Assuring

the future
of RAN
By Sean Kinney
N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 9

JUNE 2016

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 FEATURE REPORT
Introduction
Supported by the availability
of consumer handsets and CPEs,
2019 has seen dozens of operators
launch both mobile and fixed 5G
networks on four continents using
sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave fre-
quencies. This feat in and of itself
has required a massive investment
in cutting-edge radio access net-
work equipment with a particular
emphasis on massive MIMO anten-
na arrays and dense, small cell net-
works. Next year, expect dynamic
spectrum sharing to rapidly scale
5G coverage, increased densifica-
tion in urban areas as consumer up-
take accelerates, and large public
venues will leverage the next-gen-
eration cellular in an effort to cre-
ate new consumer experiences and,
potentially, revenue streams.
Despite all of this development,
5G is still in its early days with the
next major milestone coming with
a transition to standalone mode, in-
vestments in edge computing infra-
structure to support a wide variety
of vertical use cases, and a further
move toward general-purpose com-
puting infrastructure from the core
all the way out to the edge, includ-
ing the RAN. RAN virtualization
swaps out proprietary baseband
2
equipment for generic server infra-
structure creating a virtual signal
source, a much more IT-centric ap-
proach to delivering capacity. The
next step is pervasive virtualization
and open interfaces that allow for
hardware and software interoper-
ability, essentially allowing for op-
erators or other network operators
to mix and match vendors based on
the specific needs of a particular
deployment--otherwise known as
creating an open RAN.
Understanding open RAN
Open RAN is all about flipping
the current paradigm of network
economics from proprietary, sin-
gle-vendor radio sites to a more mix-
and-match approach to selecting
best-of-breed, more IT-type hard-
ware and connecting it all via open
interfaces and specialized software.
As Ken Sandfeld, president of
SOLiD, put it: “The panacea of be-
ing able to mix-and-match hard-
ware and software is obviously
not here yet but it’s moving in the
right direction.” As to the notion of
openness creating a, well, opening
for smaller vendors to win more
Tier 1 carrier business, it’ll take a
change of mindset on the carrier
side, he said.
“The biggest issue that’s going on
with the Tier 1s...is they only like
to work with really big companies.
We’re not one of those. We’re strong
vendors and obviously we provide
to the Tier 1s but [large carriers are]
looking for large vendors. It’s kind
of a catch 22 for everyone.”
Airspan’s Damiano Coletti, vice
president of strategy and market-
ing, said the vendor’s efforts to de-
couple its hardware and software to
allow customers to mix and match
vendor solutions come with two
main drivers: “I think it’s techno-
logical and economic innovation.It
allows for focus. You get the people
who are focused on certain things.
You’re not forced to go to a one stop
shop where maybe one link of the
chain is not as strong as the other.”
Sandfeld echoed this idea of “fo-
cus. Unlike some of my competition
that owns one of everything...we are
going to go after specific things and
win. There’s a DNA that goes with
SOLiD. The enterprise trusts us, the
campuses trust us, the SOLiD name
equals reliability. We acknowledge
we’re not going to make all the RAN
software. Mavenir, they don’t want
to do what we do. They’re counting
on us to do a good job at what we
do. There’s different ways to skin
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 FEATURE REPORT
the cat. We’re focused on anything
having to do with in-building.”
Speaking of Mavenir, company ex-
ecutives, including during 5G Asia
in Singapore, have been evangeliz-
ing the centrality of shifting net-
work economics by de-costing RAN
infrastructure to enable successful
5G at scale as well as take on Erics-
son, Huawei and Nokia.
In an Oct. 16 statement, compa-
ny CEO Pardeep Kohli pointed out
that delivering open, virtualized
RAN solutions follows its work in
virtualized VoLTE, VoWi-Fi, IMS
core and other parts of the net-
work. “Operators need alternatives
to the traditional vendors, particu-
larly in countries with restrictions,
and as a U.S.-based and headquar-
tered company we are that alter-
native,” he said.
4
“I think it’s one of the biggest
changes that’s really going to come
out in the 5G world,” Mavenir’s John
Baker said in an interview. “Open
RAN really is the ability to change
the vendor ecosystem. What we’ve
seen is a whole bunch of vendor
lock-in that has really happened
through the standardization pro-
cesses. Openness is now starting
to appear in the industry, which I
think is going to bring a lot of new
innovation and new vendors into
this marketplace.”
