Now on Demand- 5G for Indoor Use Cases- CET 2021
In June 2020, the release of 5G standards for enterprises opened the door to 5G’s implementation for warehouses, retail stores and manufacturing plants. For mobile operators, the growth of private 5G networking can mean additional revenue by bringing their network management skills to individual companies. This executive session will demonstrate real-world use cases for 5G private networks.
Executive Speakers:
Kishore Raja – VP, Wireless Engineering & Strategy | 5G, CBRS, Wi-Fi, Boingo
Masoud Olfat – Vice President, Technology Development, Federated Wireless
Pari Bajpay – VP Business Products, Verizon
Transcription Details
Time: 34:12
File Name: 5G Indoor Use Cases_.mp4
Transcription Results
SPEAKERS
Pari Bajpay, Host, Various Speakers, Kishore Raja, Masoud Olfat
Host:
In June of 2020, the release of 5G standards for enterprises opened the door to 5G implementations for warehouses, retail stores, and manufacturing plants. For mobile operators, the growth of private 5G networking can mean additional revenue by bringing their network management skills to individual companies. This executive session will demonstrate how operators are paving the way for private 5G networks for enterprises. Joining us is Kishore Raja, he's Vice President Of Wireless Engineering and Strategy, that at Boingo. Next is Masoud Olfat, he's Vice President Of Technology Development at Federated Wireless. We also have Pari Bajpay, he's Vice President, Business Products, that at Verizon.
Gentlemen, welcome.
Various Speakers:
Thank you.
Host:
Thanks for being here. You're kicking off our telco edge cloud event called set 2021, that's our spring event, so we appreciate that up bright and early especially for Kishore out in LA. With that said, Kishore, I am going to start with you, if you don't mind. Now that 5G standards have been out for a while, how will 5G play a role in, in-building wireless? Will it be a combination of private networks, CBRs, Wi-Fi 6, IOT, just sort of set the stage for us there?
Kishore Raja:
I think it's definitely going to be a combination of all of those. I think it's really a good question to start with, so maybe let's just take a step back. I'm going to talk about what we do from Boingo's perspective, and then head into the combination of these heterogeneous wireless networks. So, basically, what we do at Boingo, we provide a neutral host service. So, we're a neutral host service provider and we believe in the concept of technology and vendor-agnostic approach. That fits really well in some of the deployments that we do, and let's talk about 5g now. 5G is basically, especially in enterprises, it's demanding in-building wireless networks to expand at a massive scale and that's where Boingo's strength is. So, we design, architect, build, deploy, maintain and manage different types of state of the art wireless networks, and these can be a combination of, as you mentioned, private networks on the CBRs, Wi-Fi with pass point, cellular networks on das and small cells, little IoT sensors on 1000s to hundreds of 1000s of IoT networks, and sensors. And so, those are the things that are really powering the in-building wireless networks. So, let's talk about some of the examples. For instance, if carriers want to offload data from mobile networks in managed in-building networks, like airports and convention centers, and stadiums, Wi-Fi and pass point really allow a secure and seamless way of connecting these devices at a large scale and high capacity. So, that's one example. The second example really is if you have roaming partners who want to automatically seamlessly and securely connect to different types of Wi-Fi networks in-building, open roaming is a perfect example. And then let's say, you want to have a touchless experience for the kiosks and different kinds of shopping within a given venue, and concessions and private networks with on-prem MEC would be the way to go. So, as you can see, it's really a combination of all of these different networks that drive the technologies within these venues. The other thing I want to talk about is the new wireless technologies that are always powering use cases, and these use cases will be addressed by a new segment of networks, and these are private networks. In the past, we've actually deployed private networks, but these are actually networks specifically for the tenants, and there's a key distinction between a tenant network and private network. Because of the lack of standards in the past, we had to come up with an approach where we had to have a dedicated deployment for let's say, an airport lounge, and it's a tenant network. The way we used to deploy is, we used to share the common infrastructure, share the vRan, share the core, share the transport, so it may not be the best experience, but at least we were creating this artificial slicing kind of a concept. But going forward with the 5G specifications of networks, you can actually deploy dedicated private networks. Now, what's the difference between these and the tenant networks that we used to do in the past? They have a dedicated vRan, dedicated backhaul, dedicated core, dedicated transport, and you can use a combination of licensed and unlicensed, and those are the things that are really powering in-building wireless technologies and we see that we have great opportunities and different types of use cases. And as most of you perhaps know, we serve more than 2000 builders, have more than 120,000 Wi-Fi access points, more than 42,000 DAZ nodes. It allows us a great opportunity to address these industry use cases and we are right in the middle of the deployment, especially in the 5G era.
