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Driven largely by the renewed focus on fixed broadband networks and services, industry standards bodies and their members are increasingly defining fixed network evolutions with cadences similar to those found in the world of mobile networks. Designed initially to enhance the benefits that 5G is bringing to mobile networks worldwide, these overarching frameworks of technology requirements, use cases, and implementation guidelines are intended to give service providers a blueprint for network evolutions that both complement mobile network evolutions while also enabling new capabilities for fixed broadband networks.

ETSI is the primary organization defining these frameworks through its Fifth Generation Fixed Network (F5G) working group. Prior to its establishment in 2020, there really was no coordinated effort among various standards organizations to define standards and goals for fixed networks. In the mobile world, the ITU, 3GPP, and GSMA have historically cooperated and delivered the standards for each new technology evolution. But on the fixed networks side, separate standards from the ITU, IEEE, ETSI, Broadband Forum (BBF), and the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) have resulted in a disjointed evolutionary path.

From ETSI’s perspective, harmonizing standards and evolutionary requirements across fixed networks is the best way to ensure networks that both complement and enhance mobile network evolutions. The utility of these frameworks in mobile networks is clear. But in fixed networks, the relevance is less clear, especially since fixed networks encompass everything from core transport networks to in-home connectivity. Coordination in mobile networks is essential while in fixed networks it isn’t necessarily a requirement. This is due to the simple fact that in mobile networks, spectrum availability defines the technology. In fixed networks, technology determines spectrum availability- and there are many ways to deliver that spectrum in the form of optical wavelengths, RF spectrum, etc.

Nevertheless, there is certainly value in laying out an umbrella framework of technical requirements, applications, and use cases that will underpin fixed network upgrades that complement mobile network evolutionary steps. And certainly, there is value in applying the framework’s principles to the emerging F5G networks of today to the anticipated F5G Advanced networks of tomorrow.

Defining F5G

Back in 2019, 10 companies jointly launched the F5G working group, which was approved by ETSI at the end of the year. To help define the Fifth Generation Fixed Network, it was important to clarify the previous four generations and their underlying technologies—similar to how Wi-Fi generations were recently re-named.

First Front Fixed Network Generations
Generation Broadband Technology Speed
F1G PSTN/ISDN 64 Kbps
F2G ADSL 10 Mbps
F3G VDSL 30-200 Mbps
F4G GPON/EPON 100-500 Mbps

The group also set out to define the characteristics of the Fifth Generation, which is the network most operators are currently building today. The three primary technical pillars of F5G were:

  1. Full-Fiber connections (FFC) to every residence, business, room, and desktop, along with an expansion of fiber-based connections and density by 10x.
  2. Enhanced Fixed Broadband (eFBB) to deliver symmetric, gigabit speeds to residential locations and 10 Gbps speeds to businesses.
  3. Guaranteed Reliable Experience (GRE), defined by delivering minimal packet loss, a 10x reduction in latency, microsecond delays, and 99.999% reliability across the network and to every endpoint.
Source: ETSI - F5G Reference Architecture

The underlying technologies of F5G are:

  1. 10G PON
  2. Wi-Fi 6
  3. 200G/400G Optical Transport Networks

The coordinated evolution of in-home and in-building networks, the fixed access network, and transport networks is intended to provide enough bandwidth and Quality of Service to better accommodate today’s use cases, including online gaming, education, E-health, and the continued reliance on cloud applications in enterprise environments. Additionally, the goal is to be able to support forthcoming, high-bandwidth applications, including cloud-based VR and AR, as well as uncompressed 4k and 8k video. Finally, delivering a sustainable network built on passive fiber connections and active electronics that consume less energy and reduce network operators’ carbon footprints is a key tenet of the F5G framework.

Operators globally are certainly expanding their gigabit-capable fiber networks, with combined XG-PON and XGS-PON OLT port shipments jumping from 2.2 M in 2020 to 8.7 M in 2022. In part due to the supply chain issues that have plagued consumer electronics over the last two years, total residential subscribers connected to these speeds remain well behind the available infrastructure. Additionally, the current high interest rate environment has dampened consumers’ appetites for higher-cost, premium broadband connections in many Western markets. Nevertheless, operators continue to invest in 10G infrastructure as they continue to pass more homes and businesses.

Certainly, bandwidth consumption patterns aren’t going to change and will remain on their steady upward trajectory based on an annual CAGR of 35-40%.

Enter F5G Advanced

Because of this consistent growth in bandwidth consumption and because F5G was never envisioned as being the ideal end state of fixed networks, members of the F5G Working Group have proposed F5G Advanced as the next evolutionary step, ultimately leading to an F6G framework, following their colleagues on the mobile side who have proposed 5G Advanced to help 5G evolve to deliver a more robust set of capabilities. At its heart, F5G Advanced aims to improve upon the goals established within the F5G framework, with more widespread FFC, including fiber connections to the room and to a wider array of endpoints, faster eFBB through the deployment of 50G PON, and faster GRE through more widespread availability od deterministic bandwidth and latency.

