VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger suggests that with the advent of 5G the telco network should be built like the clouds. “Why can’t we build the telco network like the clouds have been built for with scalability, flexibility, efficiency, and agility?” says Gelsinger. “That’s really the idea of the telco cloud. As people go to what’s called NFV, network function virtualization, and as they’re looking ahead to 5G services, can’t we have a new architecture for building the telco cloud? But it also is flexible and scalable and helps them do services between 4G and 5G.”

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, discusses 5G and building the telco network like the clouds in an interview at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with CNBC:

Building the Telco Network Like the Clouds

What it really is about it’s saying that over the last decade and a half we’ve gotten pretty good at building clouds. Why can’t we build the telco network like the clouds have been built for with scalability, flexibility, efficiency, and agility? That’s really the idea of the telco cloud. As people go to what’s called NFV, network function virtualization, and as they’re looking ahead to 5G services, can’t we have a new architecture for building the telco cloud? But it also is flexible and scalable and helps them do services between 4G and 5G. It also helps them bridge so as they build these new services they can run them on the old as well as prepare services for the new.

The telco market is like 80 percent the size of the data center and cloud market. This is big. It’s a huge adjacent market that largely we’ve never touched before. We’re really excited about that. If you think about what we’ve done, it’s about building this rock-hard infrastructure that never goes down. Data centers, businesses, and banks running it told the telco networks that they need rock-hard never-goes-down infrastructure. We really find a huge opportunity there.

2020 is the Year for 5G

I’ve said for a few years that I think 2020 is the year (for 5G implementation). I think when you when you see a show like this everybody’s starting to really gear up. The trials are underway. I really see 2020 as really where it’s going to happen. Right now the national anthem is playing and next year the game gets started. If you’re going to be a cloud you’ve got to be efficient. That helps the bottom line by building more cost efficiency and operational efficiency. You have to do that. But ultimately, it’s about the new services that 5G is going to introduce.

It’s hard to say how much Huawei (potentially being banned in Europe) is going to impact. Obviously, people who have large positions with Huawei today, it becomes easy to add 5G onto it. It is somewhat dependent on carrier and market. Our view of what we’re trying to do with virtualization is to minimize unique dependencies on any particular hardware market. Part of our value proposition exactly helps customers navigate through the 4G to 5G transition as well as picking different key hardware vendors. That’s what that virtualization layer does so we think we actually help customers.