TMN Quarterly 2016 issue 13

REGULARS COUNTRY PROFILE: SPAIN // ANATOMY OF A MOBILE OPERATOR: NTT DOCOMO

Making sense of the worlds

mobile networks

44 BACKHAUL 48 SMALL CELLS38 TEST & MEASUREMENT41 MVNES2016 // Issue 13

ALSO FEATURINGThe Mobile Network // www.the-mobile-network.com

MOBILE WORLD CON

GRESS ISSUE

the networks

of tomorrow

#13ISSUE

5G: THE VERTICALS

STACK UP

LTE-A PRO: WITHOUT

LICENSE

DATA GENIUS:

the even smarter opera

tor

TMN VISUALISATION

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5G Requirements & Th

e Network-Connected

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///////////////////////// CONGRESS SPECIALS

MORE FEATURES /////////////////////////////////////

13 5G Part IIA matter of architecture. If 5G is to succeed, it must serve diverse requirements from a common infrastructure. Not easy.

18 NFV Part IIThe remaining barriers are technical, commercial and cultural. So not an easy run to commercialisation, then. By Guy Daniels.

34 Network SecurityOperators dont have the insight they need to understand and monitor threats to the network. Thats a worry. By Michelle Donegan

25 LTE PROgress Part IIVendors and operators are already beginning to look at commercialising pre-standards versions of LTE-A PRO.

44 BackhaulAn often unconsidered part of the network is about to become part of the wider, programmable landscape. By Michelle Donegan.

DATA TRAF FICVO LT E

C e r tain LT E-Advanc e d f ea tu r e s a l s o r e qui r e p ha s e sy nch r o ni sa ti o n , such as co o r di nat e d mu l t i p o i n t (CoMP ) and e n hanc e d in t e r -c e l l in t e r f e r e nc e co o r di nati o n ( e ICIC ) , which ar e d e s i g n e d t o im p r ov e n e two r k p e r f o rmanc e at th e c e l l e d g e .

Certain LTE-Advanced features also require

phase synchronisation, such as coordi

nated multipoint (CoMP) and enhanced inter-cell i

nterference coordination (eICIC), w

hich are designed to improve network performan

ce at the cell edge.

potentially go well beyond such network management. Although it s

not yet clear what exactly the

pr imary use cases would be for SDN in backhaul networks,

DATA TRAFFIC VOLTE LTE

SATELITE

But by 20 20 , 80 p e rc e n t o f si t e s wi l l n e e d

270 Mb p s and 20 p e rc e n t o f si t e s

wi l l r e q ui r e 1 Gb p s . That s a s tagg e r i n g

rat e o f gr ow t h ov e r th e n e x t f ew y ear s .

There are many newcomers to the market

that are pushing wireless technology

limits to produce higher

capacity equipment for backhaul applications,

many of which are aimed at backhauling

small cells where fibre is either too costly

wi r e l e s s f o r mo bi l e backhau l is no t ab ou t ca paci t y

OPERATOR

BACKHAUL

DATA TRAFF IC VOLTE LTE SATEL ITE

But by 20 20 , 80 p e rc e n t o f si t e s wi l l n e e d 270 Mb p s and 20 p e rc e n t o f si t e s wi l l r e q ui r e 1 Gb p s . That s a s tagg e r i n g rat e o f gr ow t h ov e r th e n e x t f ew y ear s . . . .

Indeed, the backhau

l network seems po i

sed

to shed its boring

status once and fo

r all,

and emerge as an in

tell igent, automat

ed,

software-contro

lled l ink that will

help

operators to del ive

r better

services and reduce

operational costs .

48 Small CellsCounting the numbers can be confusing. Especially as the definition of what a small cell is gets more blurred.

38 Test & Measurement The latest releases and news

from the test vendors pushing the industrys boundaries.

48

3438

42

47

48

41 MVNEsMVNEs are providing another customer base for software vendors, but they need solutions that can keep them ahead of the MNOs.

22 Smarter Operator Part IICan operators truly mash up network and customer data to become even smarter, or are they chasing a mirage.

MOBILE WORLD CONGR

ESS

DUAL ISSUE: PART II

TMNQUARTERLY 5

NET

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EDITOR

Keith [email protected]

KD

Hi!

Commercial Director: Shahid Ramzan // [email protected]

Editorial Director: Keith Dyer // [email protected]

Creative Direction and Design:Shona Gow // [email protected] // www.shonagow.co.uk

2016 TMN Communications Ltd.

28 Picture Story: The Connected CarThe network innovations that will underpin the connected car of the future.

REGULARS

54 Network Shorts5Gs diverse requirements and use cases.

06 Anatomy Of An Operator: NTT DoCoMoThe Japanese operator is an undisputed tech leader, but can its insights be exported.

51 Country Profile: SpainThe operators have struggled, but theres plenty of innovation in the sector.

DATA TRAF FICVO LT E

C e r tain LT E-Advanc e d f ea tu r e s a l s o r e qui r e p ha s e sy nch r o ni sa ti o n , such as co o r di nat e d mu l t i p o i n t (CoMP ) and e n hanc e d in t e r -c e l l in t e r f e r e nc e co o r di nati o n ( e ICIC ) , which ar e d e s i g n e d t o im p r ov e n e two r k p e r f o rmanc e at th e c e l l e d g e .

Certain LTE-Advanced features also require

phase synchronisation, such as coordi

nated multipoint (CoMP) and enhanced inter-cell i

nterference coordination (eICIC), w

hich are designed to improve network performan

ce at the cell edge.

potentially go well beyond such network management. Although it s

not yet clear what exactly the

pr imary use cases would be for SDN in backhaul networks,

DATA TRAFFIC VOLTE LTE

SATELITE

But by 20 20 , 80 p e rc e n t o f si t e s wi l l n e e d

270 Mb p s and 20 p e rc e n t o f si t e s

wi l l r e q ui r e 1 Gb p s . That s a s tagg e r i n g

rat e o f gr ow t h ov e r th e n e x t f ew y ear s .

There are many newcomers to the market

that are pushing wireless technology

limits to produce higher

capacity equipment for backhaul applications,

many of which are aimed at backhauling

small cells where fibre is either too costly

wi r e l e s s f o r mo bi l e backhau l is no t ab ou t ca paci t y

OPERATOR

BACKHAUL

DATA TRAFF IC VOLTE LTE SATEL ITE

But by 20 20 , 80 p e rc e n t o f si t e s wi l l n e e d 270 Mb p s and 20 p e rc e n t o f si t e s wi l l r e q ui r e 1 Gb p s . That s a s tagg e r i n g rat e o f gr ow t h ov e r th e n e x t f ew y ear s . . . .

Indeed, the backhau

l network seems po i

sed

to shed its boring

status once and fo

r all,

and emerge as an in

tell igent, automat

ed,

software-contro

lled l ink that will

help

operators to del ive

r better

services and reduce

operational costs .

30 Networked World: Big buildingsNew regular feature that looks at the network requirements of industry verticals.

The introduction of a new network generation takes a bit of understanding.

You are going to read quite a bit about how LTE-A Pro - the name for all 3GPP LTE tech from now on - is preparing the ground for 5G, or leading the path to 5G. It isnt. They are on two separate, parallel, paths. Sure - some of the techniques as defined in R13 will also be utilised within 5G networks. But 5G has to be, will be, must be, predicated upon a completely different architecture, deploying different network protocols.

It must be able to meet a variety of use cases, all carrying a different mix of requirements, from the same common infrastructure. That infrastructure cannot and will not be built on an evolution of LTE and the current core networking protocols. That is why 5G is a new generation. If, at MWC, you hear 5G will be first and foremost an evolution of LTE then smile and move on.

