< PreviousSPECIAL REPORT MARKET FOCUS We caught up with The Boston Consulting Group’s David Panhans, MD and partner, Thibault Werle, MD and partner, and Faisal Hamady, principal, to find out how operators can ramp up their 5G offering through Dynamic Spectrum Sharing IS DYNAMIC SPECTRUM SHARING THE KEY TO BOOSTING 5G COVERAGE? Overall, telcos haven’t cracked the sweet spot in 5G yet, but they are looking ahead alongside their ecosystem of partners to determine future roles in the IoT space and what vertical solutions they can offer to accommodate a sufficient 5G spectrum.” Dynamic Spectrum Sharing represents a real opportunity for operators to launch 5G in a cost effective manner, where cost constraints or insufficient spectrum release may have delayed the launch. However, it can also be deployed in regions where there is already adequate spectrum release, as a way of helping operators make a speedy return on their huge 5G capital expenditures. CommsMEA spoke to three experts from the Boston Consulting Group as operators in the region look to build out their 5G offerings. David Panhans, managing director and partner, Thibault Werle, managing director and partner, and Faisal Hamady, principal of the Boston Consulting Group explain how Dynamic Spectrum Sharing technology is making a difference for operators here in the Middle East and Africa region. HOW WELL PREPARED IS THE GCC REGION IN TERMS OF ALLOCATING SUFFICIENT SPECTRUM FOR 5G? “With the fast pace of technological inno- vations, traditional ways of managing and allocating spectrum have resulted in several challenges that need to be addressed. “Among the most prominent is the repurposing of bands (for example, such as Very High Frequency (VHF) and Ultra High Frequency (UHF) for new types of uses, including digital broadcasting) and how to free up congested bands to eliminate interference. New models are emerging, which have the necessary frameworks and tools to help spectrum managers make the right trade-offs and decisions regarding current emerging uses. A good propor- tion of spectrum practices in the GCC are revamped where spectrum managers are upgrading their toolkit and starting to head towards a more balanced and foreward looking spectrum policy. “In terms of allocating terrestrial IMT spectrum for operators, several GCC nations have made excellent progress recently (for example, KSA being among the top countries on spectrum allocation – excluding mmWave) but overall it varies across the region. There is still a potential to further ac- celerate the actions regarding 5G spectrum refarming and release and to provide further visibility to the market and investors. “The current traction at the region’s level can be further accelerated to be in line with the global development (especially further in lower and mid-band allocations as well as tapping into the mmWave potential). “In terms of private and local deploy- ments, this is broadly still in nascent stages. Moving forward, the GCC nations could experiment more by defining the vertical spectrum as this will foster innovation in logistics, manufacturing plants, and ports to become more acquainted with 5G and its capabilities. The region has organisa- tions in the energy, logistics and oil and gas sectors, all of which can build their own private networks to connect to different offshore fields and introduce new innova- tive solutions in their field operations. Overall, telcos haven’t cracked the sweet spot in 5G yet, but they are looking ahead alongside their ecosystem of partners to determine future roles in the IoT space and what vertical solutions they can offer to ac- commodate a sufficient 5G spectrum.” HOW CAN DYNAMIC SPECTRUM SHARING HELP OPERATORS RE- DUCE COSTS? “Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, at its core, gen- erally provides more benefits than downsides and risk, as it supports 5G introduction by enabling the coexistence of 5G Network Radio (NR) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) at the same time on the same spectrum band. 20www.commsmea.comCommsMEA June-August 2020MARKET FOCUS SPECIAL REPORT “When looking at cost reduction and making efficient use of spectrum resources to expand 5G coverage, low- to-mid Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) bands are required. This, in turn, can result in deep indoor coverage and signal strength, where for Dynamic Spectrum Sharing allows a dynamic allocation based on capacity requirements and provides flexibility as users shift from LTE to 5G. Further research has shown that nationwide C-band coverage is very costly, and for Dynamic Spectrum Sharing would offer a cost-efficient way to achieve nationwide 5G coverage in instances such as leveraging mid-bands (for example, C-band) in inner cities and for Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (in low-and/or mid- band) in suburban and rural areas.” WHAT CHALLENGES ARE THERE TO BE OVERCOME IN TERMS OF DYNAMIC SPECTRUM SHARING? “Considering the changing demand and sup- ply, countries need to implement a balanced DYNAMIC SPECTRUM SHARING strategy that requires a thorough understanding of the trends affecting spectrum, insight into the priorities of spectrum users and stakeholders, and knowledge of supply. “Implementation of Dynamic Spectrum Sharing may create an overhead to support the coexistence of LTE and 5G in the same band, which depends on network configuration, scheduling algorithms, testing, and validation, etc. This may result in some instances in very limited speed and capacity benefit vs. LTE. Hence a risk of customer disillusion about 5G benefits without complementary C-Band/mmWave rollout might deem a low opportunity to monetise full 5G later on. “However, the overhead cost is marginal when compared to the alternative option of the refarming of spectrum from LTE to 5G NR. Additionally, while Dynamic Spectrum Sharing requires only a firmware upgrade, the hardware should be modernised, and most players will need to ensure that modernised hardware is firmly established within the framework.” WHICH MARKETS ARE PARTICULARLY WELL SUITED FOR DYNAMIC SPECTRUM SHARING? “Markets that are restricted in terms of spectrum supply, especially in low and mid bands (this could be due to incumbents in desired bands, costly acquisition of bands, or fragmentation of desired bands), will benefit most from Dynamic Spectrum Sharing.” WHAT PREDICTIONS DO YOU HAVE FOR DYNAMIC SPECTRUM SHARING USAGE IN THE REGION OVER THE NEXT 12 MONTHS? “The interest in radio frequency bands will continue to grow, placing pressure on regulators as well as existing and potential users. “Over the short to medium term, Dynamic Spectrum Sharing usage in the region (with IMT users) will likely become more common, as the demand for new services increases. Dynamic Spectrum Sharing provides a smooth bridging for the next wave of 5G deployments (5G Non-stand-alone ‘NSA’ to 5G Stand-alone ‘SA’) that can support differentiated services for enterprise and industrial use cases (for example, network slicing). “Dynamic Spectrum Sharing will also give hedging against the drop in coverage that operators might experience upon switching or transitioning from NSA to SA, given its ability to maintain the low/ mid-band coverage until a full launch of 5G core and switching rollout.” Thibault Werle, MD and partner at The Boston Consulting Group David Panhans, MD and partner at The Boston Consulting Group Further research has shown that nationwide C-band coverage is very costly, and DSS would offer a cost-efficient way to achieve nationwide 5G coverage in instances such as leveraging mid- bands in inner cities and DSS (in low-and/or mid- band) in suburban and rural areas.” 21www.commsmea.comCommsMEA June-August 2020SPECIAL REPORT MARKET FOCUS CommsMEA spoke to Nishita Hathi, product director, and Gavin Hayhurst, head of product marketing, at TEOCO, to discover how Dynamic Spectrum Sharing can help operators launch next generation mobile services whilst making an early return on their 5G capital investments DYNAMIC SPECTRUM SHARING IS A CRUCIAL TOOL FOR MONETISING 5G, PARTICULARLY IN THE SHORT TO MID-TERM BOOSTING 5G COVERAGE IN THE NEAR TO MID TERM “Dynamic Spectrum Sharing is a great way to boost 5G coverage and speed to market in the early stages of a network. In the early days of a technology rollout, the number of users in the network is small. It is estimated that in 2020, 5G traffic will constitute just 5 per cent of the total traffic, which means that investing heavily in 5G network infrastructure in the early days of technology rollout isn’t cost effective. Determining where to deploy initial 5G sites for maximum return on investment is also tricky when the users are sparsely distributed. DSS allows operators to widely deploy 5G on the same network infrastructure and spectrum as 4G via only a software upgrade. As the availability of 5G services grow, user demand will also grow. Operators can then make further invest- ments in dedicated 5G infrastructure.” REDUCING THE FINANCIAL BURDEN OF 5G “Based on the assumption that the installed 4G radios are ‘5G ready’ and can be upgraded via software (something which most vendors have supported since 2015), an operator could activate 5G, using Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, without acquiring new spectrum, or undertaking any of the time-consuming and costly site works that would typically be required. “This allows operators to provide the new low latency, high speed 5G services without incurring the high initial costs and time delays of a typical network deployment. The network will then allocate 4G or 5G capacity based on demand on a per-millisecond basis, effectively supporting both technologies on the same infrastructure.” BRIDGING THE SPECTRUM AVAILABILITY GAP “As a tool to reduce time-to-market of 5G, DSS is almost universally beneficial. It will however be especially beneficial where operators have been unable to secure dedicated 5G spectrum or spectrum auctions have been delayed. It will also be useful for operators who have only managed to obtain 5G spectrum in the mmWave bands. “Delivering significant population coverage on only mmWave is very hard and very expensive. Operators in this situation could use DSS to effectively match their existing 4G coverage with 5G coverage. Ericsson has been the most active vendor in terms of promoting DSS and seems to have 22www.commsmea.comCommsMEA June-August 2020MARKET FOCUS SPECIAL REPORT Covid-19, I think, will have pushed that timeline out and 5G deployments will slow for the most part in the next 6-9 months. There is also a possibility that new opportunities arise due to the situation.” the most mature solution so operators with a large installed base of Ericsson ‘5G ready’ radios in their 4G network will be well placed to take advantage of the technology.” MAKING THE BUSINESS CASE FOR DYNAMIC SPECTRUM SHARING IN AFRICA “By doing a software upgrade, operators in Africa can launch 5G without significant investments in new site infrastructure. The cost of launching in this manner makes the business case much more attractive. It also allows operators the freedom to ‘test the waters’ in marginal areas and if the uptake is below the necessary threshold after a period of time, the 5G service could effectively be decommissioned in these areas with little to no wasted equipment and site build costs. LOOKING BEYOND DYNAMIC SPEC- TRUM SHARING “Dynamic Spectrum Sharing is an interim solution and a lot of network operators around the world will enable DSS in their networks in 2020 to provide 5G coverage. Ericsson estimates that 80 per cent of the 5G networks it supports will use DSS for broad 5G coverage in 2020. As the availability of 5G devices and services grows in 2021 and consumers start to understand the value of 5G services, 5G traffic will ramp up. Operators will then have to add additional infrastructure and spectrum to meet the increase in demand. There will likely be a few outliers where DSS as a long-term solution makes sense (small rural villages as one example) but for the most part it will be a temporary solution to achieve broad coverage quickly. “Over the next 12 to 18 months, I think operators will continue deploying 5G and looking for ways to monetise it. The hype of 5G has now passed and it is time to widely deploy the technology and focus on maximising return on investment. A few months ago I would have said towards the end of this period we would start to see significantly more operators deploying a 5G core and moving from a non-standalone deployment of 5G to a standalone one. Covid-19, I think, will have pushed that timeline out and 5G deployments will slow for the most part in the next 6-9 months. There is also a possibility that new opportunities arise due to the situation. With more remote working likely to become the norm, demand for services that enable that should see strong growth. It may even be that demand for 5G services beyond Enhanced Mobile Broadband (EMBB), such as VR type use cases, increase due to the current situation and end up being brought to market sooner than they otherwise would have.” Gavin Hayhurst, head of product Marketing at TEOCO. Nishita Hathi, product director at TEOCO. 23www.commsmea.comCommsMEA June-August 2020There can be little doubt that IBM’s $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat was once of the deals of the decade when it passed in July 2019. Combining Red Hat’s extensive order book in the telecoms space, with the sheer size and scale of IBM seemed to be a match made in heaven. And so it has proved to be, with the newly acquired Red Hat announcing a plethora of deals to help telcos digitalise Following on from the company’s $34 billion acquisition by IBM last year, CommsMEA spoke with Werner Knoblich, senior vice president and GM for EMEA at Red Hat, to discuss disruption and innovation their networks at the recent Red Hat 2020 Summit, held online last month. CommsMEA spoke with Werner Kno- blich, senior vice president and general manager for EMEA at Red Hat to discover how the merger with IBM was helping the company go from strength to strength. With its focus on Open Source network solutions, Red Hat began life as something of an industry innovator and disruptor. Fast forward to today and it is one of the biggest providers of open source solutions to telcos and businesses in the entire world. So, how will the company go on innovating and disrupting the industry, particularly here in the Middle East region? “Being at the heart of the fourth indus- trial revolution, the telecoms industry is embracing open source in an effort to en- able faster moving development efforts and rework legacy processes. Whether it’s connected IoT devices or mobile entertain- OPEN SOURCE: THE CRUCIAL CATALYST FOR INNOVATION AND DISRUPTION Red Hat was the subject of a $34 billion acquisition by IBM in 2019. 24www.commsmea.com FEATURE INNOVATION & DISRUPTION CommsMEA June-August 2020ment, the modern economy runs on the in- ternet,” Knoblich explained. “On the other hand, global events have shifted our world overnight, turning most of our connections virtual. And the need for the network services that telcos provide has never been greater. Our technologies are built on open, standards-based frame- works that help them create a modern network infrastructure. With our rich eco- system of certified hardware and software partners, communications service provid- ers (CSPs) have more choice and greater control of their future. “Whether enterprises are looking to automate their networks to scale faster in order to meet increasing capacity de- mands, limit outage risks, or get their teams ramped up on necessary skills, Red Hat will be here to help.” While Red Hat was a firmly established player prior to its acquisition by IBM, the “4G transformed how we use mobile de- vices and powered the smartphone boom that started in the latter end of the 3G era. While 5G promises to build upon that suc- cess, Red Hat maintains it is the enterprise sector where the possibilities of high speed and low latency at the edge of the network will drive use cases that we are only just be- ginning to contemplate. “Smart cities, autonomous vehicles, smart energy and intelligent financial services are a few examples of how 5G will change the way society operates in the same way LTE changed what con- sumers could do with their phones.What unites this disparate group of use cases is the sheer volume of data they will gener- ate and the complexity of processing it. In their search for efficiencies and desire for new applications, companies will want to process these huge amounts of data at very low latencies. Edge computing will satisfy those demands. “Red Hat is already preparing for the opportunities these verticals will bring by building what it calls and end-to-end vertical approach for telcos which in- cludes sales, partner ecosystem, market- ing, services and engineering. Red Hat’s ability to talk the customers’ language means it can quickly establish their pain points and discuss how the edge can deal has certainly helped the firm to reach the next level in terms of global reach and scale. “The acquisition redefines the cloud mar- ket for business. Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud technologies are now paired with the un- matched scale and depth of IBM’s innovation and industry expertise, and sales leadership in more than 175 countries. “Together, IBM and Red Hat will acceler- ate innovation by offering a next-generation hybrid multicloud platform. Based on open source technologies, such as Linux and Ku- bernetes, the platform will allow businesses to securely deploy, run and manage data and applications on-premises and on private and multiple public clouds,” Knoblich explained. As telcos around the world look to scale up their fledgling 5G networks, the enter- prise sector will be where those telcos begin to see the first returns on their enormous 5G capital investments. The acquisition redefines the cloud market for business. Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud technologies are now paired with the unmatched scale and depth of IBM’s innovation and industry expertise, in 175 countries. ” Werner Knoblich, SVP and GM for EMEA at Red Hat. Red Hat expects mobile network operators to start seeing a return on their 5G investments in the enterprise sector first. 25www.commsmea.com INNOVATION & DISRUPTION FEATURE CommsMEA June-August 2020transform their businesses in different ways,” he added. With Industry 4.0 initiatives starting to take shape, telcos are inevitably looking to form closer bonds with software provid- ers and network automation specialists. Around the world a flurry of MoU’s are be- ing signed that will underpin the connec- tivity that will facilitate a range of revenue spinning solutions and services for telcos. “Industry 4.0 is where smart, connected, and responsive technologies are merging with environments that are becoming more data-rich, and, as a result, digital disruption to more traditional business models is be- coming the norm, not the exception. “Many people are scrambling to de- termine how this upheaval will affect not only what they do, but also how they do it. For telcos, return on their 5G investments depends on customers accessing new ser- vices and applications as demand for mobile bandwidth continues to grow. To remain competitive, telecommunications compa- nies must cost-effectively expand their net- work while also improving user experience. “To capitalise on the 5G boom, provid- ers will need to cost-effectively expand their networks and improve their custom- er experience. An essential step in doing so is modernising their existing networks to support both legacy 4G with Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and the latest 5G with New Radio (NR) technology. To do this, operators need to evolve their radio access networks (RANs) to be part of a software- based cloud network which can adapt to the myriad requirements and applications of 5G,” Knoblich said. Undoubtedly, the current Covid 19 pandemic has radically altered the way in which billions of people around the world conduct their daily lives. A plethora of work and study from home initiatives are under- lining the critical importance of ubiqui- tous, dependable connectivity. In order to Being at the heart of the fourth indus- trial revolution, the telecoms industry is embracing open source in an effort to enable faster moving development efforts. Whether it’s con- nected IoT devices or mobile entertain- ment, the modern economy runs on the Internet.” Werner Knoblich, SVP and GM for EMEA at Red Hat. 5G will be at the heart of the fourth industrial revolution, driving revenues for telcos in the mid to long term. 26www.commsmea.com FEATURE INNOVATION & DISRUPTION CommsMEA June-August 2020cope with the sheer scale of demand flood- ing their networks, telcos are fast tracking their own digitalisation journeys. “The key challenge we face is the COV- ID-19 pandemic and how organisations need to accelerate their digital transfor- mation. Companies that are able to use technology to keep going and rethink their business model for the future by fast- tracking digital transformation will be ones ahead of their competition. “Organisations that fail to take advan- tage of digital business transformation risk losing market share and industry relevance. To be successful, a proper digital transfor- mation strategy must include all aspects of the IT organisation, including, people, culture, and process, as well as technology. That’s where we come in, Red Hat helps or- ganisations to digitally transform to be able to operate effectively,” he said. The Middle East and Africa region re- mains a key area of focus for Red Hat, not least because of its disparate levels of con- nectivity. In the GCC we enjoy some of the most advanced telecommunications net- works in the world, but in the wider Mid- dle East and particularly in Africa, there is still much work to be done in terms of digi- talising networks. “The Middle East and Africa region has demonstrated growth in its share of our business and there are a lot of expansion opportunities. Red Hat has a great reputation for delivering market-leading open source solutions and our expansion within the Gulf countries helps us meet the growing demand for Red Hat solutions in the region. We have a growing customer base in the Middle East and Africa and our regional offices in the UAE and Saudi Arabia enables us to leverage experts with local knowledge to meet new business demands in the region. Looking to the future, Knoblich is jus- tifiably optimistic about his company’s prospects in the region and further afield. “I am not an analyst. In my personal opinion, digitalisation is on the rise but the overall IT spending may slow down and we may observe an increase in plat- form services. Organisations around the world are being challenged to innovate more rapidly, or be disrupted by new players in their markets. Developers need environments which remove barri- ers to their ability to innovate, but often messaging focuses purely on the middle- ware layers and upwards. “To be truly agile, the support- ing infrastructure must be open and software-definable. It’s not enough to build your next-generation tooling on top of traditional infrastructure. Open standards help ensure infrastructure automation and management works as expected with the modern, open source tooling demanded by today’s develop- ers,” he concluded. 27www.commsmea.com INNOVATION & DISRUPTION FEATURE CommsMEA June-August 2020O PEN SOURCE INNOVATION 5G and its emerging applications are creating the need for a geographically distributed virtualised infrastructure onto which these applications can be hosted. In Open Source, we are seeing and supporting significant innovation in the OpenStack foundation’s StarlingX.io project, where work is ongoing to create a cloud native, but geo-distributed infrastructure that meets these requirements. This is a challenge that legacy open source projects, by themselves, cannot meet the need. Thus, the next generation of open source cloud technology is focused on distributed cloud, and edge cloud type applications. At the same time, open source state of the art is also seeing a transition from virtual machines to containers, as a much more performant, scalable, and resource efficient solution for virtualisation. There will be a need to take the best of breed vir- tualisation technology, like open source based Kubernetes, and use that as a founda- tion to create an end-to-end cloud solution that enables and embraces the challenges of a geo-distributed network architecture. This creates an intersection between the demand for next generation distributed cloud, and the emergence of cloud native approaches for virtualisation. As a result, interesting innovations will continue to emerge related to in- creasing the adoption and usability of containers. This will occur in the areas Paul Miller, VP for industry solutions at tech specialists Wind River, looks at how open source is evolving the way telcos operate of securing container workloads and also in autonomous operation and manage- ment of workloads at far edge sites. This can mean use cases such as Multi-Access Edge (MEC) applications pushed out to remote far-edge locations in MEA. The technology advances in container securi- ty, container management and overall op- erations from centralised locations out to the far edge. Farther out, the adoption of machine learning and AI into these same use cases will be the next leading trend. THE ROLE OF EDGE COMPUTING Telecom infrastructure is evolving from vertically integrated, monolithic solu- tions to disaggregated technology based on virtualisation and the cloud. The multi- faceted needs of a 5G network create new requirements, both technological and op- erational, that existing cloud infrastruc- ture cannot meet. Due to 5G’s requirement to distribute compute nodes to thousands of different sites to support the explosion of new connected devices, there is a funda- mental mismatch to legacy virtualisation approaches, especially around operation- al concerns. vRAN Technology based on cloud native, geo-distributed cloud solu- tions is ideal for solving the modern prob- lems, both technological and operational, introduced by 5G. Using these new approaches, telecom service providers can offer new capabilities to industries that will rely on edge com- puting such as automotive, industrial, and gaming. Telecom service providers can sup- port on-premise solutions as-a-service for industries that require the attributes of 5G, as well. The possible answers to these chal- lenges have telcos eager to build a network to support the promise of 5G that ensures: • Greater performance • Ultra-low latency • More comprehensive security • Uncompromised reliability • Intelligence (AI, analytics) • Scalability • Open source-based technology to maximise flexibility • Operationally friendly ways to deploy/manage complex, large, distributed cloud networks as they want to rapidly deploy new services • Improve OPEX and CAPEX (through virtualisation on COTS vs. integrated hardware) Thus, edge computing is the founda- tion of the next generation service provider network, not only hosting the 5G infra- structure, but also hosting applications for next-generation use cases such as vehicle to vehicle communications for accident avoidance, autonomous self-driving cars, automated industry, remote telemedicine, autonomous drone control and more. NEW FRONTIERS More mission critical systems across markets are becoming connected, and failure is not an option. New intelligent systems will have diverse needs around the cloud, virtualisation, performance and latency, security, reliability, and in- DISTRIBUTED CLOUD AND EDGE CLOUD APPLICATIONS WILL FUEL THE NEXT GENERATION OF OPEN SOURCE INNOVATION 28www.commsmea.com FEATURE INNOVATION AND DISRUPTION CommsMEA June-August 2020telligence. In this new paradigm, it will be important to seek experts, like Wind River, who have built solutions from the ground up specifically to meet the unique needs of telecom environments. Use cases in areas such as industrial automation/IIoT, avionics/commercial drones, autonomous vehicles, and medi- cal systems are interesting as they involve high stakes and demand more intensive requirements, specifically in regard to low latency, smaller footprint, and reliability. Latency will play an ever-increasing role in the ability for 5G deployments to func- tion, scale, and cost reduce. We’ll see the emergence of applications that are fully software based that are dependent on ul- tra-low latency (URLLC) access from the edge to the core to enable the application to function properly. Drawing from its experience in mission critical industries (telecom, aerospace and defense, indus- trial, automotive, medical), Wind River understands and has the expertise to ad- dress the technology requirements that 5G demands. OPPORTUNITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA As Wind River is very focused on open source based, virtual edge computing plat- forms specifically focused on 5G use cases, and the MENA region by 2025 is antici- pated to have more than 50 million 5G con- nections with networks covering 30 per- infrastructure have been built with appli- ance based, legacy hardware, we see the fu- ture of 5G deployment at massive scale to be founded on a virtualised, disaggregated approach. Within the next 12-18 months we anticipate the maturation of 5G technology combined with a global shift to employing containerised virtualisation as the plat- form of choice to host this infrastructure. As 5G matures, we see MEC technol- ogy following, leveraging the distributed cloud technology that has been deployed for 5G infrastructure, now being scaled to host third party applications as is as- sociated with MEC use cases. These in- cludes ultra-low latency applications that require hosting at the extreme edge of the network, enabling commercialisation of autonomous systems and vehicles, auto- mated factories and remote real time tel- emedicine to name a few. Thus, the evolution to 5G and advanced applications, enabled by this new distrib- uted cloud infrastructure creates the next- generation service provider network. One fully virtualised, orchestrated and auto- mated, with revolutionary flexibility and ease of use, providing rapid time to market for new revenue streams. cent of the population, we see an incredible opportunity to bring our technology to this market and help service providers solve the serious challenges associated with 5G network planning and deployment. We anticipate the GCC states to be among the first to launch commercial 5G networks in the region, including efforts by Etisalat and Ooredoo with both compa- nies working on 5G trials moving towards commercial launches. We keep a close eye as well on regulatory paradigms associated with spectrum allocation for 5G, as any is- sues here can gate early deployment. We see the UAE within the GCC in MENA as likely having the highest volume deploy- ments of 5G. Thus, we see the MENA region tracking the massive global movement and invest- ment in 5G, and in a similar manner to oth- er regions, find our technology uniquely adept at solving problems associated with 5G deployment. WHAT PREDICTIONS DO YOU HAVE FOR THE INDUSTRY OVER THE NEXT 12-18 MONTHS? While early deployments largely focused on early adoption and trials of the 5G RF As 5G matures, operators will increasingly leverage cloud and mobile edge computing to transform their networks. Telecom infrastructure is evolving from vertically integrated, monolithic solutions to disaggregated technology based on virtualisation and the cloud. The multifaceted needs of a 5G network create new requirements that existing cloud infrastructure cannot meet.” Paul Miller, VP, Wind River. 29www.commsmea.com INNOVATION AND DISRUPTION FEATURE CommsMEA June-August 2020Next >