Verizon this week blazed another trail leading to a fully virtualized network infrastructure with an assist from Samsung, Intel, and Wind River. The operator claims it recently initiated the world’s first completely virtualized 5G data session – from the network core, to the radio access network (RAN), and the edge of the network. 

Samsung’s 5G virtualized RAN (vRAN) hardware, specifically a virtualized central unit, virtualized distributed unit (vDU), and radio units were integrated with Wind River’s Kubernetes and container-based middleware, and Intel’s Xeon Scalable processor, field-programmable gate array (FPGA) acceleration card, Ethernet network adapter, and its FlexRAN software reference architecture. 

“It was a combination of selecting the best-in-class vendors that supplied the necessary components, having them develop to our requirements, then bringing them together in the lab environment to conduct integration testing, bringing that into our own Verizon lab environment, and then moving into field tests, all of which came together for the main production into the live network,” Bill Stone, VP of technology development and planning at Verizon, told SDxCentral in a phone interview.

Verizon scopes repeatable processes

Modularity and flexibility are attractive outcomes of network virtualization, he said, adding that the operator intends to create repeatable processes that can scale with multiple vendors. While Verizon is, for the foreseeable future, sticking with Wind River’s platform and Intel’s hardware, it will also work with “multiple suppliers of application software for the baseband functions, Stone said.

“The specific focus for the foreseeable future is going to be on introducing additional application vendors for the baseband functions. And this does give us flexibility now because in the past we were dependent on custom hardware and custom software from a single vendor. Now that we have a common platform, we have a great deal more flexibility in terms of introducing additional application vendors,” he explained.

Cristina Rodriguez, VP of Intel's Data Platforms Group and GM of its Wireless Access Network Division, also remarked on the cross-vendor integration work involved. “Collaboration across a robust ecosystem is critical to enable the global scale of virtualized RAN, and the work between Verizon, Intel, Samsung, and Wind River underscores that,” she wrote in response to questions.

Intel was particularly excited to see its FlexRAN software reference architecture “serving as a sort of virtualization development blueprint for the vRAN ecosystem for this effort,” she said. “We are seeing traction in the marketplace for vRAN solutions, with various service providers starting to trial and some starting to deploy solutions based on Intel Xeon.”

Wind River CEO Kevin Dallas, in a statement, noted that the virtualization effort “is not as simple as retrofitting virtualization infrastructure used in the data center. The network operator needs to deliver the key 5G requirements, which include ultra-low latency, high availability, scalability, and security in a cost-effective way across a dynamic landscape with multiple remote nodes in order to enable new 5G services.”

Samsung gains prominence in Verizon’s RAN

The coordinated effort occurred over many months, and required Samsung engineers to validate vDU functionality on the hardware and virtualization platform, “followed by an effort to ensure that performance matched that of a purpose-built hardware [baseband unit],” Alok Shah, VP of networks strategy at Samsung Electronics America, wrote in response to questions. 

“Samsung expects to integrate our hardware and software into additional platforms as more operators introduce vRAN architecture into their networks,” he added.

Samsung’s involvement is also noteworthy because while the vendor prepares to make its fully virtualized RAN 5G offering commercially available within the next month, it is also poised to gain a greater share of Verizon’s RAN contract. Verizon is preparing to “cut bait completely on Nokia — take them to zero,” and effectively split its RAN contract with Samsung and Ericsson going forward, Ryan Koontz, senior research analyst at Rosenblatt Securities, told SDxCentral last month. 

Stone did not address Nokia’s level of future involvement, other than to say the operator is “working with the entire ecosystem of suppliers on a path to virtualization,” adding that “all vendors that are part of the ecosystem are part of this process to virtualize network functions.”

Various virtualization efforts underway

Verizon said it achieved full virtualization of baseband functions on Nokia RAN equipment in May 2019, but that effort was limited to a lab, whereas Samsung’s equipment is now operating in a single market on a live network. Without addressing its RAN vendor mix directly, Stone said the fully virtualized framework “will be deployed over wider and wider geographic areas over the coming months, and quarters, and years ahead.”

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg late last year said efforts to virtualize the operator’s various networks under a common, unified framework was 60% complete. Stone said he couldn’t put a new percentage on that endeavor, but noted that most of the previous virtualization activity occurred in the core.

“We’re on the same trajectory and we continue to increase the flexibility in our network by virtualizing more network functions where it makes sense to do so,” he said. “We’ve been migrating off of the custom hardware platforms onto the Verizon cloud platform with virtualized network functions, so that’s been ongoing for many years and that’s where we’ve made a great deal of progress.”

Virtualizing RAN functions is a parallel but separate effort because it involves activities that place virtualization out closer to the edge of the network, he explained. “Now we’re pushing the Verizon cloud platform further out, closer to the cell site, and onto the cell site itself.”

This framework ultimately improves Verizon’s ability to distribute the cloud to the edge and strengthens its objectives on mobile edge computing, network slicing, and lower latency, Stone said. 

“The network is largely virtualized today, but there are some components where it just makes sense … to stay a little longer on the legacy custom platform, either for financial, economic reasons, or other operational considerations. So we’re not setting a specific target where I would say we’re going to be 100%,” he said.