In many ways, government agencies and communications technology companies live in two different worlds. Occasionally, however, those worlds collide. When they do, amazing things can happen.
The creativity of industry, paired with the rigorous requirements of government use cases, can spur new innovations—sometimes even entirely new product categories and business models. Often, communications service providers (CSPs) and vendors benefit just as much from the lessons learned as government benefits from state-of-the-art technology.
As we look to the emerging 5G revolution, we as an industry should be working to promote this kind of mutually fruitful private/public collaboration. Federal agencies can realize significant benefits from 5G. And by, working with them, vendors and CSPs can gain valuable insights to deliver better 5G products and services.
When Public and Private Worlds Collide
The federal government and communication technology companies have a long, storied history of mutually beneficial knowledge-sharing and collaboration. That collaboration runs both ways. You can point to the big examples—like the Internet and cellular networks—both of which were pioneered by government, only to eventually transform the commercial marketplace. But CSPs and wireless vendors have repeatedly partnered with government to help them capitalize on leading-edge communications solutions.
Take spectrum clearing. When the U.S. Army launched an initiative to move their wireless assets from Band 66, it took a unique set of technologies, and a unique partnership with industry to make it happen. The military needed specialized instrumentation, as well as the ability to collect and act on data in real-time, to determine the most effective way to clear interference. The technology industry developed to meet those needs had their origin in the commercial realm, but were adapted to meet Defense Department requirements.
Or, consider mesh networking. Vendors had to work diligently to develop mesh-based communications networks that could meet strict government requirements for security and reliability. Ultimately, vendors had to reevaluate the entire lifecycle of mesh network coverage design, analysis, and monitoring. In doing so, we developed a set of best practices that we could then use to dramatically improve mesh products for the commercial market.
Both sides benefit from this kind of cross-pollination. The government gets to implement cutting-edge communications technologies more quickly, at a lower cost. Meanwhile, industry benefits from running their most innovative ideas through the gauntlet of government requirements: Massive scalability. Rock-solid security. Much higher levels of resiliency, robustness, and agility. The steps industry takes to meet these requirements often lead to significant benefits for those companies and their customers.
To take one example, government technology environments are often complex and multilayered, encompassing multiple vendors and overlaid networks, often supporting multiple agencies with different mandates. It’s a huge challenge to adapt commercial technologies for that world. But when vendors do, they now have a solution that can easily scale to support enterprise consolidation and M&A activity in the commercial sector.
Preparing for the 5G Future
As we look toward tomorrow’s 5G networks and services, that kind of public/private collaboration is exactly what we need. It’s only by working together that we will be able to not only integrate 5G into demanding government network environments, but potentially solve some of the biggest challenges associated with 5G deployments.
What’s the best way to implement massive MIMO and beamforming technologies? How do we account for the unique requirements of higher-propagation RF frequency bands like mmWave? Where will we most need more accurate 3D modeling? Adapting 5G for the rigorous requirements of the federal government can help us find answers to these questions and many others.
At the same time, the areas where government needs the most urgent help—massive MIMO, network slicing, spectrum sharing and spectrum clearing—are some of the very segments where vendors and CSPs are looking to accelerate commercial 5G business cases. Solving these challenges for government will help them do it.
There are several areas where public/private collaboration could prove especially fruitful for 5G:
- Scaling complex 5G use cases: To support government customers, vendors and CSPs need to implement more robust models for things like network slicing, shared spectrum and assets, and spectrum-as-a-service. Dynamically bringing together all the pieces of these complex use cases, especially in government environments where there may be no specific uplink of an asset to a custodian of the asset, represents a significant challenge. Doing it in a way that can scale up to support massive adoption, equally so. Learning how to implement these models for government will likely allow CSPs to support enterprise and commercial use cases much more effectively.
- Securing 5G services: Any wireless technology working in confidential government or military environments must employ the most robust security and threat defense mechanisms. As CSPs and vendors work with federal agencies, industry can learn a great deal from government models for tactical communications and mobile cybersecurity. By meeting government requirements for rogue base station detection, end-to-end encryption, transport communication security, and more, industry can develop rigorous security best practices for the commercial space.
- Supporting IoT use cases: Government can provide a useful proving ground for new use cases that involve massive IoT connectivity for hundreds of thousands or even millions of devices. These implementations will push industry capabilities for managing connectivity at scale. Just as important, we will need to wrap security around every single one of those IoT connections, and be able to scale authentication and encryption just as effectively as connectivity itself.
Across IoT and other 5G use cases, delivering on the security, scalability, and resiliency that government requires can provide enormously valuable knowledge to industry. Indeed, the architectural tenets we ultimately put in place to meet government needs may well become foundational elements of the most disruptive commercial 5G business models.
Bridging Separate Worlds
Clearly, there is much to be gained from public/private collaboration, and many ways that the knowledge we share can enable superior 5G services. Unfortunately, we are not seeing as much cross-sector pollination as we might—especially from CSPs.
Of course, CSPs and vendors continue to work with government for specific projects and transactions. What’s missing, however, is pure knowledge transfer: regular, ongoing sharing of technology ideas and lessons learned among public and private stakeholders. The lack of a forum for this kind of knowledge-sharing is especially problematic here in the United States, where there is less direct involvement of government agencies with technology vendors and CSPs than in other countries, and far less open sharing of ideas and technology.
One area that would be ideal for these ongoing conversations: industry working groups like MITRE. Forums like the MITRE 5G Security Working Profile Group can provide a perfect opportunity for everyone involved—government agencies, vendors, and CSPs alike—to talk through the unique challenges that government is facing with 5G services and collaborate on new strategies to solve them.
Working together, we can help government make the most of the 5G revolution. As we do, we’ll likely find many new opportunities to make 5G more effective and economical for everyone.