O-RAN Alliance
The O-RAN Alliance came to be
in February 2018 when the xRAN
Forum combined with the C-RAN
Alliance. It’s an operator-led orga-
nization but is increasingly tally-
ing new vendor members. Upon its
Image courtesy of Mavenir
founding, AT&T CTO Andre Fuet-
sche said the telecoms industry “is
approaching an inflection point,
where increasing infrastructure
virtualization will combine with
embedded intelligence to deliver
more agile services and advanced
capabilities to our customers.This
is a global change that will impact
all network operators.”
Since its inception, O-RAN Alli-
ance has established eight working
groups focused on:
• Use cases and overall
architecture;
• Non-real-time RAN intelligent
controller and AI interface;
• Near-real-time RIC and E2
interface;
• Open fronthaul interfaces;
• Open F1/W1/E1/X2/Xn
interfaces;
• Cloudification and
orchestration;
• Whitebox hardware
• And stack reference design
Since getting started, those work-
ing groups have developed 18 spec-
ifications ranging from transport
and application protocols to fron-
thaul control, management and
synchronization. Membership has
grown to include 22 operators and
more than 100 contributing vendors.

Telecom Infra Project
The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) is
a consortium led by Facebook cen-
tered on rethinking how telecom
network infrastructure is designed
and deployed. TIP is an offshoot of
the Open Compute Project (OCP)
and is focused on making efficient,
flexible and scalable network
hardware. The general premise is
that, given data consumption and
creation trends, current infrastruc-
ture cannot keep up in a way that’s
affordable to the companies that
foot the bill. The primary aim is to
create flexible technologies that
networks can use both now and in
the future.
FEATURE REPORT
Image courtesy of O-RAN Alliance
TIP hosts a number of RAN-related
projects:
• OpenRAN is working to “de-
fine and build 2G,3G, 4G and
5G RAN solutions based on a
general-purpose vendor-neu-
tral hardware and software-de-
fined technology”;
• vRAN Fronthaul “is developing
5
 FEATURE REPORT
and validating solutions to
enable virtualized RAN deploy-
ments where fiber is unavail-
able or unaffordable”;
• OpenCellular “is a publicly
available RAN solution tailored
for rural connectivity”;
• OpenRAN 5G NR Base Station
“is collaborating to define a
whitebox platform for an 5G
NR access point that is easy to
configure and deploy”:
• CrowdCell “is developing LTE
relay architectures to extend
indoor coverage with reduced
capex and opex”;
• And solutions integration “is
defining open interfaces/APIs
between internal components
to enable multi-vendor, in-
teroperable RAN solutions.”
Spotlight on Parallel Wireless
But when you disaggregate a radio
site based on open interfaces and
specifications developed by groups
like the O-RAN Alliance, you cre-
ate a new kind of operating model.
Say your Verizon and something
goes wrong in a Nokia market–it’s
pretty clear who you call to fix that.
When you swap out that stack for a
multi-vendor site broken apart and
6
glued back together by software, that
solution becomes a little less clear.
With deals in place with ma-
jor global operators, Altiostar,
Mavnenir and Parallel Wireless
are among the leading open RAN
vendors. But, for its part, Parallel
doesn’t see those other two as its
main competition; rather, according
to Eugina Jordan, vice president of
marketing, the company competes
primarily against Ericsson, Huawei
and Nokia.
“We make everything cloud-
In an interview at Mobile World
native so brownfield and
Congress Los Angeles, Jordan said
greenfield becomes one unified
that Parallel operates with a start-
RAN architecture.”
up mentality and has scrapped to
Eugina Jordan, Vice President of
win the business it has.
Marketing, Parallel Wireless
“Parallel Wireless, we are an un-
derdog that’s becoming a unicorn,”
Jordan told RCR Wireless News. Vodafone is trialling OpenRAN in
“We don’t want to go and just sell the U.K., the Democratic Republic
the company. We want to build a of Congo and Mozambique, with
sustainable business. What are the latter two focused on rural con-
you guys going to be when you nectivity. Vodafone has also con-
grow up? We’re going to be the next ducted OpenRAN lab testing with
Nokia or Huawei.” Vodacom in South Africa and has
In October, Vodafone tapped deployed in both urban and rural
Parallel’s open RAN product for areas in Turkey.
deployment in Turkey and the “We are pleased with trials of
Democratic Republic of the Congo OpenRAN and are ready to fast
as part of a larger production trial track it into Europe as we seek to
under the auspices of the Telecom actively expand our vendor ecosys-
Infra Project. tem,” Group CEO Nick Read said in a

statement. “OpenRAN improves the
network economics enabling us to
reach more people in rural commu-
nities and that supports our goal to
build digital societies in which no-
one is left behind.” Parallel, as well
as Mavenir and Lime Microsystems,
are all involved in the testing.