In addition to those enhancements, F5G Advanced focuses on improved energy efficiency with a heavy focus on optical access networks and ONUs, in particular, which consume by far the most energy in aggregate.

Tightly coupled with reducing energy consumption is adding significantly more network intelligence through AI and machine learning. AI is envisioned as both a means to improve the operation of the network as well as a service that can be provided to customers. For service providers, the use of AI and machine learning has very practical use cases, including allowing them to:

  • Support automatic network planning and capacity upgrades by modeling how the addition of services and capacity will impact current and future network requirements as well as the need to add switching and routing capacity to support application delivery
  • Implement network changes automatically, reducing the need for manual intervention and thereby reducing the possibility of errors.
  • Constantly provide detailed network monitoring at all layers and provide proactive fault location, detection, and resolution while limiting manual intervention.
  • Simplify the service and application provisioning process by providing a common interface that then translates requests into desired network changes.

Finally, F5G Advanced seeks to make fixed networks more aware so that faults can be anticipated, isolated, and resolved, whether they originate in the home, the access network, or the optical transport network. Also, awareness means allocating bandwidth and setting latency based on applications being used, not just statically delivered to users. This is the concept of experience-oriented SLAs as opposed to the traditional method of service guarantees through bandwidth alone.

Key Technologies

F5G Advanced builds on the underlying technologies of F5G and includes platforms that deliver additional capacity from the transport network all the way to the home and business, are more energy efficient, are autonomous, programmable, and intent-based, are more secure, and can support end-to-end network slicing and deterministic latency.

The key networking technologies of F5G Advanced include:

  1. 50G PON
  2. Wi-Fi 7
  3. 800G Optical Transport Networks

The use of 50G PON, which introduces Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), is key to the overall architecture because it is viewed as a convergence technology for residential, business, and wholesale fiber networks onto a single ODN. Mobile midhaul and fronthaul applications, expanding IoT devices and services, wholesale fiber access to microcells, aggregation of Wi-Fi7 traffic in a business campus environment—all of these can, in theory, be delivered using 50G PON. Other applications and use cases are certain to emerge as operators continue to reap the benefits of converting their disparate networks onto a shared ODN, with throughput and services delivered via 50G PON.

F5G-Advanced’s Impact on the Market

It’s difficult to assess what—if any—impact F5G Advanced will have on global equipment markets. Service provider networks differ significantly, as do their competitive landscapes, which often dictate the adoption of broadband access and in-home Wi-Fi technologies. Though operators are certainly moving in the direction of all of these technologies—and have signaled their planned adoption and deployment of these technologies within the next few years,  they are likely to do so at different intervals that are distinct and based on individual market dynamics.

Two technology components of F5G Advanced that will certainly see global adoption by operators are Wi-Fi 7 and 50G PON. Already, a growing list of operators has submitted RFPs for new residential and business CPE with Wi-Fi 7 support. The combination of an increase to 320 MHz of spectrum, 4096 QAM, and multi-link operation (MLO) is exactly what operators have been looking for in their customer endpoints.

Though early, Dell’Oro Group believes total 50G-PON equipment revenue will increase from less than $3M in 2023 to $1.5B in 2027. Much more significant growth is expected from 2027 on, as operators begin to evolve their 10Gbps PON networks to next-generation technologies.

Figure 2: Worldwide 50Gbps PON Equipment Revenue

Beyond being able to anticipate future bandwidth growth coming from consumer applications such as VR, AR, online gaming, videoconferencing, and 8k video, 50G PON positions operators to address business services. Specifically, 50G PON allows a provider to offer four 10G Ethernet connections, split among multiple businesses. Additionally, 50G PON is ideal for POL (Passive Optical LAN) deployments, where fiber can be run to the desktop and deliver connectivity with less power, rack space, and less cooling than traditional point-to-point Ethernet architectures.

Similarly, 50G PON has applications in the backhaul of public Wi-Fi hotspots as well as private wireless LANs, both of which will see significant bandwidth growth with the availability and deployment of Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7. Wi-Fi 6E allows individual subscribers to burst to 9.6Gbps while Wi-Fi 7 quadruples that throughput to nearly 40Gbps. Additionally, the Wi-Fi 7 standard defines extremely low levels of latency and jitter, which the evolving 50G PON standard is also incorporating.

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5G has come a long way since the Korean operators launched mobile 5G in early 2019. In just four years, operators have invested more than $300 B globally in 5G-related capex, deploying 15 M+ macro and small cell radios. Adoption has been mixed. On the one hand, 5G has been a massive success for the typical Mobile Broadband (MBB) use cases, providing operators with pivotal tools to support data traffic growth and driving down the cost per bit. On the other hand, 5G is still mostly about MBB and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA). The technology has not touched the surface yet when it comes to connecting machines and industries. As we look to the next part of this 5G journey, any incremental technology advancements that can improve the spectral efficiency will come in handy in a world where spectrum is limited and humans/machines steadily consume increasingly greater amounts of data. More importantly, any enhancements that can improve the growth prospects for Enterprise/Private 5G and Cellular IoT (cIoT)—ultimately helping to realize more aspects of the broader 5G vision—will play an important part in this next phase. In this blog, the objective is to update the 5G Advanced blog we previously posted and review the technologies, opportunities, and RAN implications.

