Despite the progress of last years, 5G today is not yet at a stage of complete achievement of the promised performances and functions: different application profiles (eMBB, URLLC, mMTC) do not easily coexist in network slices; slicing is casted in various different forms; network analytics are not at end-to-end scope; services do not span multiple operator domains yet. 5GZORRO consortium envisions the evolution of 5G to achieve truly production-level support of diverse Vertical applications, which coexist on a highly pervasive shared network infrastructure, through automated end-to-end network slicing, across multiple operators and infrastructure/resource providers, who can share heterogeneous types of resources (spectrum, virtualized radio access, virtualized edge/core). 5GZORRO uses distributed Artificial Intelligence (AI) to implement cognitive network orchestration and management with minimal manual intervention (Zero-Touch Automation). Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) are adopted to implement flexible and efficient distributed security and trust across the various parties involved in a 5G end-to-end service chain. With these, we can implement an evolved 5G Service Layer for Smart Contracts among multiple non-trusted parties, to allow SLA monitoring, spectrum sharing, intelligent and automated data-driven resource discovery and management. Our cross domain security & trust orchestration coupled with service lifecycle automation can enforce security policies in multi-tenant and multi-stakeholder environments. Three use cases validate our research in 5GBarcelona and 5TONIC/Madrid test facilities: Smart Contracts for Ubiquitous Computing/Connectivity, Dynamic Spectrum Allocation, Pervasive virtual CDNs over 3rd-party edge resources. 5GZORRO target stakeholders are telecom operators, vertical slice owners/operators, spectrum owners, regulators, passive/ active facility owners, many of which are in our consortium of 13 top 5G players from 7 different EU countries.

Delivering on the 5G promise of increased data rates, and ubiquitous coverages, poses stringent requirements on traditional vertically integrated operators. In particular, telecom operators are expected to massively roll out Small Cells, which requires finding appropriate urban spaces with both backhaul and energy availability. Network sharing becomes essential to unlock those commercial massive deployments. The open access model, or neutral host, will come to play a key role on the deployment of 5G networks, especially in urban scenarios where very dense Small Cell deploymens are required. In parallel recent trends are paving the way towards the development of new, heterogeneous and distributed cloud paradigms that significantly differ from today’s established cloud model: with edge computing, cloud architectures are pushed all the way to the edge of the network, close to the devices that produce and act on data. We posit that there are two sets of players perfectly poised to take advantage of both trends since they already own the infrastructure needed to build edge deployments: telecommunication providers and municipalities. 5GCity focuses on how common smart city infrastructure (i.e.,small cells and processing power at the very edge of networks) can bring benefit to both players based on resource sharing and end-to-end virtualization, pushing the cloud model to the extreme edge. 5GCity will design, develop, deploy and demonstrate a distributed cloud and radio platform for municipalities and infrastructure owners acting as 5G neutral hosts. 5GCity’s main aim is to build and deploy a common, multi-tenant, open platform that extends the (centralized) cloud model to the extreme edge of the network, with a demonstration in three different cities (Barcelona, Bristol and Lucca). 5GCity will directly impact a large and varied range of actors: (i) telecom providers; (ii) municipalities; and (iii) a number of different vertical sectors utilizing the city infrastructure