DELL TECHNOLOGIES AND 5G Analysis and strategy to capture the 5G mobile opportunity

November 2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY...... 3 THE DELL TECHNOLOGIES 5G STRATEGY...... 4 1. INTRODUCTION...... 6 1.1 5G NEW DEMANDS...... 7

1.2 NEW TRAFFIC TYPES...... 7

1.3 IOT...... 7

1.4 AR/VR...... 9

1.5 MISSION-CRITICAL...... 10

1.6 ENHANCED MOBILE BROADBAND...... 10

1.7 DATA PLANE PERFORMANCE...... 11

1.8 NETWORK EFFICIENCIES...... 12

1.9 OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCIES...... 13

2. TELECOM INDUSTRY STATUS...... 14 3. TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES...... 17 3.1 AIR INTERFACE...... 17

3.2 PACKET CORE: GENERAL...... 18

3.3 SDN...... 20

3.4 AUTOMATION, ORCHESTRATION, REPORTING AND ANALYTICS ...... 20

4. DELL TECHNOLOGIES’ PERSPECTIVE ON 5G...... 21 5. CONCLUSION: DELL TECHNOLOGIES - POWERING THE CLOUD-GENERATION MOBILITY ERA ...... 23 A. REFERENCES...... 24 B. ABBREVIATIONS...... 26 Executive summary The impending 5G transition, with Imagine the future – a scalable, significant advances in bandwidth composable and automated wireless and improved latency and quality network infrastructure that meets the of service (QoS), will enable a new high-performance needs of tomorrow’s wave of services including enhanced demanding consumer, Internet of mobile broadband, connected cars, Things (IoT), and mission-critical drones, smart retail, industrial robots, services and makes it easy to build, and much more. deploy, manage, operate, and assure new end-to-end applications. The new In the last several years, Service era of 5G networks will see not only Provider networks have begun a technology innovations and operational journey towards software-defined innovations, but also business model infrastructure, leveraging the innovations that result in intelligent capabilities of compute, network devices and applications consuming and storage virtualization to drive and generating data like never before. new capital and operational models, These intelligent applications will deliver new services, and improve introduce a new set of requirements overall service delivery economics. – latency, bandwidth, capacity, The new operational imperatives for coverage – that require transformation Communications Service Providers of the entire end-to-end architecture, (CoSPs), can largely be captured in from radio access network (RAN) three core technology shifts: to Operational Support Systems • Leveraging increasing (OSS). The entirety of this software- disaggregation of hardware defined infrastructure – from Cloud and software stacks to shift RAN (C-RAN) to virtualized network workloads towards general functions to software-programmable purpose compute, such as x86. switches and routers, is built on common building blocks of compute, • Decoupling core infrastructure storage, and networking. What used and networking services from to be possible only in science fiction applications and protocols, and movies – flying drones, driverless exposing those services as cars and planes, machine-to-machine a platform to applications. interactions, seamless communication around the globe – is fast becoming • Developing a set of information a reality. models, data models and APIs to transform operations The wireless industry has from bespoke processes and always experienced accelerating associated infrastructure scripts, demand and innovation, from the early to more unified automation days of cellular voice mobility of 1G frameworks that allow service to circuit-switched data of 2G to providers to develop DevOps- high-speed ubiquitous data access style operational processes of 3G and 4G. Every decade, the mobile 5G networks will be the first true industry goes through a major upgrade end-to-end network built around these cycle of their network architecture paradigms, extending virtualization into – from the Radio Access Network the radio access network and network (RAN) to the Packet Core – to deliver edge, virtualizing the network core, and technology innovations that meet the extending end-to-end network overlays insatiable demand of mobile consumers for network and service slicing. and increasing proliferation and capabilities of smart mobile devices and the new generation of applications and services.

3 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity The Dell Technologies • These new services and applications will drive new 5G strategy architectural, technical, and Understanding these technology shifts, operational models, forcing Dell Technologies started executing on things to be done differently a strategy founded on the following from before – from design to guiding principles. Service providers implementation to operations. should consider these suggested principles as the “new realities” to • The new operational model will which they need to adapt in order leverage APIs and software- to succeed in the 5G era: programmability to a level not yet seen in networking, beyond that defined in SDN today, with • 5G is a new foundational the separation of control and user architecture, part of the planes happening not just at the continuous once-in-a-decade macro level (network), but at the re-architecture of cellular micro-level (VNFs). networks. The changes are broader than a mere new access • This new paradigm shift will technology. 5G represents an result in an increased need important architectural pivot. for de-centralization of the Dell Technologies (and, more infrastructure, and cause the broadly, Dell Technologies), boundaries between “network has the opportunity not only switches”, gateways, termination to capture this pivot, but points and “servers” to dissipate to lead in defining the underlying over time. What we currently infrastructure technology. think of as the data plane of a virtual network function running • 5G will be the first end-to- on compute will move to the end architecture which is fully network switches, and what software-defined, from the we currently think of as the radio through the core. Dell network data plane will extend Technologies mastered software- (virtually) into the servers. This defined in the data center, and will yield network switches which we are in the best position to need even more “openness” help our service provider partners and programmability than extend this all the way to edge. they have today, and network- • While more main stream integrated servers to incorporate 5G adoption is likely to be increasingly network-orientated a few years away, this is a accelerators (FPGAs, switch transformation journey, not fabrics, etc.). an overnight upgrade. Dell Technologies is already engaged with leading service providers, network and technology vendors, as well as industry standardization bodies, to drive the architecture evolution, 5G-related incubation, pre- production and proof of concept developments around the world.

4 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity • The level of programmability • Openness and disaggregation in network switches will of the different layers are key continue to increase beyond design principles in this new the current SDN-defined world. While the role of open switch abstractions, down to source will continue to grow, the forwarding plane itself. The “openness” is a wider concept. network data plane is likely to Proven commercial software become a commodity, and to and tools will continue to have leverage open source for well- an important role to play. defined functions. Much like the internet has its own domain- • With all the foundational changes specific languages (WikiML, to the network architecture HTML, etc.), the network will and operations, it is fundamental also develop its own domain- that service providers also specific language, with common transform their partnership higher-level scripting languages and procurement models (Python, Go, Java) across the to adapt to and benefit compute virtualization and from the openness and network domain. disaggregation paradigm.

• Operations will be driven by While much of 5G is yet to be defined data, and the need to capture, or designed, the rapid roll-out of the process and react to network internet has shown that, in order to data in real-time will give rise be successful, infrastructure needs to machine learning. Innovation to be flexible to cater with future use- in machine learning for network cases, many of which cannot even be data is still in its infancy. Anomaly guessed at today. detection – establishinga baseline of the network performance, traffic flows, and user mobility, and reacting to both gradual changes to the baseline and to anomalies – will enable predictive understanding not just of the network itself, but of macro events occurring in and around the network.