5G Progress by Application Chart

What is 5G-Advanced?

The 3GPP roadmap is continuously evolving to fulfill the larger 5G vision. In this initial 5G wave that began in 2018, 3GPP has already completed three major releases (new releases every 1.5 to 2 years): 15, 16, and 17.

The schedule for 3GPP Release 15 included three separate steps: the early drop, focusing on NSA option 3; the main drop, focusing on SA option 2; and the late drop, focusing on completion of 4G to 5G migration architectures. While MBB is dominating the capex mix in this initial 5G phase, the 3GPP roadmap is advancing to address opportunities beyond MBB.

Release 16, also known as Phase 2, was completed in July 2020. The high-level vision is that Release 16 will provide the initial foundation for taking 5G to the next level beyond the MBB phase, targeting broad-based enhancements for 5G V2X, Industrial IoT/URLLC, and NR-U.

Release 17, also known as continued 5G expansion, was completed in early 2022. This 5G version provides more enhancements, extending operations up to 71 GHz with enhancements to IoT, Massive MIMO, Non-terrestrial networks (NTN), and DSS, among other things. With 3GPP Rel-17, a new device type (“NR Light”) was introduced, to address industrial sensors.

These initial releases have been key to the success of both MBB and FWA. But there are still shortcomings that need to be addressed, in order to fulfill the broader 5G vision. The current thinking with Release 18 and beyond (5G-Advanced or 5.5G) is that gradual technology improvements will help to take 5G to the next level, creating a foundation for more demanding applications and a broader set of use cases.

Current priorities with 5G-Advanced include:

  • More capacity and better performance. Some estimates suggest that MIMO enhancements, better beam management, and full duplex technologies taken together with other advancements will deliver another 20% of speed improvements relative to today’s 5G. Enhanced uplink (UL) and multi-cell UL improvements could pave the way for greater data rate and latency improvements in the UL.
  • Expanded coverage. In addition to MIMO and IAB coverage enhancements, 5G-Advanced also includes Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) connectivity improvements, building on the NR/LTE-based NTN support that was introduced with Release 17.
  • More intelligence. Releases 15-17 already include some AI/ML features. 5G-Advanced will likely offer AI/ML enhancements in the RAN (including the air interface) and the management layers. In addition, Intelligent RAN and AI-powered analytics will help operators to proactively address network issues before they become a major problem.
  • Energy savings. Release 18 includes a confluence of static and dynamic power-saving enhancements for the radios and the overall RAN. Also, the specification is targeting to define a base station energy consumption model with various KPIs to better evaluate transmission and reception consumption/savings.
  • Flexible spectrum (FD, DSS, CA). NR is currently based on TDD or FDD spectrum. Full duplex (FD), a 5G-Advanced contender, improves spectrum utilization by allowing UL and DL to share the same spectrum (FD should improve capacity and latency, especially in the UL). Release 18 also includes DSS capacity enhancements (increasing PDCCH capacity by allowing NR PDCCH to be transmitted in symbols overlapping with LTE CRS). Other spectrum-related upgrades with 5G-Advanced include multi-carrier enhancements and NR support for dedicated spectrum bandwidths below 5 MHz.
  • Critical IoT. 5G-Advanced includes multiple industrial and IoT related advancements. Release 17 included support for Time Sensitive Networking (TSN), which will be expanded in 5G-Advanced to support Deterministic Networking (DetNet). NR-Light or Reduced Capability (RedCap) was introduced with 3GPP NR Release 17. 5G-Advanced will introduce lower-tier RedCap devices, seeking to find a better set of tradeoffs between cost, performance, and power consumption.
  • Sensing. Harmonized communication and sensing (HCS) is a Release 19 study item.
  • Positioning. Positioning is already supported in Release 16/17, however, 5G-Advanced is expected to improve positioning accuracy and power consumption (Nokia has said sub-10 cm positioning is doable). In addition, Release 18 will include support for RedCap devices.
Source: Nokia
Related blog: 5G Advanced—what does it mean for the 5G Core market?

Where are the opportunities?

With 5G growth now slowing in the public service provider-driven market, the search is on for the next growth vehicle that can help to offset the more tepid consumer MBB trends. All things considered, it is tempting to assume the growth opportunities will align perfectly with the PowerPoint vision, meaning enterprise 5G, new MBB scenarios, cIoT, and FWA all stand to benefit in the 5G-Advanced era. We remain optimistic about most of these potential gold mines, but we also need to keep in mind that disconnects between vision and reality are common.

