Why 5G monetization depends on automation

Rick Hamilton, Senior Vice President, Blue Planet Software, shares his insights into why service automation is of growing strategic importance as telcos seek to monetize 5G; the challenges it poses and what the future holds.

1. We talk a lot about automation – particularly in the context of 5G. Why is it so important?

Rick Hamilton: You can’t fake a digital experience. While most communications service providers (CSPs) can take an order digitally and interact with their customers through portals and apps, that’s often where automation ends. Business customers and consumers want authentic digital experiences everywhere, including from their CSP, which puts the focus squarely on automating service operations.

As operators shift to the cloud, 5G and Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC), embracing openness and automation will enable them to be more customer-centric and agile from an operational standpoint as well as allow more seamless collaboration with ecosystem partners. New capabilities like network slicing also open up all kinds of compelling, new revenue opportunities and use cases. These drivers, combined with the reduction in operational complexity and costs that are inherent with automation and digital transformation, are making it more of an imperative than ever before.

2. Where are we today in terms of adopting automation?

The telecommunications industry has gone through several network advancements. It was almost a decade ago that concepts like SDN, service orchestration and NFV started being discussed. We have long seen the need for automation, however with the telecommunications network being so complex, adoption of these concepts has been limited to specific domains and services.

However, if we fast forward to today, we are seeing new business drivers and software capabilities that justify much needed end-to-end automation. These solutions enable service automation across the full lifecycle – from service order management to orchestration to assurance.

3. How are we going to overcome these challenges?

5G provides opportunity for revenue and margin growth, if executed successfully. Legacy operational tools and processes limit CSPs ability to support network slicing—they lack a real time view of network resources and end-to-end control across multiple domains and vendors. At the same time, they rely on manual intervention which is incompatible with dynamic slice activation/modification.

Managing the full service lifecycle from planning to activation, orchestration, and assurance is a huge challenge for CSPs. It’s especially difficult in 5G because we are talking about doing this in real-time for thousands of dynamic services across multiple network and cloud-based domains.

You simply cannot use yesterday’s technology to manage tomorrow’s services. Better visibility and end-to-end automation are required.

There are some distinct building blocks to successful 5G implementation:

Real-time, dynamic inventory - Planning 5G rollouts is complex and challenging. CSPs need a complete inventory of physical and virtual resources and a unified, service-centric view for effective 5G automation.

Service orchestration and assurance - Managing the full lifecycle of dynamic services that extend across multi-vendor RAN, transport and core domains, at scale, is extremely challenging. Automating service operations from end-to-end requires a new software stack built using standards-based, cloud-native solutions that leverage open APIs.

4.What does the roadmap for network automation look like? 

5G and network slicing offer incredible opportunities but getting there is a journey that will require intelligent automation every step of the way. At Blue Planet, we believe that open, modular, and cloud-native automation solutions put operators in the driver’s seat on this journey by giving them the capabilities they need to be truly adaptable today, and better prepared for tomorrow.

5. What, specifically, can Blue Planet do to enable and accelerate 5G automation? 

To help CSPs implement service lifecycle automation for 5G, we offer a productized and open 5G Automation Solution. Our standards-based, vendor-agnostic solution aligns with the TMF’s Open Digital Architecture, 3GPP and ETSI MANO frameworks, and incorporates open APIs for multivendor, multi-domain interoperability across the 5G ecosystem. The solution helps operators accelerate every phase of their 5G journey:

Preparation and planning - simply put, you can’t automate what you can’t see. So, Blue Planet initiates your 5G automation journey with real-time visibility across all network resources and services, informed by auto-discovery and federation with existing inventory systems.

Automated operations - Blue Planet automates 5G service lifecycle management – including design, orchestration, and assurance–to optimize operational efficiency, reduce costs and improve customer experiences.

Monetization with network slicing - Blue Planet provides the first productized end-to-end network slicing solution that automates lifecycle management of dynamic slices across the multi-vendor 5G RAN, transport, and Core to enable differentiated new services

6. Can you give us some examples of the operators that you are working with? 

We are working with many customers global to support their 5G strategies. But a few great examples include:

• DISH: Dish is working to build the first cloud-native, Open RAN-based, virtualized 5G network in the US, and Blue Planet’s software will help provide a completely automated solution to drive operational efficiency. To support end-to-end automation, Blue Planet seamlessly integrates into DISH’s network slices, which reduces OpEx and ensures customer satisfaction. For more information, watch TM Forum's associated webinar.
• Telefonica: The Telefónica iFUSION project is using SDN to transform and optimize its multi-vendor transport network to support the roll out of 5G and digital services. This implementation aligns with Blue Planet’s Network as a Service (NaaS) framework, which allows Telefónica to improve the customer experience and remove vendor lock-in, while lowering operating expenses.