Subject: Is it time to take this step?

A panel of telecom industry experts examined the state of 5G-Advanced (5G-A) technology and its importance in the future Mobile World Live live latest panel discussion, where executives presented new capabilities that enable operators to leverage new use cases to increase revenue.

Panel members supported the 5G-A modernization, which aims to achieve new levels of network automation, reduce costs and improve reliability, and help accelerate the evolution to 6G in the coming years.

Egil Gronstad, senior director of systems architecture at T-Mobile US, highlighted the opportunities in cost reduction and performance improvements. “We’ve had 5G for over five years, so obviously everything we’re doing today is more advanced than what we were doing when we launched 5G. There’s a lot of network monetization going on right now, leveraging slicing and API exposure. That’s very important to us.”

One of the most important things about the 3GPP 5G-A specifications is the robust framework designed to save energy and reduce base station power to make networks more efficient. “These are significant, full-featured capabilities that we expect to see good use; the environmental benefits are reduced power consumption, which is also a significant part of the operating costs.”

He added that T-Mobile’s primary goal is to enable feature sharing across the network so that certain new use cases, especially in enterprises but also among consumers, can take advantage of specific features to meet key performance indicators.

Gronstad pointed to a number of different opportunities to create new revenue streams, such as lower-cost IoT applications, as well as improvements to limited capabilities (RedCap) in terms of lower complexity and cost, greater range and reliability, and lower power consumption.

Another possibility that will emerge with 5G-A in 3GPP is ambient IoT, which he said is a bit further down the road but “is something we think has a lot of potential, a lot of lower cost of devices. Battery-free, it opens up a lot of opportunities for new revenue streams for operators.”

Sean Casey, vice president of product management at BSS software and services provider CSG, says 5G-A gives operators the opportunity to make their networks more open and platform-based, forge new partnerships and find new revenue streams, perhaps by unbundling net and corporate services.

While Casey wouldn’t call the app a hit, he explained that it’s an opportunity for operators to evolve their business practices from being focused on retail subscribers to introducing new business streams.

“They also need to continue to think about how to modernize their support systems and networks as they go through this transformation.”

Preparing for 6G
Munish Chhabra, head of mobile software and services at US technology company Radisys, believes the most important aspect of 5G-A will be the operational savings enabled by greater automation and improved spectral efficiency, noting that the technology will be a “precursor to what we can expect from 6G”.

“That’s the starting point for that. Every G doesn’t have to be a magic wand that changes consumers’ lives. It’s also about what it does to the things around us, beyond the smartphone. That’s where things start happening and will create the path for 6G.”

He added that it is equally important to open new sources of income through new verticals.

GSMA Intelligence chief Peter Jarich sees the biggest opportunity in doing something new: “The fact that 5G-A is available is a trigger to look at open networks.” The research unit’s data shows that open APIs are a big target for operators, helping them reach new enterprise verticals.

He added that as operators prepare for 5G-A, they should also align their back-office systems with enterprise verticals to enable them to enter new markets. “I think that’s a real opportunity.”

Jarich highlighted two risks: the rush to 5G-A pushes back on things like autonomy (SA), which is incredibly important. “There’s also the risk of being too aggressive. As we saw with SA, there was a huge amount of interest. Everyone said they’d do it in a few years when it first launched, and it took longer. We don’t have many operators in the world doing that.”

He said if operators see a slowdown in the pace of development, it could damage the reputation of the new technology.

Challenges
Casey emphasized that 5G-A needs to move toward what he called the “platformization” of mobile networks. “I think 5G-A allows operators to get back to a place where they can build their networks as platforms that open up different types of opportunities to come into the system, like private networks and IoT providers. That’s a huge opportunity for 5G-A to enable operators to increase revenue.”

As a result, CSG believes that operators need to modernize their approach to serving customers, adding that as they invest in and build more advanced networks, they also need to modernize their OSS and BSS systems to keep up with these changes and make it easier for partners to access their networks.

This will enable them to offer more comprehensive SLAs and guarantees in the form of network segmentation and dynamic quality of service, allowing the networks themselves to better respond to demand.

Continuing with Casey, Jarich noted that while the industry may talk about technologies and their use cases, they typically have downstream implications, such as how new services are billed, charged, and managed.

“The addition of 5G-A makes managing systems much more complex, so if we don’t integrate automation, the costs go up incredibly.”

Chhabra highlighted the fact that 5G-A offers improved connectivity and is seeing a lot of interest in terrestrial networks, noting that one of the biggest challenges in the extraterrestrial environment is its proprietary nature and lack of leverage of terrestrial enhancements.

Here’s what’s changed from a 3GPP perspective, he said. Redefining what extraterrestrial networks are and looking at how the two can coexist could potentially lead to ubiquitous connectivity.

“You are connected everywhere, with seamless connectivity to the point where you can roam between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks.”

Gronstad expressed disappointment at the lack of 3GPP specifications addressing fixed wireless access (FWA), noting that the industry only uses mobile networks with specifications designed for mobility and then uses devices placed in locations designated for fixed wireless access.

He argued with a lot of smart people in the industry that if “we put our minds to it, we could bring capabilities to the network that take advantage of the fact that these devices aren’t moving, they’re stationary. And I bet you we could probably double the capacity of the network.”

“I want to present this as a challenge. Whether it’s 5G-A or definitely 6G, we as an industry should be thinking about fixed wireless access and how we can design the air interface and the network architecture to be much more efficient for fixed wireless access. I’m sure there’s an opportunity there.”

He sees FWA on 5G as a huge opportunity, noting that it’s a great service for T-Mobile and the company plans to continue to develop it.

Jarich suggested that much of what’s emerging isn’t about super-new use cases, but about advancements that are available before 5G-A, which introduce improvements in elements including slicing and extraterrestrial network capabilities. “That’s important because it’s about evolving from 5G to 6G.”

You can watch the entire session here.