This is Maxwell Air Force Base, Headquarters, and Nerve Center of the Air University. From here, the Air University conducts and controls professional military education of Air Force officers. So vital is this function, that the University constitutes a major command of the United States Air Force. At the Air University, officers are provided with the expertness in the profession of arms, so necessary in today's space age. Here, Allied officers come from over 62 different nations of the free world to study and share professional knowledge with power Air Force. A good part of their curriculum is devoted to the customs and heritage of these United States of America. First-hand knowledge is offered these Allied officers through visits to the Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado, the Space Center at Cape Kennedy, Florida, and our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. On one such trip, these Allied officers visited the historic area of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, Virginia. A region that had much to do with the shaping of our nation's past that forms the present. The Coast Guard, one of our oldest armed services, along with the Air Force, the youngest, invites groups of Allied officers to tour this historic area. These officers are learning about the birthplace of our culture, and this is the most vital part of their visit. The people of Virginia are proud of these replicas of sailing ships that brought the founding fathers to these shores. The first breath is a long-forgotten event in anyone's life. It is remembered only in birthdays celebrated once each year. The nation is like an individual. It, too, loses some insight into its early history. Powers as a nation formed by many lands, a culture carved from a wilderness of an unexplored country, carved by brave men in small ships. It was they who took the first English step in the New World, Jamestown. Though other nations were already well-established, England's first permanent settlement was Jamestown, founded in 1607. Our friends can see where the early Virginians lived, and the way they protected themselves from the unknown. Disease, famine, and loneliness plagued the settlers. But the survivors stayed to build the foundation of our nation. Although it was the capital of Virginia for 92 years, Jamestown failed. An inadequate harbor and poor land caused most of its citizens to move inland about six miles and start a community called Middle Plantation, which later became Williamsburg, named after King William of England. In 1699, Williamsburg became the capital of Virginia and remained so for almost 80 years, while Jamestown remained only as a trading center and a port of commerce. Williamsburg became, like other colonial cities, self-sufficient. Its many craftsmen and artisans fashioned some of the finest wares in America. The ancient craft of papermaking was brought to this country by the early colonists. Today, this skill is still practiced in its original form by the craftsmen of Williamsburg. The Declaration of Independence and many other important documents relating to our history were made on this paper and are still well preserved. The citizens of Williamsburg demonstrate other colonial crafts in shops throughout the city. Our allied visitors observed the craftsmen at work in authentic surroundings. The wigmaker's skill was much in demand, thus making him an integral part of the community. Individualism and personal initiative became foremost. The city boomed with excitement. Courts and assembly were in session twice a year. They made laws to protect themselves, tried offenders, and a jail was built. Meanwhile, heavier taxes and embargoes were levied upon the colonists by Britain and taxation without representation became a fighting slogan of the colonists. In protest against the British Crown, the Virginia Convention held in June 1776 adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights that became a model for our Declaration of Independence. Cannon and powder were scarce. Our allied friends observed the weapons the Americans used to repel the British Crown. Tempers flared. The fight for freedom began. All the colonies banded together for the fight. It was the irony of history that by coincidence the British were finally defeated only 20 miles from where Englishmen first settled 170 years earlier. Victory came about only with the help of our first allies. The French Navy sealed off the British fleet in the York River and the American Army along with the French moved in by land, isolating the red coats at Yorktown. Cornwallis, the British general, had no choice but to seek a truce. And on the morning of October 17th, 1781, he asked for a parlay. The treaty was drawn up on the 19th at the Moor House, which stood less than a mile from the battlefield. General Washington along with the German von Storben and the Frenchman Rochambeau were victorious. So ended the siege of Yorktown. So ended the American Revolution. After the war, Williamsburg was left behind by the March of Civilization, as was Jamestown nearly a century earlier. But as a historical landmark, it has been restored so that we and our friends can see today life as it was over 200 years ago. The room where the burgesses of Virginia met, a cordial welcome was extended by the mayor of Williamsburg. Our hostess explains the historical background of the colonial assembly. The mace, symbol of the crown's control, it was in this room that its right to govern was challenged. These walls framed many moments of our history. Jefferson, Washington and Patrick Henry sat in these very seats. This restored chapel still stands on the shores of the James River where it was built more than 300 years ago. Perhaps in eulogy to the settler's search for religious freedom. A search that founded a new way of life. In the governor's garden the allies can sense the beauty and serenity of America. A peaceful country, blessed with the color of many lands. The American people had two purposes in restoring Williamsburg to its way of life in the 18th century. One purpose was to simply preserve the area for historical reasons. But more important, it was to recall for future generations the basic principles of American self-government and individual liberty. The allies were hosted by the U.S. Air Force and Coast Guard at a reception held in their honor at Yorktown. Apporting them an opportunity to meet members of the local community. The warm hospitality shown our friends was reminiscent of colonial Virginia. These allied officers have just been given a glimpse of early America. A glimpse into our history. A glimpse that will help us to understand each other in a more complete way. Allies today more than ever play a major role in our world affairs. Many of the nations from which these visiting officers come are far older than ours. In the past they have contributed directly to our culture. So directly in fact that their heritage is now partly ours. Our allies leave the Air University of the United States Air Force having broadened their professional and educational skills and achieved a mutual understanding with our armed services. We have much in common. Not only in the history we have shared, but in the history we are sharing. These allied officers bring to us today a renewed friendship and a refreshing dedication to liberty for our new world.


