Why open source is the backbone enabling 5G for telcos

Telecoms.com periodically invites third parties to share their views on the industry’s most pressing issues. In this piece Alla Goldner looks at ONAP and its contribution to virtualization and preparing the way for 5G for telcos.

5G is a technology revolution – paving the way for new revenue streams, partnerships and innovative business models. More than a single technology, 5G is about the integration of an entire ecosystem of technologies. Indeed, a recent Amdocs survey found that nearly 80% of European communications service providers (CSPs) expect the introduction of 5G to expand revenue opportunities with enterprise customers. It also found that 34% of operators plan to offer 5G services commercially to this sector by the end of 2019, a figure that will more than double to 84% by the end of 2020.

As with every revolution, to extract its full potential value, it will require a set of enablers or tools to connect the new technology with the telco network. For CSPs in particular, the need for new and enhanced network management system is an established fact, with more than half of European operators saying they would need to enhance their service orchestration capabilities. But, they want to do this in a flexible, agile and open manner, and not be burdened with constraints and limitations of traditional tools approaches.

ONAP: the de-facto automation platform

This is where ONAP (Open Network Automation Platform) enters the picture. Developed by a community of open source network evangelists from across the industry, it has become the de-facto automation platform for carrier grade service provider networks. Since its inception in February 2017, the community has expanded beyond the pure technical realm to include collaboration with other open source projects such as OPNFV, CNCF, and PNDA, as well as standards communities such as ETSI, MEF, 3GPP and TM Forum. We also anticipate collaboration with the Acumos Project to feed ONAP analytics with AI/ML data and parameters. Such collaboration is essential when it comes to delivering revolutionary use cases, such as 5G and edge automation, as its implementation requires alignment with evolving industry standards.

ONAP and 5G

CSPs consider 5G to be more than just a radio and core network overhaul, but rather a significant architecture and network transformation. And ONAP has a key role to play in this change. As an orchestration platform, ONAP enables the instantiation, lifecycle management and assurance of 5G network services. As part of the roadmap, ONAP will eventually have the ability to implement resource management and orchestration of 5G physical network functions (PNFs) and virtual network functions (VNFs). It will also have the ability to provide definition and implementation of closed-loop automation for live deployments.

The 5G blueprint is a multi-release effort, with Casablanca, ONAP’s latest release, introducing some key capabilities around PNF integration and network optimization. Given that the operators involved with ONAP represent more than 60% of mobile subscribers and the fact that they are directly able to influence the roadmap, this paves the way for ONAP, over time, to become a compelling management and orchestration platform for 5G use cases, including hybrid VNF/PNF support.

Another capability in high-demand is support for 5G network slicing, which is aggregated from access network (RAN), transport and 5G core network slice subnet services. These, in turn are composed of a combination of other services, virtual network functions (VNFs) and physical network functions (PNFs). To support this, ONAP is working on supporting the ability to model complex network services, as part of the upcoming Dublin release.

To summarize the above, 5G and ONAP are together two critical pieces of the same puzzle:

The importance of vendor involvement: Amdocs case study

Amdocs has been involved in ONAP since its genesis as ECOMP (Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy), the orchestration and network management platform developed at AT&T. Today, Amdocs is one of the top vendors participating in ONAP developments, and has supported proven deployments with leading service providers.

Amdocs supports both platform enhancements and use case development activities including:

Amdocs’ and other vendors participation in ONAP enables the ecosystem to benefit through a best-in-class NFV orchestration platform, supporting the full lifecycle of support of 5G services in an open, multi-vendor environment – from service ideation, modeling, through its instantiation, commission, modification, automatic closed-loop operations, analytics and finally, decommissioning.

The result is a win-win for CSPs, Amdocs, other vendors, as well as the ONAP community as a whole.

The benefits of collaboration for CSPs are that it provides them comprehensive monetization capabilities that enable them to capture every 5G revenue opportunity. The benefit for vendors such as Amdocs is to further their knowledge of best practices, which then flow back to the ONAP community.

About the author: Since ONAP’s inception, Alla Goldner has been a member of the ONAP Technical Steering Committee (TSC) and Use Case subcommittee chair. She also leads all ONAP activities at Amdocs.

Alla Golder is on the advisory board of Network Virtualization & SDN Europe. Find out what’s on the agenda and why you should be in Berlin this May