Carriers, Others Should Embrace Software-Driven Networks, Says Verizon Executive

The company is working with vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Juniper and Nokia Networks (see 1504280037 and here) on the so-called software-first model, said Verizon Vice President-Network Planning Brian Higgins. Instead of updating or upgrading hardware, "virtualize it," he recommended. The industry needs to move to software from hardware when possible, and a broad shift is called for and that's why Verizon is working with others on SDN, he said at a Telecommunications Industry Association conference Wednesday.

SDN is among the reasons telecom spending is rising, a trend that's expected to continue, though there have been "ups and downs," said TIA Chairman Mark Walker, president of Walker and Associates. "We see a steady trend, amazingly steady" of telecom spending increases, he said in a presentation Wednesday. Video traffic -- expected to account for about 80 percent of Internet traffic, which itself is about tripling over the next five years -- is a reason for the increased spending, said Walker. He also cited SDN, 5G and the increase in the number of IoT devices. Telecom network equipment spending in the U.S. last year rose 8.9 percent to $279.3 billion, and total U.S. telecom spending will rise 5.5 percent annually over the next four years to $1.66 trillion in 2018, said a TIA report Monday. In that time, cloud computing spending will rise 15 percent annually and machine-to-machine spending 19 percent, it said.

About 80 things are newly connected to the Internet each second, and that figure is expected to increase greatly, and the point at which there are more connected devices than people on Earth already has passed, said AT&T Senior Vice President-IoT Solutions Chris Penrose. His company's network has about 22 million IoT connected devices, noted Penrose. The focus has been on how to get devices connected, and a coming area of attention may be on what types of data the gear produces "to truly unlock the power of IoT," he said.

With mobile data expected to surge, it's time to begin the rollout of 5G, said Sprint Senior Research Scientist Nick Baustert. He predicted 5G and LTE will coexist for many years. 5G has been a topic throughout the conference (see 1506020064). "There is vast potential of what we can do with a 5G network," and it "can't just be about building a bigger pipe" but about determining how the standard will be used, said Baustert. There could be commercial launches in 2020, he said. "The good news is we're not looking at commercial launches until 2020. The bad news is it's only five years away." Baustert said SDN helps improve networks' "intelligence."

A focus on software comes with a need to anticipate when usage of a network spikes such as through use of over-the-top or other data products, said Verizon's Higgins in a presentation before Baustert's. The transition to SDN from hardware is "like changing the engine midflight" because of the need to maintain current operations while making "a major shift in how we maintain the networks," said Higgins. With billions of dollars "sitting in the ground today" in deployed equipment in the industry, he recommended picking certain network functions and automating when possible processes that used to be done manually.

SDN is "a big deal for everybody" at Verizon and at other companies, said Higgins. There is "massive growth, massive opportunity" in this "transitional phase," said Higgins. SDN is standards based, so it works with other carriers, he said. "This has to be industrywide; it can't just be something that Verizon is pushing. It has to be all the carriers and [others] in the entire industry."