The role of OpenRAN in securing 5G networks and the IoT

 

 

 

 

 

Telecoms.com periodically invites expert third parties to share their views on the industry’s most pressing issues. In this piece Martin Rudd, CTO of Telesoft Technologies analyses the opportunities presented by OpenRAN technology.

With recent announcements of joint initiatives from the likes of Rakuten and Telefonica, Dish Networks and Nokia, it comes as no surprise that OpenRAN is featuring prominently on the list of the most talked about telecoms trends of 2020.

Even the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has championed OpenRAN’s role in helping to make the UK less dependent on larger incumbent suppliers. The benefits are clear – reducing cost and increasing the resilience of mobile networks, as well as speeding up the development of interoperable solutions that can become the much-needed industry standard.

But, OpenRAN was initially heralded as a way for operators to improve network economics by cutting the cost of building mobile networks. The most significant cost in building a mobile network is the RAN. 5G is set to increase these costs further due to increased cell site density, the need for more backhaul capacity, plus various infrastructure improvements to enable new low latency services and applications.

OpenRAN has the potential to provide a much-needed platform for innovation, which helps drive new revenue opportunities and streams for operators and their customers. It’s something that is garnering attention from the wider technology community, beyond the traditional telecoms players. OpenRAN lowers the barriers to working with new vendors, creating a level playing field that enables the introduction and delivery of new applications at the edge of the network.

With vendor-neutral hardware, OpenRAN can reduce the reliance on a small number of vendors by decoupling the hardware and software components of the network. This disaggregation of hardware and software, and the development of isolated network sharing capabilities like node slicing, is making it increasingly feasible for mobile operators to realistically, and securely, share physical network resources as part of their 5G deployment.

The virtualisation that OpenRAN brings allows operators to run more easily and reliably create a distributed edge cloud that can deliver software-based network functions on standard servers. The move to a cloud-native architecture enables network functions and applications to be broken up into small microservices that can be mixed and matched to best suit the application required.

This, in turn, opens the door to local vendors and suppliers across the board, boosting the economy and enabling innovative solutions to the specific needs of that community. Whether it’s an organisation supplying white-box networking hardware or virtualised network functions, or someone deploying an application or service at the edge of the network, anyone adhering to the correct standards can be part of the makeup.

As a result, smart devices can be more tightly integrated into the network, rather than just as connected end points. This is vital to the development of ‘digital twins’ – physical objects that have a virtual online counterpart. These can span everything from simple IoT devices, through to connected multifunction devices and autonomous vehicles, and they extend all the way up to manufacturing, buildings, smart cities and even people.

And this is where perhaps one of the most interesting advantages of OpenRAN comes into play – the potential for it to improve network and data security, especially around 5G and IoT. It’s been a topic of discussion at the recent FCC ‘Forum on Open Radio Access Networks’ and the Prague 5G Security Conference.

It makes sense because the exponential rise in IoT connections (expected to rise to almost 25 billion globally by 2025, according to GSMA Intelligence) will naturally mean more potential threat vectors. And this is where the distributed and virtualised network design of OpenRAN can be advantageous. By implementing a mesh defence strategy, the security load can be divided up and the results aggregated, enabling discovery and provisioning by customer, service or application. Operators can then get a higher-level view and apply strategic decisions that filter right down to the most granular levels. This bespoke and segmented approach can also bolster national sovereignty, by enabling specific network paths to be routed and protected with additional security applications and monitoring.

What’s crucial in this scenario is the ability to monitor all traffic, including encrypted traffic (in a non-intrusive way) which enables SOC/NOC teams to derive threat intelligence or monitor Quality of Service (QoS) across their network. In the event of a large-scale attack, such as Distributed Denial of Service or credential stuffing attacks, the disaggregated and virtualised nature of OpenRAN can enable an operator to shut down a small part of the network and neutralise the attack while minimising network disruption. To accomplish this, operators need an uncompromised view of the network, devices and traffic.

Because OpenRAN seamlessly enables the ability to segregate the network for a variety of different consumer, enterprise and societal services, it can help to integrate data security into every aspect of the network by design, not just at the edge and core. At the same time, local data protection laws can be maintained.

Of course, delivering on the promise of innovation and an open marketplace requires trust. The combination of using open, robust standards and having security implemented by a trusted partner can ensure growth while protecting users and data. This can only be achieved by allowing operators to have as much visibility as possible, end-to-end across their whole network and the control to manage what goes in/out of it. This transparency is something that the large vendors don’t provide.

OpenRAN will enable mobile operators to take back control, reducing infrastructure costs by freeing them from a dependence on those large technology suppliers and their proprietary hardware. It also champions flexibility and interoperability, allowing operators to use the best technology solutions available from a range of smaller suppliers to deliver fast, reliable and secure mobile networking.