5 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity 1. Introduction Dell Technologies can deliver on the broad sets of 5G demands. While much of 5G has yet to be implemented, the rapid roll-out of the internet has shown that, in order 1.1 5G new demands to be successful, infrastructure needs The ITU requirements have taken to be flexible to cater with future use- nearly 4 years to reach the point where cases, many of which cannot even be they could be published as base-5G guessed at today. requirements. This testifies to the level of discussion in the industry trying to In parallel, the shift from fixed to qualify the need for a new network and wireless access with the growth of the quantify the magnitude of the technical smart-phone has taken place, fueled by challenges which 5G seeks to address. the movement from mobile networks As such, the ITU specification is really being predominantly voice to exclusively only useful in a type-specification for data. At times, the pace of change vendors. To understand why these demanded by the internet generation metrics have been arrived at, it is has been difficult to reconcile against necessary to examine the use-case the need to roll-out new infrastructure behind them. at national-scale. The old telco-focused models of design and deployment are Standardization work towards the 5G no longer able to deliver the flexibility radio aspects is due for completion in required at the speed of change 3GPP Release 15, which will be “frozen” demanded by new internet applications. in September 2018. Important decisions towards this goal were made in March This paper seeks to give some historical 2017. 3GPP released discussion papers background to the development of on a new 5G Core in January 2017 and mobile services, explaining the move moved to a formal System Architecture from 1G to 5G and discuss the known in June 2017 with the latest versions of future demands for 5G, the changes 23.501 and 23.502. Work is expect happening in the telecom market, the ed to take at least two years to changes in the landscape of equipment complete the 5G Core standards. suppliers, as well as the development of new technologies relevant for 5G. The paper concludes with a discussion on how the open, flexible approach from

US ER EX PER IEN Guaranteed Capable of human- CE C user data rate oriented terminals O 1000X N T MOBILE DATA VOLUME IN 10Tb/s/km2 U IT ≥ 50 Mb/s ≥ 20 billion Y 1/5X 100X

S E2E LATENCY PEAK DATA RATE E 5ms 10Gb/s C 2 I 25ms 10Gb/s/km V 25ms 10Gb/s/km

R

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S 100Mb/s L 100Mb/s Aggregate service A Capable of IoT terminals

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I RELIABILITY 99.99% MOBILITY relability T

I 99.999% 4G 500km/h R

C 90 Days 1K/km ≥ 1 trillion

90 Days 2 ≥ 99.999%

N 1K/km

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S 5G5G I M 1/1000X 1000X SERVICE DEPLOYMENT TIME NUMBER OF DEVICES 90 minutes 1M/km2 ENERGY EFFICIENCY Mobility support at speed Accuracy of outdoor 10% of current consumption ≥ 500km/h terminal location 1/10X GS IN for ground transportation ≤ 1 meter TH OF INTERNET

Figure 1: New Service Characteristics & Capabilities Enabled By 5G

6 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity 1.2 New traffic types 1.3 IoT Mobile networks were initially built Presenting perhaps the widest set of with one use-case in mind: voice. In uses cases (and the most challenging fact, the architecture, operation and for any network infrastructure to carry optimization of mobile networks from efficiently), IoT presents challenges first-generation analog to 3G mirrored in the amount of data, the immediacy that of the development of the PSTN of the data and the sheer number of (public switched telephone network)- devices, with estimates ranging from based networks. The introduction of 6 to 50 billion devices by 2020 data services in 2.5G and later 3G (Source: IEEE Spectrum, 2017). challenged the manner in which packet-based data is carried over Due to the range of potential circuit-switched networks. RF links applications and services, it is not suffer from fading, multi-path effects possible to arrive at a single definition and retransmissions which, in turn, of IoT. Instead, it is imperative to look cause the predominant internet at some diverse IoT use-cases and protocol, TCP/IP, to behave poorly. their impact on the network to understand just how disparate the 4G, as the first all-IP network driven requirements might be: by data services and optimized for long-lived high-bandwidth streaming Use Case 1 - Factory Automation: video, has provided some relief, but Manufacturing plants are getting there remains a disconnect between smarter. Machines will host hundreds the operation of the air-interface of sensors and actuators giving visibility and packet throughput performance. and control not only to local staff but to Consequently, even though “headline” remote operators. This is often the case data rates on LTE appear to be close to in large manufacturing plants where wired connections, actual throughput the machines will be owned/operated can seem to be significantly lower, by the original equipment manufacturer accompanied by high-levels of latency. (OEM) but located in the customer premise. The issue here becomes both In LTE, voice-traffic is simply another the sheer number of devices and the data service. Significant complexity had control-loop latency: the presence of to be introduced to ensure that voice- the OEM in the control-loop in current quality can be maintained under all mobile architecture would add many conditions, including segregating data- milliseconds of delay to the machines’ traffic associated with the voice service control functions. 5G networks, in this on specific air-interface modulation instance, are expected to have the types, partitioning the network traffic ability to connect, collect and process into low-latency forwarding schemes, device functionality close to the edge, enacting methods for monitoring radio but under control of a distant service performance and taking evasive action owner, the OEM. The key to success should RF quality drop below given here is including the OEM in a manner thresholds, and also deploying dedicated by which the local functionality is core networks that were optimized for unaware of the extra connections, voice traffic models. yielding the creation of what is known as the IoT Gateway. For these reasons, along with the initial lack of LTE ubiquity, voice over LTE (VoLTE) did not appear immediately. Instead, operators opted to deploy 4G networks for data and continue to leverage existing 2G/3G networks for the delivery of voice service. This has prolonged the life of both 2G and 3G networks, and led to the early appearance of IoT services on these increasingly under-utilized networks.

7 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity Key technologies in 5G include: flexible solutions whereby local- • The ability to connect to devices area coverage networks can be over non-standard built to serve a particular area RF interfaces and the ability or group of sensors will need to to position software/application be developed. Flexibility is the functions close to the edge using key here – being able to use local compute functions, such as existing or common compute those specified in assets to provide RF connectivity, ETSI Multi-Access Edge transparent management Computing (MEC). operation for the SP, etc.