It might not be the most exciting revenue growth opportunity for the carriers but one fundamental aspect with 5G-Advanced will be to support more demanding consumer MBB applications. Currently, total mobile data traffic (including FWA traffic) is projected to advance another 3 to 4x by 2027. More spectrum is always helpful but given the lack of global coordination in the Upper-6 GHz spectrum, operators will need to rely on sub-6 GHz spectrum, spectral efficiency gains, DSS enhancements, and more favorable mmWave economics to support more data traffic and reduce the cost per bit.

But the real excitement with 5G-Advanced is the enterprise opportunity. Private LTE/5G is developing at a slower pace than initially expected and the market remains small, with private 5G still accounting for less than 1% of the overall 5G RAN market. Operators outside of China are also reporting that the incremental revenue upside from industry verticals remains negligible. The slower start is not impacting the long-term growth thesis: proliferating cellular connectivity into enterprises and industrial settings where WiFi or public cellular connectivity is poor remains a massive growth opportunity. Although LTE and 5G NR Releases 15-17 are enough to address the lion’s share of the existing use cases, 5G-Advanced will provide important IoT and industry-focused enhancements.

One of the enterprise contenders with 5G-Advanced is the warehouse segment. Per Nokia’s industrial site assessment, warehouses comprise around 20% to 25% of the overall industrial site opportunity. Covering around 2.3 B square meters globally (Warehouse Building Stock), a shift toward 5G warehousing could move the enterprise needle.

Helping to explain the excitement with 5G-Advanced is the promise of Passive IoT. In addition to the improved economics relative to RFID based sensors, Passive 5G-Advanced IoT solutions should be favorable from a power consumption perspective (according to Huawei, passive IoT devices consume 100x less power than a NB-IoT device).

Source: Huawei

Fueled by the vision that 5G has a growing role to play in the Factory of the Future, 5G and 5G-Advanced manufacturing expectations are rising. While WiFi and LTE still address the great majority of the smart manufacturing connectivity market, our assessment is that 5G RAN revenues to support the manufacturing vertical are improving. In fact, the manufacturing already accounts for a double-digit share of Huawei’s, Nokia’s, and Ericsson’s ongoing private wireless projects. In the case of Huawei, manufacturing makes up roughly half of its enterprise ToB revenues. Nonetheless, it is still early days here and the majority of the enterprises are in the exploratory phase when it comes to using 5G based AGVs, Digital Twin, AR/VR, and quality inspections. The improved reliability, latencies, device costs, positioning accuracy, and UL throughput should all help to improve the industrial 5G business case but as with most enterprise verticals, it will take time. Leading industrial players such as Siemens, GE, and ABB, however, have all taken actions expressing the belief that the timing to introduce more 5G is right.

Sensing has potential with both public and private deployments. Per Huawei’s MWC Shanghai update, 5.5G sensing features have been verified in various traffic and low-altitude scenarios. The improved accuracy and range relative to traditional traffic sensors could help the IoV (Internet-of-Vehicles) segment.

What does this mean for the RAN forecast?

Following a couple years of exponential growth, 5G RAN investments are slowing. At the same time, it is still early in the broader 5G cycle. The message we have communicated for some time still holds: Our baseline scenario rests on the assumption that the 5G cycle will be longer and deeper than the LTE investment phase. And even though the base case is not hinging on the premise that 5G-Advanced will drive another capex cycle, Release 18 and future releases are expected to play important roles in this next part of the 5G journey.

Predicated on the assumption that the first part of the 5G-Advanced standard will be frozen in early 2024, commercial deployments could become a reality by 2025. If so, a significant portion of the 5G base stations deployed in 2027 will include some 3GPP Release 18 features.

5G RAN Forecast Dell'Oro

In short, 5G-Advanced represents an important part of the 5G roadmap. The excitements levels for the various 5G segments will vary. Before we set unrealistic expectations, it is important to keep in mind that it took more than 10 years for enterprises to achieve an enterprise Wi-Fi installed base of 5% to 10% of the projected 2027 installed base. The enterprise is a major opportunity but 5G-Advanced is not going to change Amara’s Law (the effect of a technology in the short run tends to be overestimated, while underestimated in the long run).

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The use of AI in the radio access network (RAN) is not new. In fact, 4G and 5G deployments already rely heavily on automation and intelligence to replace manual tasks and manage the increased complexity without raising the costs. AI is also used in both 4G and 5G to improve network performance and the user experience. What is new, however, is the proliferation of consumer and enterprise AI and the change in attitude toward this tool. As the conversation about the implications for society as a whole is now moving to center stage, the timing is right to review how AI is likely to impact the RAN market, both directly and indirectly. In this blog, we will focus on four specific areas: mobile data traffic, operator revenue, RAN economics, and RAN architectures.

Is the proliferation of consumer and enterprise AI fueling an increase in mobile data traffic?