Block pay as you go phones to beat county lines drug dealers, police chief urges

 

A police chief today called on telecoms giants to shut down county lines drug dealers’ unregistered pay-as-you-go phones, capable of sending 500 texts to customers in seconds.

Detective Superintendent Gareth Williams says the £1 billion-a-year trade relies on unregistered handsets bought in cash with no questions asked. The mobiles are used to broadcast deals to large groups of buyers.

He has spoken to MPs about a new law similar to the one that significantly reduced metal theft when it became illegal to trade scrap for cash in 2013.

Mr Williams, who leads British Transport Police’s national crackdown on county lines gangs, told the Standard: “I doubt there’s something equally as simplistic as mobile companies helping us with this. Not many people send 500 texts in one go. So why have sims and phones got that capability?

“Mobile companies could stop people buying phones without giving personal details and not let them pay in cash.

“There are privacy arguments, I accept that, but the fact that people can go in a shop and buy 20 phones for £150 is highly unhelpful for us.

“We’ve caught youngsters with £65,000 in illicit cash. You can imagine what those sitting at higher tiers in the organisation are churning.”

County lines is the movement of drugs by gangs from cities into smaller towns, often exploiting children or vulnerable adults. Dealers from London, Birmingham and Liverpool often courier supplies to Brighton, Norwich, Cambridge and north and mid Wales.

Transport police have dozens of officers carrying out operations at train stations and on rail and Tube routes across England, Wales and Scotland.

County line operations have led to spikes in youth violence as gangs use knives and firearms to protect trade. Of 725 arrests, the youngest was just 13.

Mobile UK, the industry body for UK’s mobile operators, said: “While compulsory ID appears a simple solution, maintaining an up-to-date register would be hard to enforce, would not be fool-proof and could have severe unintended consequences for those who really need access to a mobile phone.”

5G infrastructure spend to double in 2020 – Gartner

With one eye keeping an eye on the troubles of Huawei, the likes of Ericsson and Nokia will be buoyed by Gartner predictions that 5G infrastructure should accelerate through 2020.
After years of waiting for the 5G era to arrive, it seems telecoms operators are ready to accelerate deployments. There might have been a brief pause to reprioritise operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Gartner does not believe that will have too much of a negative consequence on the sector.
The research firm is predicting worldwide spend on 5G infrastructure should hit $8.1 billion in 2020, double what was spend over the course of 2019. 5G will account for roughly 21% of the $38.1 billion spend on wireless infrastructure, which is a year-on-year dip of 4.4%.
“Investment in wireless infrastructure continues to gain momentum, as a growing number of CSPs are prioritizing 5G projects by reusing current assets including radio spectrum bandwidths, base stations, core network and transport network, and transitioning LTE/4G spend to maintenance mode,” said Kosei Takiishi of Gartner.
“Early 5G adopters are driving greater competition among CSPs. In addition, governments and regulators are fostering mobile network development and betting that it will be a catalyst and multiplier for widespread economic growth across many industries.”
In the early adopter markets, the network deployment competition is becoming increasingly common, while the latter stages of 2020 should see more spectrum auctions to fuel the momentum elsewhere.

Wireless infrastructure expenditure estimates (in millions)
Technology	2019	2020	Year-on-year
5G	4,146.6	8,127.3	96%
4G	20,693.2	16,402.0	-20%
3G	4,146.6	2,608.4	-37%
2G	797.4	472.2	-40%
Core	4,744.7	4,780.3	Flat

France’s telecoms regulator Arcep’s annual status report on the French telecoms market shows that in 2019, operators in France invested €500 million more than in 2018, for an overall total (excluding spending on frequencies) of €10.4 billion. Investments in nominal terms have increased by close to 50 per cent in five years. For the third year in a row, the increase in investment levels is chiefly as a result of a rise in operators’ spending on fibre deployments.
At the end of 2019, 18.3 million premises were eligible to subscribe to a fibre access plan, which represents 4.8 million additional access lines deployed in a single year. Alongside this record growth is the steadily increasing pace of fibre adoption; 7.1 million households had adopted fibre technology by the end of 2019 (+2.3 million YoY).



This increase in spending has gone hand in hand with a decrease in operators’ revenue (-1 per cent in 2019) and virtually unchanged prices for residential fixed and mobile services in Metropolitan France over the course of 2019. After a sometimes very significant drop in prices in 2018, operators scaled back their promotional offers last year.
In terms of traffic, the trend on fixed and mobile networks is in keeping with the previous years. This includes an ongoing surge in mobile network traffic, for voice calls (+4 per cent) but especially for data services (+44 per cent YoY). 4G network users are rising at an increasingly fast pace; up 7.1 million versus 6.1 million in 2018, reaching 54.8 million at the end of 2019. These customers consumed an average 8.6 Gb of data a month, which is 2 Gb more than the year before.