Pari Bajpay:
I just wanted to chime into what Kishore just said, especially on 5G. 5G gives us the ability to have a single architecture that not only supports use cases for indoor, but it also allows us to work seamlessly with outdoor mobility solutions. That's flexibility that you notice that the customers are looking for.
Masoud Olfat:
I would like to chime in, add to what Kishore said, he listed a lot of areas that we can use dedicated resources for private network. I want to emphasize a little bit, just add an emphasis on the dedicated spectrum. Because when we talk about vRan, when we talk about core and other aspects of the private network, maybe a spectrum is a major resource that gladly technologies such as CBRs, has allowed that freedom and liberalism in a spectrum that allows the private network to use the 5G type spectrum not necessarily on license, and without really being so dependent on the operator and these tenant type networks. So, I think that's another very important aspect of new technologies for private {unintelligible: 06:39
Host:
Masoud, I'm going to stick with you. So, enterprises can buy and deploy private 4G and 5G networks with a single click, the same way that they would buy, deploy or manage their IT infrastructure, how are these cloud marketplaces being leveraged right now?
Masoud Olfat:
Thank you for the very important and practical question. We can look at your question from many different angles. One angle is purely from a procurement perspective, in other words, nowadays the technology allows you to use the cloud to procure different resources for a private network, and that's actually what my company Federated Wireless initiated under the umbrella of a project called CAS, connectivity as a service. Using a cloud-based environment, you can procure different resources for private network, including vRan, core, services, and deployments. So, that's from the procurement perspective. However, I want to add a very important development in the technology that allows such a thing, basically, the ease and flexibility of deploying an enterprise network, and that's the concept of Open vRan, the concept of edge computing, the concept of network slicing that technologies such as 5G have allowed. By using an Open vRan technology most of the network deployment is going to be based on cloud except maybe the antennas, the antennas need to be there physically and transmit over there. Honestly, the majority of the network elements can be deployed over the cloud, they're using the Open vRan technology. And of course, we know that 5G allows many different scenarios and levels of flexibility in Open vRan deployments. Another aspect is edge computing, which means that majority of your core network processing can be deployed at the edge, very close to the enterprise. I want to add one more, the third one is some of the technology features that 5G has added in terms of the device deployment. In the past, for 4G technology, we were always relying on the concept of sim-based authentication, sim based certification. Now with advancing the technology, bringing the concept of electronic sim, dual sim devices, as well as the concept of IP based technology, IP based authentication, which is non-sim authentication, that allows the flexibility and of device deployment and procuring device for an enterprise.
Kishore Raja:
Those are good points. I want to maybe augment some of the points that Massoud was talking about. So, let's talk about cloud, the focus is really on the cloud so let's take a step back now 12-13 years ago when mobile devices/phones started to become smarter and smarter. One of the first evolution that happened, which really was initiated by Apple was introducing the concept of an app store, you had all these different phones capable of installing all kinds of applications and services and you did not have a dedicated place to go and install these applications, some of them are secure, some of them are non-secure and there wasn't a seamless way of doing that. So, with the App Store, Apple completely revolutionized the way mobile phones and smartphones were served with these applications. Obviously, Google followed with the Play Store, and then Microsoft, and so on and so forth. A similar concept is happening now on the 5G deployment with the advent of cloud marketplace. If you look at what CNCF is doing, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, they're really creating a platform. If you go to cncf.ci, you can see a list of all services, the journey we have had so far. When we started deploying these individual networks as I mentioned, phones started to become smarter and smarter, obviously, the networks have to be even smarter with the combination of converged networks. So, we started taking these individual network functions, and virtualizing them using the concept of network function virtualization and software-defined networks, so we created VNF. And now, as we create the VNF industry, Boingo Wireless is in the process of converting this VNF into a CNF. Now, what is that? It's a cloud-native function, and what makes a network function a cloud-native function? As long as it can be orchestrated, it can be containerized and it follows the microservice API as well as the service-oriented architecture pattern. So, once you do this, you have a plethora of opportunities and options available. And the last point, I really want to talk about this, you have an ecosystem of developers, you can get access to shared IP and global developer ecosystem in the cloud marketplace. So, when you go and deploy these networks, remember we talked about the flexible architecture and flexible deployment? You don't have to have a lock-in from one ecosystem, you can pick and choose one. And because these are CNF based components, most of these are stateless, unlike virtual network functions which are stateful, meaning you can just plug in module out. So, if you want to deploy a 5G network for the healthcare industry, there are specific requirements like low latency, high efficiency, and things like that. On the other hand, if you want to deploy a 5G for a connected venue like a stadium, it's high bandwidth for augmented reality, virtual reality. So, you can really pick and choose your components and that's really the power I would say of cloud marketplace and 5G deployment.