Speaking of diverse 5G use cases, the most diverse will be within the IoT. I said in this space last issue (Issue 12) that if you thought the IoT hype was done for now, then you had another thing coming. And then Cisco decided to spend nearly a billion and a half dollars on IoT platform company Jasper, meaning that the topic is only going to be even hotter on the, er, aisles of Fira Gran Via. Of course, Ciscos is partly a sales rather than a technology move. The tech is moving on independently of the sort of capabilities Jasper offers. But $1.4 billion buys a lot of attention. And that attention will be on the sector as a whole.

The new of today, the norm of tomorrow.

Its not the most rousing of slogans, but in some respects NTT does indeed seem to be delivering tomorrows network today.

so. But can recent efforts make more of an impact in the rest of the world?

Recently DoCoMo has aligned itself more closely with global standards. Its Xi service is based on LTE, and its Premium 4G service provides enhanced speeds reliant on its deployment of LTE-A in the network. Not that the vendor isnt still willing to tweak and modify standards to meet its own specific use cases.

For example, the carrier has developed its own network densification technology that exploits Carrier Aggregation to allow significantly improved data capacity and throughput in high traffic areas.

The operator calls the architecture advanced C-RAN (Centralised RAN) and is deploying it as it introduces LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) features into its network.

NTT DOCOM

O

Remember iMode? How it was going to be the data networking protocol of the future? Remember where that started? Yep NTT DoCoMo. Remember FOMA? The 3G network standard that wasnt compatible with any of the other 3G network standards, but that NTT DoCoMo still has in operation? Well both are still going strong underpinning 2G and 3G data services in Japan, even though the rest of the world looked on and shrugged.

Just these names alone are enough to remind us that NTT DoCoMo is not afraid to innovate on its own when it comes to network technology. With up to 50% mobile market share, and until very recently fierce control of its handset suppliers, if it wanted to make something happen it had the scale and muscle to do

OPERATOR PROFILE

6 TMNQUARTERLY

Seizo OnoCTO, Managing Director of R&D Division

Takaaki SatoVP, Director of R&D Strategy Group

Kimihiro KuboDirector, Radio Access Engineering

Shigeru Taba Director, Global Network Operations, Network Operation Centre at DOCOMO CS

Peop

le

68 million subscribers1H 2015/16 results

Y2.215 bnAdvanced C-RAN enables the

addition of small add-on cells that provide localised coverage and cooperate with master macro base stations, thereby enabling the flexible deployment of add-on cells, with a maximum downlink throughput of up to 3Gbps.

On top of its LTE-A customisation, The operator is also taking a leading role in developing 5G specifications. It works with 13 vendors, in Japan and in other research centres, and its CTO Seizo Ono is one of the few non-European names on the 5G-PPP leadership boards.

The latest 5G test vendors on board are Intel, Keysight Technologies, Panasonic, Qualcomm Technologies and Rohde &

Schwarz, with work starting before the end of March 2016.The eight companies already on the NTT DoCoMo 5G dance card are Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Nokia and Samsung.

One of those, Nokia, has announced it will be working with NTT DoCoMo on certain techniques in the 4.4-4.9GHz band, including aggregation of unlicensed spectrum (LAA) and interworking with LTE (Dual Connectivity) between 6 GHz, cmWave and mmWave technologies.

TMNQUARTERLY 7

ANATOMY OF A MOBILE OPERATOR: NTT DOCOMO

YOUR RIGHT ARM FOR SDN&NFV

Designed by

ENTER TO WIN AT MWC STAND 5H41 IN HALL 5 www.symkloud.com

C

M

J

CM

MJ

CJ

CMJ

N

TNM_Quarterly_Kontron2016_print_final.pdf 1 2016-02-05 16:55

1BG top-up purchase rate

33 million FOMA 34 million LTE

20 million i-mode 30 million sp-mode

FY2016 Priority rollout of 7,700 base stations in 640 cities in Japan. Launch of 262.5Mbps

From October 2015 - 300Mpbps services in 410 cities.

Telecom business 1.807bn% users using larger data buckets

68 million 80%grew 80%

grew 40%

40%

LTE in FY15 366bn 2014 LTE Capex

CAPEX:

Packet ARPU

97,400 20152016130,000

Total number of base stations grew from 97,400 in March 2015 to 130,000 in March 2016.

18,000 of those Premium 4G enabled (262.5Mbps enabled)

Aiming for 5G launch by Tokyo 2020 Olympics

voice ARPU

1.240

2.910

SUBSCRIBERS:

NETWORK INNOVATION:

TMNQUARTERLY 9

ANATOMY OF A MOBILE OPERATOR: NTT DOCOMO

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The aim is to achieve 10Gbps throughput on a new baseband supporting these air interface features.

And Ericsson says that NTT DoCoMo will take prototypes of radios equipped with capabilities that could form part of 5G networks into field trials in early 2016. Ericsson said it is readying the following:

Radios including features such as multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) and beamforming, that operators can deploy in live outdoor and indoor network environments and across multiple sites

Radio access prototypes integrated with cloud-based network slicing

Designs with 64 radio chains and 128 antenna elements in a compact, pole or wall-mounted form factor

Huawei said that it has conducted large-scale field trials of new radio access technologies with NTT DOCOMO in an outdoor test site in Chengdu, China. The trial saw Huawei stream live video of trial activity to its booth at the CEATEC JAPAN 2015 trade show at Makuhari Messe in Chiba.

The trial was of large-scale Multi-User MIMO, with a concurrent connectivity of 24 user devices in the macro-cell environment on the sub-6GHz frequency band.

It was also used to validate the performance of Sparse Code Multiple Access (SCMA) and Filtered OFDM (F-OFDM) waveforms in the field, both of which are underlying technologies for a new 5G air interface candidate proposed by Huawei.

As the first in the world to succeed with such a large multi-user environment test, this is an important milestone, said Takehiro Nakamura, Vice President and Managing Director of NTT DOCOMOs 5G Laboratory.

In addition to these trials, in October 2015 Nokia announced that a trial in real world conditions had achieved indoor data transmission in excess of 2Gbps. The experiment used millimeter-wavelength signals at the mmWave band 70GHz, with beamforming and beam tracking.

Samsung Electronics was responsible for 5G vehicle trials in Suwon-city, South, tests providing more than 2.5Gbps achieved in a vehicle travelling at 60kmh. The trial used a 28GHz high-frequency signal in combination with beamforming with a high number of antenna elements and beam tracking.

Meanwhile Fujitsu confirming a multi-base-station cooperative transmission system by achieving a data-receiving speed of over 11Gbps in total of four mobile devices with a 4.6GHz signal.

All of these trials are aimed at providing the basis for new air interfaces in 5G.

Nor is DoCoMos research work confined to radio access. The operator has been engaged in proof-of-concept (PoC) trials that have verified the feasibility of network functions virtualisation (NFV) using the software and equipment from six vendors - Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, and Nokia Networks. The operator has said it aims to have the commercial deployment of services based upon a virtualised mobile network by the fiscal year ending March 2016.

Finally, NTT DoCoMo is putting itself in the vanguard of enabling VoLTE service interoperability.

It launched VoLTE roaming with KT from South Korea in October 2015, becoming Japans first mobile operator to offer a VoLTE outbound roaming service.

You can see, then, that the operator has an ongoing record of innovation. This time around, due to its increased engagement across the worlds vendor landscape, the fruits of that innovation look like being more exportable, and consumed more widely across the world.

This time around, due to its increased engagement across the worlds vendor landscape, NTT DoCoMos innovation looks like being more exportable.





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TMNQUARTERLY 11

performance appropriately. Network data can also help CSPs to run their businesses more efficiently, with C-level teams truly understanding the cost-profit structure of the network, and therefore the business, better. Sales and marketing teams could design more responsive and customer-aware service offers.

