Convergence of wireline and wireless networks, and the converged core, are generally on a later stage of operator’s roadmaps than wireless-only migrations, but in the medium term, many telcos aim to take advantage of the fact that the 5G core turns 5G into a multi-access platform, in which convergence could enable new services while delivering cost and operational efficiencies.
This vision has made wireline-focused industry bodies increasingly active in 5G, whether standard bodies like the Broadband Forum, or trade groups like CableLabs, the North American cable industry’s R&D arm. CableLabs has increasingly contributed to 5G standards and to initiatives like Open RAN, and it has now initiated two projects that aim to drive further inter-sector collaboration on network and service convergence.
Each project has its own council made up of key stakeholders. The Mobile Convergence Committee (MCC) is largely The Mobile Convergence Committee (MCC) mainly consists of cable and mobile operators from round the world, and it plans to develop industry requirements for converged architectures.
There are initially representatives from nine operators, most of them with active networks in both mobile and cable – Charter, Comcast, Cox, Millicom, Rogers, Shaw, Sunrise/Liberty Global, Vodafone Group and Vodafone Ziggo. The list also includes shared spectrum administrator Federated Wireless.
The Convergence Council is an advisory board largely comprised of vendors, which will identify the convergence use cases and business models that will drive adoption, while working on “building scenarios for industry consensus”.
The Convergence Council has 12 members, representing Intel, Facebook, MaxLinear, Mavenir, Cisco, Nokia/Bell Labs, Microsoft, Cohere, Ciena, Samsung and CommScope on the vendor side, plus Stanford University.
CableLabs is keen to open the groups up to non-members to make the discussion as global as possible, as the body increasingly breaks out of its North American roots and influences the entire industry.
“We felt it was very necessary to do something comprehensive like this and have these groups collaborate and talk to each other,” said Mariam Sorond, CableLabs’ chief research and development officer. “There’s a need, and there’s a maturity level on technology” such as cloud-native and open networks.
Sorond, who was previously chief wireless architecture at Dish Network, added that the concept of virtualized, open RANs had “been around, but now it’s getting to the point where folks are deploying these types of networks”.
CableLabs has a multitude of projects that will be directly or indirectly influential on 5G architectures. Its Adrenaline project envisages an open edge compute architecture that could combine with low latency connectivity – Low Latency DOCSIS in cable, but also 5G in wireless – to support new and highly distributed use cases.
At the start of the year, it unveiled a new set of specifications called Intelligent Wireless Network Steering (IWiNS), to improve the way mobile devices switch between WiFi, LTE and CBRS (and future 5G) networks – something that could help make multi-RAT networks more feasible and so help cable operators, which tend to have WiFi-first approaches to the mobile network, up their game in the 5G era.