Road to Network Cloudification: USA & Canada

“Road to Network Cloudification” : Series focusing on summarizing the virtualization journey so far, current status & 5G related news of some of the major Operators in a region/country.

Last Updated: 4th Jan 2022.

USA:

1. AT&T :

• Virtualization Journey:
• AT&T has been one of the global leaders who has invested heavily towards virtualizing their infrastructure. Their journey towards network virtualization essentially started in 2013 when it laid out plans of its “Domain 2.0” initiative.
• As part of Domain 2.0 AT&T also announced plans of “User Defined Network Cloud” in 2014 which was their network of the future for which it selected Ericsson, Tail-F Systems AB, Metaswitch Networks ltd & Affirmed Networks as the vendors.
• Developed in house MANO(Management and Network Orchestration) platform (ECOMP) which was made open source later on and collaborated with many other global operators to co-found “ONAP(Open Network Automation Platform)”
• Virtualization Status:
• By 2019, around 71% of their core network functions has been virtualized and AT&T Targets to reach 75% by end of 2020.This target was reached in September 2020.
• Also currently SDN controls 100% of the data traffic that runs through the infrastructure connecting the elements of the core network together.
• 5G News:
• AT&T revealed in 2018 that Ericsson, Samsung & Nokia are the 5G vendors it will be using.
• In 2019, AT&T started deploying 5G using Kubernetes on Openstack’s Airship project which is being provided by Mirantis.
• AT&T is deploying its Kubernetes and OpenStack cloud on-premises rather than in a public cloud
• AT&T also teamed up with Microsoft in 2019 to innovate around 5G, AI, cloud, and edge computing and moving non network workloads to Azure Cloud by 2024.
• One of the biggest move made by AT&T was in June 2021 when they decided to move 5G core to Microsoft Azure’s hybrid cloud with Microsoft acquiring AT&Ts Network cloud platform running 5G already and integrating azure services to the platform .
• AT&T has also partnered with Google cloud in July 2021 for enterprise services

2. Verizon Wireless:

• Virtualization Journey:
• Verizon officially started its virtualization efforts in 2016 when it released its reference NFV SDN architecture whitepaper.
• However technically, its efforts towards virtualization can be considered to have started in 2015 when they launched SDWAN managed services and Virtual Network Services offering later in 2016 for the enterprise segment.
• In 2015 Verizon also built their Private Telco Cloud using Red Hat Openstack on Dell Platform and leveraging Big Switch Networks. The Telco cloud was build using all their existing networks — wired & wireline.
• Verizon also confirmed in 2017 that it is using Ericsson Platform to orchestrate services and is looking at open source MANO projects — ONAP & OSM
• Virtualization Status/5G News
• By end of 2019, Verizon had completed 60% of their networks transformation and virtualization under a common, unified framework.
• Like AT&T, Verizon has also started deploying 5G last year(2019) using their Verizon Cloud Platform built on Openstack.
• In 2017, Verizon awarded Ericsson 5G Contract for RAN , packet core , transport & associated services.
• Verizon had also been working with Nokia & Intel since 2018 to create Virtualized Ran solution for 5G and IOT .
• In 2019, Verizon did a POC with Ericsson for cloud native and container based EPC.
• Verizon also announced in April 2019 that they are trying to have a fully virtualized standalone 5G network ready in 1–2yrs time frame.
• As part of the Verizon Cloud platform the core network from Mavenir is also being utilized .
• In Mid 2019, Verizon partnered with Azure to launch joint platform for IoT application development & in end of 2019 Verizon also announced partnership with AWS for offering Mobile Edge Compute solution using Verizon 5G and Amazon’s Wavelength Edge Compute Platform.
• In September 2020, Verizon replaced Nokia’s 5G RAN solution and signed a deal with Samsung for their 5G RAN solution in a $6.6B Deal for 5yrs till 2025.
• Current RAN partners for Verizon include Samsung, Intel & Wind River. As of Aug 2020, Verizon says it completed a fully-virtualized 5G data session in a live network. This means that the session was conducted on a virtualized core, a virtualized RAN and a virtualized edge.
• In July 2021, Verizon signed deal with Ericsson for its 5G Network offering including including Massive MIMO, Ericsson Cloud RAN and software to strengthen and expand Verizon’s world-class 5G network.
• Verizon also partnered with Google Cloud in Dec2021 to deliver 5G Mobile Edge Computing.

