized cloud native functions (CNFs), as well as the end-to-end service topology from the cell site to core, enables CSPs to manage dynamic new services much more efficiently.

Orchestration and analytics-driven assurance

With the complex nature of 5G services, multi-domain orchestration helps simplify, optimize, and automate operational processes such as order-to-service. By automating the assignment of resources, as well as activating the end-to-end service across the RAN, transport and core, CSPs can significantly improve their agility and deliver the same level of velocity as cloud services. This end-to-end orchestration capability is critical for delivering network slicing and other dynamic new services that will enable CSPs to monetize their 5G investments.

The scale of 5G also brings with it an explosion of operational data. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) help CSPs sift through this monstrous amount of data, continuously monitoring network conditions, traffic demands, and resource availability in real-time. By leveraging AI and ML to automate the assurance process, CSPs can ensure that SLAs are being met and even identify problems before they impact customers.

The 5G automation roadmap

The future of 5G is exciting. But getting there is a journey that requires intelligent automation every step of the way – from network planning and design through activation and assurance. It’s time to move beyond manual, customized operational systems and leverage open and cloud-native automation solutions that give CSPs the visibility and control they need to quickly build an agile multi-vendor 5G network.