Hello everyone and welcome to ZD Tech, ZDNet’s daily editorial podcast. My name is Pierre Benhamou and today I will explain to you why network cores and their upgrade to 5G are emerging as critical issues for operators… but not only !
In mid-June, Bouygues Telecom bet on the Swedish equipment manufacturer Ericsson to manufacture its 5G network core during 2023. Previously, its competitor Orange had opted for Nokia, instructing the Finnish giant to make its own 5G network core. , again by 2023. If this decision seems trivial to you, well think again! It is in fact extremely structuring for operators, who are counting on this upgrade to expand their next-generation mobile offers and finally be able to offer the speeds so vaunted by 5G promoters in recent years.
If these partnerships are dictated by economic and technological logics, geopolitics also plays a major role. Like many Western countries, France has worked in recent years to limit the involvement of Chinese telecom giants, namely Huawei and ZTE, in the core networks of French operators.
A central element of networks
For the public authorities, it is above all a question of limiting the weight of these Chinese companies, regularly suspected of collusion with Beijing, in a context of strong tensions between the Western bloc and the Middle Kingdom. But the position of the French authorities in this dossier is also due to the critical role played by the core networks in the infrastructure of the fixed and mobile networks.
For simplicity, let’s break down a telecommunications network. First of all, there is the access network, which designates all the means allowing our terminals to be connected to the network. This access network can take the path of radio waves in the case of wireless networks, but also fiber or copper in the case of fixed or wired networks. To manage the operation and management of networks, operators rely on dedicated information systems. And for everything else, you ask me? Well, the latter rely on network cores, which as their name suggests, act as the central core of telecommunications networks.
It is up to them to manage access and their security, but also subscriber authentication, the correct routing of calls to their destination or interconnection with other networks. Enough to make it a critical element for operators who are counting on their modernization and the addition of technologies specific to 5G to make the new generation of mobile technology essential.