Earlier in February 2022 we unveiled a White Paper written in conjunction with floLIVE entitled ‘Beyond the Campus: Why Mobile Private Networks need a Global Approach’. In the White Paper we examined how a more holistic approach is required for the deployment of MPNs, stitching campus deployments into an enterprise’s wider national and global connectivity requirements. The report examines a diverse set of related issues, including the drivers for MPN adoption, which sectors have the greatest requirement for a holistic approach, and which vendors are best placed to deliver it. This blog post focuses on one aspect of the report: the need for national and global connectivity to be delivered in a way that meets regulatory, security and efficiency requirements.
As outlined in the White Paper, the delivery of MPNs will often be tied up with provision of national and/or global connectivity to complement the campus network. Most enterprise adopters will have some wider requirement for national or global connectivity beyond just the campus dedicated private network. The approach to secure, flexible, and highly controllable connectivity, however, should be the same. Equally so for those deployment scenarios that involve only wide area connectivity, either national or global. For any of these scenarios, particularly those involving multi-country deployments, there is an increasing requirement for what we term 'transport layer orchestration' (TLO), i.e. ensuring that devices are deployed and managed, and data delivered, in a compliant, secure and efficient manner.
There is a wide range of features and functionality implicit in the provision of wide area IoT connectivity, either national or global. Most connectivity providers offer SIM cards that can connect anywhere in the world. Similarly, the majority already provide some element of connectivity and device management, e.g. activation, tariff selection or firmware updates. Most do not provide the appropriate level of orchestration at the transport layer, i.e. the end-to-end delivery of data, to ensure that data is managed in the appropriate way, or the localisation elements that are increasingly required.
A full set of IoT orchestration capabilities are set out in the Figure below. They include connectivity management, device management, core network, regulatory compliance, local break-out, cloud integration and transport layer security. Sophisticated IoT connectivity solutions need to include this TLO layer and enterprise adopters should look for this functionality.
The effective delivery of multi-country IoT solutions depends on being able to deliver these elements. It should be noted with regard to all of these elements that there are implicit advantages to supporting a full deployment across multiple RANs and/or MPNs in a consistent way. For instance, using a single core network (or multiple consistently deployed and integrated core networks) to deliver superior and consistent control and management.
You will find much more detail on this topic, and all the others related to adopting a holistic approach to mobile private networks in the report: ‘Beyond the Campus: Why Mobile Private Networks Need a Global Approach’.