Above all, with the newfound certainty that this objective data provides, the network, marketing, sales and executive teams would be able to act quickly, to be more agile.

In turn, this agility would allow them to be innovation leaders, and not followers, because new service and customer offers would be based on a thorough understanding of their network cost structures, performance and subscriber experience. Hence, they could arrest and reverse the trend of declining revenues and increasing costs.

Operators have known all this for a while, and there have been a host of good intentions to build data architectures that can mine, process and expose this hidden treasure. Up until now, though, its been difficult to close the gap between these good intentions and the results operators have managed to derive from their mining, correlating and analysing.

By Inna Ott, Director of Marketing, Polystar Group

SPONSORED MWC SHOWCASE

ENABLING AGILITY To be truly agile and transform their business models, operators must democratise the use of network data and assert control over their networks and assets by delivering it to more people in their organisations. Heres how.

CLOSING THE GAPMuch of that gap has been because the final stage of the process, the production of actionable insights in a manner relevant to different particular users within the operator, has proven to be difficult. This is because legacy systems have been built to fulfil long lists of network KPIs and parameters. Such systems have not been sufficiently flexible to deliver information at the relevant level across the organisation. In the pursuit of full feature sets, agility has been lost, and with it the ability to innovate and transform.

USER-CENTRIC DATATo close this gap, Polystar has adopted a new philosophy, while completely realigning its solution portfolio. Instead of building a product set mapped to thousands of network parameters, with options destined to remain unused by the majority of users within a CSP, it has designed configurable, flexible dashboards, that deliver actionable insights relevant to different categories of service user. KALIX, a new addition to Polystars award-winning portfolio, helps CSPs shift to a truly customer-centric approach to data that enables its users to become more agile and make faster business decisions, based on objective and common data sets.

Set for its global launch at Mobile World Congress 2016, this innovative addition to Polystars portfolio provides a completely unified real-time view of networks, services and customers.

To find out more about KALIX, and how Polystar democratises data and delivers it throughout the CSPs organisation, visit us at MWC.

Communications Service Providers (CSPs) are striving to adopt a more

agile approach to how they run their businesses. This means that they need to learn how to act faster, enabling quicker time to action. But this ability depends on information and data, and, while CSPs know that they have a gold mine of data to tap, current systems are an impediment to exploiting it. In other words, CSPs aspire to agility and understand what it takes, but it can be hard to realise this goal.

ENABLING AGILITYSomewhere in these systems lie nuggets of truth about the service experience as actually lived and felt by their customers. The underlying driver for big data and CEM strategies has been the belief that if CSPs could know this truth, they could optimise network performance in a new manner. The benefits of network data are obvious. By understanding services as really experienced by their customers, CSPs could develop a more customer centric approach and optimise network

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5G has many different end use cases, but they must all be delivered over and from the same network. This is just not possible using current control plane and data networking architectures. Therefore 5G will need new ones. Its fine to say that 5G can evolve from

LTE-A-PRO and will build incrementally from sub6GHz radio innovation and so on. But when it comes right down to it, 5G - understood in terms of its ability to genuinely

deliver new business models and use cases - will need a new architecture. There are several recent developments at national and international level

that indicate the world is starting to realise this. It has to be the same network, says a senior network architect at a T1 operator.

It has to be integrated onto a common infrastructure. We just cannot afford to build dedicated networks. Networks can be sliced, but it has to be

on a common infrastructure.This is the crux of the matter in 5G architecture.

If 5G is to be affordable, and workable, and meet the very different vertical use cases proposed for it, then it will need to rely on a single common

infrastructure that is very different from the mobile network we know today.

A MATTER OF

PROTOCOL

TMNQUARTERLY 13

FEATURE: 5G KNOWLEDGE: PART II

14 TMNQUARTERLY

A new working group has been set up within ETSI to provide a central repository and thoughtspace for those who think that 5G will require new protocols that are more optimised to the properties of cellular networks.

An ETSI statement said that The Next Generation Protocols Industry Specification Group (NGP ISG) has been set up to, provide a forum for interested parties to contribute by sharing research and results from trials and developments in such a way that a wider audience can be informed. An action plan to engage other standards bodies will be developed so that parallel and concerted standardisation action can take place as a further step in the most appropriate standards groups.

That sounds like ETSI expects to see its proposals develop alongside, or in some cases within, bodies such as the IETF that are also looking at developing or enhancing protocols that are more optimised to mobile networks.

The issue is that some think that current protocol stacks, notably TCP/IP,

will not be sufficient to meet 5G network latency and throughput demands.

ETSIs release put it thus: The telecommunications industry has reached a point where forward leaps in the technology of the local access networks will not deliver their full potential unless, in parallel, the underlying protocol stacks used in core and access networks evolve. The development of future 5G systems presents a unique opportunity to address this issue, as a sub-optimal protocol architecture can negate the huge performance and capacity improvements planned for the radio access network.

The underlying reliance of mobile access networks on TCP for the delivery of data across the network is something of a historical accident, and one that means that capacity and throughputs can often be strangled because of incompatibilities between TCP and the mobile network. In other words, even where cellular conditions may be acceptable for transport, kinks in the

way the protocol responds to perceived errors mean that performance and user experience suffers.

ETSIs NGP ISG has been assembled to try and find the best way of overcoming these issues. It will look at areas such as addressing and security as well as requirements from use cases such as ultra low latency, video and content distribution. It will also encompass requirements from network operators, including challenges with encrypted content.

Andy Sutton, Chair of NGP ISG said, The TCP/IP protocol suite has undoubtedly enabled the evolution of connected computing and many other developments since its invention during the 1970s. NGP ISG aims to gather opinions on how we can build on this momentum by evolving communication systems architectures and networking protocols to provide the scale, security, mobility and ease of deployment required for the connected society of the 21st century.

The UKs premier 5G research institute, 5GIC, has outlined the capabilities of a new network architecture termed the Flat Distributed Cloud (FDC) architecture. The paper states that the new architecture is intended to provide the foundation for context-aware networks that provide a user experience that is perceived as always sufficient.

As the name suggests, the architecture flattens the current network hierarchy, invoking a horizontally distributed cloud model that relies on new user and control plane protocols allied to the implementation of NFV and SDN, with all network nodes equipped with service compute power and storage as well as

ARCHITECTURE / /communications processing. Although this may sound like other proposals for 5G architecture, the paper says that FDC avoids the blind adoption of SDN, NFV and Cloud principles without placing them in the context of some of the very specific challenges of mobile architectures.

The paper said this combination would allow networks to gain access to, and act upon, new context information as well as to apply new QoS controls.


a new

network

architecture termed

the Flat Distributed Cloud

(FDC) architecture

USER/CONTROL PLANE SEPARATIONThe paper said that FDC is similar to the CUPS (Control and User Plane Separation) architecture evolved from LTE in which the control and user plane parts of the Serving Gateway and packet Gateway are being separated out In the FDC architecture all nodes are both service and communications enabled with suitable processing and storage. The network is arranged in dynamic virtual Cell Clusters that are in turn overlaid onto Hardware Clusters that are located at key Datacentres of various sizes according to location type and available transmission support.

The architecture is very close to that of the CUPS architecture evolved from LTE, but the Control Plane nodes are mapped directly to MACRO/Umbrella cells as a single function per cluster of cells called the Cluster Controller (CC) and the user plane nodes are mapped to Small Cells as User plane functions called Cluster Member functions whilst the user operates dual connectivity to both the Control-Plane associated Macro-Cell system per Cluster and the most appropriate User Plane Cell within the cell-cluster. So the FDC approach combines Dual connectivity from 3GPP Rel-12, CUPS from Rel-14 and adds Context awareness and clustering to the architecture approach.

