Great Expectations For The Next Generation 5G Core

On average, smartphone users globally state that they are willing to pay a premium of 20 percent over and above what they pay today for the benefits of 5G. However, half of all early adopters who are familiar with 5G's promises could pay as much as 32 percent more than they do today. These potential 5G early adopters constitute 25 percent of all smartphone users globally. Although consumer willingness to pay cannot be directly translated into what they eventually will pay for 5G, this is a much stronger indication of consumer attraction than just asking about their level of interest. In the US, consumers say they can pay a price premium for 5G of 15 percent, which translates to USD 9, while a premium of 35 percent in the UAE translates to USD 14. Verizon also recently announced that its next-generation 5G mobile service will cost USD 10 more per month on top of its 3 existing unlimited plans. [7] This is in line with the average amount US consumers say they are willing to pay for the benefits of 5G; however, early adopters in the US say they could pay on average as much as USD 20 more for 5G. Others find the question of whether to charge for a premium or not less relevant, due to the network efficiencies that 5G will bring to operators, enabling them to lower the production cost of data and mobile services.

Great expectations for the Next Generation 5G Core

Download File

While waiting for the next iconic device to emerge, consumers expect the current generation of smartphones to evolve and introduce new features and functionalities. Extended battery life and extreme storage were sought after by almost all respondents. While foldable screens are making their way into 5G smartphones, 47 percent expect not just multiple cameras but also embedded 360-degree cameras. Meanwhile, the expected features on a future 5G device also include 3D hologram projectors (wanted by 30 percent), security beyond just facial recognition ID that is similar to DNA authentication (29 percent) and sensory experiences that allow them to feel textures on the screen (25 percent).

We could go on for pages and pages, bulleting out features and benefits of 5G, typing a list that may never end as future feature releases continue to refine and add enhancements. And while all these new capabilities that 5G is bringing sound great, there is a difference between what has been put to paper and what is being done in the real world today. For example, many new 5G use cases require devices to support N1 NAS protocols. With new 5G devices and a brand new 5G SA packet core this is no problem. But we live in the real world filled with existing 4G services and others previous generations of devices that do not support the new protocol(s). Most of these devices work great today and have no immediate need to be replaced. Thus, supporting multiple generations of technology has led to a need for maintaining two mobile cores, one that will support 4G legacy NAS protocols and 5G NSA devices with legacy NAS protocols, and a second core for supporting the newer 5G N1 NAS devices.

It is important to note that 6G is not yet a functioning technology. While some vendors are investing in the next-generation wireless standard, industry specifications for 6G-enabled network products remain years away.

6G radio networks will provide the communication and data gathering necessary to accumulate information. A systems approach is required for the 6G technology market that makes use of data analytics, AI and next-generation computation capabilities using HPC and quantum computing.

Like previous mobile network generations, the core network provides access to services for devices, while giving the service provider the functions they need to authenticate, authorize, and manage their customers.

But, when it comes to the extended capabilities of a 5G (fifth generation) core network architecture, it surpasses previous generations. Software-defined and built with a service-based architecture (SBA), this architecture allows the 5G core to be disaggregated, cloud-native, and distributed.

One of the many advantages of a 5G core is that the location of network functions can be optimally placed to ensure the greatest efficiency, highest performance, and lowest latency, providing the best possible experience. The 5G core network transformation is part of a much larger telecommunications business transformation. Their networks are no longer viewed as a connectivity pipe for service delivery. Instead, they are a service platform providing various opportunities for monetization.

5G networks will bring faster speeds and greater immediacy that will be almost indistinguishable from real-time. A key differentiator of 5G (vs. 4G) is the ability to support up to one million connections per square kilometer. This is the kind of density that will be necessary to support smart cities, smart homes, self-driving cars, and the growing internet of things (IoT). Consumer and business expectations are constantly changing, placing ever-growing demands on 4G network capabilities. Both the demand for and opportunities provided by this latest generation of technology is why many telecommunications service providers are currently transitioning from a 4G to a 5G core network.

