Dissemination level: Public Consultation
2 Overall architecture
5G networks have been targeted to meet the requirements of a highly mobile and fully
connected society. The coexistence of human-centric and machine type applications will define
very diverse functional and performance requirements that 5G networks will have to support.
Within the 5G System (5GS), end-to-end (E2E) network slicing, service-based architecture,
Software-Defined Networking (SDN), and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) are seen as
the fundamental pillars to support the heterogeneous key performance indicators (KPIs) of the
new use cases in a cost-efficient way. The 5GS gives mobile network operators the unique
opportunities to offer new services to consumers, enterprises, verticals, and third-party tenants
by addressing their respective requirements. To this end, 5G Infrastructure Public Private
Partnership (5G PPP) Phase I/II collaborative research projects as well as standardisation bodies
have specified and developed the main elements of the 5G architecture.
2.1 Stakeholder roles in the 5G ecosystem
The 5G ecosystem should enable manufacturers, solution integrators, network and service
providers, and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to efficiently compete and
cooperate, e.g., by means of virtualisation, standardised interfaces and protocols, or open APIs.
SMEs will be able to provide technological solutions which will be compatible with the overall
system, e.g., new hardware components in the infrastructure or software components in the
Management and Organization layers. Manufacturers and solution integrators can offer rapid
deployment enabled by virtualisation and standardised interfaces to increase the level of
innovation. Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and infrastructure providers will create tailored
slices with specific functionalities and Over-The-Top applications and services to address
requirements of vertical industries.
[2-1] and [2-5] mainly focus on single-domain service provisioning, but do not elaborate on,
e.g., cross-operator scenarios. Additionally, the 3GPP roles are defined from the point of view
of an operator. 5G PPP Phase I/II collaborative research projects have extended these roles to
allow various possible customer-provider relationships between verticals, operators, and other
stakeholder, as shown in Figure 2-1 (adapted from [2-6]):
• Service Customer (SC): uses services that are offered by a Service Provider (SP). In the
context of 5G, vertical industries are considered as one of the major SCs.
• Service Provider (SP): comprises three sub-roles, depending on the service offered to the
SC: Communication Service Provider offering traditional telecom services, Digital Service
Provider offering digital services such as enhanced mobile broadband and IoT to various
vertical industries, or Network Slice as a Service (NSaaS) Provider offering a network slice
along with the services that it may support and configure. SPs design, build and operate
services using aggregated network services.
• Network Operator (NOP): in charge of orchestrating resources, potentially from multiple
virtualised infrastructure providers (VISP). The NOP uses aggregated virtualised
infrastructure services to design, build, and operate network services that are offered to SPs.
• Virtualisation Infrastructure Service Provider (VISP): Provides virtualised
infrastructure services and designs, builds, and operates virtualisation infrastructure(s) [2-1].
The infrastructure comprises networking (e.g., for mobile transport) and computing
resources (e.g., from computing platforms).
• Data Centre Service Provider (DCSP): Provides data centre services and designs, builds
and operates its data centres. A DCSP differs from a VISP by offering “raw” resources (i.e.,
host servers) in rather centralised locations and simple services for consumption of these
raw resources. A VISP rather offers access to a variety of resources by aggregating multiple
technology domains and making them accessible through a single API.