At the recent Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Industry Conference and Exhibition, InterDigital, a mobile technology research and development company, validated a fundamental building block for operators to deliver future 5G wireless services.
InterDigital demonstrated a new service framework that will enable operators to move to a cloud-native deployment of mobile networks while allowing for vertical, industrial use cases to be realized as pure cloud-based applications.
The advanced framework, developed as part of the upcoming 3GPP Release 16 specifications, can efficiently route control plane service requests to connected terminals and end users across a virtualized network environment. The company showcased how virtual user terminals, representing mobile phones or other smart devices, could attach to a 5G network, request a brief session with three different 5G services and then detach again. The demo was significant in verifying the efficacy of the 3GPP enhanced service- based architecture (eSBA) in combination with the ETSI NFV lifecycle management system to realize the vision of mobile network operators worldwide.
InterDigital presented this innovative platform as part of the work in the NGMN Service-Based Architecture (SBA) working group and encourages NGMN members to test it for their own trials of both control plane services as well as evolving user plane services which are not yet defined by current 3GPP standards.
The world’s first trials showing the benefits of such user plane realization will be in December 2018 as part of the UK-funded 5G Smart Tourism and the EU-funded FLAME projects, demonstrating significant bandwidth savings for virtual reality and similar media-rich use cases.
Dirk Trossen, Senior Principal Engineer, InterDigitla Europe
Operators are eager to speed up and simplify orchestrated service delivery across a software-defined, virtualized network infrastructure. We were able to show how the system can apply an orchestration template across various regional data centers, as well as create or terminate service instances instantly.
