Understanding The 5G Potential
Not just faster than 4G - different in many ways
5G services are currently available in more than 160 countries with over 1.1 billion subscribers globally. For many users, a 5G subscription is merely seen as an addition to their regular service package but offering faster data speeds.
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Unfortunately, this perception of 5G simply being faster than 4G often leads to a lack of understanding of the many opportunities that the 5G system presents to individuals, established-businesses, start-ups, and innovators, all of whom could take advantage of the new 5G architecture and the variety of service-provision models that it supports.
What can 5G services do:
- for me as an end user?
- for my business as a service user?
- for my network as a service provider?
- for my home and family?
- for my community?
- for my workforce?
Our training modules are designed to provide answers to these and many other questions...
What are the opportunities:
- for application development?
- for middleware development and provision?
- for partnering with a service provider?
- for third party service provision?
- for outsourcing our networking requirements?
- for innovative service provision?
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... these questions are answered through the presentation and discussion of many key 5G capabilities and service provision techniques.
The 5G-system "tool-box"
The 5G system provides a new “tool-box” of features that mark a step-change in service provision principles and capabilities, including:
- Support for Private Networking.
- Ultra Reliable communications.
- Extreme Low Latency communications.
- Support for low power remote devices
(10+ year battery-life).
- Microservice architectures
- Support for Fixed Wireless Access (FWA)
- 5G LAN-type Services
- Non-terrestrial and satellite networking
These are just some examples of the new feature set, but the 5G architecture, protocols and procedures have been designed in a more modular and accessible manner than previous mobile systems. This creates many opportunities for third parties and developers to partner with 5G operators and provide innovative new services, and to take advantage of the 5G service-based architecture, leading to faster monetization of the enhanced capabilities afforded by 5G.
Our training modules describe these features in detail and the opportunities they offer, while also presenting some of the barriers to their use and their dependencies on other facets of the system being deployed or provisioned.
Enabling 5G Services
Some of the 5G mechanisms defined in the 3GPP standards that offer huge potential for innovation, but that are often mis-understood include:
- Network Slicing
- Network Exposure / Event Exposure
- Control and User Plane Separation
- Policy Control
- Network Data Analytics Functionality
- Device Positioning Services
The 5G system also draws heavily on technologies that were originally developed outside of the cellular environment, and these have been adapted to fit the 5G system. Often considered 5G enabling technologies, these include:
- Edge computing
- Cloud architectures
- Virtualization
- Software defined networking
- Micro-services
Understanding how these technologies can be deployed within the 5G arena is essential when considering the most effective ways to take advantage of the flexibility of the system as a whole and to realise the potential that it brings.
Our training modules present the key aspects of these technologies and features, including their positioning and use for 5G service provision, details of each of the functions and mechanisms they utilise, procedures used to invoke them and some example configuration options.
Next Generation Radio Access
5G Radio Access and the 5G RAN provide many features that improve the capacity, through-put and latency that users can experience and that service providers can take advantage of. These features are heavily dependent on aspects such as the spectrum allocation, the use of mmWave, device capabilities, interworking configuration, and the use-cases that a service provider decides to target.
- Dual Connectivity
- Carrier Aggregation
- Beamforming
- Bandwidth Adaptation
- Sidelink connectivity
Regulatory bodies are now using new licensing models when allocating spectrum in order to support commercial models that are not simply based on country-wide coverage and capacity for mobile broadband smartphone subscribers.
This opens up opportunities for innovation in areas such as Private Networking, Industrial IoT, Vehicle Automation and many other services and use-cases.
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Our training modules cover Radio Access techniques and RAN architecture options, describing features for different environments and discussing spectrum allocation and use.
The flexibility of 5G
The system has been designed to support a wide range of use-cases, including the demands of both enterprise and industry-oriented vertical markets.
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Network functions can be dynamically instantiated as software modules, allowing resources to be deployed and managed in a manner and scale that more effectively meets the actual needs of users, devices and services.
These all present challenges in terms of security, reliability and Quality of Service (QoS) differentiation, and the 5G specifications provide many features to meet these challenges.
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Many use-cases will require some combination of IoT, machine-to-machine working, automation, proximity-oriented service and interworking with other network types such as Wi-Fi.
Our training modules present a range of use-cases in order to discuss solution options feature sets that can be configured to mee the above challenges, while also giving details of the standard security features and principles available, including examples of their use.
Please contact us for more details on our 5G in Focus training modules.