Keynote Speech 3: 6G – The Journey Towards a New Breeze of Cloud-Native Mobile Networking

Abstract

Summary form only given, as follows. A record of the panel discussion was not made available for publication as part of the conference proceedings. The architectures of mobile networks have seen an unprecedented techno-economic transformation, fusing the telco world within the cloud world, adding the spices of Software Engineering to the overall system design, and ultimately yielding the concept of Telco Cloud. This has brought significant benefits in terms of reducing expenditure and operational costs, flexibility in deployment, and faster time to market. The key enablers are Network Function Virtualization, Software-Defined Networking, and Edge/Cloud Computing. Artificial Intelligence is also kicking in this arena. When all these technologies are well integrated, the creation and lifecycle management of fully programmable, flexible, service-tailored, and automated end-to-end network slices become possible. This will support diverse 5G and beyond 5G services, spanning from Tactile IoT to Pervasive Robotics and Immersive Services. This talk will showcase how the architectures of different generations of mobile networks have evolved. It will also show the journey that 6G will be likely taking towards enabling a new breeze of cloud-native mobile networking; whereby the old-fashioned concept of “network of networks” would be simply replaced by a new vision of “service of services.”