Preliminary findings suggest that AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard are not at this time directly affecting mobile data usage. Data points are limited. Vodafone’s data usage in 1Q23 shows no discernable change in its overall consumption relative to the trend line. And per Ericsson’s latest Mobility report, mobile data traffic grew 36% in 1Q23, in line with the YoY growth trajectory over the past two to three years. While AI is changing computing, power, and cooling requirements inside the data center, the impact on the mobile network has so far been negligible. Over time of course this could change, either directly or indirectly, if for example AI triggers greater video usage or if the computing location changes. But for now, we don’t see a need to change mobile traffic projections to accommodate the rise of consumer AI. Per Ericsson’s Mobility Report, mobile data traffic is projected to grow at a CAGR of 25% to 30% between 2022 and 2027.

What does this mean for operator revenues?

Global wireless carrier revenues advanced at a double-digit rate during the 1G-3G era, as mobile subscriptions exploded. But growth slowed with 4G and fresh data show that wireless revenues have stayed flat over the past ten years. The root cause is not the lack of subscription growth. Instead, we attribute the stable revenue trends to the slump in average revenue per user (ARPU), which has been down by roughly 20% over the past ten years. Even as AI is improving the optimism for potential revenue expansion, the downward pressure in ARPU in combination with slower subscription growth will continue to weigh on the prospects for growth in the area of consumer mobile broadband (MBB).

It is unlikely that AI will change these forces that now underpin the lion’s share of carrier wireless revenues. However, it is still crucial that operators invest in these tools so that they can extract more value from enterprises and verticals, improve the business case for fixed wireless access (FWA), and enhance their competitive position in all areas, including consumer MBB. In addition to improving performance and customer experience—which will indirectly improve revenues by minimizing churn—AI could assist with data monetization, especially in the enterprise, where this tool can help to optimize the user experience for 5G use cases and secure QoS levels that are key for premium services. In the future, AI might also play a role in terms of network slices.

How will AI and Intelligent RAN change RAN economics and performance?

As mobile data traffic continues to grow 25% to 30% annually while carrier revenue growth remains flat, operators have limited wiggle room to expand capex and opex to manage the increased complexity typically inherent with the technological and architectural advancements required to deliver the appropriate network performance while supporting more demanding and diverse end-user requirements. The impact on topline expansion will be limited but AI capabilities taken together with recent technology advances that allow suppliers to place intelligence inside the base station will be crucial for improving RAN economics and performance. Recent proliferation with generative AI is raising the expectations that continuation of this trend will:

      • Improve performance and experience
      • Maximize ROI on network investment
      • Improve the vRAN business case
      • Boost network quality
      • Accelerate time to market
      • Reduce complexity
      • Reduce energy consumption
      • Bring down CO2 emissions

The use of AI in the RAN is already delivering benefits in network deployment, optimization, and healing, ultimately contributing to an improvement of network performance and quality. These AI tools can be used to analyze end-user drivers and traffic patterns, while improving resource utilization. In addition, Intelligent RAN and AI-powered analytics will help operators to proactively address network issues before they become a major problem. Vodafone’s Zero Touch Operation Strategy, for example, aims to prevent 50% of the faults. A North American service provider was able to detect RAN issues 120x faster with Nokia’s AI/ML-powered SON.

According to Ericsson, operator opex could double over the next five years without more automation across deployment and management & operations, just to support the MBB-driven changes. AI will play an important role here simplifying complexity and curbing opex growth. Most of the greenfield networks are clearly moving toward new architectures that are more automation-conducive (Rakuten Mobile operates 300 K+ cells with an operational headcount of around 250 people). Change typically does not happen as quickly, however, with the brownfields. The average brownfield operator today falls somewhere between L2 (partial autonomous network) and L3 (conditional autonomous network), with some way to go before reaching L4 (high autonomous network) and L5 (full autonomous network). Still, China Mobile remains on track for L4 automation by 2025. Huawei remains optimistic that L4 Autonomous Driving Network (ADN) will be more prevalent by approximately 2025 (70% of its customer base plans to achieve L3 ADN by 2025). Rakuten Mobile previously said that its network could achieve L4 automation by the end of 2022. Vodafone has also set the target of achieving zero-touch intelligent networks by 2025, while Zain is targeting L4 automation by 2025.

Performance gains underpinned by Intelligent RAN will vary, depending on a variety of factors. Ericsson estimates that Intelligent RAN Automation solutions can improve the spectral efficiency by 15%, while Huawei has been able to demonstrate that its Intelligent RAN multi-band/multi-site 3D coordination feature can improve the user experience by up to 50% in some settings. ZTE and China Mobile have demonstrated a 3x rate of throughput improvement at the cell edge, in addition to a 50% reduction in handover delays.

With the RAN comprising around 1% to 2% of global electricity consumption (ITU), the intensification of climate change taken together with the current power site trajectory forms the basis for the increased focus on energy efficiency and CO2 reduction. Preliminary findings suggest that Intelligent RAN can play a pivotal role in curbing emissions, cutting energy consumption by 15% to 25%. As an example, Zain was able to realize 23% energy savings at a test site in Kuwait utilizing Huawei’s Intelligence-based energy saving solutions. Some operators are even more optimistic: Tele2 recently published a report demonstrating how smarter mobile networks can reduce energy consumption in the long term by as much as 30% to 40%.

