Telco Cloud Journey for CSP: market insights and actions for a successful and efficient strategy.

Telecom Cloud is one of the goals of Disaggregation/Cloudification of telecom networks. Telecom Cloud is a trend to realize telecom network functions on private or public clouds and is an area where NTT Ltd. and NTT DATA can combine their strengths. Hyperscalers such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, and GCP, and solution providers such as Vmware and Redhat are increasing their presence in this space. Building partnerships and ecosystems will be key elements for NTT DATA to succeed.

Index

Context

5G technology continues to grow, with around 600 million new subscriptions added globally during 2023 (ericsson-mobility-report-november-2023), shows that demand for high-performance connectivity remains resilient in the face of ongoing economic challenges and geopolitical unrest in some markets.

  • The demand for infrastructure will continue to grow and it will be critical to have a sustainable model that allows the business to be profitable.

    It offers greater possibilities to support new and more demanding use cases for both consumers and enterprises. Only with standalone architecture can 5G use cases requiring time-bound latency, higher speeds, capacity or benefits from network slicing be achieved. To date, more than 40 service providers have deployed or launched 5GSA in public networks. 5G deployment is far from complete. Further densification of 5G mid-band sites is needed for the full 5G experience.

    By the end of 2023, it’s estimated that 5G mid-band will be deployed in around 30 percent of existing 4G sites globally (Ericsson Mobility Report).

Figure 1: Mobile subscriptions by technology (billion)

 

  • Global 5G mobile subscriptions are projected to reach1.6 billion by the end of 2023.
  • Average global mobile data consumption per smartphone is expected to reach 56 GB per month at the end of 2029.
  • The majority of networks deployed so far are 5G non-standalone, but an increasing number of communications service providers are starting deploying 5G standalone (SA) what is Cloud Native by design

What we mean by Telco Cloud

We use the term “telco cloud” to refer to the new infrastructure to migrate the legacy wireless network functions, RAN, core and transport technologies to cloud-based infrastructure. In this publication we are focusing on mobile networks, services and applications transformation to cloud.

 

 

The concept isn’t new but has evolved during the years from only to allow virtual machines to allow CNFs in a real cloud native scenario.
Beyond the above, most telecommunications operators that have started early have mono vendor stacks or VNF dominant scenarios.

 

 

Telcos must think in a flexible infrastructure strategy, because need to deliver services and connectivity with increasing capacity and quality requirements.
A middle-long term multi-cloud strategy at the network level can play a crucial role, assisting with fixed-wire connectivity, and full mobility.

This mix strategy should have three main ingredients:

  • The hybrid multi-cloud scenario, where workloads are deployed across multiple computing environments, including public cloud and private cloud. Private clouds usually run through existing on-premises data centers.
  • The edge, where ultra-low latency applications are deployed closer to where customer data or near internet-connected devices.
  • Partnering with multiple hyperscalers, such as AWS, Microsoft, Google, and IT services companies.

–A secure and resilient edge is central to the deployment of 5G services that can help enterprise customers respond to changing customer needs and new ways of working.

–AI/ML tasks that provide greater intelligence on a network’s operations and ensure the delivery of high-bandwidth, low-latency applications on a distributed architecture.

–This is particularly beneficial for IoT, which requires an intense amount of processing at the edge.

Core evolution impacts

The new 3GPP 5G Core architecture to support 5G NR SA is based on an SBA, which implements IT network principles and a cloud-native design approach.
The NFs are completely software based, designed as cloud native and formed by microservices, meaning that they’re agnostic to the underlying cloud infrastructure, allowing higher deployment agility and flexibility.

RAN evolution impacts

As the telecom sector moves away from hardware-driven models toward virtualization and software, open radio access network (RAN) technology is the next step, today’s networks use largely legacy RAN solutions, which means that hardware and software parts are typically bundled together or purchased from the same supplier to guarantee network effectiveness, security, and efficiency.

Incorporating Open RAN network architecture offers an ecosystem-based approach, where network functions in RAN can be assembled from a variety of providers collaborating on a standard set of protocols and specifications. Open RAN has the potential to unlock innovation, lower TCO, and uncover new revenue opportunities and will push the necessity of more telco cloud capacity.

GSMA Intelligence survey data shows that 5G will be a significant driver as the entry point for adding open networking, including Open RAN, into their networks (albeit this remains a negligible amount compared to the current range of mobile networks).