Masoud Olfat:
Exactly, that's where I was going with this when I mentioned the CAS project. That's exactly the point of pick and choose of different components using the cloud marketplace. I want to emphasize the fact that even the spectrum planning and the CBRs are all based on Cloud. The SAS framework, which is using the CBRs is also a cloud-based architecture that even spectrum procurement can be done on the cloud. So, I fully agree with what Kishore said in allowing the flexibility of picking and choosing different components for an enterprise network.
Host:
So, Pari, based on these platform capabilities that Massoud and Kishore referenced, I know this is a loaded question, but how do you build an end-to-end solution really to automate the enterprise customer's business processes?
Pari Bajpay:
Another good question. Well, we think it all starts with understanding the customer's needs and pain points. Examples of what we have heard from our customers as they'd like to see ubiquitous, indoor-outdoor coverage, they would like to see scalability to support a large number of connected devices. They would like to see low latency for real-time response and they want device to cloud security. So, as we design our solutions, you know these solutions leverage private on-prem 4g 5g, leverage our rich device ecosystem in asthma, so talked about the edge compute on Mac infrastructure. And you know, and these are needed to solve these customer pain points, and truly empower people devices systems to interact efficiently and safely in a highly automated environment. And you know, this includes a highly automated LB [unintelligible: 14:54}] are learned by get use pay support experience. What we also need is a common set of tools, and a common services framework that allows integration of the solutions seamlessly with network and the MC infrastructure and this allows the solutions to be deployed easily and managed easily across the customer's environment. Finally, also as Kishore talked about, need to see a single pane of glass kind of experience, so the customer has a very seamless experience as well.
Host:
Kishore, I'm going to go back to you, and we can go around the room on this one, I know everybody probably has something to say about it. Kishore, we've talked about this many, many times, as far as real-world use cases where 5G connectivity and coverage will propel in-building wireless applications. Can you give us maybe a use case that maybe we haven't heard or maybe we haven't heard as much?
Kishore Raja:
Absolutely. I know we talked about this at Mobile World Congress and every year the use cases keep evolving. So, let's try to see if I can mention a couple of them which are relevant now and maybe going forward down the line. So, one of the key things that I do want to talk about is, from our perspective, from Boingo's perspective, enterprises actually bring the use cases. So, they imagine the use cases in airports, and stadiums, and convention centers, and we find a way to solve those use cases, build state-of-the-art wireless networks for them. And that's what is a great combination going on, from IoT and automation to video surveillance, to asset tracking, fleet management, and all kinds of touchless experience, especially in the COVID-19 era. So, in public venues where people are trying to maintain that social distance and having connectivity and technology solves some of the day-to-day problems is what I believe these converged 5G networks will propel many of these use cases. And the other thing I want to mention is when you look at these different standards, we talk about 5g networks, private networks, Massoud talked about CBRs and CAS deployments, there are so many different types of standards. When you create the standards, the use cases will not be evident, there may be one or two use cases to start with but then you really need to provide a platform for the standards to be deployed somewhere, and that will allow the use cases to start the volume from there. So, one of the things that we do is, recently we actually joined Qualcomm's Smart City accelerator program. And so, Qualcomm started this back in 2019 and they have more than 300 members now. The goal of this program is to take smart cities from concept to reality and that is our strength at Boingo, that's what we've been doing for many, many years. I can give you a couple of examples, in 2014, we deployed our first Wi-Fi pass point network in a commercial venue in Chicago. We didn't know what the use cases were but we wanted to open the platform, open for the entire ecosystem to explore the use cases. Fast forward now and we have a multimillion-dollar business on that. In 2018, we deployed our first CBRs network in Dallas Love Field, and we have started to explore many, many use cases now and we have commercial deployment in progress. In early 2019, we deployed our first Wi-Fi 6 network in John Wayne Airport here in Orange County in Southern California and we have many use cases and deployments going on now, Wi-Fi 6 and open roaming. So, as you can see, one of the things that we do is we, take these specifications from concept and make it into reality and kind of surprise ourselves to see what kind of use cases come out with that. It allows the business development folks, sales engineering to create new use cases, new markets, and new vertical segments, and that's really the creativity of these networks. And the last thing I really want to mention is when you put all of these networks together in harmony, there's a whole mammoth task of managing these networks. Applying break fixes, maintaining them, upgrading them, and understanding the different situations, and to be honest, even these management activities are creating new opportunities for us, providing network as a service that Massoud was talking about, and getting away from the concept of having a six month period that the carriers normally use for maintenance windows. It's all software-based and cloud-based so you can continuously automate this and have literally dozens of deployments going on in the network. That creates a new business opportunity. So, as you can see, there are several use cases in different segments and it's really a good opportunity for us as well as for the industry.
