By Sean Kinney, Editor in Chief
Speaking at Arden Media’s recent Telco Cloud Forum, Verizon Vice President of Technology Planning and Development Bill Stone was crystal clear that, for it to live up to the promise of changing the world, 5G has to be programmable. As such, Verizon has invested heavily in virtualization, the importance of which Stone said “cannot be overstated.”
“5G is beginning to touch nearly every industry sector,” Stone said. “We believe it will impact the global economy in a profound way and dramatically improve our global society…We’ve already gotten a strong glimpse into future solutions that will be built on top of our 5G network…This remarkable technology is paving the way for unprecedented innovation that will reshape the world.”
Virtualization and programmability
In terms of steps Verizon has taken to make its network programmable, Stone called out the operator’s efforts to consolidate, simplify, modernize and virtualize its core network first, then its access network. “The move to cloud-native and container-based virtualized architecture has led to more flexibility, faster delivery of services, greater scalability, and significant cost efficiency. With that virtualized baseband unit, we will lay the foundation for more computing functionality, to move that to the edge of the network. We will be able to rapidly respond to customers varied latency and computing needs.”
In addition to its 5G network deployments, Verizon has also invested in deployment of mobile edge computing infrastructure with hyperscaler partners, including AWS for public MEC. In August 2020, Verizon completed a fully-virtualized, end-to-end 5G data session. Then in September 2020, Samsung Networks, a leader in virtualized RAN, won a major deal with Verizon.
“The importance of virtualization in the modern network cannot be overstated,” Stone said, listing off high-value 5G applications that “all heavily rely on the programmability of virtualized networks. Virtualization is critical for advanced operations and services like network slicing and edge compute which require a programmable network with the ability to move functions and operations across the distributed network.”
From vRAN to Open RAN
“vRAN,” Stone said, “we view that as an important precursor to O-RAN.” And with O-RAN come benefits derived from new competition and innovation in the RAN vendor ecosystem, deployment flexibility, faster innovation, and greater service options, he said.
Discussing the difference between Open RAN for a greenfield build versus integration into a brownfield network environment (a key talking point in Open RAN discussions), Stone said the edge held by incumbents is institutional expertise and a robust, established network to depend on when building something new.
“When it comes to some of the considerations,” I would say one of the bigger challenges in a virtualized environment is integration…[And] extensive testing is a must as is tight collaboration between operators and suppliers to integrate functions. The more suppliers that are introduced into the RAN environment, the higher the interoperability testing complexity. Not a challenge to admire but one that we are aggressively committed to solving.
Stone concluded: “An Open RAN architecture delivers the great benefit of additional competition, innovation and cost efficiency across the radio access network but those benefits serve as the strong incentive for operators to move forward with Open RAN. We at Verizon are leaning in with our vendor partners to help solve the technical challenges associated with this evolution.”
