Evolve to a high-performing, programmable network

Network APIs require an API gateway layer that translates network and IT domain APIs into services to be exposed to application service providers (ASPs) and developers, enabling you to seamlessly expose your network and OSS/BSS capabilities.

Network APIs enable service providers and developer platforms to unlock new business models, drive innovation and explore new revenue streams. However, achieving commercial scale will require a clear go-to-market strategy and collaboration with the ecosystem, as API adoption cannot be isolated to a single country and single service provider. API aggregators such as Aduna – a collaboration between Ericsson and leading telecom service providers – will play a key role in connecting networks and making APIs easily accessible to developer platforms and their developer communities.

Differentiated connectivity refers to the capability of service providers to offer multiple levels of connectivity services that meet the distinct and often varied performance requirements of emerging consumer and enterprise applications. By ensuring deterministic performance, these services drive digital transformation, fostering richer consumer applications and advanced enterprise solutions, and fueling revenue growth.

Unlocking such revenues will require continuous evolution of the differentiated connectivity toolbox, ensuring more predictable and reliable connectivity. This could include support for mechanisms such as Quality of Service (QoS), L4S, and user equipment route selection policies (URSP) through solutions such as Ericsson’s Dynamic Network Slice Selection.

Advanced Silicon (Ericsson Silicon) is at the heart of Ericsson Radio System. It is purpose-built for our mobile networks, our Ericsson Radio System, and all our 5G products across the radio, transport, and RAN compute. It's modular and reuses the same architecture and the same intellectual property across the Silicon range. What this enables for the service provider, is the very best network performance. It's also an enabler for innovation, for example, Ericsson Uplink Booster and Ericsson Spectrum Sharing. But most importantly, it provides the most optimal energy-efficient solution. Energy efficiency is crucial not only for energy consumption itself but also for reducing the size and weight of a radio or a RAN compute product.

The ongoing cloudification of network domains is replacing purpose-built network hardware with cloud-native software and cloud infrastructure. The evolution to cloud-native 5G core networks lays a foundation that will be further enhanced in coming years through a market-wide migration to cloud RAN.

As service providers move deeper into cloud-native ways of working, the nature of network evolution will also shift – enabling incremental network evolution, rather than huge network-generation growth spurts. This will also enable service providers to embrace more consistent investment paces for new technology in these areas.

There is an ongoing transformational trend of horizontalization in how networks are built, operated and opened for innovation. Instead of dedicated, well defined and vertically integrated nodes connected in a static network setup, today’s networks continue to evolve towards a more horizontal and dynamically adaptable architecture. This enables networks to deploy network functions and applications where and when they are needed to optimize performance and cost, and support business agility.

Open RAN shifts networks away from traditional set-ups with vertically integrated stacks, towards a vendor-agnostic cloud-native horizontal architecture that can be deployed on any site, any cloud, and any server platform. This makes it possible to manage RAN services and functions faster, more flexibly and with greater scalability. It also supports the development of intelligent RAN automation through rApps, ensuring that RAN remains highly efficient, secure and scalable.

Ericsson is driving the industry in all three areas of Open RAN architectures: cloudification, open interfaces and open management. Together with our partners, we can upgrade networks with superior products, industrialize deployment and operations, and unlock new revenue-generating capabilities through open, cloud-native transformation. More than a million Ericsson radios in the field are hardware-ready for the next generation of open fronthaul technology.

A future intelligent network will not just take decision autonomously, it will also provide knowledge representation, reasoning, and explanation facilities making zero-touch paradigm a trustworthy reality. Leveraging extensive domain knowledge and one of the largest data sets in the industry, Ericsson is using industry-leading intelligent solutions and AI to cut through complexity, address the requirements of modern technologies and use cases, increase network performance, lower operating costs, and enable network automation – all with a central focus on achieving concrete business goals and enabling new business models.