Cloud Providers & Telco 5G: AWS, Microsoft & Google

In this article will be looking at 5Gs targeted use cases and how cloud providers have got involved to address Telco requirements and help with 5G scenarios.

5G & Use Cases

5G is the fifth generation of mobile networks which is designed using Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Network (SDN) technologies to abstract physical infrastructure in the data centers & virtualized workloads running on top of the infrastructure cloud for network & other applications. 5G also supports network slicing, which enables it to create virtual networks for separate use cases if required.

There are 3 use cases which have been primarily targeted for 5G:

1. Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) i.e. Mobile Internet provided to consumers, enterprises
2. Massive machine-type communications (mMTC) i.e. Internet of Things(IoT) solutions for different industries e.g. Smart Cities, Smart homes, Asset tracking & logistics, etc
3. Ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC) - e.g. Self Driving Cars, Smart Grids, Remote Patient Monitoring, Industrial Automation, etc.

While the public cloud has become center of attention for most digital transformation requirements & supporting cloud workloads, it has still not matured enough to handle lot of core network workloads that are run in a Telco operator's data center. As a result of this limitation & also to ensure network traffic meeting the performance metrics & regulatory and security compliance, majority Telco Operators prefer to run their core network workloads on a private cloud setup in their own data centers.

However, the success of hyper-scale cloud providers in other industries and with Enterprise/B2B customers in Telco has made the Telecom industries more open to migrating application workloads/non network workloads to public clouds and utilizing their own network for accessing them.

As eMBB use case involves use of network workloads primarily that are present in the 5G network core, it will continue to be hosted in On Premise/Private cloud for majority operators.However, for the other 2 use cases i.e. mMTC (IoT) & URLLC public cloud can be used for hosting the applications that are implementing the use cases.

Cloud Providers & Telco 5G opportunity

Cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft & Google were quick to identify the above opportunities with 5G where they could leverage their cloud expertise & existing products to meet requirements in the Telco vertical and along the way aid with realization of 5G use cases envisaged by the operators and help monetize them. While, the cloud providers were already involved in Telecom segment with more focus on enterprise offerings, however 5G provides them an opportunity to focus on consumer side of the industry. The cloud providers have modified their existing strategies to cater to this developments in Telecom industry & updated their offerings/solutions to aid the operators in their digital transformation journey, migrating their data centers & associated workloads to the cloud and implementing & monetizing 5G.

The common aspects of the cloud providers Telco game plan include:

• Containerized application platform for development of Telco applications to modernize existing applications or build new ones as required.
• Application platforms enhanced with latest technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data analytics are offered to enable realization of data intensive & AI related technologies like IoT.
• Hosting application workloads in the relevant edge locations and colocating on the carrier mobile network to avoid latency associated with public internet.
• Cloud Infrastructure Platform for enabling operators to migrate to cloud.

Apart from above, the cloud providers have also tried to differentiating themselves and provide value add to the customers by partnering with existing network vendors in Telecom sector and deploying their solutions on their respective clouds.

The key aspects of AWS, Microsoft & Google's Telco strategy has been highlighted below.The articles with their telecom strategy has been hyperlinked as well.

AWS

• Network vendor partners : Mavenir & Nokia's 5G Core solutions running on AWS; Amdocs Cloud based OSS/BSS on AWS
• Products for catering to 5G Use cases : AWS Outposts, Local Zones, Snow Family, IoT Greengrass and AWS Wavelength
• Telecom Operator Partnerships:Verizon, Vodafone business, Telefonica(Germany), KDDI & SK Telecom
• Target Use cases with 5G offerings: Media and Entertainment, Gaming,smart cars, streaming games, VR, autonomous industrial equipment

Microsoft

• Network vendor partners : For Edge Use Case - Arista for routers; Palo Alto Networks for firewalls; VMWare, Nokia and NetFoundry for SD-WAN; and CommScope for radio equipment
• Acquisitions: Affirmed Networks for their virtualized Evolved Packet Core (EPC) & IoT platform; Metaswitch for their containerized IP Multimedia Subsystem(IMS) solution.
• Products for catering to 5G Use cases : Azure Edge Zones, IoT platform using Affirmed & Metaswitch
• Telecom Operator Partnerships: AT&T, Etisalat, NTT, Proximus, Rogers, SK Telecom, Telefonica, Telstra, Century Link and Vodafone Business.Verizon, Vodafone business, KDDI & SK Telecom
• Target Use cases with 5G offerings: online gaming, remote meetings and events and smart infrastructure - Smart factories, logistics and operations, and connected health care

Google

• Network vendor partners : Amdocs & Netcracker Cloud based OSS/BSS on GCP
• Products for catering to 5G Use cases : Anthos for Telecom, Google Cloud’s BigQuery platform. Program name: Global Mobile Edge Cloud strategy
• Telecom Operator Partnerships:  AT&T, Vodafone, Wind TRE, Altice USA and T-Systems
• Target Use cases with 5G offerings: retail, healthcare, and media and entertainment

Fair enough to say that with giant public cloud providers getting involved in 5G & operators being receptive to them, the 5G participants pool has got much bigger and more challenging. Definitely something that I'm excited to see how it plays out specially from perspective of network Cloudification journey of operators,5G use cases implementation as and when they take place; how cloud providers are able to utilize this opportunity to the maximum and address the challenges that are specific to Telecommunication industry.

Disclaimer:

The details presented above is based on data available online.The references used are available in the hyperlinks. However some references area available at: https://matelecom.blogspot.com/p/reference-cloud-providers-telco-5g-aws.html