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The telecommunications industry is mirroring the
IT industry, as cloud-native, agile design, containerization,
dev ops, automation … it all sounds like a typical cloud-based
IT industry conversation. The telco industry began moving in the
IT direction over a decade ago when it took the first step to
embrace Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and now we’re
delivering microservices on containers.
The industry pace toward IT trends is picking up
and if you’re not onboard the cloud-native, 5G ship … well, it
sailed!
Voice Services Based on IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) Will
Evolve with 5G Core and Radio
To say that 5G is making waves across the entire
mobile ecosystem is an understatement. It’s changing everything
and driving the trend toward cloud-native IMS.
While we look forward to the day when all
networks rely mainly on 5G infrastructures, for most that will
require significant change. One thing is certain, IMS remains
essential for operator voice services as we transition to 5G.
IMS provides the foundation for voice through the packet core
transition from 4G LTE, to 5G NSA, to 5G SA.
Having an IMS core deployed for voice services
will make any move to 5G smoother. And the importance of
changing the operations paradigm to reflect the 5G era is
another requirement. The future will yield a single IMS core,
deployed with a single set of services, as well as service
parity—whether delivering the services over 4G or 5G and
seamless mobility between the generations.
What IMS Changes are Needed for Full 5G?
The evolution will most likely be gradual. First,
a company needs VoLTE and the IMS for voice calls deployment.
This enables 5G devices to fall back to the VoLTE network for
making and receiving calls. There is a fallback to the 3G
standard being defined, but this will be a clunky 2 step
procedure with higher latency and a poor user experience. The
poor experience, coupled with the reality of a stop-gap solution
involving declining 3G technology, makes it doubtful to be
adopted in the market.
Companies can deliver voice over 5G Radio once it
has placed the VoLTE network. Here the 5G radio uses the
existing 4G packet core so there is no change to IMS in terms of
connectivity. The IMS modification needed is to be ‘access
aware’ so differentiation can be made for service assurance and
billing operations.
The final step in the journey is connecting the
IMS core to 5G packet core components. This is where we see the
main IMS evolution in terms of connecting and interacting with
the 5G packet core.
The Other Big Considerations for IMS on 5G
There are 2 big considerations to address as IMS
evolves with 5G:
Network Technology Evolution: How
do you make voice services work tomorrow like they do today but
with a different packet core technology? How do you enable voice
on a new 5G environment and not break the existing service?
Operational Evolution: The
operational paradigm shift in 5G is a much heavier lift than the
network technology evolution. Shifting to a 5G world with
containerization and automation brings the promise of many
benefits. However, this requires potentially difficult
operational transformation as there is a lot of inertia in how
the industry operates voice services today.
This is where we need the cloud-native IMS. The
IMS core will coexist with the new 5G packet core so IMS must
evolve to use the same container-based cloud infrastructure and
adapt to a DevOps model of operation.
Speaking of the Containers in Store for 5G
Using containers in the cloud environment is
another big change to the go-to-market strategy of operators. 5G
core workloads are the tidal wave behind the move to containers
in a Kubernetes environment today. In turn, this is driving all
workloads and containers, not only IMS but messaging workloads
as well. The goal is to have a common cloud infrastructure with
operations harmonized across a common continuous
integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline and
automation framework.
Evolution is one of the biggest challenges. All
workloads must work in this new, cloud-native, containerized,
fully automated environment. Automation is the cause and the
method for changing the operations model. For example, CSPs
operates more like a FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google)
and less like a public utility. New plans will have to operate
like a FANG, a true cloud-first company. It’s a completely
different operating model and one that can be far more
profitable.
Some of the key benefits of having all workloads working on the
same cloud-based environment
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Reduce the overall CAPEX burden. Operators
will have the radio, packet core, IMS, and messaging
workloads, all sharing the same computer hardware, network
storage, and cloud infrastructure.
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Harmonize the end-to-end network operations. Make deployment
upgrades and configuration changes across all these
different workloads more efficient. These workloads are all
packaged in a common artifact framework, such as a container
image and Helm V3 charts, which will be delivered to the
same repository and deployed, updated, and maintained using
the same CI/CD pipeline.
-
Enable a more holistic end-to-end view of services. Gain the
ability to make more targeted and intelligent decisions in
managing the network. All these workloads will plug into a
common observable framework, which will put all the network
information in a commonplace.
From a business perspective, a fully
containerized and cloud-native IMS core allows for rapid service
delivery. Highly automated, it reduces deployment time and
optimizes application management. Containerization gives
operators power over their own destiny. IMS has been around for
quite a while, and we will continue to rely on it well into the
future.
By Brandon Larson
Brandon is the Senior Vice President and General
Manager of Multimedia Business Unit at Mavenir. Brandon has
diverse experience having held roles in sales, marketing, and
program management at Nokia and Ciena.
Voice & Data Magazine
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