SAN DIEGO — Cisco is at the “tip of the spear” in driving mobile network transformation efforts and for many operators that begins with virtualization of the core, Bob Everson, global director of mobility and 5G at Cisco, told SDxCentral at this week's Cisco Live.

One of the key aspects of network transformation is access independence, he explained. Whereas mobile networks have historically been built, defined, and constrained by radio access network (RAN) equipment, many operators now view 5G as an opportunity to design their networks around the applications and operational models they want to support, Everson said.

“We hit this optionality around radio technologies because that’s really just an access technology,” he said. “A lot of customers are coming to us looking at the mobile network from an architectural standpoint and so I think they see us somewhat as a bit of a neutral party from a radio standpoint … and we have a great view end-to-end now across all aspects of the network.”

Cisco is in talks with more than 100 network operators about 5G and more than 40 are currently deploying Cisco 5G solutions, including Rakuten, which is building a fully virtualized, software-defined mobile network in Japan. Cisco manages the whole supply chain and integration of vendors for Rakuten’s mobile network.

“It fundamentally alters the supply chain because you have these different radio vendors, you have the different radio software vendors, and you have this ability to build these integrated systems,” Everson said.

Many operators are trying to determine where best to start their network transformation journey, and Everson emphasizes that the evolution to 5G can be implemented in many stages. “If you take 5G, there’s the 5G systems architecture and then there’s the 5G airlink technology and you can sort of separate those two,” he said.

5G systems architecture principles — decomposing RAN infrastructure and different network functions; disaggregating hardware and software; and separating the user plane — can all be implemented now on 4G LTE, Everson explained. Rakuten, for example, is building a greenfield network on 5G systems architecture but will initially deliver 4G LTE services later this year and evolve to 5G next year via software updates.

“As things like network slicing become more of a reality, most [operators] are starting to realize that to do that they’re going to need a programmable interface into the different elements across their network,” Everson said.

However, once an operator deploys a 5G network, Cisco’s involvement may shift into a different role. “We’re decomposing the existing supply chain by doing this and so it changes the paradigm around things like systems integration and around ongoing maintenance and support,” Everson said. Cisco will continue to support systems integration around the telco cloud, but radio frequency planning will be managed by RAN vendors, he explained.

“There’s not just one approach for the way these things are going to be supported,” Everson said. “The whole mental model of what it is to build a mobile network and a radio network now is changing, and so a lot of the things that we’re learning from the data center and cloud environment now apply.”