5G and the technologies that enable it are key drivers for ultra-low latency and faster mobile broadband applications and use cases. It is against this background that 3GPP's 5G specifications release is behind many of the decisions of service providers to invest in their networks to support and monetize 5G use cases.  

Amdocs is a leading vendor in the network function virtualization domain. We are also an active partner to both CSPs and other industry leaders in the quest to create and showcase valuable 5G use cases. Our ability to do this is based on a number of factors. Firstly, our history as a trusted advisor throughout the major industry transitions over the past 35 years. Secondly, as a result of our leadership and key contribution to ONAP (Open Network Automation Platform) and our work with its early adaptors, which will be critical to any 5G future architecture.  

One of these industry leaders is Intel, whose new reference design now enables service providers to deploy new, revenue-producing services, supporting a variety of use case such as virtual, merged, augmented reality, retail, industrial, IoT, and gaming. Together, our two companies will be providing a live demo of Intel's new 5G network infrastructure reference design showcasing mobile edge cloud computing at 5G World.  

Intel's reference design showcases how virtualization that traditionally occurred in the back end and core, has moved toward the RAN and the network edge, thereby enabling 5G to fulfil on its promise. But such ability creates the need for end-to-end service orchestration across the multiple network domains - something which Amdocs NFV powered by ONAP is able to do very well.  

Let's look at a couple of common 5G use case enablers in this context; namely, vRAN (virtual radio access network) and MEC (multiple access network edge computing). The support of a vRAN is considered a prerequisite for the evolution of 5G by utilizing network slicing, which must support different connectivity and performance requirements associated with varying use cases and monetization possibilities. Meanwhile, MEC utilizes virtualization and cloud computing technologies to run and manage applications and services at the edge of the mobile network, thereby providing a low-latency, high-bandwidth service experience.