5G is a breakthrough technology set to deepen the architecture of networks and further advances in virtualization, artificial intelligence, and automation. That infuses networks, applications, and the underlying IT systems with new capabilities, shaping the 5G innovation wave with groundbreaking technologies like edge computing and network slicing. These innovations make the pervasive adoption of immersive solutions for all organizations a reality, empowering organizations with tremendous capability to drive digital transformation and realize new business outcomes beyond IT.
One of the most compelling indicators of 5 G’s power is rapid adoption. According to a report by Statista, 5G subscriptions worldwide are set to touch 4.8 billion by the end of 2026. This huge uptake clearly points to technology’s driving and pivotal role in shaping the future of connectivity and enterprise mobility.
Organizations can utilize the potential of improved network capabilities, benefitting from 5G to facilitate an array of advanced applications, from real-time analytics with IoT to augmented and virtual reality. This ensures increased performance and efficiency levels of the IT departments and fuels other lines of business to innovate and thrive in a digital economy.
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5G For Enterprise Networking
Enterprise networking encompasses the physical and virtual equipment, resources, and services that provide connectivity among users, information systems, applications, cloud services, and the Internet within a business or mission-oriented environment. Such networks are supremely important across various sectors, such as corporate offices, utilities, manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and public safety.
Key Elements
In a corporate world, enterprise networking would comprise of:
- Local Area Network (LAN): Gives connectivity within corporate locations.
- Wide-area network (WAN): This interconnects different corporate locations, data centers, the Internet, remote workers, applications, and services.
Technological Evolution
The enterprise networking domain continuously evolves to meet the new technological demands and challenges. The primary developments include:
- SASE: Secure Access Service Edge consolidates networking and security capabilities and provides secure connectivity for users, devices, and applications.
- Digital Transformation: Drives changes like the convergence of connectivity, cloud, and security, and increasing relevance of cellular network technologies by 3GPP.
New Requirements for Networking
The evolution of enterprise networking has resulted in new requirements, such as:
- Advanced Connectivity Services: Specific Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) are provisioned.
- Enhanced Security: Advanced security threats and measures can be met.
- Endpoint Mobility: Mobile endpoints and decentralized applications are supported.
Networking Needs Addressed by 5G
In consideration, the 5G technology provides a suitable remedy for the requirements of modern enterprise networking via features such as follows:
- 5G Flexible Deployment Models: 5G supports different network segments, including local and wide-area dedicated networks, tailored to enterprise requirements.
- 5G Network Slicing: Logical creation of separated networks on a shared infrastructure, to provide specific enterprise needs for QoE and security.
QoS and Traffic Management
5G improves the way traffic categories and QoS profiles will be managed. These capabilities shall provide CSPs the potential to offer differentiated connectivity. Examples are as follows:
- Latency Management: Traffic is categorized as background, best effort, low latency, and very low latency. This enables CSPs to tailor the services to the needs of the enterprises.
- Performance Classes: Ericsson proposes a set of discrete levels of performance to standardize the way service is delivered.
Network APIs and Service Exposure
These APIs of 5G’s network and service exposure are transforming the mobile network into a digital innovation platform, allowing application developers to tap 5G rate, capacity, and latency to build innovative services for enterprises. Key features include:
- Quality on Demand
- Verify Location
- Silent Authentication
- Device Reporting
5G-Centric Enterprise Networking Architecture
A 5G-centric enterprise networking architecture integrates CSP services with enterprise networks through an enterprise connectivity controller (ECC). This system aligns enterprise connectivity policies with:
- CSP network resources
- Manages traffic flow mapping and optimization.
- Provides data-driven insights to optimize connectivity services.
Benefits of 5G on Enterprise Mobility
With the arrival of 5G technology, there is not a single technical breakthrough or overnight revolution but a door to the growth of high-end technologies for enterprise mobility. The higher speed, lower latency, and great capacity will offer enterprises a new possibility of exponential growth.