Pari Bajpay:
I'd just like to chime into what Kishore just said, we are seeing a lot of use cases coming about in the industry. Kishore talked about a few of them, I'd like to add a couple of more. We're seeing in the manufacturing space AGV, AMR, as we have robots picking up payloads, dropping off payloads, navigating themselves through the factory floor, really cool examples. We're seeing another for warehouses where we are using a combination of computer vision and analytics to perform quality assurance. So, a lot of good use cases coming up.
Host:
Masoud, use case for private 5g networks, maybe talking about how to leverage or leveraging CBRs, or millimeter wave or etc.
Masoud Olfat:
Okay, good thank you. Of course, you know that when we talk about CBRs, CBRs is about one year and a couple of months since it started deployments and now, we have close to 130,000 [unintelligible: 20:59] even within the COVID that has been deployed using CBRs. And of course, Federated Wireless has a good share of that market. In terms of the use case of CBRs and use in the private enterprise network, it's interesting and I would like to emphasize one interesting one which is raised by the government, by the Department of Defense, and that's a Marine Corps smart warehouse project, that Federated Wireless is actually leading and working. That's basically a logistic-based IoT warehouse automation, which allows to improve the efficiency of supply chain and the storage process as well as inventory control and basically, auditability of the process. Federated Wireless is leading the deployment of that network using CBRs, combination of CBRs which is 3550 to 3700 megahertz, with a millimeter-wave band, which is actually N260. N260 is the 37 to 40 gigahertz band. We are using the technology that 5G has allowed, a non-standalone base which is based on the dual connectivity called ENDC, E-UTRAN dual connectivity. So, we are using a combination of both CBRs and millimeter-wave 37 gigahertz band, as well as a combination of band 66 and CBRs in 5G as well, to deploy this enterprise network. And basically, the goal as I mentioned, is to make sure that we provide a high-level warehouse process including finding the goods and basically processing delivery, packaging. The timing that is used for all these processes is significantly reduced by using the CBRs and the combination of CBRs and millimeter-wave.
Kishore Raja:
Those are good examples, especially the DOD one, I'd like to add on a few more specifically talking about CBRs and 5G. So, one of the things that we have been doing on a commercial level for multiple airports, there's been asked to deploy security cameras, and these security cameras really have two key features. Number one, because they're CCTV and security cameras, the transmission and the transport has to be as secure as possible, which is obvious. And then the second one is, many of these cameras either use high definition 1080p streams or even 4k Ultra High Definition streams so they actually demand a lot of bandwidth. So, they're bandwidth-hungry as well as security and that is where CBRs 3.5 gigahertz is a perfect network technology for these types of deployments. So, CBRs in combination with an on-prem, a more multi-access edge computing is really what we are driving right now in many of the airports. And one key thing that I want to talk about is when it comes to edge and NEC specifically, the cloud vendor and the cloud providers have been using content to cache the edge for many, many years and those are actually called a CDN, content delivery network. Now, what is the difference between edge with CBRs and 5G, which is a little more prominent and a little more significant compared to CDN is that; the edge on top of actually caching and hosting the content, it also takes the information and data from the IoT devices, they can be cameras, they can be sensors, they can be gateways, and remember these devices will have to end up lasting longer, which means the batteries have to be very efficient on them. This means they cannot do too much processing; they have to send the information back somewhere for the information to be processed. So, edge is really the place, the NEC takes that information, both from the cloud, for the content as well as information getting processed, and that is really what is powering 5G CBRs an edge in many of these in building venues.
Kishore Raja:
That's what we are we are looking at, this type of enterprise network using 5G, and that's some of the advancements that we can use, the AI-based planning for these enterprise networks to significantly even further reduce the time for processing. Basically, by using AI-based technology we can predict and that would significantly increase the flexibility and reliability of these enterprise networks, and those are the ones that we are we are planning to exploit.
Host:
Pari, I want to ask you one final question because we have a couple of minutes, Kishore and Masood want to add on to it, certainly do that. So, the session title is Paving The Way For Private 5G Networks For Enterprises, what can you share with us from the operator perspective that we should be focusing on more in that respect, or maybe that we're just not talking about enough?