• Networks will also need to be • Traffic Profile. Simple sensors will sliced (logically separated) to produce minimal levels of data – ensure sufficient isolation and a temperature reading may only security between public and be a few bytes of data. In today’s private application instances. For networks, transporting even a the operator, the key is to be able few bytes requires many more to deploy functionality locally to bytes of overhead, adding to the the end devices from a single overall cost of transport. In an management instance. Network internet predominantly concerned slicing is inherently built on the with carrying large amounts of principles of SDN. high-value data, those overheads could be justified, but with IoT, this is no longer the case. Use Case 2 - Sensor Networking: Often seen as the bedrock of IoT • Device Power. Many IoT development, sensors are being sensors are expected to be embedded in everything and small, long-lived (20+ years) “cloud-based” solutions are being battery-powered devices offered to consume and present located in remote, inaccessible this data. Mostly, the data produced by areas or deployed only once. these sensors is small, not overly time Current mobile technology is or delay sensitive, and sent built predominantly around the at regular times but with a long period. smart-device which measures This presents a number of issues in its battery life in hours. While today’s networks which some of this is due to the must be addressed in 5G: intensive processing on the • Sheer number. RF capacity is a device itself, a large proportion finite resource. Techniques to is due to the nature of serving re-use and share spectrum plus the RF interface. Technologies identify new areas of spectrum such as LoRA and services such are required. as SIGFOX have concentrated on optimizing battery life • Geographical spread. While through the use of for-purpose sensor networks can be RF techniques which do not anywhere, the main available integrate to current mobility spectrum is in the short-range systems. 5G will seek to provide >6GHz bands. Deploying new connectivity to suit this market. base-stations is expensive and increasingly difficult to do. 5G • Identity, Security and imagines an “ultra-densification” Management. Aligned to the of RF connectivity, but this may above issues, one-time deploy prove to be impossible to achieve devices where power needs given market economics and a to be managed are designed lack of available sites. Therefore, in such a way that their identity

8 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity is expressed in a simplified More problematic for the headset/ manner compared to the immersive VR applications is protocol-intensive methods used Virtual Reality Sickness: the effect in today’s mobile systems. The on the wearer of poor quality video primary method of providing coupled with excessive latency (over identity and security in cellular about 10ms). systems is via the SIM card; these will often cost more than Given the physical limitations of the entire IoT sensor. Likewise, the air-interface and spectrum software patches can be applied availability, it is obvious that some to a smart-device with sufficient of these issues can only be solved power and compute functionality by positioning as-much of the content over-the-air; this is unlikely to and control close to the user. be the case with IoT sensors. These differences impact both Key technologies which will enable VR/ the sensor and the network AR in 5G include: supporting it: software on the • Local placement of services via device at build time should really the use of pre-positioned content be seen as existing for to reduce latency. MEC is an ideal the life of the device, and candidate solution. therefore for many years. The network will need to be • Orchestration of services across aware of these complexities as different access media. The well, as changes which would ability to manage the provision potentially disconnect thousands of software from 3rd parties of IoT sensors (for example, due (e.g. gaming software, remote to a protocol change) are going diagnosis, etc.) into the edge- to prove troublesome to manage. compute system.

• High-bandwidth services. VR/AR 1.4 AR/VR solutions call for high definition and ultra-high definition video. VR/AR has the potential to swamp Densification of the RF layer will the current networks with its be required. Technologies such demand both for raw bandwidth and as C-RAN whereby area-wide very stringentlatency requirements baseband processing will be (Qualcomm, 2017). Ultra-high quality necessary to meet this need. immersive video already requires bandwidth in the order of several hundred Mbit/s, although, depending on the application, it can be quite delay-tolerant. However, video, when applied to remote control and tactile IoT applications such as remote diagnosis, tele-medicine or hazardous environment operations, makes demands of both bandwidth (in the order of 1 Gbit/s per video stream) and latency. King’s College London’s Tactile Lab paper (Aijaz et al. 2017) shows the effect of adding latency to the control loop of a haptic actuator and associated robotic arm, demonstrating that the entire control loop, both in terms of RF delay and application processing overhead, needs to be less than 10ms and closer to 1ms in such applications. This is beyond the 50+ ms minimum latencies seen on today’s mobile networks.

9 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity 1.5 Mission-critical event of network loss, some As mobile coverage becomes ubiquitous mission-critical applications and the “connection method of choice” will need to be relocatable services, currently delivered on for- to the edge of the network. purpose networks which have been For example, in the case of a engineered to provide some form of weather-related event, local tolerance to failure and/or availability, cellular service should be able will migrate to the mobile network. to survive in the event of a failure While some of these services will in a central core network. MEC simply have service levels in excess will enable such functionality. of a consumer-grade service, others will be engaged carrying safety-critical traffic, for example vehicle-to-vehicle, 1.6 Enhanced mobile rail transport, fire/flood alerting broadband systems, etc. While the current data services available on LTE networks are “one-size-fits- This requires that the network have the all”, it is not uncommon for the actual ability to deliver against defined service throughput to vary across a large levels. Redundant systems may also range, especially while moving at speed. be required on the network with data Additionally, all data travels over the shared/stored in such a manner single packet core and discriminating that it retains availability without traffic into discrete user-groups is compromising security. There complex. While local break-out services is no means today to declare that such as Local IP Access (LIPA) and a particular data service is critical Selected IP Traffic Offload (SIPTO) and requires specific handling through are available, these are rarely used, as the infrastructure. 5G will provide defining which connection a particular methods by which data context session should use is difficult. can be determined. Additionally, in times of emergency, networks may Economically, it is difficult for operators become partitioned. 5G will have to provide comprehensive data services the ability, through local compute in low-usage and unusual locations. It is functions, to place elements close not uncommon for urban areas to have to the affected area, ensuring that a choice of four or more operators with critical processing continues. good data rates, while rural areas have one or even no available operator. Given Key technologies within 5G which such variability in coverage, it may be enable the handling of mission critical difficult for the consumer to choose the communications are: optimal operator. Other environments, • Control/User Plane Separation: such as planes or trains, are notoriously the ability to steer traffic which difficult to provide coverage to in a carries criticality into a network multi-operator environment. slice which has been engineered to provide a different level of The goal of 5G is to provide ubiquitous availability and/or redundancy connectivity at high data rates in all than other parts will enable locations, whether moving or at rest. SLAs to be defined. 5G will also allow user-group access for specific data – for example, the • C-RAN: densification of enterprise email service on a user’s the access network in areas handset will always be routed over where mission-critical data a specific connection for that traffic and is connected requires rapid not over a default “internet” connection. fan-out of RF connectivity. This means that specific traffic handling (SLAs, security, etc.) can be applied to • Edge Services: in order to different traffic across the network. provide redundancy in the

10 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity As the demand for high-speed mobile 1.7 Data plane performance data access increases across a range of Virtualization and “softwarization” transport systems, new multi-operator are key foundational elements in the connectivity will be required to enable construction of a new 5G core network. passenger access to data services The benefits they can bring in terms of without each operator needing to flexibility and time-to-market are clear. deploy their own specific equipment. Likewise, rural areas could be served In addition, the new demands on the in a manner which provides connectivity 5G Core will require data rates in excess via a single set of infrastructure where of nx10Gbit/s across the network with it is uneconomical for each operator minimal latency in some instances (see to deploy their own. New business previous discussion). The goal of 5G is models and companies will emerge to decrease transit times and latency. to fulfil this “Neutral Host” market; All current virtualization solutions these companies will be built on a add latency to the throughput. The new range of open, lower cost ability to off-load traffic through the networking solutions. 5G software core components to ensure expedience of forwarding will Key technologies which will enable the therefore be important, and a number widespread roll-out of eMBB at moving of new data optimization techniques speeds of up to 500km/h are: are being developed. • Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN): Neutral host operators Along with the well-known Data will be able to deploy dense Plane Development Kit (DPDK) from connectivity in specific locations Intel, other stack bypass solutions and scale the centralized exist whereby traffic can avoid having processing using flexible physical to transit portions of the virtualization or virtual Base Band Units (BBU). system. However, many of these Existing operators will use C-RAN optimization techniques are hard-tied to provide wide-scale roll-out of to a particular virtual instance, be new 5G connectivity. it a container or hyper-visor solution, and therefore impact the very • Multi-Edge Computing (MEC): flexibility which “softwarization” Pre-positioning content close seeks to address. to the edge, especially in mobile environments such as trains and planes, will be needed to keep the backhaul costs down. Likewise, rural areas where high- bandwidth connectivity may be expensive or prohibitive in terms of transit time (long circuits to very remote areas) will require MEC functionality.