The Telecom Industry Is Proving Essential In The COVID-19 Response

Telecom operators have never been more relevant than they are today, connecting families and communities while keeping businesses and educational institutions logged on.
During this unprecedented time, communication service providers (CSPs) have shown a resilience and willingness to act, giving us a glimpse into the new market reality. In this “new normal,” CSPs are leading the effort for remote working, online learning and social distancing.

Immediate Response: Answering the Call

Around the world, CSPs have responded with a sense of urgency, purpose and empathy. IBM is supporting our CSP clients in their efforts across several fronts:

• Supporting healthcare and government agencies by equipping field hospitals in the U.K. with high speed connectivity and devices, providing insight on population movement to tackle the spread of the virus in the U.S., Asia and the E.U., connecting citizens to vital information, and providing national healthcare institutions with the tools to work remotely and securely as they research treatments for COVID-19
• Extending network capacity by 30-50% to support secure remote working for businesses and to connect teachers and students via virtual classrooms
• Implementing remote and virtual agent strategies to deliver customer care amid escalating traffic to contact centers and digital channels
• Ensuring continued service to residential and small business customers unable to pay their current bills, waiving late fees and opening WiFi hotspots to anyone who needs them 

Short-Term to Mid-Term: Reacting to Market Conditions

As our society and economies are connected and powered by communication networks, the telecom industry has been less impacted in the financial markets than many others. However, over the next few months the industry will need to respond to several common challenges, including:

• Significant pressure on operating expenses, with rapid cost take-out initiatives
• Prioritization of critical capital expenditure aligned to revenue and business continuity
• Supply chain optimization in the face of equipment and labor supply volatility
• Revenue and cash management amid an economic downturn

Longer-Term: Implications for the New Normal

As a new normal emerges, there are a few fundamental reactions that we can expect from the telecom industry:
1.CSPs will likely accelerate their digital transformation, institutionalizing new ways of working for their employees. Consumers and businesses will demand a richer, more consistent omnichannel digital experience with an emphasis on digital self-service. We will see more use of artificial intelligence (AI) to augment call center agents and retail stores, providing for greater customer insight and real-time decisions. 
2.Facing continued pressure on operating expenses and business agility, we expect to see a renewed sense of urgency in shifting to hybrid cloud IT and network architectures and operations with extreme automation. This will propel deployment of open, seamless networks that deliver new levels of orchestration and agility. Changes to accommodate major shifts in workload, load balancing and more infusion of AI/machine learning (ML) into the network at the Core, Edge or vRAN will become key to investment strategies and sustained operational efficiency.
3.We can expect to see more examples of traditional telcos re-inventing themselves as a platform business, operating as both Digital Services Providers and Digital Services Enablers. We are already seeing the impact of COVID-19 on planned 5G deployments—with China and the U.S. continuing, if not accelerating, the pace while several other countries have postponed spectrum auctions and rollouts. As businesses and governments establish their own new normal, 5G and Edge computing will be necessary to deliver the automation, performance and cognitive insight required by many industries—including manufacturing, healthcare, energy and utilities, among others. Telecom operators will need to embrace open ecosystems to externalize innovation and accelerate new services.
4.Cybersecurity will be high on the agenda, as the post-COVID-19 era will bring an increased level of digital access to businesses and information around the globe. CSPs will experience an increase in remote working among their own employees, in addition to an expansion of Security as a Service offerings to support their business customers.
Moving forward, whatever this new normal holds for the industry, we can expect change to impact all aspects of the telecom business. That will include the manner in which providers serve their customers and engage with partners; the work environment they create for their employees; the actions they execute to prioritize investments and streamline their operations; and the steps they take to extend the closer-knit relationships they are forming with local communities.

Feds move to stop US telecom companies from carrying foreign robocalls

Federal authorities are trying to crack down on five US telecom companies who they say are helping flood Americans’ phones with robocalls from overseas. Prosecutors on Tuesday filed for restraining orders in Brooklyn federal court against three companies controlled by Long Island resident Jon Kahen and two companies owned and operated by Nicholas and Natasha Palumbo of Scottsdale, Arizona. A Department of Justice official told reporters the companies act as a “bridge” for calls from fraudsters working in foreign call centers, which are located mostly in India. Officials are asking the court to block the firms from carrying the predatory calls. In just one 23-day sample period, the Palumbos’ companies allegedly carried 720 million calls, 425 million of which lasted less than one second — which the feds say is a sign they were robocalls that didn’t connect or were immediately hung up on. The robocallers’ schemes include posing as immigration authorities and employees from the Social Security Administration or the Internal Revenue Service — then claiming people’s Social Security numbers have been wrapped up in a crime or that they are facing deportation unless they fork over cash, court docs say. The SSA imposter scam is the most prevalent fraudulent robocall, the feds allege. The Federal Trade Commission estimated that the scheme was responsible for $11.5 million in losses to victims last year. “Robocalls are an annoyance to many Americans, and those that are fraudulent and predatory are a serious problem, often causing devastating financial harm to the elderly and vulnerable members of our society,” Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt said. Kahen and the Palumbos did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Indemnity insurance on property

