The front foot forward

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

By Pratima Harigunani

The kind of latency and reliability that advanced 5G applications hinge on needs a specific architecture approach. Is front-haul a new media term then or is it a foundational aspect for disaggregation and impact for 5G? A panel discussion at the Voice&Data 5G Conference dug deeper into that question.

What are the changes we need as we segue from 4G to 5G, especially for legacy players and from a front-haul 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 the flexibility to support both – the existing and what is coming. Here we need disaggregation too. Flexibility with front-haul is essential to steer this change. There is also a mid-haul and cross-haul part here.”

“5G is all about flexibility. It has high requirements in terms of latency and throughput, in an end-to-end way. That makes a flexible front-haul essential here.”

Ankur Chauhan, Head R&D Engineering, Airtel

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 front-haul essential here. It can adapt to scenarios in which the network is operating right now. It is going to enhance the experience of the user.”

“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.”

Digvijay Sharma, Senior Director Sales, Ciena Communications, India

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 front-haul should be able to adapt to the needs of various applications.”

The experts also talked about how the split with CU, DU, etc. helps. “The control and management are also getting split. This opens a lot of possibilities 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.

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 the consumer side which needs a flexible front-haul. Substantial fibreiztaion is required for front-haul and mind-haul.”

5G opens up new enterprise opportunities. Besides, there would be a great opportunity for consumer side, which needs a flexible front-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 front-haul becomes even more important.”

“Legacy networks are run by managed service providers. With those SLAs and the way they run networks, multi-vendor synchronization may increase complexities.”

Vikram Tiwathia, Deputy Director General, COAI

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. “Components from different vendors open up opportunities for various innovations. Solutions can be customized for different operator requirements. Yes, it does come with its own complexity. That’s why we segment it into 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.

“We need flexibility to support both – the existing and what is coming. Flexibility with front-haul is essential to steer this change. There is also a mid-haul and cross-haul part here.”

Sandeep Dhingra, CTO – Network Software and Services, STL

And India’s software prowess and self-dependence are going to be remarkable in this shift. With more and more software-ization of the network, the fiber-in-the-air trend, and the 5G impetus – there is a lot of potentials for Indian start-ups to leverage this whole move towards the front-haul. 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 the 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.

pratimah@cybermedia.co.in