Study on the trends and policy/regulatory challenges of cloudification, virtualisation and softwarisation in telecommunication

closed

Please note that this is not a call for tenders but a publication announcing the Contracting authority’s intention to publish a future negotiated low or middle valueprocedure. Cloud computing, network virtualisation and network softwarisation are becoming more relevant, and they impact both the services which can be offered and the design of the networks. Data centres are becoming increasingly important due to the demands of cloud computing and also because of a need to service the growing demand for online content and services. In 2016, BEREC organised a public expert workshop on regulatory implications of software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualizations (NFV). In 2022, BEREC organised a workshop on Open RAN (radio access network) that addressed some parts of these topics as well. An overall study of the trends however is yet to be conducted. In this context, BEREC will contract a study to gather current trends (cloud computing, network virtualisation, network softwarisation and OpenRan) in the provisioning of electronic communications networks and services and identify possible regulatory and policy challenges arising from therefrom.