We’ve all heard about the amazing opportunities 5G will open up for service providers: mass-scale Internet of Things (IoT) installations, ultra-low latencies, and dozens of new enterprise and industrial use cases, all just around the corner. Yet so far, 5G seems to offer slightly faster speeds than 4G and… not much else. Why are the truly revolutionary 5G applications taking so long to arrive? Those enterprise 5G use cases really are coming—starting in the next 12-18 months. But first, we have to get to “true” 5G.
Of the roughly 200 active 5G networks today, almost all are “Non-Standalone” - bolting 5G radios onto 4G infrastructures. To unleash more transformative use cases, we need 5G radios connecting back to 5G Standalone (SA) cores. 5G SA will bring operators a long list of benefits. But it also involves a more arduous technical and operational overhaul, and it’s taken a while to work through it. Now, we’re about to see the fruits of that transformation, and one of the biggest factors getting us here has been an evolution in testing. By embracing automated cloud-based testing, service providers are finally poised to unleash the groundbreaking 5G services we’ve been waiting for.
The road to 5G SA
Managing connectivity, mobility, and other essential functions, mobile cores make up the heart of cellular networks and, often, their most complex component. 5G kicks that complexity into overdrive, introducing several new paradigms—multi-vendor openness, cloud-native architectures, agile software methodologies—that telco Operations teams haven’t dealt with before. So, this evolution was always going to be a journey.
Talk to operators though, and they’ll tell you we can’t get there soon enough. When we finally transition to 5G SA architectures, service providers gain:
- Improved agility: By moving to a software-defined, cloud-native core, operators can innovate more quickly and easily, and continually bring new services to market.
- Increased competitiveness: 5G SA enables new capabilities like network slicing. For the first time, operators can customize network services for different applications and deliver them over the same infrastructure.
- Better user experience: With support for higher capacities and ultra-low latencies, 5G SA enables applications and user experiences that simply weren’t possible before.
- Improved economics: 5G SA is an open, cloud-based solution by default—which means operators can tap into cloud efficiencies and work with new vendors, including hyperscalers, to expand their scale and reach.
- Greener operations: Using virtualized architectures, along with the reduced signaling overhead that comes with 5G SA, service providers can drive down energy consumption and reduce carbon footprint.
All these benefits, and others, become possible when operators transition to 5G SA. So why haven’t more done it yet? Because first, we need to solve three big challenges:
- Skills gap: 5G SA employs a radically different architecture from previous-generation networks. A service-based, cloud-native architecture will let Ops teams deploy and iterate network functions much more quickly. But it also introduces cloud operations models unlike anything they’ve worked with before.
- Multi-vendor complexity: Using software-based networks makes it easier to introduce new vendors into service provider environments. Based on testing we’re seeing; operators are eager to exploit this openness to build “best-of-breed” core networks with components from multiple vendors. But they’ll need to overcome the challenges that come with a multi-vendor core—such as the number of required test case iterations growing from hundreds to thousands.
- Nonstop software changes: It’s great when you can move faster, but what happens when your vendors all move faster too, delivering a much higher volume and velocity of software updates? Historically, 4G cores might see two major releases a year. Now, vendors could be pushing updates into your environment every week, even every day. Each update needs to integrate seamlessly across lab, fulfillment, and assurance processes as part of a continuous testing and deployment framework. For Ops teams accustomed to scheduled maintenance windows, this is a very different world.
These are big challenges, and operators need to solve them before they can tap into the advantages of 5G SA. The good news is that many have now cleared these hurdles. We estimate more than 90 service providers are actively engaged in trials and RFPs to select 5G core vendors and implement 5G SA cores.
Automated, cloud-based testing
How have service providers cut through the complexity and advanced their 5G ambitions? One big factor has been a turn towards automated, vendor-neutral testing in the cloud. By embracing this new model for multi-vendor testing and validation, service providers are realizing several important benefits.
First, cloud-based testing is typically offered as a managed service, covering integration, testing, and validation of the many discrete components of a 5G SA core. This assistance is critical to help operators get to market as they work to build up in-house cloud and software skills.
Next, these environments provide a framework for multi-vendor automation—a core requirement for running highly dynamic cloud-native software. Testing itself has become increasingly automated, and operators can use these environments to validate new approaches for automating many aspects of 5G network operations.
Just as important, service providers can work more collaboratively with their vendors. With a neutral proving ground for cross-vendor collaboration, network equipment providers (NEPs) can identify interoperability issues and deliver better solutions, faster. We’re even seeing NEPs collaborate on new multi-vendor innovations that wouldn’t have been possible when everyone was working in silos.
Fueling a virtuous circle
Perhaps the greatest benefit of new testing approaches is the ability to move the testing paradigm itself into the cloud. Many service providers already plan to host 5G SA cores on a hyperscale cloud. By hosting next-generation lab testing there too, testing becomes faster, more flexible, and less expensive. Among other advantages, this model:
- Breaks down barriers between “lab” and “live”: In the past, even the most sophisticated test beds weren’t truly representative, so there was always risk when pushing updates live. In this new world, the lab is the live environment. Operators can just use a slice of the cloud as the test bed. They can stress-test multi-vendor solutions under real-world conditions and then scale them up to production environments in minutes.
- Reduces costs and time-to-market: Operators can now collapse siloed vendor testing labs into a shared, fully representative environment on the public cloud. This means there’s no longer a need to re-validate each vendor’s software from different labs, cutting timelines and risk.
- Unifies testing and ongoing operations: Now, the same tools used to validate core networks can actively monitor them on an ongoing basis. Ultimately, operators create a virtuous circle of continuous testing, monitoring, and iterating—the foundation for tomorrow’s self-driving networks.
Looking ahead
It may seem surprising to see testing play such a central role in unlocking 5G innovation. But new cloud-based testing frameworks bring together all components needed to take the next step in 5G SA cores. When operators can move seamlessly from testing to deployment to monitoring and back again, they’re building agility for their business. Now, they can quickly build, test, and refine custom 5G solutions for their customers and continually explore new ideas—at lower cost, with less risk. If that’s what the future holds, then no matter how long it took to get here, true 5G will definitely be worth the wait.