The stated purists among you will already crown upon the title of this presentation because the commission procedure to keep at the cost of review of the system of state aid is in the plural why there is only one previous statistician to keep existing aid under control. And why is that so? Because we are today speaking of existing aid in a very non-technical way. Existing aid is defined in the procedural regulation, article one of the procedural regulation, as aid that has either been approved or that is block exempted or that has become existing aid because of the elapsing of the time period for recovering such aid. Well today we would speak about existing aid in a factual sense. So all aid that is de facto out there, not in a technical way. That's why the procedures become plural and the other reason for them becoming in the plural is that the first procedure we will be talking about is actually not the procedure which is the monitoring exercise that the commission runs every year on block exempted and approved aid which is not proceduralized in any way or form, it's completely outside the procedure. So let's see at the list of the procedures. So we will look briefly into the legal basis of the power of the commission to look into existing aid procedures and in cooperation with the member state and then as said the first thing we will be looking into is the non-procedure. So it's the monitoring exercise that the commission runs every year. Then the second one will be the procedure for looking in something that does not qualify as existing aid under the procedure regulation so into illegal aid and again we will be referring very quickly to the procedure for misuse of aid which is as you will see one slide. We finally get to the only procedure for looking into existing aid which is the so-called existing procedure and finally we touch upon sector inquires which is as referred to earlier a novelty of the procedure regulation as from 2013. So moving on the legal basis. Article 108.1 provides the legal basis for our discussion today. So article 108.1 provides that the commission in cooperation with the member state shall keep under constant review all system of aid existing in all members. And then since we are talking about existing aid in a broader sense in a factual sense rather in a legal sense there is also reference to article 108.3 which is the one basically the standstill clause the one containing the standstill clause that is the one violated by all aid that is then to be considered illegally. Article 108.1 is not the only treaty provision that is relevant in this context. There is also article 4.3 of the treaty on the European Union which provides that member states and the commission must loyal cooperating in carrying on all the tasks that they have to do under the treaty. And of course enforcing stated law is one of those tasks. So the the courts have already said it many many times under stated law since stated is one of the pillars of the treaty one of the pillars of the internal market and therefore one of the pillars of the treaties. This duty of cooperation is a reinforced duty of cooperation between the commission and the member states. And when we say between the commission and the member states we say between the commission and all ramifications of the member states including the judiciary of course. Speaking of which it was rendered in another in another context actually in the criminal law context but already in the late 80s the court of justice said that the duty of loyal cooperation is a reinforced duty between the commission and the courts because the national courts are actually EU courts of first instance and that's very relevant when it comes to this role of national courts which we'll discuss today later in enforcing stated state. Let's move to secondary legislation and here is the article of the procedure regulation that makes direct reference to article one or eight one as I said is the this article is basically also the legal basis for the real existing procedure under the procedure the procedure regulation but reading it broadly and we have done so lately it's also the article in the procedure regulation that gives us a legal basis for more for running the annual monitoring. So once we have quickly seen the legal basis the general legal basis for the subject matter of our discussion this morning we move to the first of these procedures the slash non-procedure which is more. As I've already mentioned earlier monitoring has become important in recent years the actually the court of auditors already in 2011 so as you will recall from the discussion earlier this morning before some was even put forward in the communication of 2012 already at that time the court of auditors told the commission you should step up your efforts because there is a lot of aid which is not looked at upfront but it's a way but it's given by member states and you should really step up your efforts in looking at that aid and being sure that that aid is compliant with union law. In the wake of that in the opinion given by the parliament on the stated modernization communication the parliament explicitly said that the other side of the coin of stated modernization particularly of broadening the jibber is that the commission should also broaden monitoring meaning giving more power to member states meaning giving more freedom leeway to member state had as a countervailing measure the fact that the commission should look really closely at how these measures are in the end implemented in the in the relevant members. Just to give you a bit of a bit of a flavor in 2002 we were we had some 2600 measures out of 3800 which were block exempted so you see that the court of auditor already at the time had a point in saying there is a lot of aid which is given under the block exempted regulation and in 2015 which is the last year for which we have complete data because we are almost always one year behind because we need to get the data from member state we have 30650 block exempted measures out of 4550. When we are given these numbers what we are talking about is not the measures implemented in that year but it's all the measures under which member states report expenditures in that year so it might be that the measure is 10 years old but the member state is still spending on it so if you think about that you see that this number this proportion is only going to increase because of course you have a huge stock of all measures which could not be block exempted under the new block exempted regulation to which you add the newer measures and that's