Mavenir, focused on accelerating software network transformation and redefining mobile network economics for communications service providers, announced the results of a new global 5G Operator Survey. The survey, just completed by Heavy Reading in November 2017, unveils important new findings regarding the 5G development and deployment plans of more than fifty major communication service providers around the world.
Among the highlights, communication service providers overwhelmingly—94% combined—responded that they intended to deploy Cloud RAN architectures in their 5G networks either partially or in their entirety.
As Gabriel Brown, Principal Analyst at Heavy Reading, points out, “Our survey shows strong support for Cloud RAN as the 5G deployment architecture. The response indicates the architecture will be widely adopted as operators deploy advanced 4G and 5G networks.”
Additionally, 5G is overwhelming viewed as evolutionary, rather than revolutionary with the 5G strategy to build on advanced 4G.
“The 5G strategy for these mobile operators is to build on advanced 4G and this evolutionary strategy is precisely why the decisions that are made today will greatly affect the mobile network economics,” said Pardeep Kohli, President and CEO, Mavenir.
“There is strong support for Cloud RAN as a 4G 5G deployment architecture from this survey. This adds to what we have already learned – with Mavenir’s Cloud RAN deployment, mobile operators can see 49% savings in Capex and 31% annual savings in Opex.”
“Mobile operators like open standards as this allows them to take advantage of innovation across the ecosystem,” said Heavy Reading’s Brown. “The survey shows this applies across the RAN and core domains.”
Other key findings of the report show the intent of communication service providers to deploy software defined networks to handle the huge number of data-heavy use cases anticipated in the near term. Although individual software defined networks strategies vary greatly, it is widely accepted amongst the responders that network-slicing and edge computing platforms built on cloud-based architectures will be instrumental in the success of their 5G build-outs.
Mavenir’s Cloud RAN extends virtualisation to the edge of the network and provides strategic differentiation by enabling the Remote Radio Units to interwork with the virtualised Cloud Base Band Units over Ethernet Fronthaul at a tenth of the bandwidth that is currently required with proprietary solutions. Cloud RAN opens the door to using previously excluded fronthaul solutions and to processing of the radio interface on COTS processors, all having a significant impact on the TCO.
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