The Changing Face of Telecommunications

Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson are the joint winners for the Nobel Prize for Economics [1] this year for their work "for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats." As we understand, the duo is credited with seminal work associated with the efficacy of the auctioning mechanism as a tool for price discovery. The 5G spectrum auctioning mechanism in India faces numerous questions – especially in the context of the newer learnings that we continue to discover through the pandemic. The pandemic has taught us how pivotal telecommunications is to keep the wheels of our economy and the society as a whole, moving. Even otherwise, spectrum auction has ceased to be a purely economic policy issue in India. The last three decades have witnessed heated public discourse on how this commodity be put to use. The dilemma is created by two contrarian forces: Spectrum auction as means of revenue maximization for the government, so that the government is di...

I recently conducted a poll on the prospects of 5G roll-out in India. I basically tried to gauge the perception about the availability of 5G in India - on or before 2021; or after that. Expectedly, the overwhelming response was the latter. India has too many challenges to surmount before 5G can make an appearance - the auction process, the operator finances and the choice of vendors. Each of these challenges is a topic for separate discussion. The uncertainty surrounding 5G in India is unfortunate. 5G does promise higher data rates than its predecessor, but that is not its only advantage. 5G institutionalizes network segmentation or 'slicing' according to the traffic profile. It is thus possible for low throughput IoT sensor traffic to co-exist with data-intensive video without the network designer breaking into a sweat. For India, which has ambitions of developing world-class manufacturing, logistics, transportation, healthcare, finance and governance frameworks; it is importa...

In my last post, I discussed the pitfalls of microservices, which power CNFs. In this post, I will present the other side of the story. We know that microservices dissect individual CNFs into a mesh of interdependent services that can be containerized independently of each other. I would like you to take a moment a relook at the usage of interdependence and independence carefully. A given CNF is thus a combination of multiple microservices. Our report “Containers and Telcos: Ready to Tango” chronicles and describes several CNFs. Metaswitch for example, offers its virtual IMS (vIMS) as combination of multiple microservices such as SIP routing, HSS proxy, distributed timer database, in-memory open-source database, file-based open-source database and open-source configuration distribution service. Individual microservices have independent development and deployment schedules; and are therefore often managed by dedicated teams. The methodology of microservice development also makes it clea...

Of late, cloud native network functions (CNF) have been gaining steady traction. We tracked the market for CNFs in our report Containers and Telcos - Ready to Tango?. The market prospects for CNFs are very bright, with a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) in excess of 50%! 5G and its cloud-native push is undoubtedly the most compelling driver for microservices. The edifice of CNFs, and containers, rests on the tapestry of microservices. I will discuss the benefits of microservices in a later post. The above report is replete with such examples. Make no mistake – CNFs are here to stay, and microservices will drive them deeper into the telecommunications domain. This post is about the cautioning factors surrounding microservices, especially in the network equipment design domain. Most of the challenges associated with microservices are accentuated due to the set, well-entrenched, tried and tested methodologies that dominate telecommunications equipment engineering. Microservices pose a...

  I returned with useful insights from the SDN-NFV India earlier this month. There were two discernible trends – optimistic solution vendors and cautious telcos. Indian telcos are worried about the following: Indian telcos, including the largest ones, are genuinely concerned about the solidity and stability of SDN and NFV products. Telcos think that vendors do not completely appreciate the difference between a service outage suffered by Facebook and an outage suffered by a licensed cellular operator. The former can be irritating, the latter can be catastrophic. Indian telcos are also looking towards concrete ways of making money from SDN and NFV. What works with telcos in the US may not work with Indian telcos. The above points were recurring themes. You could say that Indian telcos were never among the early adopters of technologies. You could also say that Indian telcos are bleeding far too heavily in the present to think rationally about overhauling their networks. Plenty has be...