As the universal core of optical fiber, 5G may be coming soon

The convergence between wired and wireless networks is one of the ideas that makes people feel that it is always on the horizon. But experts told Fierce that a perfect storm of industry trends—virtualization, decomposition, 5G, fiber optics, cloudification—finally came together, bringing the long-awaited technology within reach.

Dave Allen is a distinguished engineer of Ericsson and the head of the Wireless-Wired Convergence (WWC) workspace of the Broadband Forum. He told First that he has been studying integration for a long time. Of course, the ultimate goal is the common core of fixed and mobile access networks. But when the industry tried to converge about 10 years ago, he said that the necessary jigsaw was not in place. "The problem is that at the time, mobile phones were basically flip phones and BlackBerry phones, and smartphones were just beginning to appear. More importantly, we didn't really talk about cloud computing," he said. The biggest difference now is that everything except the core—devices and protocols—is based on IP. In addition, Allen said that 5G fixed wireless access is already working hard to commercialize 5G-enabled residential gateways (5GRG). He said: "There are many motivations for this, and many contributing factors are already in place." Allen pointed out that in addition to the core and user management, other aspects have basically been integrated. Coupled with the trend of cloud computing, integration can be achieved through software upgrades, which means "Look, you have the ability to eliminate so much duplication in operator networks." In fact, operators are keen to make efforts to simplify wireless and wired networks to reduce duplication and save operating costs. Vodafone recently trialed a split broadband network gateway (BNG) with Nokia and Cisco. Vodafone told Fierce that the company sees the feature "evolving, including interoperability with 5G cores." Since the beginning of 2017, the Broadband Forum has been working side-by-side with the wireless standards body 3GPP on convergence specifications. At that time, the two organizations held a joint meeting to study use cases, set goals, and determine how the work should proceed. Since 2019, they have been actively writing specifications to make convergence a reality, and 3GPP has solved this problem in its 16th edition of the standard. Last year, the Broadband Forum completed its first phase of specifications, solving the basic problems of convergence, including how to support 5GRG on wired networks, and how to begin network transformation. Allen said that the company is currently working on the second phase, which will address expanded deployment options, added features, new sources of revenue and other improvements. Although vendors and operators pay close attention to 5G, Allen said that several "major operators" and some vendors have already conducted technical proof-of-concept tests on the basis of the first-phase specifications. Ken Ko, managing director of Broadband Forum, pointed out that there are several different convergence paths, but at least one path that has been determined will completely eliminate the traditional BNG, and "after the access network has completed the adaptation function" in the (5G) mobile core Terminate residential services by itself. He added: "In this most forward-looking version of convergence, there are not even many adaptations. The mobile protocol is actually implemented through 5GRG." Allen summarized why convergence is so important and why operators continue to chase it. He explained that once the operator’s core network becomes a universal digital platform, “services are universal, tools are universal, [and] you can provide ubiquitous strategies regardless of the access rights of a given user, Such as parental control, corporate access, etc. This is a huge challenge.