Parallel has carved out a niche
serving rural and remote locations
“Initially the value proposition
of these next generation
architectures was heavily
weighted towards the TCO
benefits of using open
interfaces, sharing resources,
mixing and matching baseband
and radio, and utilizing more
general purpose processors.”
Stefan Pongratz, Senior Director,
Dell’Oro Group
like what it’s doing in the DRC
with Vodaofne and what it’s do-
ing in Alaska with local operator
OptimERA.
“We make everything cloud-na-
tive so brownfield and greenfield
becomes one unified RAN archi-
tecture,” Jordan said. To the rural
point,” When we were no one, that’s
who we could get. They gave us a
chance in rural [markets and] five
years later we’ve deployed, we’ve
proven. Now guess who they’re giv-
ing the big projects to? They’re giv-
ing us whole countries. Our goal as
a company is to make 5G more ac-
cessible for everyone. And it’s from
big cities to small villages. Once you
provide connectivity and you make
healthcare or education more ac-
cessible…the economy improves.”
Open RAN’s “value narrative is
morphing”
The dominant open RAN talking
points focus on leveraging open
interfaces and general purpose
hardware to lower total cost of
ownership while providing opera-
tors the ability to mix-and-match
at radio sites while fostering com-
petition in a vendor market domi-
nated by three major players.
Prior to announcing an
FEATURE REPORT
investment in open RAN vendor
Altiostar via its venture-focused
subsidiary, Telefonica Global CTIO
Enrique Blanco said, “We are de-
signing and building cloud-based
networks,” calling the shift in net-
work design “extraordinarily am-
bitious.” Blanco said 5G networks
have to be programmable; “This is
a must because we need to monitor
huge growth in the data capabil-
ities for our customers. This net-
work needs to be open and we need
to get all these capabilities.”
Blanco hit on the contrast be-
tween an LTE outage today and a
5G outage in the future. If 5G goes
down, “We will be stopping society,”
he said. “We will be stopping cars,
hospitals, industries. This is just im-
possible to happen. This is a signifi-
cant part of the 5G future.”
5G is much more IT-centric than
LTE networks, often described as
requiring cloud-native design with
flexible computing managed by au-
tomated software processes orches-
trate workloads distributed from
the core out to the edge of the net-
work, which would include radio
sites, customer premises, central
offices and even devices.
“This future is not possible
through the continued deployment
7
 FEATURE REPORT
of traditional RAN solutions,”
Ashraf Dahod, Altiostar’s CEO
said in a statement. “To be success-
ful, operators must embrace new
innovative solutions that possess
the openness, programmability
and automation delivered through
a software-defined, cloud-native
platform and an open supply
chain. We are honored that a global
operator like Telefónica is joining
us on the journey of innovation in
the RAN industry through disag-
gregation, network virtualization
and building a multi-vendor open
ecosystem.”
While current 5G services are fo-
cused on the consumer segment,
the real, long-term revenue source
is likely to come from providing
specialized network service
support highly variable sets of en-
terprise and industrial use cases.
A cloud-native network would be
designed to serve up network slices
to optimally service specific appli-
cations like manufacturing robot-
ics, real-time video analytics and
autonomous vehicles, for instance.
Blanco, in a statement accom-
panying the Altiostar investment
announced, described this
the ability “to expand our net-
work capabilities and make them
8
available to our customers at the
speed of software.”
In addition to the network eco-
nomics piece, this idea of flexible ar-
chitecture, itself part and parcel of
TCO, is another central point of the
virtualized, open RAN story, as well
as the larger end-to-end cloud-native
network story, which hopefully ends
with the ability to automatically de-
liver customized network slices.
