Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Thursday, July 02, 2020

Virtualization paves the way for 5G, as a preview of upcoming use cases

Network virtualization in Argentina has so far occurred on the Core part of the network, and the next piece of the puzzle is on the radio, in a clear move toward the edge. This transition will allow the construction of a mobile IoT offer for the business, logistics, and manufacturing segments, among many others.

Just as Ian Hood, Chief Technologist of Red Hat Global Operators, explained to Convergencialatina, the next step in building a “Multi Access Edge” is to evolve from virtualization functions of the network (virtual machines) to the native Cloud world (see more details below). The first thing operators are rolling out in the latter are 5G Core functions, and secondly they are trying to virtualize radio. In parallel, use cases of the next technological era are explored: “Many providers are looking for applications that run on 5G - logistics or Enterprise, for example - at the edge of the network. They do this to give added value to the edge to the different verticals. In general, each operator specializes in one vertical or another. With 5G you will have the ability to offer these apps, by putting the data on the edge and not in the data centers, close to corporate customers," said Hood.

Telecom had successfully completed the virtualization of all its Core, Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) in 2017. Last year, it deployed in the Core EPC the functionalities Non Standalone (5G NSA, which is deployed over the 4G network), leaving the network ready for 5G deployment. Before the Telecom-Cablevisión merger, each company had its own OSS (Operation Support Systems) and BSS (Billing Support System) systems: today they are unifying them with systems that make use of virtualization and multicloud technologies.

In the case of Telefónica, the official told Convergencialatina that the objective for the end of 2020 in the country is to have the IMS virtualized by 57% and the EPC by 36%. He also plans a proof of concept in Open RAN. And begin to virtualize the CPE in 2021. The investment, they assure, will increase "in the coming years with 5G, Open RAN and vCPE."

Within the framework of Única, Telefónica's global project to virtualize its networks and applications, the Argentine subsidiary installed nodes in Mar del Plata and Mendoza, which join two others in the metropolitan region. And it suspended the plan to install another for this year. In 2019, it put into production one of the nodes with commercial functions such as vDNS and PoC (proofs of concept) of vEPC and this year it plans to do the same with four sites with vIMS and vEPC. Although the goal for the past year was to have 14 productive VNF functions, they only deployed 7 in commercial mode or PoCs "due to issues of technology maturity in 2019."

Telefónica recognizes that virtualization, in the first steps, does not bring cost reduction –by overlapping technologies–, but in the medium and long term it estimates reducing them by 30%.

A required step towards 5G. Claro, Movistar and Personal agree on that it is impossible to think of 5G without the virtualization component. In Telecom officials explain that, for example, to provide Network Slicing –the network architecture that allows the multiplexing of virtualized and independent logical networks, supported by the same physical network infrastructure– it is necessary to have resolved the virtualization and orchestration of functions and network services.

Along the same lines, for Movistar, virtualization is a “must-have” for the moment of 5G massification, when technology will require having native Cloud environments. Virtualization makes it possible to generate a common platform to quickly test and validate use cases that with current technologies would be difficult to perform, or very expensive.

As summarized by Hanen García, Global Manager of Telco Solutions at Red Hat, the great difficulty that operators in Latin America will face this year and the next is how to start their 5G network and at the same time expand their 4G deployment. "The answer is in virtualization. Faced with containers and a native Cloud scheme, which comprises another way of packaging network functions (as opposed to virtual machines), it generates a horizontal platform as the basis for the future. While working on use cases such as industrialization and live events”, he concluded.

Containers and microservices. Traditional virtualization, with virtual machines (VMs), begins to contrast with more innovative visions imported from the IT world, based on containers. The fundamental benefit of the implementation of containers is the reduction of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), by simplification compared to the scheme of VMs. The same operating system virtualizes resources, so the removal of a software layer generates performance improvements and multiplies the apps that can be run.

By turning IT language practices into “telco grade”, other benefits are: greater speed and capacity in the use of infrastructure. But at the same time, challenges linked to security arise, as warned by Ericsson. “Container virtualization techniques are based on open source. So the challenge is to meet the security requirements of network functions, which containers do not yet have. The community is developing reliability for massive development in the telco world,”said Juan Skalany, Solutions architect for the Swedish vendor.

According to Hanen García, Global Manager of Telco Solutions at Red Hat, the transition from VMs to containers involves a step from silos to a horizontal virtualization platform, which allows managing containerized network functions. The products that Red Hat offers in both fields are the OpenStack platform - where VMs can run - and OpenShift - with Kubernetes, which function as container orchestrators. "The trend is that all 4G will be virtualized and all 5G, containerized," he projected.

This decentralization of NFV, with a combination of containers and microservices, is still very incipient in Argentinean operators. As Citrix and VMWare told Convergencia, container adoption is low on critical mission and a virtualization foundation is still needed for an effective transition to that model. In the case of Telefónica, all its commercial network functions are supported in virtual machines, but they are testing the first versions offered by their suppliers in microservices format, and plan commercial tests in 2021.Telecom commissioned laboratory tests to determine the degree of maturity and possibilities of integration in multi-vendor solutions, but they do notice some fragmentation in the initiatives. On the other hand, for Claro, the providers are not yet mature with their components for the use of containers and microservices: he opined that most of them are virtualized versions of the same legacy platforms.

Getting on the wave. Network Virtualization (NFV) and Network Functionality (VFN) are intended for operators with large numbers of users, who require flexibility to come up with new services without the need to make changes to physical equipment. In Argentina, the transformation makes sense and has a positive impact on OPEX for large players, but "due to the cost of virtualization solutions, it has not yet impacted on the implementation of small ISPs and cooperatives, " Juan Domínguez, president of Tecnored said to  Convergencialatina.

Nevertheless, Domínguez stressed that just as partners of Huawei, they can help “anyone who wants to ride the virtualization wave”. The Chinese-based firm offers a complete stack of ICT solutions conforming to a holistic vision, with AI learning models for constant optimization, and the platforms and systems orchestration that mount on top of it. It has SDN solutions and virtualization for energy, finance and insurance, tourism, government and, fundamentally, telecommunications, explained Hernán Bugallo, Solutions manager at Huawei Argentina.

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