EVOLVING QOS CONTROLS WITH MORE INFORMATIONThe FDC also proposes a context-aware user plane protocol (UPc) that allows bearer class negotiation by service description and user context rather than by QoS class request. It will also map the service/context request to available QoS controls that are provided by FDC network elements. To do this whilst also maintaining control of functions such as charging, policy and lawful intercept, the FDC would include a new protocol called the Met-Data Protocol (MDP).

The paper said that to date, QoS controls have been seen as either too complex or insufficiently supported on an end to end basis to be workable. The IETF has been slightly more successful in its Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) approach although once again a small subset of controls is actually operated in most cases. 3GPP has four generations of experience in setting QoS for mobile networks, but provision and exposure of QoS controls to the device/application has proved poor. So it is proposed here that for 5G, each communications request is made more descriptive of the request type, content and performance requires and the network selects the best available QoS controls in the network accordingly.NETWORK

MULTIPLE (Fixed/mobile) RESOURCE CONNECTIONFDC also proposes extending the current RRC (Radio Resource Protocol) into a Common Resource Connection Protocol, CRCP, allowing multiple bearer types from multiple technologies to be combined to support one common, dynamic, virtual connection from a device towards the FDC network. In this manner the FDC network enables the potential to dynamically operate simultaneous multiradio and multi-fixed access technology pooling, on a per user basis (multi-RAT/ FAT).

USER PROFILE INTERACTING WITH THE NETWORKContext aware networking means that user profiles provide full 5W (what, when, where, who, why) to the network, with user profiles being selectively enabled for application/network usage using secure certificates issued by the user. Subscriber Data Management (SDM) systems have remained HLR centric to date, but that is envisaged to be extended to support user profiles so that the user may share information selectively with the network in order to improve their user experience. It is proposed that each user will have a User Profile (Upr) that will be extensible in a negotiable manner to provide information keys into new applications and network SON algorithms to improve the network and user experience.

3GPP has four generations of experience in setting QoS for mobile networks, but provision and exposure of QoS controls to the device/ application has proved poor.


TMNQUARTERLY 15

Join the conversation #tmntalkingpoint // Contact: [email protected]

5G could have new QoS controls, with user context brokered through the network.

Seven things I know about

Capacity is never enough, SDN makes its entry

No matter how much technology we throw at the core, backhaul and RAN, usage will outstrip available capacity growth. The evidence is that users will tend to use all the capacity networks are able to provide. Some estimates are that 5G networks will need to cope with 10,000x the volume of traffic, with a top throughput rate 1000x faster than todays peak.

That means that over-provisioning RAN or backhaul capacity is not an option, as it will just not be economical. Technical tweaks to improve spectral efficiency will prove of limited benefit - LTE-A PRO advances already push spectrum efficiencies close to Shannons Limit. The single largest opportunity to cope with this capacity growth is to increase utilisation from their current levels, often below 50%, to near 100%. Its the equivalent of doubling spectral efficiency, meaning that boosting utilisation is a key driver for the implementation of SDN in mobile networks.

The network will get closer

5G network assurance will need to take note of a major architectural shift, as the network distributes virtualised functions to the edge. User plane, and some control plane, traffic will need to remain local where possible, to offload transport to and from core elements and eliminate wasteful congestion at the EPC. The lower latency demands of 5G will also drive content and service logic to the edge. Todays mobile networks typically see 30-50ms of one-way latency across the RAN, whereas

The core will melt

This architectural shift will mean the EPC, backhaul and RAN will blend into a single, full mesh network with only logical centralisation. A distributed virtual EPC (vEPC) is required to provide control over the full mobile network footprint and to eliminate bottlenecks at todays physical EPC, where all the traffic from the entire network is funneled through a single interface. As the core melts, its functions will flow like lava through the network. Backhaul and access networks will also blend, with access and backhaul connectivity provided in the same spectrum, by the same elements, using spatial multiplexing techniques. These trends will eliminate the tiered distinctions between core, backhaul and access networks.

www.accedian.com

SPONSORED FEATURE

The 5G future redefines existence

The killer app of the future is the network itself. Distributed compute, control, capacity allocation and a self-organising, intelligent network become a living, breathing fabric, a platform that will interconnect and support humans and devices like oxygen feeds life. Blended within this fabric will be instrumentation, sensing and reacting to information in the world around it. Around this fabric a new planet will emerge: a 5G planet.

Accedian delivers network performance visibility from core to edge. Its latest solution, FlowBROKER, is making its debut at MWC 2016, introducing ubiquitous visibility into the customer experience.

QoE is the new money

Network operators will develop new business models that see them compete on performance and differentiated user experience, as pervasive connectivity becomes fundamental to human behaviour. Industry verticals and large enterprises will be offered the opportunity to self-provision services, with guaranteed service levels. Cloud service providers and IoT applications will similarly be served the throughput, latency, and resilience required on a per-service basis. To enable this, networks need to adapt in real time, with virtual, dynamic network slices connecting subscribers to resources that immediately serve their needs.

Networks wont be run by humans

The GSMA predicts 100x more devices, 10x more apps, and 1000x more bandwidth used by 2020, which you could reasonably posit results in a 1,000,000x increase in management complexity. Network diversity, densification, demand and increasingly dynamic traffic patterns mean that networks are no longer static or implicitly stable, and constant micro-corrections will be required to ensure competing applications are afforded the priority, bandwidth and resources required to function as they coexist. That wont be done by humans. Automation, machine learning and AI technologies will be utilised to create networks that are increasingly self-aware. Instrumentation must be built into this automated network, to both monitor and feed those automation engines.

The network is alive

There are three main pillars to form the foundation of this self-optimising, autonomous mobile network:

ubiquitous QoS and QoE visibility (the nervous system and source of real-time feedback)

fast analytics fusing visibility with subscriber context and policies

SDN control that takes action at all layers, locations and for all services and subscribers - both prescriptively and reflectively as conditions change.

As the network, analytics and control virtualise, so must visibility. Virtual instrumentation that sees all mobile traffic, every application, function and decision at every location - all the time or on demand - must be able to scale out cost-efficiently and be at the service of automated control committed to continuous QoE optimisation. It must be integral to the network, in all its newfound complexity and scale.

3

SPONSORED FEATURE

TMNQUARTERLY 17

18 TMNQUARTERLY

Building the plane while

it is flying

we may even have participated in proofs of concept work. But before we all get too carried away about how an NFV-led re-architecting of the network will transform an operators fortunes, just how realistic is it to expect an easy transition, and what obstacles need to be overcome as we make the move from legacy networks?

The prime benefit is that NFV will enable a reduced time to market for new services and save operating expenses by deploying disaggregated network functions. The subsequent Virtualised Network Functions (VNFs) can be run over low-cost servers, at any location within the network.

FEATURE: NFV UPDATE: PART II

ur first feature (Issue 12) looked at some recent NFV Proofs of Concept that are designed to

scope out how virtualisation may be applied to certain network functions. Part II of our series on NFV goes further and asks: what are the current barriers to telco implementation and commercialisation? By Guy Daniels

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) is going to change the mobile network as we know it. Weve heard the sales pitches, we understand the technology,

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TMNQUARTERLY 19

Whilst much of the initial NFV sales pitch has been about saving OPEX and CAPEX, questions do remain about the other non-financial benefits. In particular, the business case for service agility is yet to be fully realised and appreciated.

Much of the early focus on NFV by mobile operators has been on the evolution of the mobile edge, utilising NFV in cloud RAN, virtual LTE evolved packet core (EPC) and Gi-LAN virtual services (where the packet data network interconnects with the IP network infrastructure). Early NFV wins for mobile operators appear to be centred around virtual CPE equipment, the evolved packet core and virtualised base stations.