• Control and User Plane Separation of EPC nodes (CUPS): being able to separate traffic into different categories and treat according to SLA and/ or ownership will enable defined classes of service.

11 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity Key technologies in 5G which Governments around the world are will seek to address the impact also keen to reclaim legacy spectrum on packet forwarding are: and have already indicated that they • FPGA: Hardware-based field- expect 5G to be the vehicle by which programmable gate arrays some for-purpose legacy systems can (FPGAs) can be used under be repurposed. These governments control of the core elements to have been busy building out digital bypass and “switch” data in an transmission systems for radio and optimal manner. television to replace analogue, usually not just to improve the range of • SDN: the ability to program an services on offer, but also to gain from entire network function chain better spectral efficiencies in new such that optimal forwarding modulation techniques. Switch-over based on a traffic class and/or to Digital Terrestrial Television is nearly SLA is key to 5G. complete in most EU countries, saving substantial amounts of spectrum in the • Control/User Plane Separation: 800MHz band (a very useful band for Some traffic may not be future cellular solutions). Switch-over concerned at high latencies (e.g. from broadcast AM and FM to digital email), whereas others will be systems has not progressed at the negatively affected (VR/AR). same rate, but take-up is increasing Multiple user-plans based on due to the rapidly falling cost of the traffic profile will exist in 5G receivers; both Germany and the UK with different technologies as are now at over 50% of radio listening appropriate for the traffic type. on digital systems and both are considering switching-over. As well, the stateless nature of 5G operations between the control plane and user plane contributes 1.8.2 Seamless mobility to achieving the specified 5G 5G will also need to tackle these latency targets. challenges of how to make the service appear to be continuous while the connectivity underneath changes. A 1.8 Network efficiencies good example, which not only highlights the potential to consolidate spectrum 1.8.1 Spectrum more efficiently but also explains the Since the wide-scale installation of challenges faced by 5G designers, is the fiber backbones in the 2000s, while UK government’s decision to replace last-mile capacity has been problematic the current standalone TETRA-based in some geographies, the wired internet cellular system. This system is similar predominantly has infrastructure to 2.5G networks with an Emergency capable of delivering near-term Service network on a future 5G solution traffic needs. as a VPN on one (or more) of the current MNOs. Key features required for The same is not true in the raw emergency services include capabilities commodity needed for mobile system – not in the 4G specification, such as pre- RF spectrum. This highly valuable asset emption (the ability to seize resources is tightly controlled and allocated and from other users), talk-groups both suffers from a dichotomy: the longer- within a user-community and the ability reaching lower frequency spectrum to set-up new communities quickly, the is the one that provides the least role of a dispatcher and ultra-low call bandwidth capacity, whereas setup for Push-to-Talk (LTE has a Push- the higher-frequencies can provide to-Talk over Cellular, but the call setup is the required bandwidth but do not not fast enough for emergency services have the required range. usage).However, unlike current 4G LTE,

12 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity the current UK-wide TETRA network for 5G: the solution needs to be flexible provides 100% geographical coverage. enough to be able to handle services Providing national coverage instantly which we haven’t even considered yet. at switch-on has never happened with new mobile roll-outs, so new 1.9 Operational efficiencies techniques, such as the ability In the telecoms industry, across the to interoperate with existing space of about 30 years, we have seen infrastructure, will be required. several waves of technological change, but in many cases, the new technology Additionally, the very notion of “national” has not fully replaced the original. coverage will challenge the concept of For example, in 2017, a number of the competitive MNO – most operators 2G networks still existed around the will cover quite similar areas with similar world in a fully operational and fully revenue-potential equally well as they supported state. cannot afford to deploy to loss-making areas. Roaming between national Why is this? Firstly, the time involved operators, while technically possible, in deploying national infrastructure is is not the norm, is not seamless (an LTE extended – most countries do not have re-attach is required which will cause full 4G coverage as of mid-2018 despite all sessions to drop) and is a drain roll-outs having started many years on battery resources (mobile devices previously. Additionally, coverage ratios in their “home” area currently do not and penetration rates within search for alternate networks many emerging economies for 4G in order to preserve power). have yet to reach values that generate financial returns similar to those of Both of these examples, however, developed markets. beg a similar question: in terms of national infrastructure spend, Secondly, the funding cycles rely would it have been more efficient on new investment being driven by to have a single infrastructure solution, revenue derived from the existing or such as 5G, able to provide the variety new services. In some aspects, there of services? is a chicken-and-egg issue here – the argument may be made that if an entire The truth is that the technologies of the network were to be put in place from time when the infrastructure decisions day one, new revenue would flow. were being made – mostly 2G or 3G – However, experience of 3G shows that were not flexible enough to be able to this is not always the case: the vast deliver anything other than their primary sums paid for spectrum in 3G have not purpose services. There is a lesson here yet been matched in new revenue. Also,

Cloud Economics

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Macro Base New Services Station

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Small Cell Decision Latency Router Backbone Data Center Network CPE Simpli­cation Core Network Analytics

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Figure 2: Shifts in the Mobile Architecture(s) and Value Chain

13 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity macro-economic circumstances may solutions around the network is not slow the investment pay-back making currently possible. 5G will look to make the original network unprofitable. To this possible. some extent, 4G has suffered from a difficult macro-economic situation. The inflexible architectural constraints of for-purpose hardware and software Thirdly, existing users cannot be solutions inherent in 2G, 3G and 4G disenfranchised simply because a newer have not allowed optimum efficiency technology exists. Migrations between in the current deployments. 5G will technologies need to be planned. This not only introduce new technologies is especially the case with 2G, which in packet-core, access and RF, but will has found some niche uses in M2M. enable some of the existing solutions We find 2G equipment placed in remote to be re-worked into more dynamic, and difficult-to-access locations such as flexible deployments. ATMs and vending machines. At the same time, presenting both Finally, cutting across from one new and existing elements as a single technology to the other requires that management domain will help reduce the new technology provides services costs due to the proliferation of OSS/ at least as good, in terms of coverage BSS systems which has occurred as and quality of service, as the ones it is each new technology has brought replacing. Such technology transitions with it its own management and therefore happen over extended time- operational model(s). 5G will look to periods. An example of this is the move address orchestration within both in the UK from 405-line TV to 625-line new and existing technologies with TV. This move started in 1967 but was the goal of reducing operational cost not completed until 1985, with the two and complexity. Many studies into systems running side-by-side. A similar Management and Orchestration move to digital terrestrial television was (MANO) are ongoing, such as the planned to take only 5 years, starting in ETSI OSM group (OSM, 2017) or the 1998, but due to the dot-com bubble of Open Network Automation Platform 2001, the eventual switch-over was not (ONAP) initiatives. completed until 2012 (Given, J. 2003).