The proliferation of AI now also offers the potential to improve vRAN economics. One of the main TCO challenges with vRAN/Cloud RAN is the difficulty of realizing efficiency gains from orchestrating several workloads. As a result, some are now exploring the possibility of improving the vRAN business case by realizing synergies in other ways (such as between 5G and AI). Softbank and Nvidia recently announced that they are looking at the utilization and financial benefits of deploying 5G vRAN on the same servers that run AI. While the TAM for centralized vDU implementations is limited, it will be interesting to follow Softbank’s progress here.

What does AI mean for future RAN architectures?

AI is already available in the RAN today to some degree, albeit to a limited extent. Going forward, however, the share of AI in the RAN will undoubtedly rise. In addition to increased use of AI with existing 5G networks, 5G-Advanced promises to introduce more AI and ML enhancements in the RAN, including in the air interface. And while we are still in the early days of 6G the current thinking is that AI native Air interfaces will be one of the fundamental technologies.

It would be premature at this early stage to attempt to paint a comprehensive picture as to how AI will transform society and the telecom networks. But compared to previously hyped technologies, one of the differences with AI is the broad-based acceptance that all roads lead to more of it. So even if this is not the magic answer for operators to grow consumer ARPU, there is no doubt that suppliers and operators will gradually increase the use of AI in and around the RAN.

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Credit: RSA Conference 2023

 

Last week was the RSA Conference 2023 in San Francisco, the annual gathering of security vendors and their customers to review the latest in cybersecurity. This year’s theme was “Stronger Together.” According to the conference, it was selected to highlight that when the cybersecurity community works together, it strengthens the community.  Over 600 vendors heeded the call to come together in the vast halls of the Moscone Center.  While I had no intention of meeting with even a tenth of the vendors at RSAC 2023, I did meet with nearly 30 vendors across a swath of the vendor landscape.  (If you are a client of my research services, I will shortly send an email with thoughts from my meetings.)

For me, RSAC 2023 ended up a glass-half-full and half-empty event. While there was tangible progress and innovation, it lacked the same buzz of the 2022 and 2020 editions (2021 was canceled due to the pandemic). In this blog, I examine the three reasons I believe this was.

1) Zero Trust, Data Security, and Software Security were hot buzzwords but no common winner across the show. Meanwhile, SASE/SSE lost some intensity.

 During the worst of the pandemic, the rise of remote/hybrid work and attacks on Internet-based applications caused the industry to rally behind SASE and runtime app security solutions.  But all good parties must start winding down.

SASE appears to have come down from an apex in the last couple of years because, at RSAC 2023, it was no longer a pivotal conversation. Perhaps there is some marketing fatigue, but other externalities are at play, such as a reduced number of full-time remote workers as some have returned to the office full-time.

Similarly, the hot discussion about runtime application security (such as API security) has spread out as part of the “left shift” movement to greater design/coding security.  Now, there’s a greater breadth and depth of solutions to consider as part of a comprehensive cloud application security that inevitably has shifted the conversation to more generalized concepts like data and software security. As a result, cloud application architects now have an abundance of tools to contemplate. But, unfortunately, where to start is daunting, and the market fragmentation isn’t making it any easier.

Beyond what I noted above for SASE and cloud security, there was the factor of increased macroeconomic pessimism. Enterprise IT is no longer on a spending spree as it had been just last year. For vendors, it seems to have led to playing RSAC 2023 conservatively.

2) AI (artificial intelligence)-drive ChatGPT is coming to security, but we’re just scratching the surface of possibilities with AI

Unless living off the grid, you probably have heard, or even have tried, ChatGPT, the chatbot driven by AI technology that eerily feels human. From passing law exams at the University of Minnesota to writing computer code, ChatGPT has shined a bright light on AI and generated many new discussions about the possibilities for AI. So, it wasn’t surprising to hear ChatGPT dropped by more than a few vendors at RSAC 2023.

ChatGPT wasn’t part of the formal vendor marketing messages on the show floor – the arrival of ChatGPT happened too recently have made it into any of the marketing  – but many vendors in discussions talked up adding AI-driven natural language processing (solution-specific ChatGPT-like chatbot engines). Natural language processing promises that it will make solutions easier to use and increase the effectiveness of security admins. For example, rather than hunting through dashboards or reams of events, the security admin will be able to ask questions such as, “Where is my greatest security risk?”

Though ChatGPT brought AI awareness to the masses, AI has been in play for several years in the security industry, specifically in threat detection.  One of the first examples I remember was the 2020 firewall announcement by Palo Alto Network. It added machine learning to the firewall to improve malware and phishing detection.  Since then, I’ve run across other examples of AI-powered threat detection.  Still, the maturity and power of AI-drive detection need to improve. Of course, human security researchers are still vital, but I suspect AI will incrementally enhance and reduce the reliance over time.

