5G technology is here.
How do you see 5G affecting the
fixed network?
Well first of all everybody
thinks 5G is sort of new radio
standard.
It's much more.
It defines a whole new end to
end network. Well, me coming
more from the connectivity in
optical space.
I might even say you know what
it's an optical network was an
antenna at the end.
Some might say no it's about
critical infrastructure.
It's about 10 times lower
latency it's about 10 times more
reliability.
And now if you look at a
different use cases the industry
defines basically three use
cases.
One is enhanced mobile
broadband. That's access for
everybody with much higher peak
data rates.
The next one is massive, type of
IoT.
So lots of different sensors
also an infinite amount of
different sensors. The machine
massive machine type application
and the other one is ultra
reliable low latency
applications.
As an example this could be
factory automation or this could
be the connected car all of
which are some of the
applications within 5G and will
drive the network.
And how does the fixed network
come into play there?
Well if we use those examples I
was just talking about for
example thinking about the ultra
reliable low latency
application.
It obviously needs low latency
to give you some examples of
Connected Car.
Looking at road safety in cities
or even outside cities probably
requires a latency of around
about 10 milliseconds or faster
end to end.
So taking some data and going
through the network doing
something with it going back to
that car 10 milliseconds.
Another one which is very
restrict is everything which is
factory automisation, automation
so you can see doing things with
robots and so on probably much
less than 10 milliseconds end to
end latency so one thing is very
strict latency requirements.
Another one is synchronisation
requirements.
So in order to do things like
for example carrier aggregation
we have end to end
synchronisation requirements of
130 nanoseconds and better in
timing error.
That is very difficult to
achieve both of it.
So latency and synchronisation
requirements will require a
fundamental change of the
network.
It's not just elegant antenna
at the end of it.
It's really changing the whole
network with it. But another one
I want to say is we obviously
want to look at deploying all
these different applications
over one single fixed or
backhaul network.
So that requires technology
which we call network slicing
using the same network for these
different applications which is
not easy.
So you've got a very low latency
one or the sync sensitive one as
well as the high data getting
gigabits to everybody one.
And what needs to happen at the
network edge for 5G or for those
use cases to realise their
potential?
I think at the end of the day
what will happen
at the network edge, is first of
all we will see data centres
being distributed to the edge.
Now that is a very high level
saying. If I go back to the low
latency and synchronisation
requirements specifically the
latency requirements or
aggregation requirements of
massive machine type machine
type of applications what you
see there is these things being
processed very near to the user
at the edge.
So provide some compute do some
as I said processing aggregation
something visit very near to the
user and then going back into
the network. There are other
applications which might not
require that.
So what we will see at the edge
is much more than just some
transmission some fibre some
radios.
So there will be some small data
centres some small data centres
in boxes coupled with
transmission enabling those
functions of low latency of
first type of aggregation and so
on.