Given current short funding, investment 2. Telecom industry cycles and the uncertainty of the new Status revenue sources, 5G will need to offer In previous “Gs” time, the more than simply a new, parallel set of telecommunications industry could be infrastructure. At least in the early days, seen as a specific business defined most of the revenue derived from 5G by the special requirements around will come from savings in the operational “carrier-grade” (99.999%) operation state of existing technologies and in the and a large number of regulatory ability to rapidly deploy new elements as requirements. This industry was use-cases are identified. also bounded by the relatively few service providers and the even fewer Therefore, 5G is more than a new providers of complex system solutions solution; it is about re-working existing and components. This resulted in a solutions in a manner whereby cost- situation where Network Equipment savings can be made. For example, providers (NEPs) (Originally Nortel, moving today’s 4G packet core to a Ericsson, Lucent, Alcatel and Siemens. flexible platform which can be expanded Now, Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, Alcatel to provide additional services and/or Lucent, and Cisco) and operators capacity is seen as a 5G facet – the created relationships in which the NEPs current EPC solutions are difficult to where extensions of the technology expand and are built as a one-size- departments of the operators. This fits-all solution. Likewise, the ability to relationship was also amplified by deploy new processing and/or storage

14 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity operations outsourcing agreements and lead times in deploying or upgrading other contractual stipulations. In many network functions. instances, the existence of the operator and the NEP were intertwined. The technology development and innovation in cellular communications The relationship was such that the has been deliberate: iterative to ensure NEPs drove standards and development no major disruptions to carrier-class via 3GPP, and then built equipment operations, and timed to ensure that in a greenfield market that was not operators recoup some level of CAPEX questioned by the operators. At the outlay through service revenue. time, it was more important to provide a When compared with “internet speed” working service and then build a market deployment and availability of new share at a premium in competition with services and features, deployment within other national operators. In an economic the mobile industry has been slow. environment of rising customer Consequently, consumers have moved average revenue per user (ARPU), this to other providers for their services and relationship was in balance. The solutions applications, diminishing the role of the built were bespoke and proprietary, with cellular operator largely to transport and the exception of the 3GPP interfaces connectivity. This move of revenue has that enabled interoperability of the challenged the ability of the operators functional nodes in the network. At the to invest and likewise has had an impact same time the 5-9’s requirements drove on the NEPs. a verification, validation and acceptance methodology associated with a very high assurance, but at the cost of long

Specialized NEP (T2 NEP) System G20 NEP Equipment & A NEP addressing a function segment or A NEP with a complete portfolio of products business niche covering most of a comSP needs Software

NEP SI (G20 OEM) Independet SI System Integration The SI branch of a system NEP handling A SI without own products integrating solution own and partners products towards a comSP from multiple vendors

Disruptor Transformation Operations Optimized Telecom A tier one operator with larger An operator in any tier who Typically a tier two or three Solution technical investment and optimizes operations through operator buying fully need to lead transformation transformation as a fast end customer integrated solutions with solid follower SLA’s for functionality

Figure 3: Shifting Roles Across the Mobile Supply Chain

As early as 2012, operators, realizing that required the cooperation of NEPs a radical change and modernization were to provide such infrastructure-agnostic required, generated proposals around network functions, but as this was Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) not in the best interests of the NEPs, to open-up the telecom infrastructure. and consequently, the development Citing the dominance of a handful to this end has been slow. The result is of NEPs as well as high costs, they that we now see virtualized verticals suggested a separation of the execution replacing the legacy integrated stacks environment from virtualized network with little actual gain in the operational functions running on top. This change efficiencythe operators so badly require.

15 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity Longer term, we will reach the full Telecom procurement will evolve such potential of NFV. There are specialized that verification and certification will NEPs prepared to produce the be based on scalability, orchestration disaggregated network functions and reporting. With such paradigm, and challenge the incumbents. In this the question would no longer be how scenario, there is a need for a new actor much can run on this hardware but who will build the disaggregated telco rather what resources are needed for data center; this can be either one of a function with a specific (workload) the big NEPs or one of the emerging profile. Thus, specification and system SI companies (e.g. TMH, Atos). procurement of infrastructure for The disaggregated telco data center is a telecom environment would be a key component for Dell Technologies much more like IT procurement, building in 5G. Investments in new infrastructure agnostic data centers as resource pools. and software creates the momentum needed for a change of sourcing, Abstraction of the infrastructure to development, system-integration and enable certification of the solution, for deployment principles to enable the example, in a similar manner to VMware disaggregation. The disaggregation also whereby certification of turns infrastructure from components the software is automatic on specific in a telecom vertical into a full underlay infrastructure where the VMware independent infrastructure system installation is itself certified, enables requiring less telecom expertise. rapid deployment on “known good” installations based on reference Traditionally, infrastructure was sold architectures rather than the to operators for telecom network current first-principles approach. functions as an OEM through the NEPs. The model has changed The telecom data center will slightly and some equipment is therefore evolve from a centrally now sourced directly, but on strict located, for-purpose system into specification, from the providers of one encompassing compute in the network function software. The different physical locations with main reason for this lock-in is due a single orchestration plane, to the verification and certification thus creating one homogenous processes mentioned previously. Every execution environment in which network function in every version is to place workloads. verified and certified on a specific set of infrastructure components. This process hascontributed to the slow roll-out of new services.

