What are the requirements for the 5G Monetization Solution?
Requirements for the 5G Monetization Solution
Without a doubt, 5G has provided the much-needed innovation and flexibility for Operators to look for different revenue streams & partnerships. 5G is bringing many exciting services related to eMBB, URLLC, and mMTC use cases.
5G Use Cases and Services (Image Courtesy: ITU) (Click to enlarge)
These services require high bandwidth (e.g. FWA, 4K content delivery), low latency/high threshold (e.g. AR/VR, Self-driving cars), and high density (e.g. IoT devices, Smart Cities) based on their categorization.
The excitement & new opportunities bring the challenges of monetizing these advanced services.
Network Slicing will allow Operators to provide dedicated logical networks with virtualized network functions, storage, computing, and processing capabilities to cater to different services & related functionalities. This will give flexibility to Operators to make use of their physical network resources in efficient ways based on the slice requirements.
fig. 5G Charging System and Network Slicing (Click to enlarge)
5G Monetization solution should be capable of charging customers/enterprises based on their Network slices. In other words, the 5G Monetization solution should allow accurate Slice-based charging.
fig. 5G Charging System Requirements (Click to enlarge)
Below are some of the requirements that a 5G Monetization solution should support:-
- Be Cloud-native so that features like serverless, elasticity, auto-scaling, fault-tolerance, etc. can be achieved.
- To support both Online & Offline Charging methodologies to provide a Converged Charging solution.
- To support Virtualization and Containerization.
- To support Pre-paid & Post-paid payment models for allowing consumption of Services based on available credit balance as well as the credit limit.
- Ability to handle advanced analytics to offer service personalization & upsell/cross-sell opportunities.
- Ability to perform AAA activities on the network slices in action.
- Architecture to be built using Microservices design patterns.
- To follow Continuous Integration, Continuous Development, and Continuous Deployment practices.
- To support flexible deployment options like Co-existence, Standalone, or Full-stack deployments.
- To support low latency and high threshold in processing charging requests at a very high TPS.
- To support dynamic pricing configuration.
- Tight integration with NFs like NRF, PCF, SMF, UPF, AF, etc.
- To support backward compatibility with 4G & legacy networks so that charging requests based on protocols like Diameter & CAMEL can be mediated into RESTful APIs.
- ..........
As the 5G implementation use cases and OSS/BSS transformation may evolve, many more requirements can be added to the above list.
OSS/BSS readiness & transformation gain prime importance in tapping the exciting opportunities offered by the 5G Network at this critical juncture. And, 5G Monetization Solution plays a very crucial role in this transformation.
Understanding the requirements for 5G Monetization is just the beginning. My book "The 5G Core: Architecture and Functions Explained" provides a complete roadmap for implementing these requirements, covering Converged Charging, BSS Integration, Network Slicing, and 5G Roaming settlements.
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Glossary
3GPP: 3rd Generation Partnership Project
BSS: Business Support System
OSS: Operations Support System
eMBB: enhanced Mobile Broadband
URLLC: Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications
mMTC: massive Machine Type Communications
FWA: Fixed Wireless Access
AAA: Authentication, Authorization & Accounting
ABMF: Account Balance Management Function
RF: Rating Function
NRF: Network Resources Function
AF: Application Function
PCF: Policy Control Function
CTF: Charging Trigger Function
SMF: Session Management Function
UPF: User Plane Function
NF: Network Function
CAMEL: Customized Applications for Mobile network Enhanced Logic
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