3. T-Mobile:

• Virtualization Journey & Status:
• T-Mobile has not been public about its NFV efforts.
• However Sprint which has been acquired by T-Mobile has invested heavily towards virtualization and has been working on OpenStack Cloud since 2017.
• Sprint had fully virtualized its Packet core and IMS core as part of its virtualization efforts.
• In 2018, T-Mobile announced launch of World’s largest virtual Packet Core with Cisco which will help it prepare towards supporting 5G.
• Also, they informed that in standalone 5G trial they have used packet core from Nokia & Cisco.
• 5G News:
• T-Mobile was first operator in US to launched 5G services in beginning of 2019.
• T-Mobile has an internal Kubernetes platform “Conducktor”which is already supporting 20000 containers for building applications, automating them and implementing them on scale.This infrastructure could enable adoption of container based workloads which are part of 5G.
• As of July 2020, T-Mobile has deactivated Sprint’s legacy 5G network to reuse its Spectrum internally to improve its own network.
• On August 4, 2020 T-Mobile announced that they had launched standalone 5G network by launching in Lisbon, North Dakota.
• T-Mobile worked with Cisco, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, OnePlus and Qualcomm as partners on its path to deploying SA 5G . Nokia and Cisco were the vendors on core network side and Ericsson & Nokia supplying the RAN.

4. Dish Network:

• Virtualization Journey/Status/5G News:
• Greenfield Operator in process of setting up its network and turning it on to support virtualized 5G network.
• Dish intends to build a nationwide, cloud-native, fully virtualized 5G Network riding on open source technology and open RAN standards. In April 2020, Dish named Mavenir as first vendor for cloud native OpenRAN deployment.
• Also, as Dish is greenfield operator deploying 5G directly, it intends to deploy 5G Standalone Network directly.
• In July, Dish striked a deal with Altiostar and Fujitsu for their Open Ran solutions for 5G solution .
• In August 2020, Dish initially finalized on VMware Telco Cloud to deploy their 5G network. Dish called out the software-defined nature of VMware’s cloud as a strong foundation to support Dish’s 5G partner ecosystem. However, in April 2021, Dish decided to use AWS for hosting its RAN and mobile core for both public and private 5G networks with VMWare also being used for select ORAN aspects.
• For the 5G core, Dish has selected Nokia in September 2020 with Nokia announcing deployment of standalone 5G Core on AWS in June 2021.
• Dish selected IBM’s AI powered Automation & network orchestration Software — Cloud Pak For Network Automation (CP4NA) for their 5G Network in September 2021. The product will be performing role of MANO in this setup.

CANADA:

1. Bell Canada:

• Virtualization Journey/Status:
• Bell Canada kicked off its NFV strategy in 2015 by launching its Network 3.0 Strategy which involved transformation of its network from core to edge.
• In 2018, Bell Canada launched Bell Virtual Network Services- a catalogue of cloud-based, on-demand network functions for enterprise business customers under the Network 3.0 umbrella. Cisco Viptela SDWAN is one of the use cases which is being provided as part of this offering
• Also in 2018, Bell deployed containerized version of ONAP solution in production along with Amdocs to automate life cycle management of both physical and virtual network functions, incident management and service assurance.
• In 2019, Bell Canada informed that they are running Virtual Machines on Kubernetes platform without any openstack platform.
• 5G News:
• In June 2020, Bell launched 5G services in 5cities in Canada using Nokia.
• Bell also selected Ericsson for 5G RAN in June 2020.

2. Telus:

• Virtualization Journey/Status:
• Telus has being deploying NFV from at least 2016 deploying 10 NFV pods on Openstack till 2018.
• Telus has also worked with Affirmed Networks (Now Microsoft) to implement NFV for IOT services. They deployed virtualized EPC, IMS and vCPE to realize the same.
• Telus has also leveraged Netcracker’s Network As a Service offering to deliver SD-WAN and other next-generation services to their customers.
• 5G News:
• In June 2020, Telus selected Ericsson Nokia & Samsung to deploy 5G services.
• Also, they launched 5G services in Canada in June 2020.

3. Rogers Canada: Even Rogers Canada has started deploying 5G in Canada in Jan 2020. Rogers is deploying 5G in Canada using Ericsson’s 5G RAN & Core.

Note: This series is taken from my other blog and on it I have another post with summary table capturing all regions, the operators from the posts in this series and their NFV ecosystem/5G status.
URL: https://matelecom.blogspot.com/2020/08/road-to-network-cloudification-summary-table.html

Disclaimer: The details presented above is based on data available online.The references used are available on: https://matelecom.blogspot.com/p/references-road-to-network.html .