Better Productivity for Remote Workers
Remote work has become a strong trend in the industry; many businesses have recognized the advantages of remote workers. 5G is here, and with the improved speed and the improvement of working conditions, remote work will now be faster and more comfortable, with no nuisances in the connection that slowed down the remote worker.
Improved Performance of IoT Devices
Connected technologies have made doing everything quite easy. 5G will allow connecting numerous devices without service interruptions, extending the data spectrum by doing this. Improving this technology in the mobile sector is groundbreaking since it will make data collection, verification, and analyses easier and faster. Employees will be in a position to manage data in real-time through the use of connected devices and a reliable 5G network, hence improving the service of clients.
Mobile Application Performance
The performance of mobile applications is also expected to increase in functionality of AI, VR, AR, and video conferencing with 5G. Now businesses can perform these services more effectively through applications due to the enhanced speed and reliability of 5G. This will ultimately provide a good experience for customers. However, businesses have to amend their existing applications and invent new applications with new concepts to best suit 5G.
More Cloud Services
5G will enable better device-to-device connectivity due to better network slicing. Network slicing is potential for service providers to create a virtual end-to-end network customized for application needs. The Cloud has high virtualization capabilities and will help every kind of organization and most software/mobility-focused organizations with cloud services.
Transforming Network Management with 5G
A significant transformation is needed to drive operational efficiency in cloud-native 5G core networks and business innovation. As service providers transition to cloud-native environments, they will face new challenges and problems inherited from previous technological shifts. However, they will also have many potential and opportunities.
Challenges in Current Network Management
Experience with leading service providers’ journey to NFV and the new 5G Core has shown that most operators retain their existing operational perspectives when transitioning to the cloud. This contributes to the perpetuation of a few critical pain points. This means transitioning to hybrid networks with a mix of physical and virtual elements across core, radio, and transport often results in limited end-to-end (E2E) governance across design and operations.
The main problems that appear are:
- Operational Silos: Existing and new operational silos both within and between domains lead to multiple touchpoints in the E2E service flow.
- Manual Operations: Inconsistent, labor-intensive, and manual processes with no operational model integration increase network management complexity.
- Workload Disruption: Patchy and manual workload deployment procedures hamper the smooth formation and operation of E2E services.
Without a change in operating models, the 5G Core evolution will escalate network management costs and complexity, prolonging time-to-market (TTM) for new services. This goes against the benefits expected with 5G.
Impact on Business Metrics
Operational inefficiencies were seen to impact business metrics significantly:
- Extended Service Sales Cycle: Undefined E2E business processes and non-standard service design models continue to extend service creation and fulfillment, which affects revenue and customer experience.
- Onboarding is Painful: The lack of standards and guidance for onboarding new technologies complicates monetization, leading to errors and, hence, frustration for customers and service providers.
- Limited Automation: Inadequate end-to-end closed-loop automation and integration bring down network availability and user experience.
- Repair Delays: An end-to-end (E2E) topology with poor visibility leads to longer repair times.
- Skill Gaps: Insufficient planning of competencies for the effective operation of organizations using new technologies.
A strong transformation plan is needed to seize the cloud-native adoption opportunity and, at the same time, be mindful of the impending challenges. The strategy has to be supported at the C level, and an organization’s business and technology requirements must be considered along with its current level of maturity. The high-level areas towards which the transformation strategy must focus are:
Processes: Automate and orchestrate the hybrid core network in a cost-effective way. The high-level guiding principles for the transformation of operational processes are:
- Empower workflow automation
- Empower integration
- Empower inter/intra-domain integration
Organization: Establish a cross-domain model that strongly emphasizes competencies and organizational setup based on emerging needs of the new processes. This should ensure:
- No silos
- Encourage and enable collaborations across organizational functions
Technology: Ingest capabilities toward achieving very high 5G operational efficiency. The key technological vectors are:
- Leveraging advanced automation tools
- Adopting AI-based tools to enable predictive maintenance and closed-loop optimization
- Cybersecurity hardening measures
Also Read: Cybersecurity Essentials for Aviation and Aerospace
Benefits of Integrating 5G with IoT
Integrating 5G technology into IoT systems offers numerous benefits that can boost the performance and productivity of IoT operations. This allows many connected devices without degrading performance, helping an organization deploy more IoT sensors and devices to support real-time monitoring and data-based decision-making.
