ARMONK, N.Y. and LITTLETON, Colo.—Dish Network Corporation has selected IBM to help automate the United States' first greenfield cloud-native 5G network.
The project illustrates how AI is transforming the construction of new networks and allowing operators to speed up the launch of new services.
"This is a seminal moment for Dish and the global telecommunications industry," said Steve Canepa, managing director, IBM Global Communications Sector. "By utilizing IBM's AI-powered automation and intent-driven network orchestration software, Dish can develop and deploy network offerings, applying advanced AI with IBM Watson and orchestration capabilities to help optimize network operations and performance. As a result, Dish can accelerate time to market for new innovative services powered by a secured, automated, intelligent and agile 5G network."
Marc Rouanne, chief network officer at Dish Wireless added that “our 5G build is unique in that we are truly creating a 'network of networks,' where each enterprise can custom-tailor a network slice or group of slices to achieve their specific business needs. IBM's orchestration solutions leverage AI, automation and machine learning to not only make these slices possible, but to ensure they adapt over time as customer use evolves. With IBM, DISH is combining the speed and latency advances of 5G with the customization and intelligence of the cloud, and the result will be a paradigm shift for small businesses, large enterprises and the broader wireless industry."
Dish's new smart network will be designed to be agile, scalable and fully virtualized and will leverage IBM's AI-powered automation and network orchestration software and services to bring broad 5G network orchestration to Dish’s business and operations platforms, the companies said.
Intent-driven orchestration, a software-powered automation process, and artificial intelligence (AI) will be utilized to drive the operations of Dish's cloud-native 5G network architecture.
Dish has engaged IBM Global Business Services to use IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation software with Dish's 5G network architecture. The intent-based orchestration functionality designed to stitch hardware and software resources together more seamlessly and efficiently, will to help Dish make network slicing possible and accelerate the creation and delivery of new services.
Dish also plans to use advanced network slicing to offer new use cases and industry vertical opportunities that are customized to each business and customer who leverages the private hybrid 5G network. Network slices – individual pieces of the network – will be managed by customers to set service levels for each device appropriate to their use of the network. For example, an autonomous vehicle can be supported by very low latency while an HD video camera can be allocated high bandwidth.
