Analysis of the four major reasons for the 5G "life and death battle" among operators in 2019

There is no doubt that 2019 will be the "Year of 5G". Major operators around the world are discussing the launch of 5G services of all sizes, and OEMs are also hinting at the features and prices of their new 5G phones. Through virtualization and cloud computing technologies, higher speeds and bandwidth, and ultra-low latency, 5G is likely to have a significant impact on network operations and customer expectations. The continued maturity of artificial intelligence and automation technologies, as well as the continued exponential growth of the Internet of Things, will bring huge new opportunities to operators, but will also inevitably bring huge challenges.

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Therefore, 2019 will be a critical year for operators. In this regard, the editor summarizes the following four major factors.

1. Disruptive technologies will promote the development of BSS

As telecom companies increase the digitization of their services, especially with the upcoming 5G innovations, the pressure on operators to reduce costs will decrease. However, on the other hand, there is a need to improve the customer experience and provide full transparency to users.

While new disruptive technologies will undoubtedly help meet these needs, operators' business support systems (BSS) will need to evolve to adapt to the more complex architecture required to support them. For example, AI will be increasingly used to automate operators' business processes, such as automatic bill checking, fraud prevention, and customer analysis. It will also play a more important role in customer service, supporting chatbots, automated social media messages, and voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri. All of this will prompt updates to operators' BSS systems.

2. 5G deployment may promote the development of OSS

Based on current developments, we can assert that the pace of 5G deployment will continue to accelerate in 2019. However, this will cause many problems for operators' Operation Support Systems (OSS) due to the lack of transport convergence and virtualization modeling required to support the automation of these deployments. Like BSS, OSS also needs to evolve to meet the needs of this new environment.

As this happens, we believe the lack of revenue and reliable means of monetization will mean that few operators will deploy VNFs in their networks. At least for now, any investment in VNFs is likely to be related to the core network, with the RAN network emerging in late 2019/early 2020.

III. Changes in service guarantee

The demand for automation of service assurance processes will increase in 2019. As the progressive deployment of 5G continues to change the entire environment, operators will face a new set of unknown challenges and will need new and more effective methods to solve them.

We will also see machine learning (ML) capabilities take over in the areas of integrated assurance and analytics. All of this will be further enhanced by the role of ML in new technologies such as VNFs, which are expected to see wider adoption in 2019, and new management approaches based on self-organizing capabilities such as SDN, not to mention the need to manage new 5G networks.

4. Unleashing IoT Opportunities

The adoption of IoT solutions by small and medium enterprises increased gradually in 2018. In 2019, more IoT deployments are expected to be realized as the high speed and ultra-low latency of 5G technology unlock the full potential of the Internet of Things (IoT).

However, they are not necessarily related to a specific vertical, such as smart metering or smart manufacturing. In fact, we are likely to see IoT technologies deployed in industry-agnostic areas, such as asset tracking or preventive and predictive maintenance, both of which can be applied in areas such as logistics, healthcare and manufacturing.

In 2019, global telecom operators will also deploy more and more nationwide NB-IoT and LTE-Cat M IoT networks, thereby continuously increasing the total number of global IoT projects and solutions.

A revolution is coming, and it will disrupt everything we know. The convergence of new technologies, coupled with the unstoppable force of 5G, means that 2019 will be a very important period in telecommunications, and operators will need to adapt in order to make the most of the huge opportunities that are coming.