When you’re buying a house and applying for a mortgage, the conveyancing process can sometimes throw up all sorts of surprises.
Some of these might seem like insignificant issues to both the buyer and the seller, but they can throw a real spanner in the works when it comes to persuading the mortgage lender to release the funds.
Indemnity insurance - sometimes called legal indemnity insurance, or title indemnity insurance - can come to the rescue in such cases, satisfying the lender (and the buyer) that it’s ok to proceed.

What’s indemnity insurance?

Indemnity insurance is used during conveyancing transactions to cover some sort of legal defect with the property which can’t be resolved swiftly, or at all.
As an alternative to rectifying the defect, an indemnity insurance policy can be taken out, particularly when the buyer is otherwise satisfied with the property and simply wants to make sure their mortgage goes through smoothly.

 The Council of Mortgage Lenders’ (CML) handbook for conveyancers says: “You must effect an indemnity insurance policy whenever the Lenders' Handbook identifies that this is an acceptable or required course to us to ensure that the property has a good and marketable title at completion.”
The issues covered by indemnity insurance usually have a very low risk of causing any actual loss - but if they did cause a loss, it would be significant.
Yet buyers should always keep in mind that the indemnity policy doesn’t actually remedy the defect - it simply provides financial compensation in the event of the defect causing a loss.

Who’s covered by legal indemnity insurance?

Legal indemnity insurance covers the buyer and the mortgage lender in the event of any loss of value on the property as a result of the defect.
Unlike other types of insurance which have an annual premium, indemnity insurance is paid as a one-off, is transferred to successors in title and lasts for the life of the property.
Yet it’s usually the seller who pays for the policy.
Most policies cost in the region of a few hundred pounds, so most sellers will pay this rather than see a sale fall through.
However, if the seller refuses to pay, the buyer may need to negotiate with them over who covers the cost, or else walk away from the sale.

Defects covered by indemnity insurance

Legal indemnity insurance could extend to a whole range of defects, with planning permission and building regulation issues being the most common.

Planning permission/building regulations

When you’re buying a property, your conveyancer has a responsibility to make sure all relevant planning permission and building regulations have been obtained.

If a property has been built, altered or extended without building regulations or planning permission approval, then the local authority could take action to ask for it to be reversed or remedied.
However, in most cases there's a four-year limit on the local authority issuing an enforcement notice, so if the work was carried out before this the risk of any action is remote.
Because of the low risk involved, indemnity insurance is often more appropriate than the seller trying to retrospectively satisfy planning conditions in the case of things like loft conversions and extensions.
However, indemnity insurance is no guarantee that the work carried out is safe or satisfactory, so a prudent buyer should still consider arranging surveys and engineer reports for their own peace of mind.

Restrictive covenants

Restrictive covenants are provisions written in the deeds of a property which limit its use in some way. On residential properties that could be anything from an agreement not to erect any outbuildings, to not keeping chickens in the garden.

If you’re looking to buy a house where a covenant has already been broken – for instance an extension has been built in a position where it’s forbidden – a neighbour or other interested party could, in theory, insist that it’s removed.
However, if the breach has been in existence for some time, indemnity insurance may be a solution to allow a house sale to go through.
There may be conditions to the insurance, such as no dispute being currently ongoing, or the breach having been committed a certain time ago.

Absence of easement

During the conveyancing process it might transpire that the property is accessed by land where the property hasn’t been granted a right of easement – the right to get to the property this way.
Indemnity insurance for an absence of easement will cover the cost of establishing easement, or the loss of value in the event access ever becomes an issue due to this lack of permission.
Again, the chances of this happening are usually remote if the property has had access that way for many years, or if the owner of the access land is unknown.

Chancel repair

Sometimes during the searches, the conveyancer will find that the property is liable for chancel repair. This means that the owner of the property could be collared for repair costs to their local church and there are horror stories of this running to thousands of pounds.
In practice, however, it’s rarely enforced, so an indemnity insurance policy can offer a cost-effective solution if it’s a sticking point during a home sale.