The long-awaited move to deploy voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) on IMS has been an important driver for many telcos to look at NFV. However, most are adopting the least disruptive approach, which is to deploy VNFs on virtual machines that dont require an extensive overhaul of their back office systems. The ideal future-proof solution would be to deploy a full NFV stack with MANO (management and network orchestration) functionality, but thats not on the immediate horizon for most. Indeed, the OPNFV has only just expanded its scope to include MANO in future releases.


Barriers to adoptionA survey last year by IHS showed that barriers are becoming more prominent as operators get closer to commercial deployment. These included products not being carrier grade and finding and training staff. Some barriers are technical, certainly, but of more importance are the organisational and cultural hurdles that service providers will need to clear to reap the full benefits of NFV.

Whilst the entire telecoms community believes NFV to be a good thing, that doesnt mean they are all rushing to re-architect their networks and spend money on aggressive deployment strategies. ETSI is still working on standards (at a commendably fast pace), partners are still working on proofs of concept, and only the most forward-thing and progressive telcos are engaged in real-world trials.

TMNQUARTERLY 19

Maturity of the technologyThere are plenty of mobile operators who dont feel the need to be first to make the change. That may because they are smaller and dont have the resources, or else their markets arent so competitive, or that they are content to wait until NFV technology matures. Or they may have every intention of investing in NFV, its just that they have plenty of other upgrades to finance and roll out first.

The large multinational operator groups, especially those with fixed-line operations as well, are the ones most prepared for the evolution and have cleared internal obstacles to NFV. For example, AT&T is implementing a common infrastructure for all VNFs, with the first VNFs now in production. By 2020, AT&T plans to virtualise and control more than 75 per cent of its network.

People and ProcessesThe biggest barrier is people and processes in telcos, said Vinay Saxena, Distinguished Technologist, Chief Architect NFV, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. It takes time. Carriers still have to run their old systems and keep the lights on. Any change of this magnitude is hard.

There is a cultural shift needed to adopt to this different model, and a lack of skills within many telcos network engineers must align themselves and work closely with software engineers, and a substantial amount of training is required to help the operations team get comfortable with this new model.

Weve seen some service providers invest heavily in this training process, and they can still lean on their vendors in terms of helping with consulting services, said Chris Wright, Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat. But inside the telcos, they need to really understand the cultural shift and the new skillsets at a fundamental level.

The pace is different from carrier to carrier, and between the tier ones and the tier two operators, although the requirement is the same. The large telcos may be able to take on some systems integration roles themselves, but smaller ones will need to buy this in from vendors, added John Zannos, VP of Cloud at Canonical.

Technical and operational complexityThe biggesNFV means an end to silos between equipment providers, and this means all vendors need to accept and adopt the new common interfaces and standard practices. This is going to take time. It will be important to adopt solutions that can interface with existing OSS and BSS systems, as well as supporting new MANO specifications. Carrier networks mean, by definition, carrier grade solutions. This level of performance cannot be sacrificed in the transition to NFV. However, moving away from reliance on a handful of traditional telecoms equipment manufacturers (TEMs) is not going to be that simple.

The majority of core Telco VNFs available today from the traditional TEMs consist of monolithic software with integrated, proprietary networking stacks created with mostly irrelevant requirements, stemming from the physical appliances they aim to replace, explained Martin Halstead, Chief Technologist NFV, EMEA, at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. These complex composite VNFs expect the virtual infrastructure on which they are deployed to be simple in terms of providing dumb network pipes linking same vendor VNFs. The problem with this approach is that it doesnt help realize the full business benefits of NFV, of having a single, network feature rich NFV platform, capable of independently hosting VNFs from multiple TEMs.

Legacy infrastructureFor at least the next decade and possibly longer, carriers and operators will have to manage a hybrid network that is part physical and part virtual. This will be a major challenge. Few, if any, operators are going to deploy NFV in greenfield sites. Instead, they will roll-out the technology alongside existing legacy equipment, creating hybrid networks.

We have to build our plane whilst it is flying, is the analogy used by Diego Lopez, Head of Technology Exploration, Global CTO Unit, Telefonica. We cant stop the network for a week, then it becomes fully virtual the next week. We have to find ways to reconcile our physical network with what will be our virtual network.

Development of NFVProof of Concept work is now focusing on end-to-end scenarios, looking at where the friction points are going to be. We still have a lot to learn, said Trevor Cooper, Solutions Architect, Communications Infrastructure, Intel. Were at the point where we can integrate the various components and show whats possible, now we have to contextualise this with the orchestration and management systems to be able to automate and provision in a commercial way.

Virtual packet gateways for M2M services are now being developed, and some progressive operators are on target to introduce virtual EPC into their main networks. But an overhaul of the mobile core network is a challenging and risky undertaking at the best of times, and will require many more successful proofs of concept and trials before operators take this big step.

Within about five years, around 70 per cent of the network infrastructure will be virtualised, said Eyal Felstaine, Head of NG OSS at Amdocs. Operators will change totally the way they work. The changes will be immense.



If the barriers to NFV are cultural, technical and commercial - isnt that a worrying list?

20 TMNQUARTERLY

Operators have intelligence but can they use it to become even smarter?

Carrying terabits of customer data doesnt make operators the know-it-alls of digital society because the data isnt theirs. However, integration of their network and customer data and moves to aggregate insights from that with third parties could see the even smarter operator become an omniscient middleman, writes George Malim.

Substantial focus has been devoted to the network data-related aspect of mobile operators intelligence as they prepare to use both network and customer data to enable the efficient operation of virtualised and hybrid networks. However, network intelligence is only part of the opportunity operators have to become even smarter. If they close the loop between network insights and the insights they can access within their customer data, they could find new ways to interact and serve customers and partners and, critically, monetise those - in addition to achieving efficient, automated network operation.

Operator moves to personalisation, adaptive customer experience management, flexible service delivery, converged analytics and integrated and automated BSS-OSS decision making, if completed, could provide the foundation for the even smart operator but such completion remains years away.

Nevertheless, Jrme Gueydan, the

Innovation CIO at Orange, thinks the even smarter operator will become a reality because there is a lot of value that can be drawn when crossing customer data with network data. Neil Lilley, a director of marketing at Ericsson, agrees and goes further: Knowledge is power and companies realise that for relatively modest investments they can get better and better insights - especially once companies start to see projects succeed and go beyond their expectations, he says. For example, weve seen the ability to predict net promoter score (NPS) for a set of customers deliver significant value.

Not everyones convinced. The even smarter operator probably wont be a reality in my career lifetime, says Jay Perrettt, the chief technology officer of Aria Networks. Theres a lot of hype about big data but collecting data is one thing, using it to make an informed decision is something completely different. Were an awfully long way away from being able to that effectively.

There is, therefore, a long road ahead

The Even Smarter Operator

FEATURE: SMART OPERATOR: PART II

22 TMNQUARTERLY

Operators could be the middlemen, aggregating all the possible data, not only from mobile phones,


A lot of operators use data internally effectively so I think there will be a question of priorities as to when or if operators look to external opportunities, he says. A potential use of the data is to address network efficiencies so they may focus on enhancing network utilisation first.

Federico Pigni, an associate professor in the department of management and technology at Grenoble Ecole de Management who is researching digital data initiatives, points out that operators tend to be highly internally focused. Operators could be the middlemen, aggregating all the possible data, not only from mobile phones, he says. That could be a good way to provide an added service to customers but operators tend to be internally focused even though there is no clear winner yet. The provision of customer premise equipment, such as set top boxes, could see operators play a role in smart home and other Internet of Things initiatives, for example.