NOC resources Storage resources 1

2 t N t VN F VN F VN F Manageme n Execution environment Network / SDN / WAN resources e Manageme n tu r VirtuaVirtuall Dis Distributributetedd Datatacea Cnteernter astru c f r I n

Cloud Compute Core Compute Edge Compute resources resources resources

Figure 4: The Emergence of a New Mobile Cloud Blueprint

16 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity Dell Technologies’ Ready-X (figure X) 4G. 5G, edge computing and other 3.1 Air interface validated solutions accelerate roll-outs Probably the biggest difference and minimize product, technology, between 5G and previous generations integration and vendor risk (for VMware is the lack of a new air interface. Instead and OpenStack environments). These of mandating a new air interface as validated solutions bring together the 2G, 3G and 4G have done, 5G uses best of IT and mobility capabilities and the existing LTE air interface in existing provide open, disaggregated solutions spectrum but augments its capabilities with best of breed VNF and service by overlaying a new air interface above enablement capabilities from a broad 6GHz (Qualcomm, 2017a). In fact, ecosystem of vendors. this air interface is based on the same technology as that used in LTE, OFDM, 3. Technology advances but with several changes: • 5G NR uses CP-OFDM, which Unlike previous mobile roll-outs, has narrower shoulders than LTE 5G is not a wholescale replacement usage of OFDM meaning that of existing technology with something better use can be made of the new. It is a way of evolving what spectrum (less requirement for already exists and of re-imagining the guard-bands). architecture so that maximum flexibility and operational efficiency may be made • Single-Carrier versions of 5GNR from current and future infrastructure. exist (SC-OFDM and SC-FDMA) which are more suited to devices As in previous generation lifts – with limited battery life such as but even more so for 5G – we used in IoT in mMTC. see a significant out-of-domain technology enabling the core • MIMO techniques are technology, particularly in virtualization enhanced and aggregation and automation/orchestration. We also can be accomplished across see major changes in how networks are spectrum jumps allowing developed and deployed that come from for massively enhanced the agile methodologies in the broader data throughputs such software industry as well as as are appropriate for eMBB use of micro services as a way applications. to reach speed and flexibility. • Collaborative services will The technology advances can be be able to be operated not grouped into five major areas – only across spectrum used the big 5 – comprising SDN, NFV, MEC, for 5GNR but also with LTE Air I/F and Automation. The latter area Advanced, meaning that the is rather wide and collects technologies 5G capabilities are additive for reduction of OPEX and TTM as well to current services. as flexible service creation. • Spectrum can be split between

mMTC, eMBB and Mission- Critical as needed, including in unlicensed space.

17 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity The use of higher frequencies will the way to potential network re-design, require a denser rollout of base stations; 3GPP does not envisagea whole-scale operators will need to be able to deploy change in the operation of the packet systems rapidly and cheaply. New core within the first deployments of techniques in SDR will mean that many 5G services. We can therefore cell sites will consist in “dumb” Remote expect to see the existing protocol Radio Head (RRH)-type of deployments stack of GTP and IP remain based with the baseband processing on anchor-points for some time. backhauled to compute functionality In the interim, two modifications located regionally and/or centrally. to the current architecture will C-RAN type deployments may also start to introduce 5G concepts no longer be linked to a single operator, to both the 4G LTE and 5GNR as is the case with existing range air interfaces in order to address extension such as DAS. So-called the performance requirements of “neutral host” solutions, able to provide the new use-cases: virtualization multiple operator access, will appear, (and by association, network slicing) alleviating the difficulties associated and edge functionality. with the in-building deployment of small cells for LTE. 3.2.1 Packet core: Virtualization A key technology which will 3.2 Packet core: General be necessary to enable the Today’s 4G LTE Packet Core is built flexibility and scalability required in the around the same design principles 5G-capable packet core is virtualization. as that of the original 2.5G networks. First, the current 4G packet core That architecture was based on components are re-named and re- the voice central-office design with architected in 5G and will evolve as the switching centers to provide transit 5G protocols are refined. Operators service between endpoints and to/ will need to be able to deploy these from the rest of the network. While the technologies rapidly, and the monolithic, end-station is mobile, the architecture for-purpose packet core components is static, using a serious of network as deployed in 4G and before will not tunnels to create the illusion of mobility. be appropriate. Orchestration and This architecture has proved to be automation of deployment will also acceptable for delivering voice and text mean that the 5G core will be able to services, but is limited in its ability to react to traffic utilization by scaling up/ provide the high bandwidths and low down components. As new use-cases latency required for interactive video emerge, the 5G core will be able to and the ultra-low latency required for support these traffic types, as operators IoT applications.3GPP has published a will not have to install new equipment as new 5G Network Architecture in 23.501 was the case for 2, 3 and 4G. (3gpp, 2017). However, while this Second, solving the latency issue describes new interfaces and opens for critical applications will require

Smart network New network and An open ecosystem convergence service capabilities for innovation

Better sustainability Business models based and scalability on shared resources

Software Dened Network Function OSS Transformation Multi-Access Networking Virtualization (ML/AI) Edge Computing

Figure 5: Technology Transformation Domains

18 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity placement of services close to the user. user community accessing the same Having a virtualized environment able to content source or application can be host applications and software of use to re-directed to use a local version located the end-user will be key in 5G. on compute close to the edge. Likewise, elements of the packet-core, currently Third, 5G will be able to run network a fixed architecture, can also be slices: independent instances of the relocated or co-located on edge core network for specific purposes compute functions removing latency (e.g. a closed-user group, specific from the session. traffic types or security requirements). Operators will be able to build a sliced The key to a successful MEC solution network able to split by user and/ is that the orchestration and operation or traffic type, such that the best should be transparent to not only the experience is given to each use-case end user who need make no change rather than a one-size-fits-all as is to their application, but also to the the case today. operator; the network orchestration will build and deploy appropriate services The ability to provide flexible to edge devices. MEC may be deployed virtualization features located at on existing 4G LTE networks as well as all levels of the network but with being a core component of 5G. a single operational view, coupled with automation features which Common to both virtualization and understand traffic flows, network slicing of the packet core and the constraints, etc. and take autonomous ability to deploy edge services is the action to maintain service against need for a universal compute solution defined SLAs, is key to delivering available at every point on the network a virtualized 5G core network. where appropriate functionality may be deployed. The benefit of such a 3.2.2 Packet core and platform is that new, hitherto undefined edge services applications may also be hosted on this platform. Experience of the rapid Just as with the wired internet growth of the internet has shown where the proliferation of CDNs us that trying to second-guess what close to the subscribers has improved applications and services will appear in video delivery, the wireless internet the future is futile. The ability to adapt requires that services are placed to whatever the market demands is key. close to the user where optimal data experience is required. Delays An example of a possible future of over 50ms are not uncommon hosted application is the move towards on today’s 4G LTE EPC; this is centralized (or partially centralized) unacceptably high for the control baseband processing for RF known loop timings of IoT applications or as C-RAN. With the developments in some video such as AR/VR. RRH technology, baseband processing is becoming less of a cell-site feature Multi-access Edge Computing and more a compute function. (Dahmen-Lhuissier, S., 2017) considers As 5G will see a proliferation of cell how content and applications may be sites, baseband processing could moved to the edge of the network, become a very important distributed often at the cell site or pre-aggregation compute requirement. site in a mobile network, in order to provide lower latencies than would be possible where services are centrally located. MEC instances can also be placed into network slices whereby a