also why the the second line here the red line hasn't increased as dramatically as the blue line because when you introduce a measure you will start spending on that measure the year thereafter sometimes two years thereafter so if you look at 2015 measures the expenditures that were possible on new jibber measures which was introduced just one year or one year and a half before was not that much so we are expecting actually we know already that new measures are almost 90% under jibber and we are expecting also that this red red line would go in the region more of 70% in the in the next years so we are talking about about huge numbers and numbers that cannot go undetected because the overall impact on the market of those number is quite quite simple. The size covers both approved measures and block exempted measures for the approved measures we have under the procedure regulation a reporting obligation on the member states which is in article 261 of the consolidated regulation of the qualified regulation and there is also provision which I put up there but if not very much use I cannot actually recall one instance in which it was used which allows the commission to carry on onsite expressions to see onsite how in a sort of antitrust way our decisions are implemented as I said it's not I'm not sure it has ever been used and that's the legal basis for monitoring or actually for having the information then to monitor approved measures. The legal basis for having the information to monitor block exempted measures is contained in the block assumption regulation itself and it provides that members say it must submit reports we will they must submit an info sheet 20 days after implementing implementing the measure under the block assumption informing the commission what the measure is about what they spend it to sell what type of beneficiaries are to be covered by measures and what is the expected overall and annual budget of the measure and then this is the source of the information that we have seen in the first graph yearly they have to report the expenditures under each individual measure so that red line was basically the cumulation of all this information which is reported yearly by by members. On the basis basically of this earlier report then the commission selects the cases that are to be monitored each each year so basically we look at all all measures so we have seen what we would look at in 2015 is some 45 100 measures both approved and block exempted we go through the list of all measures that have expenditure that has been reported and then we try in that list to find significant number of cases that would cover all or almost all member states but every two years we cover all member states it is very rare that we lack more than one or two member states per year it happens with very small member states you can't really monitor every year more because you would monitor in the same scheme always you have to have some flexibility on that and also all types of aid and all types of aid measures the principle is that to be meaningful we monitor mainly many schemes on decisions we can monitor also individually but it's very rare that we do for practical reasons well for one practical reason is that usually when an individual aid is found to be particularly problematic there would be at that point a monitoring clause in the decision approved itself so that's outside the monitoring exercise but it's monitoring done under the decision itself so there would be enhanced reporting obligation under that scheme is the case for example of most of the banking price cases in which banks had to undergo a sort of audit for a certain period of time to certify that they would comply with the with the commitments that they gave in order to be able to to get in the first place so that's why there is this sort of difference between normal monitoring and monitoring then once we have a list we will be doing two types of monitoring each year the classical one that we have been doing since 2006 meaning we look at the legal basis and we look at how the legal basis has been implemented as from some as from 2014 actually as from 2015 monitoring exercise we have also added what is called a real-time monitoring exercise why so again much more leeway in the ends of the member state much more responsibility in the ends of the member state that has not only corresponded to an increased monitoring but also in an increased availability of the commission to cooperate with member states in ensuring that the beneficiaries would enjoy legal certainty under the schemes and that the schemes are implemented correctly that from for what concerns us here in the monitoring means that we would monitor schemes that are in a very early stage of implementation in which expenditures are not yet reported which increases the number of schemes that we look at from 4500 to actually 7000 and look at whether the legal basis is written in a way that could prevent problems later so we would just look at the legal basis look at whether it's correctly sorry implementing the the jibber so as to prevent that any illegal aid is granted under that national legal basis it was mentioned before just to give you a flavor the other way the other two ways the commission is helping member states in implementing jibber is one these comfort letters which are from time to time requested by member states to be sure that the the measure that they have in mind is actually jibber conform or replying to questions on the jibber itself just to give you an idea we have replied so far to some 750 questions on the jibber which means that it's an easy piece of legislation on particular parts of the jibber even more i think the aid environmental part of jibber has reached more than between 250 and 200 questions so far back to monitoring so how does it work we write to the member state we tell them look this year this scheme has been selected for for being monitored for being part of the monitoring exercise please provide primary and secondary legislation implementing the scheme and also a list of all beneficiaries in which to which aid was granted under the scheme in er minus two so two years back and minus three we normally receive that information so the first thing that we do is to look into the legal basis and that is common to the classical the classic and the real-time monitoring and then we look at the list of beneficiaries and then randomly select a number of beneficiaries to then prepare the second request of information in which we would request the member state to provide us all the documentation of