Some (Surprising) Discoveries in Applying the as-a-service model in Running a Mobile Core Network.
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The document discusses the journey of building a mobile core network as a service by the company wg2, which has successfully implemented over 100 improvements monthly to enhance network capabilities. It emphasizes the use of microservices and cloud infrastructure to optimize flexibility and user experience while maintaining compliance with telco standards. The platform has been actively developed for seven years and operational for four years, showcasing its effectiveness through commercial deployments and integrations.
Some (Surprising) Discoveries in Applying the as-a-service model in Running a Mobile Core Network.
- 1. Running a Mobile Core Network as a Service Observations and Experiences Werner Eriksen, CTO
- 2. Who we are On a mission to give mobile operators Internet scale innovation power Deliver a “gateway” mobile core network as-a-service and as-a-platform Based in Scandinavia / ~40 people An example of how much can be achieved when small teams leverage modern tools Independent company with support from Telenor, Cisco and Digital Alpha
- 7. Product Innovation in the Mobile Network
- 8. Product Innovation in the Mobile Network
- 11. Iterate like your life depends on it...
- 13. ● No “killer app” ● 100s and 1000s of services addressing the needs of micro segments ● Lawyer example ○ Click to call from CRM ○ Lookup in CRM o incoming call ○ Call and SMS logs into CRM ○ Call recording / transcript Killer apps vs Microservices (not the Kubernetes kind…)
- 14. Microservices - UK Number attached to my Norwegian SIM
- 15. Microservices - UK Number attached to my Norwegian SIM Call: 020 3974 2948
- 16. Innovating on mobile core assets... ...possible, but pretty hard... ...then try to scale… ...simply doesn’t work = A structural problem that needed a structural solution Our journey to solve this problem
- 17. >100 improvements to production network every month (features, security, performance, etc) Rebuilt IMS with a handful of engineers Time-to-fix for controlled code usually lower than just the escalation takes for external nodes Engineer understanding of end user experience is extremely high An end user can go to dev.operatorX.com and access their subscription through a public API Next operator that joins the platform gets aggregated effects of all improvements Impersonate an off the shelf 3GPP core network externally, while replicating web scale dynamics Design goals, model choices and example effects Enable mobile network programmability of each and every SIM as well as enabling platform/marketplace dynamics Maximise our software engineering team happiness and effectiveness Minimise time and noise between changes made and effect on end user experience While maintaining or exceeding the expected Telco SLAs - 3GPP compliant on the edges (only) - Delivered as-a-system - Delivered fully as-a-service - Control code - API everything - Multi-tenant - Leverage cloud / infra / open source - Terminate telco at the edges - DevOps and control code - DevOps, CI/CD, feature flags - Fully as-a-service - Safe environment for changes - Leverage cloud providers - Fully as-a-service - Control code and DevOps Design goals Model choices Practical examples of what this gives us
- 18. Undress and compress the black boxes Delivering the full “gateway” core network
- 19. Telco network elements Cloud Infrastructure (not) ● Incoming traffic: Telco protocols are not(yet) HTTP(S); need to support SCTP, UDP, etc ○ Kubernetes support is coming along, kind of ○ Terminate at the edge, convert to gRPC, etc ● Outgoing traffic: External connectivity and customer expectations are the hardest! ○ Expectation that traffic originates from a fixed IP (per service) ○ This doesn’t match well with cloud-based flexibility ○ Current WIP; investigating Calico CNI to solve ● Automated and controlled management of stateful services with live traffic
- 21. The WG2 platform... ● Has been in active development for ~7 years ● Has been a live service for >4 years ● Commercially deployed for ~2 years ● Two integrations done, third integration to go live in Q1 ● Used in the implementation of roaming agreements (IR.21) of a new IMSI range for worldwide coverage 21
- 22. Demo - UK Number attached to my Norwegian SIM
- 23. Demo - UK Number attached to my Norwegian SIM Call: 02039742948