Yet even for internal applications of integrated network and customer insights, the end game isnt in sight.

to consider, he says. Id also emphasise that this type of sensitive user data has seen regulators take a dim view of the potential for it to be over-used.

For Perrett a clear business case must be present and today, for the most part, it isnt. Collating the information into a clear business objective that can be translated into something an operator can do is the challenge, he confirms. In our work at two tier one operators and a large over the top (OTT) provider the hurdle hasnt been the technology or the integration into systems, it has been the business processes to make the project work. Operators are still approaching integrating network and customer data from an internal perspective, partially because there are internal business cases that they can readily understand.

Having a true 360 degree view of our customers interactions with Orange, would allow us to predict their expectations and issues before they have even made us aware of these, Guyedan says. Combining customer data with network data access and use enables us to continue improving customer experience in two areas: the quality of access, at [specific] times and locations; and customised offers based on the types of content and services consumed.

For King its a question of operator priorities as well as familiarities.

for operators to travel to integrate their disparate data before attempting to make it available to other organisations and monetise that. Gueydan foresees challenges for operators in bringing together network and user data.

Firstly operators must delete silos and integrate IT as in some cases this can still be separate, he says. Secondly, they must translate what the added value of crossing these two data streams is to the customer. This needs to move beyond internal operations.

Matt Roberts, the head of marketing for the big data and strategic innovation unit at Amdocs, concurs: Finding the right data at the right time and fusing it with other sources is particularly challenging within telecoms because data is highly siloed and organisationally the corporate set up of operators prevents that fusion.

Chris King, the senior director of marketing at Oracle, adds to the list. There are any number of technical challenges involved in blending the siloes together, especially with user data based around SIMs or IMEI numbers, but there are also internal politics within operators and some regulatory concerns

TMNQUARTERLY 23

Im not saying they dont have lots of data but the operators have become disintermediated



Is this feature outlining an impossible dream or an achievable goal?

24 TMNQUARTERLY

The end game is for the operator to deliver business value as its business needs change, says Perrett. That means bringing together these two data sets so the operator can make informed business decisions. Those business decisions arent network operations-related. This isnt thinking about how to connect a firewall to a load balancer, adds Perrett. That happens automatically. This is about the network being an intelligent cable that the operator uses to generate value.

Will operators data and their analytics capabilities enable them to become a data hub that puts them at the centre of the data economy? Thats a real aspiration and its likely, says Lilley. Its still taking shape in terms of a business model and

what the most compelling use cases will be. The monetisation scenarios most likely to succeed will be to do with location such as localised advertising correlated with knowledge about the customers profile and interests.

King thinks operators are more familiar with providing third parties with insights than is widely thought. As an industry telecoms has exposed data to third parties for ten years now, he says. Parlay and OneAPI exposed network capabilities to third parties and things like location information are already being utilised. Its not an uncommon thing. Yet, while scenarios in which companies exploit their data become more common, operators are not necessarily at the centre of the data economy. The problem is there is a war of ecosystems going on, says Pigni. People say that data will be the 21st century equivalent of oil in the 20th century for industry. If you believe that, operators look like theyre in a good position because the cellphone has the data. However, they dont own that data, the apps do. Operators are in the right place to strike oil but they

dont have the exploitation rights. Im not saying they dont have lots of data but the operators have become disintermediated, adds Pigni. They have the device information, they have geolocation from the phone or towers if theyre allowed to use it, and they are still in the loop for payments. Theyre in an interesting position because they could provide the channel and be the aggregators of data but Im not sure how interested they are. Operators are working hard on becoming smarter but for now, at least, their focus is on deploying their new data driven abilities internally because there are clear ways and importantly ways they understand for them to generate revenue and create savings from doing so. Lack of familiarity with the requirements of other industries and privacy regulation concerns in some markets are making external application of data insights less of a priority but not necessarily something that wont happen. After all, if its not operators that become the middlemen of mobile data, who will?

TMNQUARTERLY 25

FEATUREFEATURE: LTE-A PROGRESS: PART II

The story so far The 3GPP has decided that future releases of LTE-Advanced standards specifications will officially be known as LTE Advanced PRO, following a decision at a recent meeting to adopt a new name for specifications from Release 13 onwards.

Although the standards will not be frozen until March 2016, many vendors have already started to release pre-standards commercialisation of R13 features. These can be seen in some vendors with a distinct brand name, like Huaweis 4.5G and ZTEs. Others, such as Nokia Networks and Ericsson are announcing products as LTE-Advanced PRO features, as part of new product and software releases. TMN takes a look at some early commercialisation of what will be R13 technologies.

LTE will continue for a long while yet, being developed

in parallel with 5G specifications.

We even have a new name for this

process - LTE Advanced PRO. Part II of this investigation looks at vendor pre-releases so far.

Many vendors have already started to release pre-standards commercialisation of R13 features.

Is this feature outlining an impossible dream or an achievable goal?

26 TMNQUARTERLY

NOKIAS RADIO ENHANCEMENTS

Nokia Networks will showcase LTE-Advanced PRO innovations at Mobile World, including industry firsts with 3D Beamforming and 8 transmit by 4 receive Intelligent Beamforming, inter-site carrier aggregation capabilities, and carrier aggregation combined with advanced modulation to triple uplink data rates.

The product upgrades are largely driven by software developments, which will work on current base stations as well as with advanced cloud-based configurations. Several of the upgrades fall within the scope of R13 specifications that will form the first tier of LTE-A PRO releases.

A TD-LTE-Advanced Pro 3D Beamforming demonstration will show Nokias Intelligent Beamforming capability that maximises signal levels while also minimising inter-cell interference by combining vertical and horizontal beamforming. It promises 4-fold uplink and 3-fold downlink throughput gains, measured in outdoor field environments using a commercial base station and devices.

Nokias Inter-Site Carrier Aggregation combines TDD and FDD carriers from different base stations located at different sites. This can provide high throughput at the cell edge using existing Release 10 devices.

Nokia Intelligent Beamforming now includes 8x4 (8 transmit and 4 receive antennas) capability for TD-LTE that doubles cell edge rates and delivers 50% more average sector throughput. It also implements DL-CoMP (Coordinated MultiPoint) for a 50% increase in cell edge spectral efficiency. The Intelligent Beamforming capabilities are particularly applicable to high bands for greater coverage and capacity.

Uplink Carrier Aggregation and 64QAM modulation are introduced via software and combined to increase peak data rates in FDD-LTE cells by up to 150 Mbps, three times the maximum uplink speed of typical LTE networks today. This rebalances users uplink and downlink experiences, following multiple downlink speed increases in LTE-Advanced in recent years.

ERICSSONS 17A RELEASE

Ericssons Networks Software 17A for Massive IoT was launched with a fair bit of fanfare from Ericsson, which was keen to announce operator support for low power cellular IoT features that will be standardised in R13. The vendor announced that both Verizon and AT&T are working with it to trial some of those elements to support their IoT services.

Verizon is already trialling existing cellular IoT tech from Ericsson, and said it will add the LPWA variant to the mix. AT&T also seems to be trialling the tech from Ericsson, with this release saying Ericssons 17A release had the backing of AT&T, and including a supportive quote from the operator.

17A will incorporate support for NB-IoT which the 3GPP is rushing to finalise for its March freeze date, as well as LTE Machine-type Communication (LTE-M). As such it is a pre-standards release, as of now.