Higher Data Transfer Speeds
5G technology massively boosts data transfer speeds in IoT applications. Higher frequency bands support the rapid transmission of high volumes of data, allowing IoT devices to process and take action on the data received within no time. This is of the essence in those industries that need fast data processing and immediate actions, for instance, in the healthcare sector, wearable IoT devices that monitor vital health signs are in constant use and need to transmit such data in real-time for an instant response.
Data Transfer Efficiency
Data transfer efficiency is another reason that leads to energy efficiency. 5G technology enhances data transfer efficiency in IoT applications for higher speed, making it incredibly energy-saving for these devices. In this way, the battery life remains viable for long operating times on one charge. Greater energy efficiency also translates to longer battery life, lower maintenance costs, and reduced ecological costs due to less power consumption and battery traditions. Moreover, the efficient handling of small packets of data by 5G technology lets IoT devices be aligned with greatly less energy use, increasing the IoT scope in power-limited regions.
Latencies in the Range of Several Milliseconds
5G technology reduces latency in IoT systems to a few milliseconds, resulting in instant decision-making and action. This is a key enabler of real-time data processing in IIoT, where machinery reacts instantly to sensor data. Reduced latency directly benefits the general performance and dependability of IoT systems.
Network Reliability
5G significantly increases network reliability for continuous data sending and receiving. This is highly applicable for critical application areas such as health monitoring and infrastructure management. The 5G network simultaneously supports a large number of devices under stable conditions and connections. This kind of reliability enhances the reach of IoT technologies into problematic signal areas.
Top 5G Technology Providers in 2024
#1 Ericsson
#2 Jio
#3 Nokia
#4 Qualcomm
#5 Samsung
#6 Vodafone Idea
#7 Airtel
#8 Cisco
#9 Huawei
#10 Intel
What’s Next after 5G?
6G is expected to be commercially available by 2030. Early research and requirements collection for 6G is underway and will continue throughout its full development lifecycle. Development of the 6G specification and standardization is targeted for 2025-2029. The first lab tests and pilot deployments are targeted to start in 2028, with commercial availability of 6G being targeted for 2030.
Again, the path from 5G to 5G Advanced is important to reach readiness for commercialization. 5G Advanced standards are being developed based on 3GPP Release 18, which is expected to be frozen as complete by June 2024. The commercial availability of 5G Advanced networks and devices is expected in 2025.
3GPP Release 19 will be the basis for the 6G development, with its freeze date expected to be late 2025. Development of 6G will continue over subsequent releases: Releases 20-22. Timetables for these releases are not yet posted, but averaged from past schedules, they have been approximately 2- to 2.5-year development cycles. Thus, the average time to target commercial availability for 6G is the 2030 date range.
FAQs
1. How will 5G impact the security of enterprise networks?
5G introduces advanced security features such as network slicing and improved encryption, which help safeguard enterprise data and protect against cyber threats.
2. Can 5G reduce the cost of network operations for enterprises?
Yes, 5G can reduce network operation costs through increased automation, improved efficiency, and the ability to support more devices without compromising performance.
3. What role does 5G play in supporting IoT in enterprises?
5G supports IoT by enabling the connection of a vast number of devices, providing high-speed data transfer, and ensuring low latency, which is crucial for real-time data processing and decision-making.
4. How does 5G facilitate remote work for enterprises?
5G facilitates remote work by offering faster and more reliable internet connections, enabling seamless access to corporate resources, and supporting high-quality video conferencing and collaboration tools.
5. What changes are required in network infrastructure to support 5G?
Enterprises need to upgrade their network infrastructure to support 5G, including deploying new base stations, enhancing backhaul capabilities, and adopting new network management tools and protocols.
6. How does 5G improve the efficiency of enterprise network operations?
5G improves efficiency by enabling advanced automation, real-time analytics, and more flexible network configurations, reducing manual interventions and operational downtime.
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