Capabilities of Business and Operational Support Systems for Pre-Commercial 5G Testbeds

Abstract

With the visions and high ambitions for the 5G ecosystem, mobile network operators (MNOs) and communication service providers (CSPs) embark on increased market complexity, with regard to volume and variety of users, customers, services, and partners. Digitalized, frictionless, and growth-enabling support system journeys become imperative. This article builds on the analysis of users' challenges and requirements when accessing support systems and proposes an architectural design for the 5G platforms' system support stack. It suggests the most important capabilities that 5G business support systems and operation support systems should have and explains why they are important from the perspective of pre-commercial 5G testbeds/experimental platforms. Our study focuses on the three main actors interacting with such platforms, namely the MNO/CSP, which operates and contributes infrastructure to the testbed; the vertical enterprise customer, who consumes services for performing experiments; and the third-party service provider, which complements the testbed by offering its own services through the platform or performs testing of its services under realistic conditions.