Re: What do you think about the "cloudification" of mobile?

[Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa>]

On 1/26/22 23:04, Christopher Morrow wrote:

> It seems like some of the situation is:
>   "5g/mobile builds include a bunch more 'general machine' resources 
> which offload a bunch of the work from what was dedicated appliances/etc."
>
> Followed quickly by:
>   "Well, we don't have the resources/etc to design/build/run/maintain 
> that sort of thing in the field"
>
> In a bunch of mobile deployments (in the US at least) a lot of the 
> work was done by some vendor already, so swapping one vendor for 
> another isn't particularly new.
>    "Out with Nortel, in with Ericcsson!"
>
> As to 'is this cloud?' or not, that's probably not super important? If 
> the telco (as an example) could come to an agreement with ~bunches of 
> local sysadmin shops
> who'd all cooperate and build/deploy 'the same thing' (from the 
> goes-into and goes-outof perspective) a price points which would be 
> palatable. I imagine the telcos would have taken that direction.  
> Instead, they choose to minimize the number of contracts and options 
> and get cookie-cutter deployments.
>
> Folk may grate at 'aws' or 'azure' or 'gcp' ... but really the telco 
> folk (the customer in this case) is choosing someone to run infra for 
> them, under contract with what they hope are appropriate SLO/SLA and 
> repair properties. It certainly behooves them to think about failure 
> scenarios, but that's what SLO/SLA are for, right? :) and offloading 
> the methods of repair/avoidance is part of the contract process.

The classic MNO's will continue the same operational model, of 
contracting a vendor and giving them a floor in their building so they 
can operate the network. For them, it's a case of "if it works, don't 
fix it".

What content are doing by getting in on the game is, really, to open up 
the industry to other players that may want to either run their own 
private cellular networks, or start new mobile businesses at whatever 
scale they can muster, without having to lay out a ton of fresh capital 
in terms of money and people, to get going.

There is still room for both classic MNO and content-backed 
infrastructure. Which one wins out in the end is a matter of time, but 
it's great for the user, because they just want to get connected. They 
don't really care, anymore, who gives them that connection, as long as 
it works and doesn't break the bank.

Mark.