A panel of telecoms experts examined the state of 5G-Advanced (5G-A) and why it is important during Mobile World Live’s latest topic panel, with the executives highlighting new capabilities enabling operators to capitalise on fresh use cases to drive revenue.
The panellists backed 5G-A upgrades to fuel new levels of network automation to reduce costs and improve reliability, and help drive the evolution to 6G in the coming years.
Egil Gronstad, senior director of systems architecture with T-Mobile US, highlighted the opportunities around cost reduction and improvement in efficiency. “We’ve had 5G now for more than five years, so of course whatever we do today is more advanced than what we did when we introduced 5G. There is a lot going on right now with network monetisation, using slicing and API exposure. That is very important for us.”
One of the big things in the 3GPP 5G-A specifications is a strong framework developed for energy saving and reducing cell site power to make networks more efficient. “These are meaningful, full capabilities that we expect to take good advantage of; it’s good for the environment to reduce power use, which also accounts for a large part of opex.”
He added T-Mobile’s major focus is to be able to expose capabilities in the network so certain new use cases, especially in enterprise but also consumer, are able to take advantage of specific capabilities to cater to their KPIs.
Gronstad pointed to a number of different opportunities for creating new revenue streams, such as lower-cost IoT applications, along with enhancements in reduced capability (RedCap) in terms of lower complexity and cost, better coverage and reliability, and lower power consumption.
Another capability coming with 5G-A in 3GPP is ambient IoT, which he stated is a little bit further out, but “is something we believe has a lot of opportunities, much lower cost of devices. With no battery, it opens up a lot of opportunities for new revenue streams for operators”.
Sean Casey, SVP of product management at BSS software and services player CSG, believes 5G-A gives operators the opportunity to make their networks more open and platform based, develop fresh partnerships and find new revenue streams, perhaps through net-co service-co separation.
While Casey would not quite call it a killer app, he explained it is a chance for operators to evolve their business practices from being focused on retail subscribers into new business streams.
“They’ve also got to continue to think about how they modernise their supporting systems as well as their networks as they go through that transformation.”
Preparing for 6G
Munish Chhabra, head of Mobility Software and Services Business at US technology company Radisys, reckons the most important aspect of 5G-A will be through operational savings enabled by more automation and improved spectral efficiency, noting the technology will be “a trailer to what we can expect is coming with 6G”.
“It is a starting point to that. Every G doesn’t need to be a magic wand that will change the life of consumers. It’s also about what it does to things around us, beyond the smartphone. This is where it is starting to happen and will create the pathway for 6G.”
He added opening new revenue streams through new verticals is also vital.
GSMA Intelligence head Peter Jarich sees the biggest opportunity in doing something new: “The fact that 5G-A is available as a trigger to look at open networks.” The research unit’s data shows open APIs is a big focus for operators, which helps them reach into new enterprise verticals.
He added as operators prepare for 5G-A, they might as well get their back-office systems in order to target enterprise verticals to allow them to move into new markets. “I think that is the real opportunity.”
Jarich highlighted two risks: the rush to 5G-A pushes off things like standalone (SA) which is incredibly important. “There’s also the risk they’ll be too aggressive. As we saw with SA, there was huge interest. Everyone said they were going to do it within years when it first launched and it took longer. We don’t have many operators globally that are doing it.”
If operators see slow momentum, it could hurt the reputation of the emerging technology, he stated.
Challenges
Casey stressed 5G-A needs to move to what he called the “platform-isation” of mobile networks. “5G-A in my view allows operators to get back to where they can create their networks as platforms that open up to different types of opportunities to come onto the system, things like private networks and IoT providers. This is the big opportunity for 5G-A to enable operators to grow revenue.”
As a result, CSG believes operators need to modernise their approach to engaging with customers, adding as they invest and build more advanced networks, they also need to upgrade their OSS and BSS to be able to keep up with those changes and make it easier for partners to access their networks.
This will enable them to offer more robust SLAs and guarantees in the form of network slicing and dynamic quality of service, where the networks themselves can be a lot more responsive to demand.
Picking up on Casey’s point, Jarich noted while the industry can talk about the technologies and the use cases, they generally have knock-on effects, like how to bill and charge for new services and manage them.
“Adding 5G-A makes managing systems so much more complex, so if we don’t integrate automation, your costs go up incredibly.”
Chhabra underlined the fact 5G-A offers enhanced connectivity, with strong momentum in terrestrial networks, noting one of the biggest challenges in the non-terrestrial environment was it being proprietary in nature and not taking advantages of terrestrial enhancements.
This is what has changed from a 3GPP perspective, he stated. Redefining non-terrestrial networks and looking at how both can coexist can potentially lead to ubiquitous connectivity.
“You’re connected everywhere, with seamless connectivity to the point where you’re able to do roaming between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks.”
Gronstad expressed disappointment with 3GPP’s lack of specifications to address fixed wireless access (FWA), noting the industry is just using the mobile network with the specifications designed for mobility and then use devices put in a location for fixed wireless.
He argued with so many smart people in this industry, if “we put our minds to it, we could introduce capabilities in the network that take advantage of the fact that these devices are not moving, they are fixed. And I bet you we could probably double the capacity on the network”.
“I want to put that out as a challenge. Whether that is in 5G-A or definitely for 6G, we as an industry should think about fixed wireless access and how we can design the air interface and the network architecture to be much more efficient for fixed wireless access. I’m certain that there is an opportunity there.”
He sees FWA on 5G as a huge opportunity, noting it has been a great service for T-Mobile and it plans to continue to grow the service.
Jarich suggested a lot of what is emerging is not about super new use cases, but about enhancements available before 5G-A which bring improvements in elements including slicing and non-terrestrial network capabilities. “That is important because this is all about an evolution from 5G on the way to 6G.”
يمكن الاطلاع على المقال الأصلي على: