2023-04-17 20:22:20
The world of technology has been in constant evolution over the past few decades, and one of the most exciting and promising developments in this realm is 5G technology. IDEMIA, a world leader in identity technologies, has been working on the development of 5G technology to further improve connectivity and efficiency in communication systems.
The promise of 5G is to serve a wide range of use cases with three pillars: mobile broadband, critical communication, and the Massive Internet of Things (IoT). The first pillar of 5G is clearly focused on broadband communication to meet the needs of the evolution of smartphones to offer subscribers higher performance and better network reactivity.
Another trend in the industry is the virtualization of network resources. Instead of having a dedicated piece of hardware optimized for a network function, they could be offered on off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware or even cloud resources, allowing for cost-effective and flexible network deployment.
On the other hand, the need to address specific use cases and take advantage of network virtualization capabilities leads to a natural network approach. Instead of having a single network serving different use cases, we have network segments that can operate in parallel for specific use cases: broadband, IoT, or critical communication. This creates additional opportunities to allocate network resources to a specific entity; a private network like a segment dedicated to a factory, for example.
Segmentation of 5G networks
The first focus of 5G standardization and deployment is the ability to address one of the three pillars, which mobile network operators are comfortable with and the most profitable segment at the time: Enhanced Mobile Broadband. This is fully in line with the evolution of mobile broadband from 2G to 3G to 4G, offering more and more performance and better reactivity to the network.
This leaves two other pillars that need to be better addressed to deliver on the promise of 5G: Massive IoT (for example, smart meters) and mission-critical control (for example, public safety networks).
The evolution of 5G to address massive IoT and mission-critical control will be focused on network virtualization. In the past, specific hardware was designed for a specific network function and linked to its dedicated software. Today, there is a need to virtualize these network functions with software that can run on off-the-shelf off-the-shelf hardware. This brings more cost effectiveness, higher reliability, and more flexibility in network design.
On the other hand, the SIM, whether in its traditional, embedded or embedded form, plays a key role in the evolution of split networks. The basic functionality of the SIM is to authenticate the user’s subscription to the mobile network operator’s network, but it can also do much more. You can preconfigure the device with preferred applications loaded by the mobile operator on the SIM card. This is the case of network segmentation configuration. The mobile operator can configure the SIM card with rules to indicate which network segment the device application traffic will be directed to and to which a particular charging policy can be applied.
It should be noted that 5G technology is one of the most exciting innovations in the world of technology, which will significantly improve connectivity, efficiency and digital security. Such technology will become an essential part of the global digital infrastructure in the coming years, and we are excited to see how it will change the way we interact with the digital world.
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