This dynamic and competitive environment requires management of the networks and their supporting systems to be less expensive to manage and maintain while expanding their role in the service definition. The network needs to be self-provisioned to drive down costs in an instant-access, cloud, and application-driven world. Management of the cloud environment and new services become even more important as all services need to be managed in real-time maintaining the required service performance. New methods of enabling exposure of assets from multiple networks is needed, like network asset facilitation and exchange, or even, on service providers request, aggregation into a single offering. However, the rapid deployment of new features makes the traditional standardized federated model hard to use. The complexity with multiple networks has been hidden through interoperability and inter service providers exchange models. Global connectivity and services have by tradition been deployed in a federated model, where the interfaces are well standardized and offered by any service provider. Vertical topological domains span from “Devices / Local networks” on the left all the way to “Global sites” on the right. The horizontal architecture functional domains will be further described in the following chapters. The open air-interface, open RAN-packet core interface and global roaming specified in 3GPP is the basis, and remain so, for the global scale with a strong ecosystem. In this transition, correct modularization of network functionality is crucial. Separation through horizontalization between HW, cloud, transport, data pipelines, network applications, management, and monetization will consequently make interfaces supporting horizontalization more important for multi-vendor interfaces. It is important to leverage the strength of business relevant vertical/functional interfaces and additional horizontal interfaces in the network platform for flexibility in a cloud world, all coordinated across relevant standardization bodies, open-source projects, alliances and partnerships. Driving openness in 5G and beyond to foster new application development and new business is critically important.Ī central part of openness in 5G networks, and beyond, is the horizontal architecture. With 5G we have created a powerful innovation platform that can be used to meet the communication and connectivity needs of virtually any sector of industry or society. This network transformation is enabled through the horizontalization of the network architecture where distributed cloud resources, joint data pipelines and Open APIs open up for the programmability and flexibility needed - both inside the network and to the outside world. Instead of dedicated, well-defined, and vertically integrated nodes connected in a static network setup, the networks are evolving towards a more dynamically adaptable architecture where Network Functions (NF) and applications are running where and when they are needed to optimize performance, cost and business agility.
The high-level network architecture, Figure 6, represents a transformational trend in how networks are built, operated and opened up for innovation.
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