But, according to a research note
from Dell’Oro Group Senior Director
Stefan Pongratz, the open RAN “val-
ue narrative is morphing. Initially
the value proposition of these next
generation architectures was heav-
ily weighted towards the TCO ben-
efits of using open interfaces, shar-
ing resources, mixing and matching
to baseband and radio, and utilizing
more general purpose processors.”
However, he observed based on
recent conversations, including at
two of the aforementioned trade
shows, “that the performance per
watt per dollar delta between x86
and ASICs is perhaps not converg-
ing as much as initially expected,
resulting in an increased weight
towards the demand side value up-
as side as a result of easier access to
the framework for 3rd party appli-
cation developers.”
In a world where RAN equipment
is flexible and multi-purpose, essen-
tially a reflection of the software
its running, x86 is king. However,
application specific integrated cir-
cuits (ASICs), as the name implies,
are designed to do one thing and do
it well. So putting the cost element
aside, the question becomes can
general-purpose hardware match
or exceed the performance provid-
ed by a purpose-built box.
“One of the fundamental key ques-
tions we are admittedly struggling
a bit with is the fact that on the one
hand the operators would like to see
more RAN/5G competitors,” Pon-
gratz wrote. “But on the other hand,
there are so many changes hap-
pening from a supply and demand
perspective and the R&D required
to provide a competitive 5G portfo-
lio with the increased complexity
in the RAN and core, the increased
use of machine learning and auto-
mation in services, and the prolif-
eration of new use cases spanning
across a wide range of industries,
will possibly move the needle in the
opposite direction and complicate
the entry for new entrants that
want to catch up in the 5G race.”
Let’s ask Verizon’s Chief Network
Officer Nicki Palmer if open RAN

will make her life easier or more
difficult. “It’s both,” she said during
an interview at MWC Los Ange-
les. “Our ideal, like our North Star,
is that we’re able to pick best-of-
breed componentry and stitch it
together. Best-of-breed gives us
the performance characteristic we
want [and]the cost we want.” On the
other hand, open RAN “does require
a level of interop a level of integra-
tion. But I think, you know, we’re a
while away from fully realizing the
vision that I just laid out but we’ve
been chipping away at it and work-
ing towards it.”
Spotlight on SOLiD Technologies
Earlier this year SOLiD Technol-
ogies joined the O-RAN Alliance in
an effort to help shape the open
interfaces needed to shift net-
work economics and foster inno-
vation in the RAN vendor space.
Last week during Mobile World
Congress Los Angeles, the compa-
ny announced an O-RAN compli-
ant SURF radio platform.
SOLiD President Ken Sandfeld,
in an interview with RCR Wireless
News, said the open RAN movement
is gaining momentum. “We feel like
it’s making really good progress,
which is why we’re developing to the
FEATURE REPORT
current spec. The panacea of being
able to mix and match hardware and
software is obviously not here yet,
but it’s moving in the right direction.”
Sandfeld said the new platform is
being tested in the U.S., Korea and
Japan. “We’re building different
options…and different configu-
rations to basically test out how
this will look from an installation
standpoint, how it will look from a
cost standpoint, and we’re also look-
ing at a bunch of hybrid options on
“I believe the first [open]
how we utilize the technology in
networks will be directly to the
different ways.”
enterprises and the reason is
Sandfeld reflected on the current
because they can. For the first
vendor/Tier 1 operator paradigm
time in a long time, they have
and what it means for companies control over their destinies for
like SOLiD, as well as market dy- spectrum.es one unified RAN
namics that could open up the RAN architecture.”
vendor playing field. Ken Sandfeld, President, SOLiD
“The carriers only like to work Americas
with the really big companies. We’re
not one of those. We’re strong and current vendors, the three big guys,
obviously we provide to the Tier or perhaps, since it’s a little more
1s…but they’re looking for large compartmentalized, they might
vendors. I think there’s a few points start trying the O-RAN solutions in
of entry that will help. Private LTE more compartmentalized, segment-
and CBRS is a great point of entry. ed parts of their network. They seem
We see it as a point of entry for our like they want to go that route.”
O-RAN products.”
He continued: “To the extent later What’s the market entry point?
that carriers are able to get PAL li- The move towards fully-interop-
censes on CBRS, they can go to their erable, multi-vendor radio access
9
 FEATURE REPORT
networks is more of a marathon
than a sprint, with operators and
vendors actively engaging in spec-
ification development through the
O-RAN Alliance and collaborating
on an assortment of trials. And
while the network economics asso-
ciated with a commercial-off-the-
shelf hardware approach to RAN
investment are clear, achieving
meaningful scale is likely still a
ways in the future.
