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DTW (Digital Transformation World)

Network slice ‘brokering’ unlocks 5G’s value for telcos and customers

Network slicing, enabled by 5G, gives telcos new ways to generate revenue. A TM Forum Catalyst is tackling the tricky challenge of managing resources efficiently while assuring slice SLA performance to deliver on the promise.

Sarah Wray
15 May 2019

Network slice ‘brokering’ unlocks 5G’s value for telcos and customers

Network slicing, enabled by 5G, gives telcos new ways to generate revenue. A TM Forum Catalyst is tackling the tricky challenge of managing resources efficiently while assuring slice SLA performance to deliver on the promise.

5G offers service providers the ability to ‘slice’ the network. Network slicing allows a physical network to be divided into multiple virtual networks, enabling operators to provision the right ‘slice’ depending on the requirements of the use case.

This flexibility creates opportunities for new business models and revenue opportunities as operators will be able to offer customized network slices to various different business verticals. However, the new capability also adds complexity – particularly around the efficient use and effective management of network resources. Success in 5G hinges on the ability to assure guaranteed performance against diverse customer expectations across multiple network slices, without ‘locking up’ resource capacity (allocating resource buffers so as to avoid over-utilization within any given slice) that could otherwise be monetized by enabling additional network slices and services.

This is not a simple challenge to overcome. The resource requirements of any given service will fluctuate significantly through the day, as customers move through the access network and even across communications service provider (CSP) boundaries. The problem is one of real-time, predictive awareness and orchestration of networks. Service providers need to ensure there is sufficient compute, connectivity, memory/storage, and spectrum license resources to meet service level agreements (SLA) to guarantee the services using each slice dynamically and in real-time. ‘Sufficient’ is the key word here. Over-provisioned network slices translate to opportunity cost. The problem becomes even more complex as some resources may be shared among ‘sub-slices’, while others are dedicated to a specific slice. At the same time, some resources are removed from the overall resource pool for general services outside of slices.

Furthermore, a new management capability is used to control and isolate the parts of the network that support slices and this also consumes resources.

To deploy guaranteed services at scale, network slices and the underlying resources must be optimally coordinated and assured across multiple CSPs, seamlessly and in real-time.

Intelligent slice management


Slice management isn’t just about meeting SLAs either. An intelligent approach allows service providers to get the most out of their assets by ensuring resources are not sitting idle and that resources are not over-provisioned.

A TM Forum proof-of-concept Catalyst project is exploring this challenge and developing a number of solutions based around the idea of network ‘brokering’.
Fred Feisullin, NFV/SDN/AI/5G Architect, Verizon (which is one of the companies taking part in the Catalyst), said: “The brokerage process is a combination of assurance systems, orchestration and data models so that we know tactically where resources are needed now and for more long-term strategic planning.”

At TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World event in Nice next month, the 5G Optimized Capacity & E2E Experience Catalyst will demonstrate how service providers can effectively orchestrate resources in real-time for slice management, using NFV and SDN, and enrich orchestration by applying machine learning to enable predictive, closed loop assurance of SLA guarantees.

Their work includes outlining the specific slice requirements, in line with GSMA’s work on network slice templates, as well as recording, via blockchain, how each resource has been used as well as each service provider’s performance against the SLA.

It will also include identifying the new data models and metrics required to support these brokerage capabilities and explore how these data models can be unified and extended seamlessly used across carriers.

Connected customer experience


Vinay Devadatta, Practice Head & Principal Consultant, Wipro (another company taking part in the Catalyst project) said: “As well as the service provider’s perspective, we are also looking at it from a customer's point of view.”

With this in mind, one of the use cases the team will explore is that of a video-conferencing call made by a passenger in a car, showing how network resources can be orchestrated between CSPs to ensure call connectivity is seamlessly maintained throughout the journey to ensure good customer experience.

To enable this scenario today, a customer might request a ‘boost’ from their service provider because they know the call is important and they want to ensure it is smooth. In the future, as connected car technology advances in parallel, interconnecting systems and providers could figure this all out behind the scenes and pull in data from maps, calendars and plugins to automatically plan future resource requirements.

Teamwork


TM Forum Catalysts bring together companies to create innovative solutions to common challenges.

Champions bring a business challenge that they need to solve, and each offers a unique angle based on their geography, strategy and more. The champions for this Catalyst are BT and Verizon.

Champions work alongside the Catalyst participants – in this case, Amdocs; Arris; CanGo Networks; MYCOM OSI, Nokia and Wipro – who each provide a technical piece of the solution.

The team will use TM Forum’s Open APIs to demonstrate the broker system, including the service, service order, performance and alarm APIs. They will also contribute their findings back to the Open API program.

Learn more by watching this video filmed at Digital Transformation World 2019: