With its Technology Vision 2020, NSN is implementing a hands-on innovation approach to enable mobile broadband networks to profitably deliver 1 gigabyte of personalized data per user per day by 2020. Recent advances, including a big data project, follow the Technology Vision 2020 blueprint for future mobile networks to help operators deal with extreme traffic growth, simplify network operations and provide the ultimate personal gigabyte experience.
The industry is facing a massive increase in data demand while needing to boost profitability and personalized experience at the same time. NSN is committed to meeting this challenge by implementing the following six pillars of its Technology Vision 2020 that have been defined in cooperation with operators globally:
- enable 1000 times more capacity,
- reduce latency to milliseconds,
- teach networks to be self-aware,
- personalize network experience,
- reinvent telco for the cloud, and
- flatten total energy consumption.
“Until now, end users have learned how to use mobile broadband networks to enrich their lives. In the future, end users will teach networks and devices how to evolve and adapt to 2020 lifestyles. Technology Vision 2020 is a guide that equips mobile broadband networks to adapt to those lifestyles. We are working closely with customers, partners, top universities and research institutes to make Technology Vision 2020 a reality,” says Hossein Moiin, executive vice president, Technology and Innovation, and member of the Executive Board, NSN.
To enable 1000 times more capacity, NSN is driving 5G research together with customers and industry partners and heading the HetNet stream in METIS, an EU funded 5G flagship research project.
The company recently spearheaded the world’s first live Authorized Shared Access (ASA) trial to dynamically access unused spectrum. The Small Cell Integrated Backhaul Antenna, demonstrated earlier this year, radically simplifies deployment of small cells and meets backhaul challenges.
Reducing latency to milliseconds is an area where NSN has already taken significant steps by introducing Liquid Applications, which turns the base station into an intelligent part of the mobile operator’s network to store, process and deliver local content in close proximity to the end user.
The engagement with entrepreneurs, developers and application providers to create a new category of applications using capabilities of the Liquid Applications platform is an example of how NSN is encouraging an open environment for innovation.
In teaching networks to be self-aware and personalizing network experience, a global team of experts at NSN, working together with eight ecosystem partners at its innovation center in Silicon Valley, have developed the first working implementation of a linearly scalable big data platform for the telco environment.
Completed in record time of just five months, this new technology is already capable of crunching one million messages a second, which is close to the data processing volume a network in a country like Finland would need. This project is an example of how NSN is applying the best of IT and telco technologies to speed up innovation.
Reinventing telco for the cloud is a step by step approach where NSN has started “cloudification” of software elements from its Customer Experience Management and OSS offering, moving towards IMS, mobile core and ultimately towards radio access elements.
Over time, the migration of network elements in combination with software defined networking (SDN) will transform today’s networks into a fully software defined infrastructure that is both highly efficient and flexible.
Flattening total energy consumption despite heavy traffic growth is a growing concern for operators. In mature markets energy consumption accounts for 10-15% of the total network OPEX already now and can reach even 50% in developing markets. The focal point for improving energy efficiency is the radio access, which accounts for around 80% of all mobile network energy consumption.
Ultimately the energy efficiency that can be achieved by 2020 depends heavily on the pace of network modernization. To improve energy efficiency massively, NSN drives advanced power amplifier innovations, deployment studies for customer networks, industry initiatives and standardization.