Here’s where open RAN intersects
with two other significant indus-
try trends–operators have largely
stepped back from investing in
in-building systems for anything
other than high-value venues like
NFL stadiums or airports; and en-
terprise owners, through things
like private networks built on CBRS
spectrum, for instance, now can
control their own wireless destiny
so to speak.
So, in a climate where enterprises
need to invest in wireless systems
and have access to spectrum, the
thinking is they will look to invest
in the most capital efficient man-
ner possible, which would be an
open, virtualized RAN, rather than
a vendor-specific stack. And pene-
tration of open RAN technologies
into the enterprise could serve as a
10
proving ground of sorts before op-
erators adopt the technology across
their networks.
For Tier 1 operators, open RAN
take is “not going to be a fast adop-
tion. It’s not going to be a slash
cut,” Sandfeld said. That’s because
operators only stand to benefit
when there’s a healthy level of
competition with the open RAN
space, he said. “It needs to be open
standards long enough so that
multiple competitors can be vying
for that business.”
So what is the outlook for open
RAN adoption? “I believe the first
networks will be directly to the en-
terprises and the reason is because
they can. For the first time in a long
time, they have control over their
destinies for spectrum. If you’re a
customer that’s big enough to take
on the challenge of building your
own networks, it’s because you
have the resources to do it and you
have the ability to do it.”
He continued: “Enterprises need
solutions they can scale. We need
to accomplish what the enterprise
and the carrier needs. Giving a
carrier a cheaper RAN solution
isn’t going to solve the problem,” of
decreased in-building/enterprise
system investment. “They still can’t
afford to deploy. If it means there’s
a server that each carrier remotely
loads their software in, then so be
it, the system can work that way.”
RAN virtualization and openness
gradually shifting vendor dynam-
ics, Airspan sees its history of hard-
ware and software development,
as well as its track record of large-
scale deployment with operators
like Reliance Jio and Sprint, as po-
sitioning the company to play a big
role in 5G builds and address key
vertical industries.
Case in point, during Mobile
World Congress Los Angeles, Air-
span announced its working with
in-flight connectivity provider
Gogo to deliver ground-to-air 5G to
private aircraft, regional jets and
smaller mainline birds. That net-
work is tracking for availability in
the 2021 timeframe.
And with this win in aviation,
Airspan’s Damiano Coletti told
RCR Wireless News, speaks to Air-
span’s ability to address complex,
vertical-specific use cases. “The op-
timistic view is there are a lot of in-
dustries with billions in capex that
require this technology as a tool for
their digital transformation. We see
the opportunity to address these
premium markets.”
 FEATURE REPORT
As compared to its competitors,
Coletti said Airspan’s history of
hardware and software develop-
ment gives it an edge in tailoring
product sets to meet the needs of
different end users. In the case of
Gogo, Layer 1 ability to track fast
moving objects is a key part of the
larger value proposition.
Coletti also discussed the compa-
ny’s efforts to decouple its hard-
ware and software to allow cus-
tomers to mix and match vendor
solutions. “I think it’s technological
and economic innovation,” he said
of open RAN. “It allows for focus.
You get the people who are focused
on certain things. You’re not forced
to go to a one stop shop where may-
be one link of the chain is not as
strong as the other.”
Back to the enterprise as the mar-
ket entry point for open RAN, Ma-
venir’s John Baker acknowledged
that potential while also bringing
the issue back to operator’s willing-
ness to interconnect. “Enterprise
is...a segment that is getting a lot of
attention re open RAN,” he wrote.
“Given the separation of in-build-
ing today that is supplied by a wid-
er group of vendors it is seen as an
easier opportunity especially when
they can be standalone systems
12
like CBRS. The same problem still
exists of connection to the carrier
existing core of the vRAN in place
of the eNB that is currently con-
nected to the DAS. Bottomline: the
interconnected carrier still has to
be onboard with open RAN.”
Network automation is key to service
assurance
The complexity of future 5G
networks, simultaneously han-
dling consumer, enterprise and
machine-based data transmission,
requires investments in network
automation. But, as operators take
a step-by-step to automating oper-
ational processes, the rewards are
clear but the risks are myriad and
speak to both technology-facing de-
cisions as well as a shift in internal
structure and culture.