Pari Bajpay:
I must say that we can make a case for any application leveraging private 5G and [unintelligible: 26:59] we'll be seeing benefits. I think it really shines when it comes to business applications that have ultra-low latency requirements. We are increasingly living in a device-dense environment with IP-enabled devices that are emanating a lot of data, and this new set of applications require this large volume of data to be processed efficiently, quickly for a real-time experience. So, you know, with 5G and MEC we are really enabling this next generation of applications to achieve ultra-low latency, to achieve improved data localization, data sovereignty, more efficient use of transport bandwidth, and really leverage a more effective, more power-efficient device base. So, I talked about two examples of AVG, AMRs, and CV analytics, and so on but that's a relatively small part of the overall story. I think Kishore started to get into it, as we are recovering from the pandemic, think about venue spaces, think about theatres. Venues, they want to provide their fans a unique and safe experience with accelerated access to fans, VIPs, and employees. Think about theatres, you know, who are looking for crowd management solutions for a concert audience, and whatever applies to theaters also applies to enterprises, they are also looking for similar experiences. Another good example is autonomous checkout for retailers, coupled with 5G and onsite compute computer vision applications, you can detect when a customer is dropping items into the cart, it allows them to have a touchless payment experience. So, we really believe that by integrating compute capacity and cloud services onsite with the private 5G network, 5G enables these customers to bring to market increasingly transformative use cases that were previously just not possible because of latency and bandwidth requirements.
Kishore Raja:
So, we work with all the carriers, especially tier one and tier two operators like Verizon as well and one of the things that we have increasingly noticed the past couple of years, especially for the operators is; how do we bring scalability into the picture when you have these different types of networks? You should also have the capability not only to deploy and manage these networks but also scale to potentially millions and 10s of millions of users. I already talked about flexible architecture, so that's the first thing that will allow scalability to be achieved, especially in these types of networks. The second thing I really want to talk about is, which I think Massoud touched upon a little bit, for 5G deployments, 5G, edge, and AI, they go hand in hand. I always like to say that 5G and edge are pretty much like Yin and Yang. One can go without the other, you can deploy certain applications, one-off applications but really, it's a combination of these ones. I would say that 5G will drive the edge and edge will end up enabling the 5G. So, I talked about 1000s of IoT sensors deployed, and they need the data to be processed and because there's so much data coming from these, Massoud talked about having AI and machine learning to manage the state of process, that's data. I also talked about the security Canvas, you need a MEC edge server and application to process all of this data and then create a consensus-based on that. The other application I want to talk about, especially in-building wireless is, biometric-based access. So, for passenger management and fleet management in many of the venues, I actually used that LAX a couple of years back where they now have biometric access at the gate areas, you don't even need to carry your passport, your ticket, not even a digital ticket. They have all my information once I've checked in and registered, so I just walk into this biometric access and that's it. They identify me and they allow me to board. So, this seamless and secure access is what I see being propelled in building networks and 5G, edge, and [unintelligible: 31:40] is really accelerating some of these deployments.
Masoud Olfat:
Because you asked Perry about the carrier's involvement in this process, I think I just want to add a couple of technology enablers that allow the carrier's role specifically in the deployment of the enterprise private network. Unlike the past that we were relying on as Kishore said, those tenants-based networks, 5G has developed something called PNINPN, Public Network Integrated Non-public Network, which means that you can integrate an enterprise network within a carrier network like Verizon. And also, some other features that either in 5G or like in [unintelligible: 32:30] Alliance or previously CBRs Alliance, we have developed the neutral host base CBRs network that we have developed. That allows basically, the carriers to use their resources very efficiently to deploy enterprise networks. and that is beneficial for all the sectors of the ecosystem going from the enterprise providers as well as the carriers. And devices are being developed to support those PNINPN, more Con-based more On-base as well as NHN base deployments.
Host:
Well. certainly, a lot of runway for private 5G networking for operators and the supplier ecosystem as well. It's always good to have these discussions to not only sort of determine what the state of play is now, but what we can expect maybe in a couple of years. Kishore, we've done this before, we really appreciate your time and getting up bright and early out on the west coast and joining this conversation, it was really important to have Boingo as part of this. Federated Wireless, Masoud, we haven't done this before but you are a great addition and we appreciate your time and being with us as well. And last but not least, Pari Bajpay with Verizon, very much appreciate your time. We know you guys are super busy, especially in the private 5G networking space over at Verizon so we appreciate your input in your time as well. And again, to our audience, thank you to the speakers on paving the way for private 5G networks for enterprises for this executive session on-demand, go to thenetworkmediagroup.com. So long