Ericsson is making a pretty big play here, with a press release trumpeting millions of connections per cell site, and making the most of the operator tie-ups, although if you read between the lines there is not a great deal of actual commitment in there. Theres also a supporting white paper, in which the writer has clearly been tasked to come up with all possible reasons for cellular IoTs superiority to non-3GPP alternatives (LoRa, Sigfox, Weightless, Wifi etc.) It addresses a comprehensive range of Internet of Things (IoT) applications by supporting millions of IoT device connections per cell site. The new network software introduces narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) to existing LTE network infrastructure, enabling fast rollout of reliable, secure mobile connectivity with low total cost

FEATURE: LTE-A PROGRESS: PART II

TMNQUARTERLY 27

Keep an eye out for LTE-A PRO features being released this year as pre-5G.


Meanwhile Vodafone Group, Huawei, and u-blox say they

have completed the first successful commercial trial of pre-standard NB-IoT. Vodafone and Huawei integrated the technology into the operators existing mobile network in Spain and then sent the first pre-standard NB-IoT message to a u-blox module installed in a water meter.

Matt Beal, Director of Innovation and Architecture, Vodafone Group, says,Vodafone has led the development of NB-IoT, the LPWA technology in licensed spectrum that has gained huge industry support. The completion of this first commercial trial with our partners is further evidence of that. Once commercialised, NB-IoT will provide tangible benefits for our enterprise customers, principally making it feasible to connect more devices to IoT.

Nokia is also present in the R13 IoT game. With Korea Telecom it recently conducted a field trial of enhanced

Machine Type Communications (eMTC), also known as LTE-M.

The trials were conducted on KTs LTE network using Nokias Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station, where eMTC utilized 1.4 MHz of the 20 MHz LTE system. The trial demonstrates the potential for eMTC to allow for coexistence with existing the LTE network, provide extended coverage and accommodate medium data-rate Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity use cases.

Other vendors too are adapting to the R13 environment.

Small cells specialist SpiderCloud will be showing LAA-capable cells at MWC, bringing its product in line with the Radio Dot and 6402 picocell from Ericsson, and small cells from Huawei and Nokia Networkss Flexi Zone G2 small cell.

Enhanced carrier aggregation, LAA and IoT will be the big three technologies that vendors push from R13. Along with those will be the antenna developments, with MIMO and 3D beam forming to the fore.

of ownership. Additionally, the network software introduces power-saving functionality for NB-IoT and LTE-M, allowing for more than 10-year device battery lifetime.

NB-IoT, LTE Machine-type Communication (LTE-M) and the previously launched Extended Coverage GSM (EC-GSM) are complementary and address the diversity of LPWA IoT use case requirements and deployment scenarios while making best use of existing networks. EC-GSM serves IoT applications for all GSM markets. LTE-M supports a broad range of rich IoT applications such as wearables, location-based child-tracker services, and eHealth health care apps like continuous blood pressure monitoring. And the newly defined category NB-IoT covers ultra-low-end IoT applications such as metering and sensor monitoring with greater cost and coverage advantages than LTE-M.

NB-IoT scales LTE to connect a much wider variety of use cases and has flexible deployment options, using a dedicated carrier (200 kHz) that can be deployed in-band of LTE, in a guard band or stand alone. Each NB-IoT carrier can support up to 200,000 connections, which can be easily scaled up by adding more carriers as capacity requires, for millions of IoT connections per cell site.

HUAWEIS PRE-STANDARDS NB-IOT

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THE CONNECTED CAR &

THE MOBILE NETWORK

SMART TRAFFIC LIGHTS communicate over LPWA to traffic information applications

Deliver traffic information to apps and analytics engines, with the results fed back to the car.

FUTURE: WIFI ACCESS POINTS 802.11p (WAVE), data exchange between vehicles and the roadside infrastructure that operates in the 5.9 GHz band of the wireless spectrum.

5G. V2V communications, direct vehicle to vehicle connectivity for automated driving.

ONBOARD CONNECTIVITY to devices in-car via WiFi and 4G. Multi antenna, WiFi/Bluetooth combined chips for in-car connectivity.

ONBOARD NAVIGATION with updated traffic info, plus distance to charging and fuelling stations = display on dash

28 TMNQUARTERLY

TMNQUARTERLY 29

FEATURE

THE MOBILE NETWORK

SENSORS provide feedback for collision avoidance

5G FUTURE: small cells, densely packed, provide edge intelligence that communicates in near real time with the car, meeting near real time latencies.

MACRO CELL provides small cell cluster coordination and aggregation

EMERGENCY CALL over cellular networks with location

ENGINE DIAGNOSTICS

Picture credit: BMW

TMNQUARTERLY 29

ABI Research said in a report published in January 2016 that the in-building wireless market would more than double in revenue by 2020, with the market anticipated to top $9 billion by 2020

Nick Marshall, Research Director at ABI Research, says, Sports venues, transportation and healthcare will continue to be the verticals that attract the most DAS investment, with shopping malls and hospitality coming in at a close second place.

Operators, too, know that this is an area in which they need to play catch up. Of Ericssons claimed 100 Radio Dot

customers, 39 are in the Asia Pacific region, and that reflects Marshalls view that the region is set to lead in in-building. While the Asia-Pacific region today accounts for just one fifth of the total market, we forecast it to be the fastest growing region and to represent almost one third of the market by 2020, Marshall says.

Consider the demands of a major stadium event. For the 2015 Super Bowl in Phoenix, Verizon customers alone used 4.1 terabytes of data. That was a major increase on the 1.9 terabytes at 2014s event.

About 90 percent of our time is spent indoors. However, results from an Ericsson ConsumerLab survey reveal that only three in 10 smartphone users find indoor voice quality, coverage and reliability to be good. The challenge will be exacerbated by the 11 times growth in smartphone traffc forecast from 015 to 0 1, with around 90 percent of mobile data traffc expected to come from smartphones by the end of 0 1.

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FEATURE: NETWORKED WORLD

The above is a direct quote from an Ericsson statement that is publicising the 100th operator customer for its dedicated in-building super-DAS system, the Radio Dot System. From the Dot, to Huaweis LampSite, to SpiderClouds E-RAN and Airvanas OneCell, to the intelligent digital DAS products from the likes of CommScope and Cobham Wireless, theres little doubt that meeting the coverage and capacity demands of large venues, from airports, shopping malls, major office campuses to arenas and stadiums is very much a priority for wireless vendors.

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This year, for Super Bowl 50, Verizon has designed its coverage of Levis Stadium in Santa Clara to handle 6 terabytes. And its not just the stadium itself that needs an upgrade when a big event comes to town. Roads, transport hubs, major hotels and gathering points also require a subsequent boost.

For Super Bowl 50 that adds up to a $70 million long-term investment to more than triple 4G LTE wireless data network capacity in key areas throughout the Bay Area. Preparation has taken nearly two years, boosting network performance in more than 10 major areas from San Francisco to Santa Clara, along with the three major area airports and several hotels. The list of network rollouts has included:

Nor is meeting stadium demand merely about the technology. Before and during Super Bowl 50, a special team of 100 technicians and engineers will monitor and manage the network in real-time both in San Francisco and in and around Levis Stadium.

As can be seen from the list below, meeting the demands of large venues requires a mix of technology. DAS, small cells as standalone deployments and in pseudo-cloud iterations, beefed up macro and Wi-Fi will all play their part. This mix is determined at the outset by the expected traffic mix (ie voice, data, video, uplink/downlink), the inherent RF propagation characteristics of the building, and also what the building owner wants to achieve with the rollout. Another factor, especially for existing buildings, rather than new builds, is the existing supporting infrastructure, such as cabling and power.

Its notable that some systems may offer tri-mode capability, powered over Ethernet, but that might mean installing additional cables through a building rather than using the existing cabling. Its also worth remembering that boosting access within a building will, using small cells, in many cases, mean boosting access to a building. That means increasing the backhaul. Of course, the upside of this is that once a building is properly covered, there should be ample capacity within the building, and so increasing capacity means increasing backhaul to the structure, rather than revisiting a site to install more radio nodes.

