The global 5G services market is forecasted to reach $1.4T by 2030, providing market players with a myriad of lucrative revenue opportunities. 5G means more data; new customers and partners; and different business models. For telecom operators, 5G presents an opportunity to transition from mass-scale, standardized B2C commodity products to a new category of enterprise services: higher-value, B2B and B2B2X solutions that are tailored for specific target industries, such as automotive, manufacturing, healthcare, and media and entertainment.
Many operators are increasingly trying to move beyond B2C-focused portfolios and towards B2B or B2B2X. However, enterprise use cases today are seeing much more hype than traction. Part of the challenge lies in today’s telco Business Support Systems (BSS), which are not fit for a truly 5G future.
5G exposes network data to third parties and enables new B2B2X use cases
The telco industry is widely of the belief that the real ROI for 5G will come from new and innovative B2B use cases and not just selling more to traditional telco consumers. These could be new 5G offerings to enterprises or to businesses selling to consumers (B2B2C). The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) body has recognized the need for commercializing 5G investments (monetizing network investment has historically been low on their radar) and have included a new core network function call the Network Exposure Function, which aims to expose network data and services to external third parties (business/enterprise customers and partners of the operator).
This is the first time that non-operator systems can in theory directly interact with the 5G core components, with the data and services exposed to allow the telecom operator’s business customer and/partners to innovate on. The success of 5G is now opened up to an endless number of innovative partners and will not just rely on the telco to come up with new monetization ideas and use cases. The telco wins as they charge the partner access to the network data and services.
5G introduces new capabilities and challenges
Delivering on 5G enterprise use cases requires both new and upgraded BSS capabilities, particularly to support IoT device connectivity. Up until 5G, however, telco standards had largely ignored the rest of the IT world and implemented their own architecture and interfaces between core network components and telco IT systems. With the arrival of 5G, the 3GPP decided on a radical change from the well-known diameter point interfaces to adopt architecture and interfaces widely used in the IT web scale world—namely a Service-Oriented Architecture with http-based interfaces.
To be 5G ready, telcos need to implement new standard architecture and interfaces that can handle ultra-low latency demands and be fully cloud native. While early 5G efforts have largely focused on radio access network roll-out to expand coverage, telecom operators must also consider changes in their core network that will be required to handle the complexities of moving from product to service-based solutions, manage new partner ecosystems, and enable new business models.
Key considerations for making BSS systems ready for 5G include:
- Monitoring dynamic services for device volumes at scale: Enterprise systems require optimized information models and a high degree of automation to handle huge numbers of devices per enterprise customer.
- Supporting low-latency, real-time processing:Real-time processing will be critical for enabling low-latency, high-bandwidth 5G enterprise use cases. To provide the quality of service (QoS) required to support these use cases, telco-industry enterprises will need to rely on relatively new technologies and strategies such as converged charging systems (integrating the BSS functions of charging, policy control, and network exchange) and network slicing.
- Migrating legacy BSS stacks to cloud-native platforms:5G is built on cloud-native platforms and a cloud-native BSS architecture allows integration across various enterprise use cases in a cost-effective manner. Accordingly, IT systems must be easily and affordably scalable to ensure efficiency and reliability across distributed networks for edge computing applications.
- Meeting 5G standards and adopting open frameworks: TM Forum Open APIs are maturing and becoming the de-facto standard for northbound BSS integrations, making it easier to interface with telco and enterprise systems for B2B2X services and open new markets in API management and monetization.
Telcos must also embrace organizational change to realize the full potential of 5G
Alongside this technology evolution, telcos must adapt their organizations in these key areas to enable IT/OT convergence and exploit 5G:
- Greater cross-team collaboration: Operators must drive greater convergence between CIO and network teams to ensure efficient collaboration among subject matter experts for designing and building cloud-native, programmable 5G networks. Cross-functional, agile teams that combine IT, OT, and product teams, for example and use of CI/CD and DevOps processes will be key to 5G growth and success.
- More flexible architecture: Enterprises must replace existing legacy systems with open, transparent, scalable solutions that maintain data consistency. Open APIs and microservices will be key, but they will bring different versions of data that must be kept consistent for accurate decisioning. New systems must be able to orchestrate cross-functionally by provisioning networks and other services. Customers and partners will need and want to interact directly with operator systems to enhance service visibility, accelerate onboarding, and service configuration.
- Deeper proposition clarity:Operators must frame 5G as an enabler for moving up the value chain. Proposition teams must quickly refine planned offerings, including charging models, to reach beyond mobile broadband and ward off early revenue plateaus. 5G offers an opportunity to differentiate connectivity play (e.g. unique SLAs per network slice) and innovate with both prospective and existing partners.
5G offers telecom operators an unprecedented opportunity to move up the value chain and tap into new revenue streams in a variety of industry verticals. But new and upgraded BSS capabilities, along with organizational changes, are required before operators can realize the full potential and promise of 5G.
