Preparing for 5G, Carriers, Vendors Focus on Moving Network Functions to Cloud

Other aspects of network virtualization include open rather than proprietary systems, executives from companies including AT&T, Cisco, Red Hat and Verizon agreed Tuesday. The focus on software in networks means training employees to switch jobs, and getting vendors, ISPs and others to work more closely together to make purchasing and development decisions more quickly, some said. Moving to the cloud is "inevitable," said Red Hat Senior Vice President-Infrastructure Business Group Tim Yeaton. "This transcends industries." Within the telecom industry, it's "incumbent" that "we look at a digital future that is all software defined," added Yeaton. "We’re moving to a software defined, virtualized era."

But the FCC decision to deem broadband a Title II utility-like service was wrongheaded, said TIA CEO Scott Belcher. Noting the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision on net neutrality rules could come anytime, he said the group is waiting for it to determine its next step. TIA made an amicus filing backing challenges to the rules. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.

The commission got praise on 5G and spectrum. The agency is working on issues involving "hundreds of megahertz of spectrum" and "making sure that we get on that global roadmap really quickly," said Verizon Wireless' Aparna Khurjekar, vice president-network for the South area. "This is real" and "we are well on the way to starting to deploy 5G commercially next year," she said. "We are making sure that this is a unified effort across the entire industry." AT&T Chief Strategy Officer John Donovan laid out a similar 5G time frame, and he and Khurjekar said the standard may be first used for fixed wireless.

To make the transition to the cloud, "we have to work together, we have to work in continuous integration," said Cisco's Yvette Kanouff, general manager of the Service Provider Business. "Go to market faster" by working more quickly among various sectors feeding into the telecom industry, she advised. "It's hard to get started," but once the switch begins, "you can’t ever go back," she said of such moves. She said moving DVRs to the cloud, voice over Wi-Fi and other cloud functions are paying off. "Our industry is going through an immense change, our industry is going through an immense transformation," said Kanouff.

Surging broadband traffic globally and at companies including AT&T necessitates the focus on software for networks, TIA 2016 speakers said. "Year after year, we have to continue to add bandwidth," said Kanouff, saying broadband usage is rising about 50 percent annually but revenue for ISPs isn't increasing as rapidly. "We have to look at the way that we provide technology in a very different way," she said. Kanouff advised offering bandwidth in shared ways "rather than building networks in the way that we did in the past." By 2020, she said, Cisco forecasts there will be about 3.4 devices/connections per person worldwide, while 82 percent of the world's Internet Protocol traffic will be video and "it will do nothing but grow." In 2015, 70 percent of world IP traffic was video, Cisco reported. The "massive explosion for IoT creates bandwidth needs but is also a real opportunity for us," said Kanouff.

AT&T, experiencing its own data usage increases, is progressing on network virtualization, using more software and moving more functions to the cloud, Donovan said. There's an opportunity to "radically reshape how networking is done," and "this trend" of mobile traffic growth "isn’t slowing down," he continued. Such network uses include virtual and augmented reality, self-driving cars, 4K video and IoT, said Donovan and others. "The challenges are huge, but so are the opportunities," said Donovan.

"It's the most complex software project that we’ve ever undertaken at AT&T," said Donovan, "a pivotal shift in the entire history of networking." He said he tells his staff "if you look at the eye of the tornado, we’re in it." This is the "critical year" for the carrier's network virtualization, "when we build the scaling capabilities to take this thing to another level," added Donovan. Last year, 5.7 percent of the company's network was virtualized, a figure that will rise to 30 percent this year and 75 percent in 2020, he said. The carrier is integrating cloud facilities with virtual network functions, opening locations of what it calls AT&T Foundry with the latest focusing on connected healthcare and in Houston, and using interoperable and open products "rather than closed proprietary machines," which keeps costs down, said Donovan.

Fifth-generation wireless networks can lower costs per bit of data traffic, relying on open platforms and software just as network virtualization does, said technical experts at an earlier TIA 2016 panel and in informal discussions with us Monday. Speakers including Huawei's Wen Tong, wireless network chief technology officer, sought densification of networks in some geographic areas. He also backed a "plug-and-play" approach where he said "you don’t have to do a lot of planning." Carriers can't spend as much as they used to maintain networks and need multiple platforms working together, said founder Dan McVaugh of wireless engineering firm Centerline Solutions. "The people that are going to be buying these networks, they do not want to have a proprietary spin" on what they use, he said. ​"It sounds very nonspecific and pie in the sky, but that’s really the direction that 5G is going to go," said McVaugh: Otherwise, that is just "bolting" improvements onto 4G networks.