EXFO VP, SASS Division, Ab-
delkrim Benamar said, “Auto-
mation is extremely powerful if
you make the right decisions but
if you start to make wrong deci-
sions, automation only increases
the damages. This is why I believe
there will be a mix of open loop au-
tomation for some elements of the
network coupled with some closed
loop automation.”
He continued: “To be able to have
real meaningful building blocks
for powerful automation, it’s not
enough to just have the right data
from probes…It’s also to have a
deep knowledge of the underly-
ing topology of the network so not
only you can asses issues related to
signaling on the control plane or
issues related to usage of services
on the user plane but be able to cor-
relate those issues.”
From the service assurance per-
spective, operators are currently
focused on adding capacity to net-
works and then thinking about as-
suring the services that ride on in-
creasing capacity levels. But, as we
move to cloud-native 5G networks
able to provide network slices like-
ly tied to stringent SLAs, service
assurance is imperative to creating
new 5G revenue streams.
Benamar gave the example of
automated troubleshooting and
called it out as an automation use
case that’s working today but is one
step in a multi-step process. “I think
the zero-touch thing…that’s an end
goal. All of this ca start to be auto-
mated so we help…engineers flag
issues and identify the most im-
pactful and take action and then
implement that next best action as
an intermediate step toward fully

self-healing networks.”
So, given the complexity and opex
management improvements net-
work automation enables, at what
point do operators become com-
fortable enough with closed loop
systems that they take their hands
off the wheel so to speak?
“That’s the $1 billion question,”
Benamar said. “I think it depends
on the culture of the service pro-
vider. Some are a bit more conser-
vative, they’re not early adopters,
they go step by step. They will
take on non-vital parts of the net-
work and automate things. It re-
ally depends on the culture of the
service provider.”
VMware recently announced a
deal with Cellwize Wireless Tech-
nologies that contemplates a col-
laboration around “a network-wide
5G automated assurance solution
from the core, through the RAN
and to the edge.” Cellwize will com-
bine its “RAN intelligence” tech
with VMware’s Smart Assurance
platform; that will cover unified
management of optical, virtual and
physical networks.
“Cellwize RAN automation and
orchestration technology with
VMware Smart Assurance can give
CSPs end-to-end control of mobile
services,” Cellwize CEO Ofir Zemer
said. “We are excited to bring our
leading-edge technology to the ta-
ble and be a key enabler of 5G de-
ployments worldwide.”
VMware’s Gabriele Di Piazza, vice
president of solutions for the Telco
and Edge Cloud business unit, said
the Cellwize partnership will help
“further extend” automated ser-
vice assurance. “As CSPs are now
adapting for the 5G rollout, the
ability to have end to end visibility
and control across the entire net-
work — from RAN to the core and
edge networks — alongside with on-
going intelligence and automation
is a must in this new reality.”
In an earlier interview, Di Piazza
said, “For a couple of years we’ve
been discussing how the world of
assurance is changing. With 5G,
you’re starting to introduce…the
concept of slices. You actually
start to charge for and create spe-
cific services. Now you’re moving
to a much more dynamic approach
to assurance.”
According to Neeraj Patel, senior
VP and GM of Software & Services
at Radisys, RAN is “the most com-
plex piece in the telecom maze. The
open RAN […] initiative [is being]
driven by the operators globally. It
FEATURE REPORT
is all about open interfaces, open
architecture, open APIs, open hard-
ware and software,” he explained
at Mobile World Congress Los Ange-
les. “But why?”
Patel continued: “You have these
operators that have come together
creating a lot of momentum globally
behind this initiative to see how do
we actually take RAN and get this
from its monolithic box and break
it into disaggregated elements for
having multi-vendors coming in for
white box hardware, software-de-
fined components […] and then add-
ing layers in, which is where a lot of
the work is going on today.”
In essence, as virtualization and
openness extends from the core
network out into the RAN, service
assurance must similarly evolved
to become an end-to-end, automat-
ed process. Analysys Mason shifted
from the term “service assurance”
to “automated assurance” and es-
timates the market will be worth
$7.1 billion by 2022. “Automation
of assurance processes using ad-
vanced analytics such as machine
learning and AI will drive [CSP]
spending in this market during
the forecast period,” said Anil Rao,
principal analyst in the segment
for Analysys Mason.
13
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14
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