Telstra and Ericsson: A Seamless Journey to 5G and "Cloud?Native"

As an adjunct faculty member at Rutgers University School of Business, Executive Programs, I have taught, among other topics, Emerging Technologies. Recognized as a top influencer in Digital Transformation, I regularly provide research and consultations with leading tech companies, including Ericsson. Having served two terms as the mayor of a city of about 90,000 people in the United States, I have an abiding interest in the role of “Tech for Good”. I currently reside in Italy.

Sponsored by Ericsson Digital.

Let’s begin with the?“Why?”

In the video above, we learn about Telstra's “Why”. As Australia’s leading telecommunications company, Telstra is literally entrusted with safeguarding lives, accelerating business opportunities, and offering Australians the best telecommunications services possible. An industry leader, Telstra built Australia’s first and largest 5G network.

The Challenge: Transitioning to the Newest Technologies While Continuing to Provide Industry-Leading Communication Services to All of Australia?

As we have seen with many leading communication services providers, there has been a flattening of the average revenue per user (ARPU) in the telco industry. To combat this — Telstra has been extremely innovative in enhancing its services to capture new growth opportunities from new technologies. One way Telstra did this, is that they introduced a more efficient solution to reduce network complexity while seizing the opportunities of 5G.

A seamless journey to 5G and “cloud native” was a must for Telstra with so many people and enterprises depending so much on Telstra’s critical, uninterrupted services. Greater automation and orchestration were needed to quickly roll out and optimize new technologies and services. A partnership with Ericsson made a swift and seamless journey to 5G and “cloud native” possible.

5G and “Cloud Native” combine to provide businesses, consumers, and communities with vastly improved telecommunications services

5G, the fifth generation of cellular networks, is up to 100 times faster than 4G. It brings businesses, consumers, and communities near-real-time data exchange, offering new services, efficiencies, security, and experiences that come with its enhancements. It accelerates collaborations and innovations. It gives us the ability to connect everything, everywhere without delays.

Cloud Native “unlocks the potential of 5G” by providing a business model and technological framework that take advantage of all “the possibilities of the cloud.” Cloud Native gives enterprises the operational efficiencies that come with leveraging the cloud’s elasticity to quickly scale new capabilities, automate upgrades, adapting instantly to changing environments and needs, and obtaining cost efficiencies in the process. It brings vastly improved interoperability.

“The cloud-native 5G Core is a must-have component of a 5G network to deliver its full benefits to industries and consumers,” explains Monica Zethzon, Vice President and Head of Solution Area Packet Core at Ericsson.

?“It’s exciting to see how leading customers and 5G pioneers such as Telstra are now making it all a reality for their customers with networks empowered by our solutions. This is a recognition of our strategic investments to bring a leading 5G Core portfolio to market. It also shows how our vast experience in 5G supports our customers to achieve their visions and ambitions using our technology,” she added.

Transitioning from 4G to?5G

With Ericsson’s “Spectrum Sharing” (ESS), Telstra has been able to operate 4G and 5G services simultaneously, in the same spectrum, allowing Telstra to “move very quickly in offering a 5G coverage service across the whole 4G network layout.” In doing so, ESS enabled the introduction of 5G on existing 4G bands with minimal impact on live end-user service.

Ericsson’s “dual-mode” 5G Cloud Core solution empowered Telstra to launch new services based on 5G stand-alone technology while still caring for its existing 4G customer base in a common software platform.

Ericsson also ensured that the existing network infrastructure serving 4G was upgraded (software only) to add support to 5G non-standalone services.

Telstra’s Success

Telstra successful transitioning to 5G and cloud native, which is progressing in steps, “with each step providing concrete benefits”, is empowering the company to “expand its role in the communication services value chain by seizing new opportunities to offer new use cases and applications to both consumers and enterprises.”

With Ericsson’s collaboration, by way of example, Telstra will be able to leverage Ericsson’s cloud-native core solution capabilities in combination with Artificial Intelligence/ automation so that the network can “adapt to traffic needs or even predict what the traffic needs are, as well as to self-heal, move around and re-deploy across the underlying cloud infrastructure.”

Summarizing Telstra’s successful transitioning to 5G and cloud native, David Aders, Telstra’s Group Owner for Mobile Development and Product Engineering, observed:

The sky is the limit with this highly programmable architecture. We need to disrupt ourselves as an industry to actually get out there and be able to realize new services and move into all of the promising areas available to us with 5G.

* Special thanks to Ericsson’s Monica Zethson and Telstra’s David Aders for sharing their important insights on this case study.