The 5G future — a Comms Connect NZ preview

Comms Connect is excited to announce that two sessions at its upcoming New Zealand conference, to be held from 13–14 June at Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre, are set to explore the potential of 5G standalone networks.

Josh Bahlman, General Manager of Telco Cloud at Spark, will explore this topic first in his keynote presentation, before taking part in a panel session with some of the pioneers of 5G standalone trials in New Zealand.

From ‘non-standalone’ to ‘standalone’ 5G

5G has the potential to create a step change for business and enterprise customers through new use cases that leverage low latency and high throughput, such as enhanced virtual and augmented reality, industrial automation, real-time video analytics with artificial intelligence, digital twins and ‘massive IoT’. But while networks in New Zealand have been updated to 5G, data centres and network cores are still running on legacy, non-5G systems, which are dependent on 4G infrastructure (non-standalone 5G).

A 5G standalone (5G SA) network, on the other hand, is ‘cloud native’, meaning that it is fully virtualised, can run on any cloud service, is designed with a microservices approach and is architected to address evolving customer needs in a scalable way, while also offering inherent resilience. This creates flexibility in an end-to-end 5G solution and allows users of the network to realise the full range of benefits of a standalone 5G network, including advanced capabilities such as network slicing and private networks. A standalone 5G network also enables low-latency access to multi-access edge compute solutions, allowing customers to deploy solutions that can push compute capacity from the core network right to the customer’s worksite, factory or workplace.

To achieve standalone 5G, data centres and core mobile networks need to be upgraded and deployed on a cloud-native platform. The problem is that existing mobile networks run out of a centralised data centre have relatively static use cases and are complex to customise.

Proofs of concept for enterprise customers and wireless broadband

Last year, Spark deployed a Mavenir 5G SA cloud-native core solution on AWS Snowball Edge, a physically rugged device that provides edge computing and data transfer services. Using the AWS device allowed Spark to create a highly portable edge solution that could literally fit into a suitcase — to process and store data close to where it’s generated. The company’s test results demonstrated low latency to deliver real-time video analytics — with latency reduced by 70% to single-digit milliseconds — prior to the edge deployment of the 5G standalone cores solution and analytics service.

This proof of concept allows Spark to experiment with how a highly customisable network can be sliced and adapted to evolving enterprise requirements — for example, creating dedicated virtual networks with functionality specific to the service or customer over a common network infrastructure. It also shows how businesses such as port authorities (with large mobile device fleets that require high throughput and low latency) could operate on virtual network slices that optimise the use of a physical private network.

While the initial use case for Spark’s 5G was to increase speed and capacity in its wireless broadband and mobile products, the company saw the opportunity to explore how its broadband service would further benefit from operating on a 5G SA network. To test this, Spark deployed a Mavenir 5G standalone cloud-native core solution on AWS Outposts, a fully managed solution delivering AWS infrastructure and services to virtually any on-premise or edge location. Testing a wireless broadband service on this proof of concept showed faster download speeds and reduced latency when compared to pre-deployment results, the telco said, providing a better experience for its wireless broadband customers.

5G standalone trial

Finally, Spark this year announced the completion of a 5G SA trial which successfully confirmed and validated the technical capabilities of 5G SA technology on the company’s network. Delivered within a short three-month timeframe, demonstrating the ease with which standalone cloud-native solutions can be deployed, the trial showcased how 5G SA technology can deliver the low latency, high bandwidth and reliability that are required for high-performance use cases, such as real-time video analytics, when compared to previous wireless technologies.

The trial was underpinned by Ericsson’s cloud-native 5G Core running on Red Hat OpenShift, integrated with Spark’s 5G Fixed Wireless Access Network (FWA) to test enhanced wireless broadband. Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core network slicing and edge computing deployment capabilities are understood to create the potential for new monetisation opportunities for Spark’s customers in enterprise and critical communication.

Bahlman concluded, “These proofs of concept create line of sight for us to deliver the enhanced benefits of standalone 5G — both to New Zealand businesses looking to innovate using 5G connectivity and multi-access edge compute, and to New Zealanders accessing a network that supports applications such as instant video streaming, cloud hosted gaming and the reaction times required for driverless vehicles.

“The 5G standalone network opens the door on capacity and low latency to help accelerate IoT trends, such as connected cars, smart cities and IoT in the home and office.”

Bahlman’s keynote and panel will take place on day two of Comms Connect New Zealand, on 14 June. He will be joined by Ben Panic, VP and Head of Telco at Red Hat; Paul Jesemann, Regional CTO, APAC at Mavenir; and Ratan Kumar, Principal Solutions Architect at AWS. For more information, visit https://www.comms-connect.co.nz/.

Image credit: iStock.com/yaom