3) Applications and IT infrastructure security are still top of mind but were – unfortunately –worlds apart.

It used to be that IT infrastructure teams held the keys to the security kingdom since applications could only get deployed once the infrastructure team did so. Infrastructure owned the servers, storage, and networking that applications relied upon.

From a security perspective, infrastructure teams tended to put significant thought into the application data security lifecycle because, over many years, they had come to understand the security implications of data in motion, in use, and at rest.

However, applications teams hated having to wait for the infrastructure teams. The infrastructure teams lost most of the security control when the cloud-based paradigm arrived with its continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) on ephemeral infrastructure (also known as a cloud DevOps culture).  Applications teams could now do as they pleased without involving or waiting for the infrastructure teams.  But unfortunately, cloud application security is far from as mature as it had been in the traditional monolithic days involving the infrastructure team. Consequently, security posture has suffered and led to notable cloud breaches.  However, as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.

The last seven years have seen a bumper crop of new cloud workload security vendors (from acquired startups like Dome9, Twistlock, and PureSec to more recent pure-plays like Lacework, Orca Security, and Wiz).  These vendors are in tune with application developers’ operations and have identified key points in their workflows to insert security. The space is evolving quickly, and seeing how many were represented at RSAC 2023.  For the interested reader, in October 2022, I put out my first Advanced Research Report on Cloud Workload Security detailing market evolution and TAM (total addressable market).

Nonetheless, it was disheartening how these two camps, the infrastructure and application security, literally lived in different worlds at RSAC 2023. The north expo hall had the infrastructure security vendors, and the south hall had the applications security vendors.  Enterprise infrastructure and application teams must work together for the common security good. Still, developing beneficial synergies will be impossible if the vendors they rely on occupy different worlds. In addition, because application development moves to be “cloud-native,” it doesn’t eliminate the need and possibilities with the enterprise infrastructure teams.

Yes, the glass was half full and half empty on several fronts at RSAC 2023. But, then again, nothing is ever perfect, nor will it be. So rather than ending on this bittersweet note, I’ll end on a positive and highlight that my conversations at RSAC 2023 were enthusiastic, rich, and insightful, which demonstrated that as we come together, we do get stronger.

I look forward to RSAC 2024.

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2022 marked a record year for broadband spending around the world, as service providers forged ahead with major network upgrades and expansions. In many cases, the focus of these investments was to expand the reach of fiber for business and residential services with the ultimate aim of de-commissioning legacy copper and DSL networks.

A major part of these network upgrades was the investment in PON technologies with the ability to deliver 10Gbps of bandwidth across a single OLT port, which is then shared by dozens of subscribers. The short-term goal is to be able to deliver symmetric 1-5Gbps of bandwidth consistently to each residential subscriber. The focus on delivering these speed tiers has resulted in a significant jump in the purchasing of 10Gbps-capable technologies, including 10G EPON, XG-PON, and XGS-PON. From 2020 to 2022, spending on OLT platforms and ONTs supporting 10Gbps technologies jumped 308% (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Worldwide 10Gbps-Capable PON Equipment Revenue

 

While these technologies will serve most operators well for the next 5 years operators in a growing number of markets want to ensure that the significant investments they are making today in expanding their fiber networks and ODN won’t be regrettable investments and that there is a technology roadmap in place that keeps them ahead of their competition in terms of speeds and latency, but also allows them to achieve a number of architectural goals, including delivering both residential and enterprise services using the same technology and ODN; collapsing access and aggregation networks to reduce the total number of network platforms; providing a simplified upgrade path through co-existence of multiple PON technologies, and; delivering wholesale mobile transport services.

Bandwidth demands show no signs of slowing, with the ITU having estimated that worldwide bandwidth consumption grew at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 50% from 2015 to 2021, reaching a total of 932 Tbps, up from 719 Tbps in 2020. With governments and operators alike focused on expanding their networks to get more homes and businesses connected, as well as applications like virtual reality (VR) and online gaming set to expand, bandwidth consumption will almost certainly accelerate throughout the remainder of this decade.

For some operators in highly-competitive environments, 25G PON is the appropriate next step, as short-term demands for bandwidth beyond 10Gbps and for the need to address both residential and business customers from a single ODN push them to act within the next 1-2 years.

Meanwhile, the ITU-T’s 50G PON Standard and corresponding prototype platforms and components continue to evolve quickly, as operators and equipment vendors look to accelerate the availability of products so that they can undergo the rigorous testing and homologation required of any new technology. Considerable effort has already gone into defining the physical layer parameters, latency requirements, and Forward Error Correction (FEC), among other elements.