19 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity 3.3 SDN 3.4 Automation, SDN is key for many other advances. orchestration, For example, for orchestration to be reporting and efficient, the network configuration analytics must be under automation or API This area is perhaps the most complex, control as well. In the same way, with a due both to its broad nature as well software defined transport layer with as to the multitude of technologies richer function sets than what has been needed to make it work. Generally available in the past, it is possible to speaking, this is the area where agile move low touch network functions into service creation is enabled and, with the transport network. The creation of that, where much of the value in the distributed virtual cloud environments 5G network will be created. requires transparent networking between locations or for the private Virtualization in various forms including network structure to be set up per hypervisors and containers has already application or tenant in the network, been brought into the telecom domain which would not be possible under the with NFV, and in turn requires software existing manual paradigms. to manage the new resource types. Cloud management platforms such as Advances in switch and router hardware OpenStack and VMware fan out from as well as development of SDN managing virtual resources to also controllers has accelerated in the past manage workloads and services. years and is expected to accelerate further in the years to come. Going the other way, there is technology emerging for bare One consequence of bringing SDN metal management, BMaaS, into mainstream telecom is that the and new initiatives in infrastructure organizational setup of the industry management, like RedFish in the rack- will change. Separate network scale infrastructure sphere, making for departments will have to go from higher utilization and more flexibility. running the network operations into running the equipment and handling For automation to work, there is a need interfaces and policies. for policy-based decision systems and information gathering for the decision A technology of special interest in the models. Current advances in streaming SDN area is that of domain-specific analytics and big data fits well into languages to set up service chains the area of network analytics in 5G with processing in the switching that will enable the whole chain, from infrastructure or in of-load accelerators reporting on the state of the network placed in banks. With the switching to automatic problem detection to infrastructure fast approaching solving further to predictive analysis of a switching fabric with function the networks. These functions are today placement all the way from the L2 deployed in other industries and fit switch through accelerators and on to well into the requirement picture for 5G. a smart NIC including a virtual switch component in the processing domain.

20 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity Another area from the IT industry will require more openness in terms of that will be fundamental for 5G is access to the infrastructure than has catalogue-based service creation both been the case up to now. Operators for application and service management will no longer have the ability to run using flexible template-driven long-term test and validation cycles, approaches such as TOSCA. given the increased set of services and the myriad of combinations of solution. Finally, automated security analysis Instead, operators will expect the and enforcement is becoming far more infrastructure components to be important with the increased flexibility tested as a set of reference solutions and openness of the 5G networks. and architectures and with the ability for These technologies are being used the components to monitor and correct elsewhere in enterprise IT but have for deviation from those references. not been seen as needed for the closed and static operations OSS/BSS must be simplified, work of telecom. across multiple component providers and have a degree of autonomy The way applications are built in other not currently found. Additionally, it industries with micro services and must understand and react not just agile deployment will drive the use of on infrastructure KPIs but on end- software frameworks such as Cloud user experiences and SLAs. As the Foundry, even though they are not industry moves to software-defined yet ready to take on the full scope of infrastructure in both RAN and network telecom software. This will also lead to core, sensible placement of functionality some parts of the telecom software between software and hardware stack being deployed as a service from components based on the cloud, utilizing technology similar to cost per component rather than Amazon AWS and Salesforce. software vs hardware for pure ideological reasons will prevail. In some instances, it will be more efficient to use 4. Dell Technologies’ components such as FPGAs for data perspective on 5G processing – for example, in high-speed packet forwarding, encryption off-load It is increasingly obvious that the cellular and C-RAN processing – but in others, telecommunications industry is at a a software-based solution may be more point where the future 5G network will advantageous. The key is open require levels of flexibility not currently access to each of the components possible with monolithic solutions. and orchestration across them such Orchestration across multiple domains that the infrastructure makes the and the ability to consolidate and choice based on overall efficiency, re-architect today’s services to react not by the component chosen by quickly to changing network conditions a specific manufacturer. and for network capabilities to adapt to service requirements, while enabling In short, tomorrow’s 5G infrastructure rapid deployment of new functionality is requirements, with an emphasis on the panacea that will enable operators multi-actor, distributed, work-flow- to seek out new revenue streams. based deployment in an efficient and agile manner, look a lot like today’s New actors from the non-traditional large-scale IT cloud solutions. Dell Telco space continue to appear and Technologies is therefore uniquely expect to be able to deploy their positioned to provide solutions at services into the 5G environment in the CoSP-scale. same manner in which they deploy into the cloud. New customer relationships will be formed where neither the traditional NEP nor the MNO holds the contract with the end-user. This

21 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity While elements of the 3GPP 5G Table 1. Compute intensive functions, solution are still under discussion, especially in RAN and UPF, lend the 5G Systems Architecture 23.501 themselves very well to hardware off- is defined and it is possible to map load techniques such as SmartNIC and/ the major components to or FPGA, and developments are already Dell infrastructure. being seen in these areas.

It is also interesting to note that Orchestration and Service Assurance a distributed bus-based approach techniques found in Enterprise IT to the common core functions has will also become more important, as been taken with 5G – this again is in management of multiple networks is common with distributed processing currently challenging for operators with and message-bus techniques prevalent items in their own domain. Managing in Enterprise IT environments. Each of multiple instances across domains and these has an interface defined by the locations will be even more onerous prefix “N” (e.g. Nnnsf, Nausf) described unless work-flow methods are used to as a “services-based interface” control elements. more akin to a data model than a traditional protocol. The increased network and service agility will require tools such Each of these elements exists per-slice, as real-time analytics as well under control of the orchestration. as orchestration tools provided Therefore, there has to be a compute by the VMware portfolio. environment provided capable of spinning up/down each of the functional elements as required. Mapping each of these components to their resource requirement can ensure stricter SLA enforcement. An initial judgement can also be taken on the requirements for these components and summarized in

22 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity Compute Database Message Data Latency Intensive System Bus Forwarding Critical

NSSF  

NEF 

NRF 

PCF 

UDM   

AF

AUSF   

SMF    

AMF  

UPF   

(R)AN   

Figure 6: Mobile Blueprint and the Dell Technologies Opportunity

5. Conclusion: Dell Beyond the infrastructure foundational elements (NFVI), Technologies - and where appropriate, Dell Powering The Technologies also leverages the broader Dell Technologies portfolio Cloud-Generation (VMware, etc.) to automate and accelerate mobile operations, Mobility Era enable premium user experiences with optimized economics. These While as an infrastructure technology unique workload profile management, vendor, Dell Technologies’ role in visibility and security capabilities defining the functions and services increase operational agility and that make up 5G may be limited (3GPP optimize operating costs across standards, baseband radio technologies geographies, administrative etc.), Dell Technologies has a significant domains and organizations. role in driving the evolution and advancement of the various workload execution environments.

Beyond 4th Generation (4G) mobility, the Dell Technologies product portfolio helps bring the best of IT, service and workload management and mobility capabilities together over one unified, validated platform. With its “Ready-X” 4G, MEC, IoT and 5G solutions, Dell Technologies accelerates a new generation of mobile rollouts while minimizing product, technology, integration and vendor risk over a variety of cloud management platforms, with the added benefit of a curated ecosystem of VNF and services partners.