The third-generation partnership project (3GPP) has outlined many options for service providers to transition towards a 5G core network. Option one is the current state for service providers with a 4G network.

Exposure to new types of infrastructure assets demands that investors manage higher levels of risk. Many next-generation investments are self-evident, such as electric-vehicle (EV) charging networks, battery storage, hydrogen distribution, and smart motorway and rail technology, 5G telecom networks, and data centers. These assets offer many of the characteristics that infrastructure investors look for: real assets, protected market positions, and the potential to generate stable cash yields. However, to get exposure to these new asset classes, investors will have to accept a period of significant investment and negative cash flow, along with development, technology, and commercial risks.

The NGMN Alliance (Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance) is an open forum founded by world-leading mobile network operators. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and, ultimately, will satisfy end user demand and expectations.

5G launches have started amid great expectations of changing the world altogether. 5G is aimed at meeting a wide range of requirements and use cases such as further enhanced mobile broadband, massive machine-type communications and ultra-reliable low-latency communications. With its high potential, 5G has gathered momentum and become a sort of boom attracting interests from a wide range of vertical industries beyond telecom. This momentum is highly expected to invent new business models and ecosystems across the industries.

In the talk, the history is reviewed to predict the future. Some laws of mobile communication generations are introduced from the observation of previous generations, e.g. the second law: the law of great success only in even-numbered generations. Although these laws predict the future, it is shown that completely different phenomena are also happening in 5G. These laws therefore may not be applicable to 5G and beyond and 5G may spread in a different way from previous generations. The talk provides hints that will lead to future success, such as cross-industry collaboration.

The full IMT2020 compliant standard of 3GPP R16 will be released shortly and we will soon witness a global roll-out of 5G. There is no doubt that 5G will change our life and even the whole society. What is beyond 5G then? The network is expected to provide you with a seemingly infinite bandwidth and capacity by pushing beyond the current physical, informatics, and engineering limits. Connection will not be the only service provided by the network. Computing and caching will also be native resources of the cloud integrated network. With intelligent orchestration, the goals of extreme QoE and network efficiency will be achieved. Intelligence augmentation and trustworthiness will be the two pillars of the next generation wireless networks. Both of them will be essential to the novel service and business model. AI/ML will be used to improve the operational efficiency, while at the same time, the network with an edge computing architecture will improve the learning efficiency of AI/ML with less data, less training time and privacy preserving. The research challenges and technology breakthroughs required to deliver the vision for future wireless will be presented in this talk.

Biography: Jianmin Lu joined the Huawei Technologies in 1999. During the last two decades, he conducted various researches on wireless communications especially on physic layer and MAC layer and developed 3G, 4G and 5G products. He received more than 50 patents during the research. He was deeply involved in 3GPP2 (EVDO/UMB), WiMAX/802.16m and 3GPP (LTE/NR) standardization and contributed several key technologies such as flexible radio frame structure, radio resource management and MIMO. His current research interest is in the area of signal processing, protocol and networking for the next generation wireless communication. He is currently Executive Director of Huawei Wireless Technology Lab.

In connection with RAN #69 in Sep. 2015, 3GPP held a workshop in Phoenix, USA in order to inform 3GPP about the ITU-R IMT-2020 plans and to share the visions and priorities of the involved companies regarding the next generation radio technology/ies. The chair's summary (RWS-150073) formulated 3 next steps:

At RAN #70 in Dec. 2015, 3GPP started already a Rel-14 study item (FS_NG_SReq, RP-160811) "Study on Scenarios and Requirements for Next Generation Access Technologies" with the goal to identify the typical deployment scenarios (associated with attributes such as carrier frequency, inter-site distance, user density, maximum mobility speed, etc.) and to develop specific requirements for them for the next generation access technologies (taking into account what is required for IMT-2020). This study completed at RAN #74 in Dec. 2016 with the 3GPP TR 38.913 which describes scenarios, key performance requirements as well as requirements for architecture, migration, supplemental services, operation and testing. 2ff7e9595c