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The Front Foot Forward

Building flexible fronthaul to deliver 5G – is it easy, is it worth it, is it happening? A panel finds out at the ‘5G Driving Transformation’ conference

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VoicenData Bureau
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Panel discussion on building a flexible fronthaul at 5G Conference

Building flexible fronthaul to deliver 5G – is it easy, is it worth it, is it happening? A panel finds out at the ‘5G Driving Transformation’ conference.

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The kind of latency and reliability that advanced 5G applications hinge on, need a specific architecture approach. Is fronthaul a new media term then or is it a foundational aspect for disaggregation and impact for 5G? A panel sat in a special huddle at the 5G Conference organised by Voice&Data and dug deeper into that question.

What are the changes we need as we segue from 4G to 5G, specially for legacy players and from a fronthaul angle, asked Vikram Tiwathia, Deputy Director General, COAI. The panel unlocked some interesting peeks here.

Yes, we have a high level of legacy in terms of towers and uses of existing technology, averred Sandeep Dhingra, CTO - Network Software and Services, STL. “When you have to move to modern protocols, flexibility is key. One cannot just throw away one’s legacy. It is going to be a process, a migration, a form of co-existence. That’s why we need flexibility to support both what is existing and what is coming. Here we need disaggregation too. Flexibility with fronthaul is essential to steer this change. There is also a mid-haul and cross-haul part here.”

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5G is all about flexibility, echoed Ankur Chauhan, Head R&D Engineering, Airtel. “It has high requirements in terms of latency and throughput, in an end-to-end way. That makes a flexible fronthaul essential here. It can adapt to scenarios in which network is operating right now. It is going to enhance the experience of the user.”

And, interestingly, for industry players there can be implications on ARPU too.  Digvijay Sharma, Senior Director Sales, Ciena Communications, India shared. “We do not want the neck to become the bottleneck. As we start to migrate to 5G, there should be enough flexibility to make the transition. For ultra-low latency, high-bandwidth use case, this fronthaul should be able to adapt to the needs of various applications.”

The experts also talked how the split with CU, DU etc. helps. “The control and management are also getting split. This opens a lot of possibility for applications as a lot of cycle time is preserved. Compute resources sitting at DU itself open a lot of scope for new applications which can be highly latency-sensitive like security, facial recognition. Of course, there are always creative minds that can explore new service revenues with new applications.” Argued Sharma.

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RAN also needs to be flexible, reminded Dhingra. “When we talk about revenue opportunities, 5G opens up new enterprise opportunities. Besides that, there would be a great opportunity for consumer side which needs a flexible fronthaul. Substantial fiberistaion is required for fronthaul and mind-haul.”

But would multi-vendor ecosystem help here, asked Tiwathia. Chauhan opined that split architecture provides an opportunity for different vendors to interoperate with each other. The final impact should remain intact with a good end-to-end QoS. Different vendors have different engineering designs. They have to adapt to each other. That’s where flexible fronthaul becomes even more important.”

However, legacy networks are run by managed service providers, so far. With those SLAs and the way they run networks – would multi-vendor synchronisation increase complexity or benefits, Tiwathia wondered. “Having different components from different vendors opens up an opportunity for various innovations. Solutions can be customised for different operator requirements. Yes, it does come with its own complexity. That’s why we segment it in different parts. Each segment follows its own portion of SLA. Despite some level of complexity, we see more benefits than challenges in end-to-end experience.” Chauhan explained.

And India’s software prowess and self-dependence are going to be remarkable in this shift. With more and more software-isation of network, the fibre-in-the-air trend, and the 5G impetus – there is a lot of potential for Indian start-ups to leverage this whole move towards the fronthaul. Disaggregation of hardware and software is going to be a great step now because here the real magic is in the software.

The panel hinted at a scenario where there is emergence of not just great applications, an elevated user experience but for a new interoperable industry paradigm as well as the big opportunity to leverage India’s software edge.

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