The 5G networks are not only envisioned as a
support for “Internet of Things” (IoT), but also as
means to give rise to an unprecedented scale of
emerging industries, instilling an infinite vitality
in future telecommunications. IoT requires
support for a diverse range of service types, such
as eHealth, Internet of Vehicles (IoV), smart
households, industrial control, environment
monitoring, and so on. These services will drive
the rapid growth of IoT and facilitate hundreds of
billions of devices to connect to the network,
which also conceives the “Internet of Everything”
vision especially from vertical industries.
The requirements for IoT services are also very
• Service diversity
The services foreseen in the 5G era fall into three
typical scenarios: enhanced Mobile Broadband
(eMBB), Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency Commu-
nications (URLLC), and massive Machine Type
Communications (mMTC). eMBB focuses on
services characterized by high data rates, such as
high definition (HD) videos, virtual reality (VR),
augmented reality (AR), and fixed mobile conver-
gence (FMC). URLLC focuses on latency-sensitive
services, such as self-driving, remote surgery, or
drone control. mMTC focuses on services that
have high requirements for connection density,
such as those typical for smart city and smart
agriculture use cases. Each scenario requires a
completely different network service and poses
requirements that are radically different, some-
times even contradictory.
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diverse. Services such as smart households,
smart grid, smart agriculture, and intelligent
meter reading, will require supporting an
extremely large number of connections and
frequently transmitted small data packets.
Services such as smart vehicles and industrial
control will require millisecond-level latency and
nearly 100% reliability, while infotainment
services will require extreme fix/mobile broad-
band connectivity. These requirements indicate
that the 5G networks need be more flexible and
scalable to support massive connections of
different nature. Meanwhile, operators will
perform a gradual shift away from pipe services
towards coping with vertical industry needs:
• Guaranteed performance
Several key performance indicators (KPIs) must
be simultaneously satisfied for some of the
above-mentioned services. For example, VR and
AR have strict requirements on data rate as well
as latency. Such demands become more strin-
gent for vertical industries, where the terminals
are normally "machines" with very low tolerance
on performance degradation.
• Fast deployment and short time-to-
market (TTM)
It is a long process to deploy conventional mobile
networks. A simple service update may take from 10
to 18 months. Such long cycles are very difficult to
meet tailored and fast service provisioning and
short TTM demands from vertical industries.
• Resource multiplexing and isolation
Different from current telecom practice, vertical
industries are likely to get involved with special-
ized network functions (dedicated routing,
mobility support, customized flow handling,
in-network processing, etc.). To handle such
diversity without losing operation efficiency,
operators prefer to use resource multiplexing
approach with secured isolation provisioning.
• Automation
Flexibility and scalability are the key features of
the 5G networks. Such networks cannot depend
on manual management. Fully automatic network
management techniques, such as self-diagnosis,
self-healing, automatic configuration, self-
optimization, and auto installation/plug-and-
play, are fundamental to achieve efficient
network operations and to provide the dynamic
service mix. With the progress of the automatic
network management techniques, management
will become more agile and more adaptive. New
tools for such management are required; in
particular, artificial intelligence (AI) and auto-
matic learning techniques should be considered
for the 5G networks.
• New ecosystem and business model
The 5G networks will support new roles and
business models, which may involve network
infrastructure providers, operators (mobile
network operators, mobile virtual network
operators, etc.), and vertical service providers.
These new roles and business relationships help
the telecom industry to build a new ecosystem
together with vertical industries.
• Convergence of fixed and mobile access
FMC is also a very important requirement,
because customers do expect the same user
experience regardless of the access technology
used. While today the architectures, service
concepts and ecosystems of fixed and mobile
networks differ in many aspects, it is envisioned
that with 5G these will converge. An architecture
that can natively handle all kinds of fixed and
mobile access technologies will contribute
significantly to enable the design goal of truly
converged 5G networks.
1. Industry Trends and
Requirements