Benefits of a correct Telco cloud

From NTT DATA We see the following factors as the biggest benefits/drivers for transition to telco cloud:

Business Benefits

  • Optimized total cost of ownership (CAPEX + OPEX)
  • Increase in average revenue per user (ARPU)
  • Improved customer experience (QoS/QoE)
  • Faster time to market for new applications

Operational Benefits

  • Greater scalability
  • Increased operational efficiency
  • Greater flexibility in working with different vendors (reduced vendor lock-in)
  • Improved network security

-Making networks scalable is the biggest factor driving telcos to transition their networks to cloud. It is possible to deploy and scale 5G standalone core rapidly in a cloud-native environment.

-Most of the cost savings are expected to result from a network’s optimized TCO, improved operational efficiency.

Greenfield telcos
will benefit more quickly from technology due to experimenting their lower upfront CAPEX requirement and low OPEX on the latest and up-to-date network architecture.

Brownfield Telcos

Significant savings will comes with network transformations that use 5G SA installations on a new stack and involve the migration of existing subscribers from old to new technology.

-The timing of these migrations is critical to maximizing the savings opportunity (for example, moving applications or functions to cloud when legacy platforms are ready to be retired).

-It is important that the strategy designed for infrastructure consider synergies between core, Ran functions and applications.

Multi-cloud strategies in the market

Telcos have traditionally imposed very complex requirements around quality of service, network security, which makes the use of external cloud providers are reduced and take time to adopt, because of that most telecom providers choose a more conservative multi-cloud strategy starting in private cloud for critical applications.

Interesting points

  • For network core, telcos across geographies prefer proprietary, private-cloud deployment.
  • For RAN, the virtualization strategy is lagging more than CORE in adoption, but the market is starting to have major projects.
  • New largely non-legacy functions like 5G SA core will be deployed on private cloud.
  • Small applications have started deploying directly on public cloud.
  • Telcos need to be sure they can put on public cloud critical applications.
  • Important points to be handled: sovereignty, security

The importance of the compatibility test for the strategy

One of the factors in deciding on a cloud deployment is availability of the latest software releases.
The latest versions of containerized network functions provided by equipment vendors are usually available on their proprietary cloud platforms or for private blueprints.

-An important point is to design an E2E testing and homologation strategy to assure the quality of the telecom application and to verify the compatibility with different infrastructures.

Current reality and future status

The first implementations of telco cloud continue to have deficiencies in terms of scalability, resilience, speed of deployment and testing as well as security.

 

 

Imperative transforming Infrastructure and NFs for True Agility and Automation for Large-Scale deployments.

The importance of Telco cloud in relation to sustainability

An important point to take into account from the beginning in the design of the cloud infrastructure is that must be sustainable, this means we need to incorporate aspects like environmental, social, and economic implementation and operation as a design.

One of the main drivers of sustainability in telecom network cloud transformation is the increasing demand for data and the corresponding need to expand and upgrade telecom networks. The traditional infrastructure models are energy-intensive and can have a significant environmental impact.

Telco cloud must promote sustainability with:

  • Lower emissions from facilities (e.g., reduced physical hardware footprint, reduced office-based power usage)
  • Auto-scaling of cloud applications and network functions for more efficient, demand-triggered resource use
  • Improved utilization of storage and compute power through bundling of these resources on the cloud
  • Managing power consumption resources by using AI and machine learning to optimize network traffic and energy usage in cell towers, CPU and GPU resources.

NTT DATA inc. services for Telco cloud

We have a comprehensive telco cloud business strategy to define goals, target timelines and actions, providing services that supports network evolution and cloudification based on disaggregation and decoupling of network functions.

 

 

  • Services for Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVi). Services on: E2E Telco private telco cloud design and implementation.
    Capacity Planning, Design, Implementation, Support and Maintenance on Virtualization Infrastructure for Telco Cloud, Edge Compute and Central Office POD.
  • Services for Network Functions Virtualization & Orchestration (NFVO). Consulting, development, deployment, and integration services for Open-Source MANO (OSM) and 3rd Party orchestrator providers.
  • CI/CD/CT Pipelines. Assets and professional services to design and automate the deployment of Network Functions, keep track of versions and updates lifecycle management in a zero-touch base.
  • Testing & Testing Automation. NFVi, NFVO and NF functional and non-functional testing design, testing execution, testing automation, NF emulation, as well as traffic emulation for certifying virtualized network as a whole.
  • Telco Cloud Inventory: Assets and professional services to adopt future proof data model based on Linux Foundation Networking-ONAP to set a unique source of truth on infrastructure availability and occupancy to support autonomous network functions fulfilment and assurance related processes
  • End-to-End Slicing & Orchestration. Assets and professional services to ensure multi-domain orchestration and slice management based on Linux Foundation Networking-ONAP architecture.

Why NTT data

 

 

Alejandro Javier Fernandez Diaz

Alejandro Javier Fernandez Diaz
NTT DATA Telecom Infrastructure CoE (Center of Excellence) Director