5G network technology gives telecommunications
operators the ability to deliver many new applications and services in
dynamic ways, but they can’t do it by themselves.
This is one of the findings in a report by
Ericsson , in collaboration with MIT Technology Review Insights, titled
“The 5G Operator”.
Low-latency
connectivity, ultra-high broadband speeds, and mobile edge computing
capabilities will create myriad innovative business opportunities as
well as consumer experiences. Many of 5G’s
clearer use cases—such as autonomous vehicle fleets, internet of things,
and management of fully-automated factories—are enterprise-focused,
which gives operators a path to new revenue creation.
However,
such services are still only just emerging, and carriers do not possess
all the vertical-industry knowledge or specific application development
experience to effectively explore the seemingly
infinite service opportunities that 5G presents. There is a growing
understanding that operators cannot do it alone, and that an innovative
ecosystem of partners will be crucial to future success.
This
report explores how IT and network executives at leading operators
worldwide are creating a roadmap to 5G, including strategies for
rethinking network operations, IT, business support systems
(BSS), and business processes to accommodate a growing number of digital
service partners in rapidly expanding ecosystems. The key findings are
as follows:
· Collaboration
is the operating model for 5G delivery.
5G provides telecoms operators with powerful technological capabilities
that can dramatically accelerate the digital transformation of
companies
across industries and geographies. But executives interviewed for this
report state that getting the full value of 5G is not something they can
do on their own. To take advantage of the infinite possibilities will
require an ecosystem of partners, and partner
collaboration will become the baseline for success. Partnerships will
include hardware and software companies, traditional and digital
players, and large and small innovators—all of which can bring specific
application and domain expertise needed to exploit
new niches.
· Scaling
5G services will require an ‘app store’ style of customised connectivity. To
be an effective
innovation partner in the 5G era, BSS functions such as billing, service
creation, and catalogue management must be open and agile, and provide
opportunity for partners to “plug-and-play.” One implication of this is
that BSS capabilities, empowered by AI, analytics,
and automation, will provide building blocks for partners to employ by
themselves in a type of “app store.” The goal for becoming truly
scalable and innovative is to become close to “zero touch,” which will
require greater network and IT integration for the
automation of key BSS functions such as “configure, price, quote.”
· Rich
data sets offer infinite opportunities for automation, AI, and real-time insight.
With increasingly rich data sets, operators are becoming their
customers’ partners in business intelligence,
AI, and in generating new opportunities for value creation. This
requires operators to become more embedded in their customers’ digital
businesses using increasingly virtualised
and automated capabilities, provisioning uniquely defined services around specific customer requirements.
· Cloud
migration is a key success factor for BSS. Cloud
migration is certainly at the top of the agenda for network operators
in their preparation for 5G. But there is less maturity in moving
network functions to the cloud than there is in IT, and there is little
appetite for moving stable applications to a cloud environment where
they may be more costly or challenging to virtualise.
Customer experience is one capability that executives agree should be moved to the cloud—a virtualised,
on-demand service delivery platform is the foundation upon which new
innovative services will be created swiftly, in collaboration
with the carrier, its service partners, and customers.
· 5G
will be an organisational as well as technological transformation. From
sales and marketing
to operations, IT, network management, pricing, and billing, there will
be enormous changes that operators must plan for in 5G roadmaps. The
internal processes of telecoms operators are usually more aligned to
consumer than enterprise segments, and this will
need to change as connected devices soon outnumber human subscribers and
complex enterprise services are deployed at scale. A huge shift is the
closer integration of network and IT teams, processes, and platforms, as
service provisioning becomes more virtualised
and new offers are developed with partners in cloud-native environments.
Download the full
report.
