Ericsson: High-performance programmable networks empower the high-quality development of the industry

On the first day of MWC Shanghai, Drazen Jarnjak, Vice President and Head of Network Business Unit of Ericsson Northeast Asia, delivered a speech at the forum "Promoting Open Gateway Development in the 5G-A Era".

Chinanews.com, Shanghai News, July 2 (Xu Yin) During the 2024 Mobile World Congress Shanghai (hereinafter referred to as "MWC Shanghai") held recently, AI successfully made its "C-position" debut: whether it is vehicle-road collaboration, autonomous driving, digital intelligent manufacturing, AIGC ...... AI is visibly integrated into every corner of the ICT field. At the main forum, the relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology clearly pointed out: "Promote the deep integration of 5G and a new generation of information technology, especially artificial intelligence." ”

According to the latest data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, up to now, the mainland has built a total of 3.748 million 5G base stations, and 889 million 5G mobile phone users; according to the data of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, as of March this year, the scale of 5G industry users in the mainland exceeded 30,000, including more than 1,000 users in the industrial, smart city, medical and education industries, more than 500 in the power and mining fields, and 92% of the 5G applications in the country's 25 major coastal ports...... With such a large number of users, there should be more room for value exploration. According to Ericsson Consumer Lab, 20% of mobile phone users are willing to pay an additional 11% for a differentiated, high-quality, high-performance network.

As a network solution provider that has participated in more than half of the world's 5G live network construction, Ericsson once again sent a signal to the industry during MWC Shanghai: 5G and AI are at the right time to converge, and to accelerate 5G value monetization and large-scale innovation by building high-performance programmable networks.

Differentiated connectivity drives 5G value monetization

Starbucks, the world's leading coffee brand, has met the diverse needs of people in 82 countries and regions around the world by providing differentiated products: coffee lovers can enjoy latte, American, cappuccino and other coffee styles, while tea lovers and caffeine intolerant people can taste Frappuccino, Chawana and snacks and pastries, and those who love the neighborhood can buy a wide variety of coffee cups and pendants...... Now, the vast majority of chain beverage brands around the world are following this model.

Today, the ICT industry is also offering differentiated connectivity services to meet the different needs of enterprise applications. Especially in terms of network deployment structure, operators are now able to provide different forms of networks, such as virtual private networks, hybrid private networks, and physical private networks, to meet the relevant requirements of enterprises.

But here's the question: If there are hundreds of network requirements or scenarios, how should operators accurately manage them? Does the network have the ability to identify real-time, increasingly complex user and service combinations if subscriber network needs change temporarily?

It is imperative to provide users with high-performance mobile communication customized services. "Our products and services cannot be as undifferentiated as bulk commodities, but must be made into high-performance differentiated networks, including 5G and 5G-A." Drazen Jarnjak, Vice President and Head of Network Business Unit for Ericsson Northeast Asia, said during MWC Shanghai that network solution providers need to provide differentiated, high-performance and programmable networks that enable operators to provide differentiated connectivity services to users across a wide range of industries.

The advent of the AI era will lead to the next round of transformation of mobile communication networks. In particular, with the extensive deployment of SA networks, the advantages of 5G can be better played, network demand has surged, network interaction efficiency and objects have increased exponentially, and mobile networks are ushering in a new period of traffic growth. "The industry hasn't captured the growth that we're seeing very well, it's not monetizing that growth well, and it's not bringing in high revenues." Drazen Jarnjak believes that by building a programmable 5G network to achieve differentiated connectivity, more layers of services can be added to the original basis, thereby stimulating users' desire to pay and improving the monetization ability of operators' networks.

High-performance programmable networks are inseparable from the underlying support of AI technology. It is reported that Ericsson is continuously improving the AI capabilities in its RAN computing portfolio, and through continuous R&D investment in RAN computing hardware and software, it will improve AI inference and training capabilities, such as adding dynamic storage and persistent storage, so as to accelerate the processing of real-time workloads. At the same time, Ericsson is also working with partners to explore AI acceleration technologies and AI software lifecycle management to ensure the efficient operation and continuous update of AI models.

Network Capability Openness Breaks the "Dimensional Wall" of Scale Innovation

How to further stimulate the innovation vitality of 5G while promoting the realization of its value, so that 5G can become the largest innovation platform?

Drazen Jarnjak believes that many developers are not very familiar with 5G technology, and there is no interest in 5G, and APIs are not globally standardized and not deployed globally, which leads to the lack of more 5G use cases today. Ericson's global practice has proved that the openness of network capabilities is an important force to promote 5G innovation and form a scale effect. It is understood that Ericsson acquired Vonage, so that Ericsson can make 5G technology and capabilities easily used by 1.6 million developers around the world. In addition, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI, AWS, and others have announced a partnership with Vonage, which is the original intention of the Global Network Platform (GNP) to enable developers and enterprises to integrate network functions into their applications, opening up new ways for operators to monetize network investments and spurring 5G innovation. Imagine what kind of innovation platform 5G will become if hundreds of developers understand and integrate into 5G.

"What we need to do is make 5G easy for everyone to use." Drazen Jarnjak believes that to achieve this effect, the industry must build a global API platform and realize the basic communication API and 5G network API openness. "We want to attract the developer community to innovate on top of APIs."

Behind the openness of network capabilities is Ericsson's thinking about the future development of global 5G networks. Network capability openness, exploring more value of 5G, and promoting 5G innovation should become a perfect closed loop and form a benign 5G development ecosystem. "When more network capabilities are pushed to developers through APIs, more innovative services and applications will be born, which will bring more users. Carriers will be able to increase their service revenue, attract more operators to join the API developer ecosystem, and encourage operators to continue to invest in building differentiated high-performance networks. Drazen Jarnjak believes that the development of the entire industry, including application developers, equipment manufacturers, and operators, will enter a virtuous and positive cycle based on "network effects", and all parties involved will gain corresponding positions and benefits, and the industry will be reshaped. Based on this, Ericsson actively participates in the work related to the GSMA Open Gateway, vigorously promotes the global standardization experiment of APIs, and is committed to achieving the goal of 5G network capability openness on a larger scale.

"Our physical and digital worlds are becoming better connected and converged." Looking ahead, Drazen Jarnjak said that we are at a turning point in the development of 5G, and with the continuous advancement of 5G technology and the continuous expansion of application scenarios, high-performance programmable networks will play a more important role in driving cross-industry innovation and promoting digital transformation. (ENDS)

Editor: Xu Yin