It may become commonplace for carrier networks to run on public clouds someday. What was only a dream in the early 2010s, when ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) began working on NFV specifications, is now about to become a reality. Mobile cores, which have been built and operated in on-premises/private cloud environments, have been migrated to AWS and Microsoft Azure one after another. An example of AT&T building a 5G network on AWS with a 5G core on Azure is the U.S. Dish Network (hereafter, Dish), which has newly entered as an MNO on the occasion of 5G, and is one of the largest mobile phone operators in South America. Telefonica Vivo is mentioned. In Europe, too, “Swisscom is leveraging its own facilities, AWS Outposts, and a new AWS Region planned to open in Switzerland in the second half of 2022,” said Kiran Edara, general manager of connectivity services at Amazon Web Services. We are looking at migrating 5G networks to hybrid cloud architectures.” In North America, AT&T announced at the end of June that it will migrate its commercially available 5G/4G networks to Azure. It will start with the migration of the 5G core, and it is expected that RAN and MEC (multi-access edge computing) will also be moved to the Azure platform in the future. In addition, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Verizon Business, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, Telstra, NTT, etc. are also Microsoft's carrier partners. of carriers leverage Azure technology. Mr. Taichiro Otomo, Industry Executive, Telecommunications Media Sales Division, Enterprise Business Headquarters, Microsoft Japan, said, "5G is an area with huge potential. talk.
Mr. Taichiro Otomo, Industry Executive, Communication Media Sales Division, Microsoft Japan Enterprise Business Headquarters
Let's check the network configuration and operation mode of Dish and AT&T as representative examples from 5G core to RAN and MEC. Dish used Nokia's cloud-native 5G core to build its 5G network on AWS. The company is also active in the development of O-RAN, and is deploying a 5G network with a multi-vendor configuration, such as adopting Mavenir and Altiostar for DU/CU, and Fujitsu for RU. We operate 5G core and OSS/BSS on a large scale at several AWS Regional Data Centers in the US, and operate UPF and DU/CU that transfer user data at Local Data Centers scattered throughout the country. Utilize functions such as computing, containers, IoT, machine learning, and security provided by AWS for 5G data processing and service provision. In addition, in order to support 5G use cases with high real-time nature at the network edge, "We plan to utilize AWS Local Zones and AWS Outposts," says Edara. AWS Local Zones is a service that deploys AWS infrastructure closer to end users, with several locations including Boston and Dallas. It is intended for running applications that require low latency of 10ms or less, and is suitable for applications such as real-time games, live video streaming, and machine learning inference. AWS Outposts is a managed service for running AWS services on your premises. Hardware designed by AWS and equipped with software is installed in the customer's data center, etc., and AWS performs remote operation management. Users can operate using the same APIs and tools as AWS. In this way, Dish plans to develop a network that can provide MEC services and private 5G for specific industries and companies by combining multiple AWS infrastructure/services. In the future, we will "apply machine learning capabilities in AWS to the network edge to predict network congestion at specific locations, recognize anomalies in network functionality, and make modifications to optimize performance." We plan to automatically take measures and improve our services,” said Edara.