Page 44 - SAMENA Trends - October 2019

REGIONAL & MEMBERS UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

Cisco Predicts Major Backhaul Upgrades for 5G

Cisco is at Mobile World Congress Americas to have it.” In addition to being poised of compute per location. Finally, Rakuten’s
this week, which raises the question: Why? to deliver upgraded backhaul, Cisco is network has two main data centers, which
Cisco isn’t typically thought of as a radio also positioned to help carriers upgrade handle all the compute for the central
access network (RAN) vendor, and its their core networks for 5G. Gogo today control functions. All of the compute
name doesn’t immediately come to mind announced that it selected Cisco to in Rakuten’s network is based on x86
— such as Ericsson and Nokia — when provide core network solutions that will servers. “One of Rakuten’s philosophies
thinking of the mobile vendor ecosystem. power Gogo’s nationwide air-to-ground was to really anchor all their technology
But Jonathan Davidson, Cisco GM of (ATG) 5G network. Gogo said it selected onto a small number of commodity
service provider networking, said, with Cisco because of its expertise in providing building blocks,” said Beesley. “It helps
typical Cisco confidence, “Cisco is the 4G/5G solutions for some of the world’s them a lot with economies of scale and
most important 5G vendor in the world.” largest wireless telecommunications with pricing.” While this makes a lot of
He said when mobile carriers are building networks. In fact, Cisco’s work with sense for Rakuten, it’s kind of amazing
their 5G networks they have to select Rakuten, the Japanese company that’s that Cisco is on board with it. A few years
vendors in three key areas: They have to building a greenfield 4G/5G network, is ago, it felt as if Cisco was resisting the
pick a radio vendor; they need a backhaul giving it some good cred as a leading trend toward generic hardware and was
vendor to rebuild their network because vendor of next-gen mobile core networks. holding onto its proprietary-hardware
the current network can’t handle the 5G Rakuten has been very open about the roots. But Davidson said, “There’s no point
speeds; and they need a 5G core vendor. buildout of its new, fully virtualized, cloud- in fighting the ocean.” And he said Cisco
Cisco participates in two of the three: native network. It said in February that actually contributes a lot of networking
backhaul and core. And actually, it’s also it had hired Cisco to build its network code to open source groups such as the
beginning to help drive the Open vRAN functions virtualization infrastructure Linux Foundation. While Cisco is banking
ecosystem. Davidson said 5G is going to (NFVi) with 4,000 edge nodes. And Cisco on 5G for new business from backhaul
need a lot of backhaul upgrades. “Globally, is also the primary systems integrator for and core, it’s also dabbling in virtual RAN
the average backhaul is less than 5 Rakuten’s virtualized telco cloud. Today, by leading the charge on Open vRAN. Its
Mbps,” he said. And even though there’s Michael Beesley, Cisco CTO for service partners on this initiative currently include
a perception that backhaul in major metro provider networking, elaborated on the Altiostar, Mavenir, Parallel Wireless and
areas is all built from high-capacity fiber, company’s work with Rakuten. He said JMA Wireless, among others. Asked if
Davidson said, “You still see a lot of these the new network comprises three layers Open vRAN conflicts with the work of the
big round domes with a lightning bolt on of compute. The 2,000 to 4,000 nodes O-RAN Alliance, Davidson said he doesn’t
them. That’s microwave.” He described (or cloud RAN locations) are fitted with see them as competitive at all. “It would be
much of the existing backhaul network x86 compute and distributed unit (DU) difficult to do Open vRAN if O-RAN didn’t
in America as “a really low capacity and centralized unit (CU) functions. The exist. O-RAN is about defining interfaces
network.” And when 5G starts to become next layer of compute includes more than and APIs. Open vRAN is about making sure
pervasive, and it’s delivering speeds over 100 locations for distributed user plane all these elements actually work together,”
1 Gbps, he added that, “You need a new functions for the packet core. Beesley he said, adding that it’s a “take-to-market”
backhaul network. You absolutely need said these sites host three or four racks initiative with joint partners.

Cisco SD-WAN Services Help Altice USA Offer Better Ways for Enterprises
to Manage Their Networks

Altice USA is working with Cisco to expand customers a host of differentiated services the traditional way of doing things,”
the scale of its Software-Defined Wide Area in a seamless, reliable, and secure manner. said Kip Compton, senior vice president,
Networking (SD-WAN) service offerings With this innovative leap forward, Altice Cloud Platform and Solutions Group,
to enterprises, to help improve user business customers can have their Cisco. “We also share its obsession with
experiences and gain greater flexibility in managed services turned up quickly, understanding and pleasing the customer.
how they manage network applications. managed securely from the cloud and With Cisco MSX, Altice USA can enable
SD-WAN software technology provides the modified easily using software-defined faster innovation and increase customer
network intelligence required to connect networking technology. Additionally, this satisfaction by speeding time-to-market
remote work forces with cloud-based solution will enable Altice to provide a new for SD-WAN, and other managed and on-
applications and data. Using Cisco’s set of infrastructure and platform services demand services.”
Managed Services Accelerator (MSX) in the future. “We share Altice USA’s focus
platform, Altice USA can offer its enterprise on driving innovation and challenging

44 OCTOBER 2019