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16 NEW MACRO CELL SITES;75 SMALL CELLS;FIRST TIME, PATENTED ANTENNASYSTEM TO REACH LOWER STADIUM SEATS;INCREASED PEAK DOWNLINK SPEEDS;37 SITES UPGRADED TO XLTE14 MOBILE CELL SITESTH

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In a mobile network the ratio of uplink to downlink traffc is typically around 1110. At a music festival however, during peak hours the ratio of uplink to downlink traffc can be reversed to 311.

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Vodafone and Telefonica Germany have dealt with large crowd events at its Fan Mile by installing a digital DAS that is fed over fibre by base station capacity sited 5km away. The system uses Cobham Wireless idDAS ABOUT

SERVICESThe newest battle in large in-building installations is around services. One aspect of choosing the technology is to understand what you want from the technology. For example, a building owner may just want to make sure its tenants or visitors get the coverage and capacity they need. An operator installing a dedicated network may want to go further and be able to use its connection to the core network to provide localised or enterprise services, that can be hosted on the infrastructure that provides the capacity (like in the Mobile Edge Computing or SpiderClouds Services Node or Nokias Liquid Apps model). Or it may be that the enterprise itself wants to be able to provide services to its own users, or in an environment like retail or hotels, to its visitors. An equivalent in the large stadium environment would be to offer attendees to the event dedicated content or video streams of the event they are attending, using locally optimised broadcast over LTE, or streaming, services. This aspect, the service enablement of the in-building space, will form the next battle for revenue in this sector, but it is one that will be influenced by the technology choices that businesses are making today.

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FEATURE: NETWORKED WORLD

How will the technology choices that in-building wireless providers make impact on the services they can deliver?


Lets roll this. Sometimes you just need to roll in capacity. The most recent example is Verizon boosting its coverage for the Super Bowl 50.

CELL ON WHEELS

Nokia has recently launched its pop up network. This comes with services that include planning and optimisation, provided by specialist tools and consultants to make sure that temporary capacity is located, provisioned and deployed in a dedicated way.

Stadium or large venue wireless design doesnt necessarily have to be permanent. If venues are expecting a one-off increase in demand for an especially large event, or a temporary stadium is being constructed (as for many sporting events) then check out these options.

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How will the technology choices that in-building wireless providers make impact on the services they can deliver?

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SECURITY IN A

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FEATURE: NETWORK SECURITY

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Mobile network security has never had a higher profile than it does today. Just a few short years ago at Mobile World Congress, for example, security wasnt even on the agenda. Now, security products and discussions are prevalent on the show floor.

Theres a heightened awareness in the industry about the vulnerabilities that exist in nearly every part of the mobile network, from the devices to the mobile core and the business support systems that store volumes of customer data. For mobile operators, the most disastrous cyberattacks can cause a major service outage or steal customer data. Operators pay a high price for suffering a cyberattack in direct financial charges and brand damage.

A recent cyberattack on UK broadband provider TalkTalk highlights just how wrong things can go for service providers. In a major customer data breach, hackers accessed the personal details of 156,959 customers (including names, addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers and email addresses), as well as bank account details for 15,656 of those customers. To make matters worse, the incident was the third such attack on TalkTalk in nine months. TalkTalk estimates the cyberattack will cost up to 60 million and is offering all customers a free upgrade.

But the damage to TalkTalks brand and reputation for failing to safeguard its customers personal data is likely to last longer than a one-off financial hit and possibly result in higher churn and lower new subscriber additions. According to consumer market research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, TalkTalk lost market share in the UK home services market in the fourth quarter of 2015 following the data breach, as seven percent of its broadband customers left for other service providers.

No mobile operator wants to be the target for high-profile public backlash like TalkTalk was in the UK, which is why network security is now so important.

But there are signs that mobile operators are not as well equipped as they should be to deal with todays threats due to lack of visibility into the traffic flowing across their networks (particularly at the application layer), inadequate threat detection and not enough automation to avert attacks before they can inflict damage on the network.

According to Arbor Networks annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report, 38 percent of mobile operators surveyed said they had an event that led to a customer-visible network outage while 38 percent said that they had no visibility into their mobile packet core network, slightly up compared to 33 percent in last years survey. Meanwhile, 44 percent said they had no visibility into their mobile Internet infrastructure.

The survey results also suggest DDOS attacks are on the rise, some originating from mobile users. Of the mobile operators surveyed, 68 percent said they had seen DDOS attacks targeting their users or infrastructure, which is a

significant increase from last years 36 percent. Furthermore, 15 percent of mobile operators surveyed said they had detected DDOS attacks from mobile users, but 59 percent said they did not know, indicating they lacked sufficient visibility to detect these threats.

Mobile operators are increasingly frustrated by a lack of granularity in the traffic monitoring systems that detect threats. When a network traffic anomaly is discovered, its difficult and time-consuming for an operator to determine whether the incident is the result of a malicious attack or not. For example, an unusual spike in LTE signalling could be caused by malware or just a poorly designed chatty application that requests too many server updates.

Operators also need to act more quickly to prevent a malicious attack from degrading services or compromising customer data once it has been detected and identified. This requires more automation in network security systems.

While operators seek solutions to todays myriad network security challenges, some are moving towards a new network security architecture, which is virtualised, based on the fundamentals of Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN).

...DISASTROUS CYBERATTACKS CAN CAUSE A MAJOR SERVICE OUTAGE..

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Looking ahead to a secure 5G future

On the surface, NFV and SDN look like network security nightmares. Both networking paradigms introduce entirely new ways of building networks and creating services. In network security terms, new equals risk.

NFV takes mobile operators out of their siloed hardware comfort zones. Software-based network functions reside in software on generic, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware, which can be spun up all at once across a network, rather than traditional vendor-specific hardware being launched by teams of engineers.

Among the many security concerns about this approach is that by injecting telecom network functions into IT platforms, those functions are vulnerable to the security weaknesses already inherent in the IT infrastructure as well as to hackers who are familiar

with how to infiltrate such IT systems, thereby creating new kinds of threats. Not only does the network function need to be secured, but also the virtualisation infrastructure that it rides on.

Also, the use of open application programming interfaces (APIs) will give more people access to network resources than ever before, while the adoption of open source software creates new vulnerabilities too.

When it comes to SDN and its centralised software-based network control, the worry is that it will be easier for hackers to disrupt services by attacking just one SDN controller.

However, despite those concerns, virtualsation and SDN present significant opportunities for operators to implement more flexible, cost-efficient security across their networks as well as provide revenue-generating security services to businesses. The principles of flexibility, programmability and agility that underlie NFV and SDN are just as applicable to network security, if not more so. NFV and SDN allow security to be distributed to more parts of the network and enables security to scale flexibly according to

changing threat patterns. Some operators are already pursuing

virtualised security, most notably AT&T and BT.

For AT&T, the move to virtualised security is in line with the operators overall transition to NFV and SDN. As AT&T senior VP and Chief Security Officer Ed Amoroso explained to the Wall Street Journal, the idea is to no longer rely on perimeter security, but to shrink-wrap security around new applications and databases with software as the operator shifts to SDN.

Meanwhile, BT is working with Cisco in a major security initiative aimed at its own networks as well as those of its business customers. According to Les Anderson, VP of cyber at BT Security, one of the key reasons why BT choose Cisco for this project was the vendors ability to deploy security products into SDN and virtualised environments to unlock additional value that is critical to security.

The move to virtualised security is also leading to new partnerships among security and telecom vendors. For example, in the Cisco-Ericsson partnership, Ciscos secur

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TMN Quarterly 2016 issue 13

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