To learn more visit DellTechnologies.com/OEM/Telecom

23 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity A. References ETSI. (2017). Harmonised Standards for IMT-2000. [online] Available at: http:// 3GPP. (2017). www.3gpp.org - /ftp/ www.etsi.org/technologies-clusters/ specs/archive/23_series/23.501/. technologies/mobile/imt-2000 [online] Available at: www.3gpp.org - / ftp/specs/archive/23_series/23.501/ Given, J. (2003). Turning off the Television: Broadcasting’s Uncertain Aijaz, A., Dohler, M., Aghvami, A., Future. University of New South Wales Friderikos, V. and Frodigh, M. (2017). Press (UNSW). Realizing the Tactile Internet: Haptic Communications over Next Generation IAB. (2017). IAB Statement on Internet 5G Cellular Networks. IEEE Wireless Confidentiality | Internet Architecture Communications, 24(2), pp.82-89. Board. [online] Available at: https:// www.iab.org/2014/11/14/iab- Assessing the case for in-country statement-on-internet-confidentiality/ mobile consolidation. (2015). [ebook] London: GSMA. Available at: http:// IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineer- www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp- ing, and Science News. (2017). Popular content/uploads/2015/02/Assessing- Internet of Things Forecast of 50 Billion the-case-for-in-country-mobile- Devices by 2020 Is Outdated. [online] consolidation-report.pdf Available at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/ tech-talk/telecom/internet/popular-in- Cisco. (2017). Cisco Visual Networking ternet-of-things-forecast-of-50-billion- Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Fore- devices-by-2020-is-outdated cast Update, 2016–2021 White Paper. [online] Cisco. Available at: https:// GSMA Intelligence, G. (2017). GSMA www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/ Intelligence — Research — Global collateral/service-provider/visual-net- Mobile Trends. [online] Gsmaintelligence. working-index-vni/mobile-white-paper- com. Available at: https://www.gsmain- c11-520862.html telligence.com/research/?file=357f154 1c77358e61787fac35259dc92&downlo CNBC. (2017). JP Morgan sees US tele- ad.p34 com sector consolidation, T-Mobile deal. [online] Available at: http://www.cnbc. ITU. (2017a). ITU towards “IMT for com/2017/01/23/jp-morgan-sees-us- 2020 and beyond”. [online] Available at: telecom-sector-consolidation-t-mobile- http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/study- deal.html groups/rsg5/rwp5d/imt-2020/Pages/ default.aspx Dahmen-Lhuissier, S. (2017). Multi- access Edge Computing. [online] ETSI. ITU. (2017b). Focus Group on IMT-2020. Available at: http://www.etsi.org/ [online] Available at: http://www.itu. technologies-clusters/technologies/ int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/imt-2020/ multi-access-edge-computing Pages/default.aspx

Statista. (2017). Mobile ARPU by country 2015 | Statista. [online] Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/ statistics/203642/forecast-for-the- global-average-revenue-per-mobile- user-in-2015-by-region/

Ericsson. (2017). MBNL network consolidation project completed by Ericsson. [online] Available at: https:// www.ericsson.com/en/press-releas- es/2010/11/mbnl-network-consolida- tion-project-completed-by-ericsson

24 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity Kantar. (2017). Double Digit Smartphone Storno. (2017). UK Public Mobile Ra- Market Growth is over - Global site - diophone Service. [online] Available at: Kantar Worldpanel. [online] Available at: http://www.storno.co.uk/radiophone. https://www.kantarworldpanel.com/ htm global/News/Double-Digit-Smart- phone-Market-Growth-is-over TelecomTV. (2017). ITU agrees on key 5G performance requirements for IMT- Mobile Future. (2016). The Rise of 2020. [online] Available at: http://www. Mobile: 11.6 Billion Mobile-Connected telecomtv.com/articles/5g/itu-agrees- Devices By 2020. [online] Mobilefuture. on-key-5g-performance-requirements- org. Available at: http://mobilefuture. for-imt-2020-14401/ org/the-rise-of-mobile-11-6-billion-mo- bile-connected-devices-by-2020/ Titcomb, J. (2017). Mobile web us- OSM. (2017). OSM. [online] Available at: age overtakes desktop for first time. http://osm.etsi.org [online] The Telegraph. Available at: Qualcomm. (2014). The Evolution of http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technol- ogy/2016/11/01/mobile-web-usage- Mobile Technologies. [online] Qualcomm. overtakes-desktop-for-first-time/ Available at: http://www.qualcomm. com/media/documents/files/the-evo- lution-of-mobile-technologies-1g-to-2g- WT Docket No 11-65: Staff Analysis and to-3g-to-4g-lte.pdf Findings. (2011). [ebook] Washington DC: FCC. Available at: http://hraunfoss. Qualcomm. (2017a). Making 5G NR a fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA- reality | Qualcomm. [online] Qualcomm. 11-1955A2.pdf Available at: https://www.qualcomm. com/documents/making-5g-nr-reality

Qualcomm. (2017b). VR and AR are pushing the limits of connectivity, but 5G is coming to our rescue | Qual- comm. [online] Qualcomm. Available at: https://www.qualcomm.com/news/ onq/2017/02/01/vr-and-ar-are-push- ing-limits-connectivity-5g-our-rescue

25 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity B. Abbreviations

3GPP Third Generation Partnership

AMPS Advanced Mobile Phone System

AR Code Division Multiple Access ARPU Augmented Reality

BBU Baseband Unit

CDMA Code Division Multiple Access

CP-OFDM Cyclic Prex Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

COTS Common O The Shelf

C-RAN Cloud Radio Access Network

DAS Distributed Antenna System

eMBB Enhanced Mobile Broadband

EPC Evolved Packet Core

ETSI European Telecommunications Standards Institute

EVDO Evolution Data Optimized

FPGA Field-Programmable Gate Array

GPRS General Packet Radio Service

GPU Graphics Processing Unit

GSM Global System for Mobile Communications

IM Instant Messaging

IoT Internet of Things

ITU International Telecommunications Union

LI Lawful Intercept

LTE Long Term Evolution

M2M Machine to Machine

MANO Management and Orchestration

MEC Multi-Access Edge

mMTC Massive Machine Type Communication

MNO Mobile Network Operator

NEP Network Equipment Provider

NMT Nordic Mobile Telephone

OEM Original Equipment Manufacturer

OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

OTT Over the Top

PSTN Public Switched Telephone Network

RAN Radio Access Network

RF Radio Frequency

RRH Remote Radio Head

SC-FDMA Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access

SC-OFDM Single Carrier Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

26 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity SDR Software De‚ned Radio

SLA Service Level Agreement

SMS Short Message Service

TACS Total Access Communications System

TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

TD-SCDMA Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access

TETRA Terrestrial Trunked Radio

UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service

URLLC Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications

VoLTE Voice over LTE

VPN Virtual Private Network

VR Virtual Reality

W-CDA Wideband Code Division Multiple Access

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27 | Dell Technologies and the 5G mobile opportunity