4 ms·

Ehm. You all are aware that 5G was created with the expectation that in the future all networks (and core functions) will be cloud-based? The last remaining HW

Ehm. You all are aware that 5G was created with the expectation that in the future all networks (and core functions) will be cloud-based? The last remaining HW will be the physical antenna and some PA/LNA and some local signal processing. You connect fiber to that and everything else is a operator-as-a-service model - running on AWS/Azure/GCP.

walrus01 5y ago
You're aware that telcos have massive amounts of physical stuff needed to make that happen first? You can't "cloud" hand wave away things like massive metro scale dark fiber networks for backhaul. Or things like inter city long haul DWDM networks. I assure you there's a lot more going on hidden behind the scenes of a modern ISP or 4G/5G carrier than just some antennas and software in a VM somewhere.
- ng55QPSK 5y ago
  This will not happen this year. But in the long run you don't need much own HW to be an operator. And fiber connectivity is (as the startpoint of this comments) outsourced in large scale.
  - walrus01 5y ago
    "in the long run you don't need that much HW to be an operator" - have you ever worked for a facilities based ISP or Telco and visited the interiors of dozens of different POPs? Please do so and then come tell us all about how telecom infrastructure on a national and global scale isn't composed of massive amounts of hardware all over the place.
    - ng55QPSK 5y ago
      I work in a team that created 5G. And around ~2014 it was clear: operators want to go away from own HW.
      - walrus01 5y ago
        Just because you've outsourced some function to another contractor or telecom doesn't make the physical stuff go away. It just abstracts it away to someone else's responsibility.
  - kazen44 5y ago
    how? the hardware needs to be there because you actually need to run the physical infrastructure to locations, no matter the technology, you still need geographical coverage to actually build connectivity.
    - tguvot 5y ago
      well, around ~2011 network operators discovered that it's possible to virtualize network&compute, i.e. run routers, switches and computers in VMs. As result of this they came up with a grand plan where they will stick everything to virtual machines on top of cheapest hardware (preferably). A bunch of conferenced happened in order to define standards for all this happy future. Only most of it crashed and burned for multiple reasons. But it was back then. Now, in theory, it's pretty much possible to run operator based on leased lines (many operators actually run over leased lines anyway, in many countries and they don't own physical fiber networks due to regulations or other reasons), and interfaces with antennas/enodebs that are "virtualized" (to support multiple operators at once) or even using cloud-ran while deploying rest of software stack "in cloud".
- signa11 5y ago
  checkout how rakuten and altiostar are doing just that.
oytis 5y ago
4G is already pretty much cloud-based. But it doesn't mean the cloud should be run by the network equipment vendor - a more sustainable model would be the network operator, or at least European tier 1 developing and maintaining it.

walrus01 5y ago

You're aware that telcos have massive amounts of physical stuff needed to make that happen first? You can't "cloud" hand wave away things like massive metro scale dark fiber networks for backhaul. Or things like inter city long haul DWDM networks. I assure you there's a lot more going on hidden behind the scenes of a modern ISP or 4G/5G carrier than just some antennas and software in a VM somewhere.

ng55QPSK 5y ago
This will not happen this year. But in the long run you don't need much own HW to be an operator. And fiber connectivity is (as the startpoint of this comments) outsourced in large scale.
- walrus01 5y ago
  "in the long run you don't need that much HW to be an operator" - have you ever worked for a facilities based ISP or Telco and visited the interiors of dozens of different POPs? Please do so and then come tell us all about how telecom infrastructure on a national and global scale isn't composed of massive amounts of hardware all over the place.
  - ng55QPSK 5y ago
    I work in a team that created 5G. And around ~2014 it was clear: operators want to go away from own HW.
    - walrus01 5y ago
      Just because you've outsourced some function to another contractor or telecom doesn't make the physical stuff go away. It just abstracts it away to someone else's responsibility.
- kazen44 5y ago
  how? the hardware needs to be there because you actually need to run the physical infrastructure to locations, no matter the technology, you still need geographical coverage to actually build connectivity.
  - tguvot 5y ago
    well, around ~2011 network operators discovered that it's possible to virtualize network&compute, i.e. run routers, switches and computers in VMs. As result of this they came up with a grand plan where they will stick everything to virtual machines on top of cheapest hardware (preferably). A bunch of conferenced happened in order to define standards for all this happy future. Only most of it crashed and burned for multiple reasons. But it was back then. Now, in theory, it's pretty much possible to run operator based on leased lines (many operators actually run over leased lines anyway, in many countries and they don't own physical fiber networks due to regulations or other reasons), and interfaces with antennas/enodebs that are "virtualized" (to support multiple operators at once) or even using cloud-ran while deploying rest of software stack "in cloud".
signa11 5y ago
checkout how rakuten and altiostar are doing just that.

oytis 5y ago

4G is already pretty much cloud-based. But it doesn't mean the cloud should be run by the network equipment vendor - a more sustainable model would be the network operator, or at least European tier 1 developing and maintaining it.