Just over two decades ago, the network was mainly a fixed voice network in widespread use in mature markets but with limited reach in emerging economies. Cellular and the internet were only just starting to appear. Each regional network was built and run by a Communications Services Provider who would acquire the underlying proprietary technology from Network Equipment Providers and charge subscribers to use the network. The resulting networks were largely homogenous with most of the equipment typically coming from a single vendor.
In this traditional model the technology and product roadmap of the Communications Service Provider was the technology and product roadmap of their Network Equipment Provider. The Network Equipment Provider controlled the architecture, interfaces, the hardware and software within the network appliance, and the product roadmap, making it difficult for the Communications Service Provider or others to innovate to reduce costs or create new services. Capital and operational costs were high for the Communications Service Provider, but these costs were predictable and could be recovered over time from a captive subscriber population in a relatively uncompetitive market.
Move forward a short twenty years or so and the industry has transformed. Mobile and Internet are booming worldwide. Traffic has moved from circuit-switched voice to packet-switched data. The network has far greater reach: hundreds of millions of people in mature and emerging economies worldwide now stay connected to the network to regularly access valued consumer services such as streaming and business services such as video conferencing. Capacity is significantly increased and demand continues to grow as more devices connect to the network and services consume more bandwidth. Markets are far more competitive and communications services are increasingly commoditised. As consumers, we pay less and get more. The network itself has become the foundation for the new global digital economy of the 21st century. Happy days.
Scratch the surface of the industry a little and we see the Communications Service Provider’s business model is largely unchanged from twenty or even a hundred years ago. Networks remain largely homogenous and the Communications Service Provider remains locked-in in the long term to the Network Equipment Provider’s product roadmap for proprietary offerings.
With network function deployed as physical appliances, being preintegrated bundles of hardware and software, new services require changing the physical structure of the network and this takes as long as months or even years and incurs the cost of a field workforce. While there has been movement from appliances towards virtualisation to separate hardware and software and enable a more open supplier ecosystem, this largely occurs with a single vendor's product set and there is no strong industry towards vendors deploying their software on each other’s hardware or opening of network infrastructure to client or third party innovations.
The great irony here is that the traditional networks that are the foundation of the Communications Service Provider business can in fact slow the business. With consumers paying less to get more each year, the Communications Service Provider must continuously create new services and provide more bandwidth at a lower cost each year just to remain viable as a business. The underlying proprietary network technologies and closed supplier ecosystems prevent the Communications Service Provider from leveraging the open market to introduce new capabilities to reduce costs. This creates the challenge for the CSP's business model and the CSP risks being wedged. The tipping point has already been reached in highly competitive markets such as India where CSPs are disappearing from the market or are merging but still losing customers to competition. Despite the network itself becoming the foundation for the new global digital economy of the 21st century, the industry that provides the network is facing significant challenges.
How then does the communications industry, both move to the open model of innovation, development and collaboration enjoyed by other technology-based industries? Enter Open Source. <Describe Open Source movement and benefits to companies and industries. Give Linux as an example and refer to others eg databases.>
<outline history and value of linux as open source OS, list who is using Linux. List benefits of open source: continuous improvement, collaboration, security, quality>
<outline how Linux has been successful as a result of strong governance and collaboration, without one vendor controlling developments.
In recognising both the importance of communications to the emerging global digital economy and to improving lives of people everywhere, and the challenges facing the commuications industry, the Linux Foundation in 2018 (?) established LFN as the umbrella organisation. The goal is for LFN software and projects to provide platforms and building blocks for Network Infrastructure & Services across Service Providers, Cloud Providers, Enterprises, Vendors, System Integrators that enable rapid interoperability, deployment & adoption.
LFN helps by increasing the availability ad adoption of quality open source to reduce the cost of building and managing networks, giving Commuications Service Provider, Cloud Providers, Enterprises and others the means to:
- significantly reduce cost of the networks on which their businesses depend
- gain control of their network and product roadmap
- introduce new capabilities and service more quickly
- reduce capital and operational costs, for example by increasing the number of functions that can be remotely deployed and maintained, through automating operations and through increased use of commodity hardware
- increase security through having multiple entities review the software
Outline at&t as an example of a CSP that has been public about their strategic intent to harness open source … give examples of at&t open source initiatives and business impact>.
While there are benefits from using open source, the benefits are greater to those who also contribute to open source. This is because "Companies that contribute and give back learn how to better use the open source software in their own environment." Source: Harvard Business Review: Firms that contribute to Open Source capture up to 100% more productive value from Open Source Software than their free-riding peers.https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-hidden-benefit-of-giving-back-to-open-source-software
US military research agency DARPA has stated its intention of establishing an open source program for 5G and US Congress is legislating to provide funding.