Ensuring bandwidth and accessibility are mission-critical but are becoming increasingly difficult to deliver. As advancements in technology accelerate, carriers must quickly adapt to a changing ecosystem. From mobile 5G and fiber rollouts to network transformation automation, significant change drivers are at play in the market that intensify the need for carriers to evolve their infrastructure. Doing so is vital to enable the Future Mode of Operation (FMO) of both physical and virtualized networks and services.
Emerging 5G networks are creating new opportunities to deliver services at greater capacities, accelerated speeds, and lower latencies. However, 5G networks require massive network rollout activities. Both large core data centers and new edge data centers must be set up and outfitted with fiber connectivity. All will require substantial IT servers, software, and virtualized application environments.
Though carriers must master these change drivers to give customers the competitive speeds and advanced digital services they want, while delivering stakeholders the profitability they expect, legacy OSS/BSS simply can’t handle today’s requirements. Meeting customer needs, generating revenue and increasing productivity in a digitally transforming world requires a modern and future-proof ICT infrastructure.
5G networks bring new challenges
Upgrading network infrastructure is the key to deploying the new technologies required for the digital future. Yet, this is no simple task. Even in conventional networks, there can be thousands of configuration parameters assigned to each cell site and each network domain, relating to active and passive equipment, different radio technologies, and many other variables.
Therefore, it's not enough to track each element individually. A full visualization of the network, including cabling, fiber and site locations, is necessary for optimal planning and management. Geo-referenced map views of assets, which bring the data to life, and 3D walk-throughs are crucial for complete visibility.
Maintenance is also reliant on a single database for optimal management. Even something as simple as exchanging fibers or nodes can be cumbersome and error-prone without utilizing a unified database. These large numbers of components will explode even further with 5G densification and the addition of more virtual network functions (VNFs) to the telco catalogue. For example, the space, power and cooling levels of an edge data center supporting a virtualized baseband unit for a 5G network.
Benefits of unified resource management
To support enterprise and IoT applications effectively, a completely different approach to planning, deploying, and managing 5G will be needed. The only way for a single network to support a huge range of different functions is to become software-based and virtualized so that it can be fully flexible and programmable and have enough coverage, capacity and quality of service (QoS) for the most demanding application.
Optimizing cost efficiency and customer QoS across complex platforms, while constantly adapting the network for changing data patterns, requires a holistic view of every physical and virtual component of the network across all of its domains. Unified resource management can provide this ‘single source of truth’ and visibility into all elements from the physical layer to business applications.
This enables operators to document, visualize, plan, and manage complex infrastructure to support important 5G opportunities such as Industrial IoT and smart cities. Additionally, with a unified, up-to-date and complete catalogue of assets, an operator can plan, adjust, and reconfigure its network in response to the demands of new use cases and traffic patterns.
The ideal solution should provide a bundle of specific, configured software to address defined use cases such as efficiently managing cable and outside plant infrastructures, achieving complete transparency across the telco active inventory, improving the effectiveness of mobile RAN management, and simplifying hybrid resource management. Let’s take a closer look:
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Cable and Outside Plant Management - The proper documentation and planning of passive inside and outside plant infrastructure is crucial to gain full transparency across the network to enable the efficient operation and management of complex passive network infrastructures. To automate the planning of entire fiber routes, cable and outside plant management should feature GIS based visualization and a full featured auto-routing capability.
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Telco Active Inventory - An active inventory solution will enable the centralized management of all network and service resources in the telecommunications environment as it provides all of the relevant resource information for planning and engineering, service fulfillment, and service assurance processes for use by network operators and service providers. The ideal active inventory solution will support all types of network technologies, provide seamless navigation throughout all hierarchical layers, and support as-is documentation.
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Mobile RAN Management - Mobile RAN management supports planning and rollout management, configuration management, site management, and the operation of mobile Radio Access Networks (RAN). This is vital to ensure the seamless planning of 5G network rollouts, transformations, changes, and corresponding work orders.
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Hybrid Resource Management - Hybrid resource management addresses virtualization challenges caused by the introduction of Network Function Virtualization (NFV). By building a central repository of virtualized resources with underlying physical equipment and required infrastructure resources, hybrid resource management enables the documentation and planning of server and storage infrastructure as needed. This type of solution can be used to manage floor space, power cabling, power and cooling capacities in combination with power consumption and heat emission across large core data center sites as well as distributed edge data center locations and containers sites.
Overall, how communication service providers, mobile network operators, and Internet service providers respond to industry trends will determine their ability to remain competitive in a digital world. Unified resource management enables them to convert opportunities into revenue by not only supporting existing networks, but also networks of the future.
Software solutions for cable and outside plant management, telco active inventory, mobile RAN management, and hybrid resource management can form a central system of record with all relevant information across telecom, IT, and data center infrastructure, and service resources. Together, they will provide a single source for all information about network assets, which is the key to gaining a clear understanding of overall utilization, capacities, and asset status for more efficient planning, service assurance, and fulfillment processes.
With a holistic view of active and passive assets and an accurate and up-to-date inventory of all physical, logical, and virtual network resources, providers can make confident decisions for planning, building, and deploying new services while capitalizing on business opportunities.
This article was co-authored by Bernd Pruessing, Senior Solutions Consultant at FNT Software, and Daria Batrakova, Senior Consultant at FNT Software.
Daria Batrakova is a Senior Consultant at FNT Software. She has worked in network operation and OSS integration roles in the Telecommunications field for over 15 years. Daria graduated from Moscow State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Mathematics.