Already, a number of operators have either conducted early lab trials of prototype equipment or have endorsed the technology as their next choice, including China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Globe Telecom, Orange, Saudi Telecom, Swisscom, Telefonica Spain, Telekom Malaysia, and Turkcell. Other operators are keeping an eye on the standardization process but are also largely focused on their current rollouts of XGS-PON to make any formal commitment beyond that.

Additionally, a component ecosystem is emerging quickly, driven largely by system vendors who want to get products to market quickly, as operators want to be absolutely certain that the power budget requirements and dispersion penalty, along with the use of digital signal processors (DSPs) does not force any change in the existing ODN.

 

Recent Steps Forward

A number of major steps forward for 50G PON were announced in September 2022, during the ITU-T Study Group 15’s Plenary Meeting. The most significant announcement was the agreement on details for the simultaneous coexistence of all three ITU PON technologies (50G PON, XGS-PON, GPON) on a single ODN. Previously, simultaneous coexistence with GPON and XGS-PON had not been defined, meaning that operators would have to upgrade their GPON networks to XGS-PON prior to beginning their 50G PON deployment.

With the addition of a third upstream wavelength band (1284-1288nm) to the G.9804.1 standard’s existing 1260-1280 and 1290-1310 bands, 50G PON, XGS-PON, and GPON can now live together on a shared ODN. Additionally, combo PON implementations can now be supported using 50G + XGS-PON, 50G + GPON, as well as all three modes (50G + XGS-PON + GPON).

The support of both simultaneous coexistence as well as combo PON implementations is critical addition as operators have said time and again that they do not want to disrupt their ODNs when moving to a new technology. Additionally, operators are expected to make their transition to 50G PON through the use of combo PON, which takes advantage of the existing space in the central office, requires no modifications to the ODN, and does not require the use of a WDM multiplexing device, which can result in optical power loss.

 

Challenges Remain

50G PON represents a significant improvement in bandwidth availability and latency over today’s 10Gbps technologies. However, these benefits don’t come without their challenges. The biggest technical challenges are in the PHY layer. Specifically, the optical power budget required, dispersion penalty, and intersymbol interference (ISI) are all potential hazards in 50G PON systems. As bandwidth increases, overall performance typically declines, especially when the existing ODN defines a 32dB power budget. The use of DSP technology can reduce or eliminate these PHY layer issues. However, previous PON technologies did not use DSPs, so operators will want to test this thoroughly and ensure that point-to-multipoint communications between the OLT port and ONTs are occurring as expected and without error. The DSPs specifically help to reduce the dispersion and bandwidth limitation penalty, as well ensuring that lower-bandwidth GPON and XGS-PON ONTs are supported more efficiently.

At this point, current 50G prototypes are asymmetric, delivering 50G downstream and either 25G or 12.5G upstream. Though system vendors are working through the best options for delivering consistent, symmetric speeds and have already delivered some prototypes using semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) and FPGA-based DSPs, the ITU-T SG15 agreed back in September 2022 to further study the options for delivering symmetric speeds. Clearly, operators would prefer a symmetric option as early as possible. But the dramatic increase in downstream bandwidth and billboard speeds should more than suffice until the upstream technologies and components have been standardized and implemented in OLTs and ONTs.

 

Opportunities Continue to Grow

Though early, Dell’Oro Group believes total 50G-PON equipment revenue will increase from less than $3M in 2023 to $1.5B in 2027. Much more significant growth is expected after 2027, as operators begin to evolve their 10Gbps PON networks to next-generation technologies (Figure 2).

Beyond being able to anticipate future bandwidth growth coming from consumer applications such as VR, AR, online gaming, videoconferencing, and 8k video, 50G PON positions operators to address business services. Specifically, 50G PON allows a provider to offer four 10G Ethernet connections, split among multiple businesses. Additionally, 50G PON is ideal for POL (Passive Optical LAN) deployments, where fiber can be run to the desktop and deliver connectivity with less power, rack space, and less cooling than traditional point-to-point Ethernet architectures.

Figure 2: Worldwide 50Gbps PON Equipment Revenue

Figure 2: Worldwide 50Gbps PON Equipment Revenue

 

Similarly, 50G PON has applications in the backhaul of public Wi-Fi hotspots as well as private wireless LANs, both of which will see significant bandwidth growth with the availability and deployment of Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7. Wi-Fi 6E allows individual subscribers to burst to 9.6Gbps while Wi-Fi 7 quadruples that throughput to nearly 40Gbps. Additionally, the Wi-Fi 7 standard defines extremely low levels of latency and jitter, which the evolving 50G PON standard is also incorporating.

Finally, as operators continue to converge their residential, business, and wholesale fiber networks onto a single ODN, 50G PON is envisioned as the universal technology to deliver services across those networks. Mobile midhaul and fronthaul applications, expanding IoT devices and services, wholesale fiber access to macrocells, backhaul of fixed wireless access (FWA) nodes—all of these can in theory be delivered using 50G PON. Other applications and use cases are certain to emerge as operators continue to reap the benefits of converting their disparate networks onto a shared ODN, with throughput and services delivered via 50G PON.