ofcom priorities for uk regulation: universality, fairness,...

PROMOTING CHOICE • SECURING STANDARDS • PREVENTING HARM

Classification: CONFIDENTIAL

Ofcom Priorities for UK Regulation: Universality, Fairness, Reliability and the role of InnovationMansoor Hanif, CTO

IEEE 5G Summit San Diego, Comsoc

San Diego 19th April 2019



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About Ofcom



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2019 Priorities for Communications Infrastructure

1. Better broadband and mobile – wherever you are: helping to encourage investment and improve broadband and mobile coverage across the country, so everyone benefits from the services they deliver.

2. Fairness for customers: ensuring that broadband, phone and TV customers, particularly vulnerable people, are treated fairly.

3. Encouraging Innovation as a bridge between Universality and Fairness –increasing role as facilitator and convenor

4. Supporting consumers and industry through Brexit: looking after the interests of UK consumers and the communications sector as we exit the EU.

5. Strong, secure networks: working with communications companies to help ensure their networks are strong, secure and protected against outages or cyberattacks



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Enabling 5G in the UK



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UK commercial 5G rollouts will start in 2019

Main focus on bigger cities

Vodafone has announced it will rollout 5G to 19 cities in 2019

BT/EE has indicated that it will start the 5G rollout with 1500 sites across 16 cities.

O2 has earmarked 4 cities for 5G

Three is going to start 5G rollout with Fixed Wireless Access services this spring (mainly in London area).

Some 5G trials in rural locations

https://www.5gruralfirst.org/



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UK Government 5G test beds and trials programme

Different consortia testing wide range of use cases across the UK



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Our programme of work for 2019/20

700 MHz

• Provide wide area coverage

• Clearance well under way

• Award in 2020

3.4-3.8 GHz – “primary” band for 5G

• Large bandwidth can support higher data rates, provide increased capacity, and enable higher speeds

• Award 3.6-3.8 GHz in 2020

3.8-4.2GHz and other bands

• We are exploring the potential for further sharing between existing and new users

• Consulted in December 2018



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Ofcom priorities for supporting UK-wide 5G in 2019

Urban & Suburban areas

• Ensuring spectrum availability

• Universal duct and pole access

• Roundtables to support 5G-compatible Full Fibre architectures

• Barrier-busting & ECC advice

• Supporting MNO investment

Rural areas

• License coverage obligations

• Facilitating access to unused/shared spectrum

• Technical advice to DCMS Rural 5G trials

• Technical advice to DFT/NRT for Road/Rail coverage

• Community network engagement

• Technical advice to DFT/NRT

• Supporting Rural communities

Industrial / Commercial areas

• Low-cost access to local spectrum

• “Verticals” discussion paper

• Series of industry sector workshops

• Net Neutrality clarifications

• Encouraging new entrants

UK-Wide

• TBEST Security & Resilience

• Ensuring strong, secure networks



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Innovation through Collaboration, Courage and Creativity



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5G / Edge Innovation for Consumers – transforming the AR experience



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How innovation can help improve rural coverage

Technical Innovations: Emerging technical can reduce cost and extend reach. Ofcom will continue to look at ways it can facilitate this e.g. our work to license-exempt self-installed mobile repeaters

Collaborative Measures: Ofcom’s Advice to Government on Options for Improving Mobile Coverage

identified other potential levers:• Public subsidy to fund further rollout of coverage. • Infrastructure sharing between operators.

• Further easing of planning barriers. We also considered rural roaming and concluded that the surest way to deliver benefits through such an approach would be collaborative arrangements between operators

Leo Satellite Network

MIMO

Tethered Balloons and

UAVs

Device to

Device



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Challenges and Opportunities for scaleableperformance and reliability



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Challenges and opportunities to scale Performance

• Spectrum variety, Dynamic allocation and sharing

• vRAN dynamic reconfiguration based on real-time usage

• Multihost networks –dynamic capacity reallocation based on real-time load

• 3-D beamforming, beamsteering, beamshaping

• Rapid NFV intruder / anomaly detection and seclusion

• Automated network slicing, slice reconfiguration

• Programmable networks – edge-core application fluidity

• Ultra-resiliency trade-off with Ultra-security: vResiliency (Virtual Resiliency?)

• We can imagine many more …..

5G and other new technologies bring a huge increase in complexity, add real-time requirements and a new dimension to security with NFV: automation and ML/Real-Time analystics will be critical



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A Framework for Dynamic Reliability & Performance



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Different requirements may open up opportunities for new business models and technologies



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Mixed Spectrum availability can meet an increasing and varied demand



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A holistic approach to scalable performance and resiliency: Transport sector example

Better understanding of market inhibitors, working alongside Government, developing appropriate regulation

• Optimal use of resources along railways and roads:

• Programmable networks and dynamic allocation of resources (bandwidth, power, capacity)

• Dynamic spectrum sharing to follow transit passengers (eg local license for 3.8-4.2 Ghz along railway line) adapting to peak commuter traffic

• Synergies

• Connectivity to roads, rail, remote areas

• Operational rail, consumer broadband, autonomous cars



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A New Approach to Assurance for Network Security & Resilience



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A robust security & resilience assurance framework is essential

This assurance framework requires continual proactive testing and proactive technical, organisational and commercial measures

Identify those network elements key to network availability & propose systematic preventive hardware, software and process checks to improve network availability and resiliency;

A code of best practice to reduce the time required to reconnect subscribers following a large-scale network outage

5G networks providing services on a significant wholesale basis or to critical industries, to offer greater levels of redundancy and resilience in the control plane.

Work with international standards organisations to implement new standards for interworking between elements.



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A new approach to Standards for ultra-resilient networks

Traditional standards approached is based on normal mode of operation

Future standards should be designed for 3 modes of operation:

1. Normal Mode of Operation

– As per existing approach, but must embrace multi-access & multi-tier resiliency

2. Unstable Mode of Operation

– Applies following a large scale “shock” or attack

– System or network level instability or “flapping”

– Priority is “back-off” between elements to restore system stability

– Currently poorly addressed by standards

3. Outage Mode of Operation

– For large-scale regional or national outage

– Priority is to provide minimum level of service asap (eg local autonomy)

– Short-term balance between restoring service and network security



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Requirements to underpin the new 5G network assurance & resilience framework

Details will be subject to consultation between Ofcom, Government and industry

Areas of focus are likely to include:

– Business and governance processes to enhance security

– Network design & build to enhance security

– Networks to be securely managed & operated, and

– Vendor procurement and ongoing management to support network security.

Virtualised networks components using Open-Source software: particular care must be taken to systematically deploy software updates in accordance with the faster development cycles for such software

Virtualisation should be harnessed and engineered to maximally scale resiliency and security in real-time or near real-time: vResiliency



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Emerging areas of focus



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Impact of Innovation and new Technology –Key Themes for future regulation

Competition / Innovation / Trust

New service providers – more SPs than vendors?

Edge Networks

Multi-Access including Space

Security Frameworks and Certification

Need for a wider ecosystem

Platforms

Algorithms

Convergence



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Any questions?

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