5G Architecture

As service providers begin to roll out 5G POCs and initial deployments, there is no question that these cloud native platforms will be huge Capex and Opex investments on their part. These platforms should be able to handle diverse workloads such as telco, edge and enterprise applications. They must be efficient as well as robust from an operational standpoint. They must also serve the operator well for years. While it is never my intention to be hyperbolic or combative, the question is if Openstack is a viable 5G platform – when compared with hyperscaler clouds.

Ericsson just released the twenty-second edition of their authoritative Mobility Report, in which they continue to follow the evolution of the telecom industry. Ericsson calls out 5G as scaling faster than any previous mobile generation. This blogpost summarizes the key findings of the report from a 5G subscriber growth & global distribution standpoint.

This post will consider the top four intertwined system architecture considerations in deploying edge applications successfully on a hardware platform.

We continue our discussion of the public reference architecture on the Dish 5G buildout on AWS with a detailed look at the deployment automation of the implementation.

This implementation uses O-RAN standards and consists of a Radio Unit(RU) deployed on cell towers and a Distributed Unit (DU) as well as a centralized unit (CU) which is deployed in an AWS local zone.

We continue our discussion of the public reference architecture on the Dish 5G buildout on AWS with a look at the physical network design and datacenter layout.

DISH Networks is pioneering the deployment of a greenfield 5G network. This implementation uses O-RAN standards and consists of a Radio Unit(RU) deployed on cell towers and a Distributed Unit (DU) as well as a centralized unit (CU) which is deployed in an AWS local zone. While these components combine to provide a full RAN solution that handles radio level control and subscriber data traffic, let us consider the key architecture lessons from this first blog.

Dish Network and AWS teams have just published a public reference architecture [1] on the Dish 5G buildout on AWS. As this is a project my team is involved in, I thought it would be a good diversion from architecture posts to discuss key aspects – the main business case & the architecture principles in this post.

This post discusses the third 5G architecture pattern – where both the 5G Core is deployed on the cloud and the Radio Access Network (RAN) components are deployed on managed hardware.