aid granted to those individual beneficiaries under the monitoring scheme depending on how complex is the assessment of the individual aid granted under the scheme this would take between two three four requests for information but we usually strive to keep this under the year it's usually a yearly cycle and we try to close it within within the year then once we have gone through our two three requests for information we then have a final assessment of of the case and we write a final letter to the member state the most welcome outcome is of course the first one we detected no irregularities in the legal basis and no regularity in the implementation of the scheme so we basically tell the member state good job thanks for having allowed us to monitor the scheme it's perfect to go on like that in some cases we find some irregularities some conditions that are not perfectly clear that are missing but implemented in practice so a number of and we'll come back to that a bit later on the efforts of this a number of small irregularities that are purely procedural and do not impact real compatibility but as the the court of justice has told us in this wellness they do impact compatibility we have another step of irregularity which is wrong provisions in the legal basis it's not really only unclear or some or missing but it's provisions that are really running a fold of the of the block exemption regulation or of the decision and then we ask the member state to change that and if the member state doesn't we take action against them but it's very rare that a member state receiving such a letter does not act upon upon such a such a communication and does not change the legal basis we might then find that those irregularities have given rise to some irregularities in the implementation but not systemic so what we ask again is the member state to correct those irregularities by voluntary recovering any excess aid that has been granted particularly when the regularities affect the aid ceilings or the aid intensities that are allowed under the decision of the constitutional regulation and then if really the issue is systemic we might have to go pay for my for my position against member state so to give you an idea between 2006 and last year we have monitored some 470 schemes we have found irregularities in roughly one third of the cases in some a part was irregularities well there is a portion that is still yet unclear meaning that the cases are still under investigation so we could not take a final view on whether the case was final no some of the regularities are clearly not affecting compatibility other irregularities are a bit more borderline and might affect compatibility what are those irregularities that we have been doing so different types of irregularities can be as we said on the legal basis the most common thing is that there would be some conditions missing in the legal basis and the most common conditions missing in the legal basis is for example the so-called the Degendorf close meaning the close excluding companies that are the addresses of a pending recovering order from getting aid under the block exemption regulation or even under the decision it's of course a condition that even though we are quite attached to very rarely gives rise to regularity in the implementation phase because you need to actually grant aid to a company that has an outstanding recovery orders and there are luckily enough not too many around Europe so statistically speaking it's very difficult that this missing condition actually causes a problem in implementation but still is important there are often missing our references to aid intensities aid ceilings or exclusions of firms in difficulty the fact that those conditions are missing in the legal basis does not automatically mean that they are not implemented in practice that's why we have said there is a big difference between a missing condition and so something that is formal and procedural and something that really affects compatibility of course if you think about it the fact that no reference to aid intensities is there can give rise to a huge problem of compatibility because access aid can be granted so it's potentially affecting compatibility but not as necessarily actually affecting compatibility and sometimes the second sometimes as we said we have wrong provisions and wrong provisions are most often provisions that allow aid to companies as actually sorry to sectors that are excluded from the gibber for example we have heard earlier that some sectors or that impose conditions like the use of local products which again run a full of gibber run a full actually of the treaty and then of gibber again only when the condition is implemented in practice or is enforced in practice it gives rise to compatibility problems if it it's not implemented in practice it's not problematic in the as problematic in the end so those are the conditions that we would consider normally purely procedural but as I said earlier the Court of Justice has told us that even a very very procedural requirement such indicating in the legal basis that the legal basis is implemented under the blockage that actually in that case under all the presented regulation gives rise to compatibility problems because the Court of Justice in the Dillies Wellness Hotel premium ruling has told us that since the rule is you have to notify under 108.3 the gibber is an exception and is an exception that has to be interpreted very strictly Article 3.1 of the previous gibber the 800 2008 explicit said that all compatibility conditions included in the gibber must be complied with for the measure to be covered by the gibber itself article 3 of the current gibber says almost the same thing so we are in the same environment whenever one of the compatibility conditions and under our regulation 800 the mentioning of the gibber is a legal basis one was one of these compatibility conditions whenever one of them is not compliant the eight is not compatible under the gibber it could still be compatible under a guideline but of course requirements of the guidelines are usually much stricter than gibber requirements so you might find yourself in a situation in which it is not compatible on the gibber because of a procedural irregularity and is not compatible under a guideline simply because the guideline is in principle stricter so requires more compatibility requirements than the gibber does those cases would turn to be quite problematic you see that briefly hinting to it we have highlighted a may in the first sentence of article 12 one of the procedure regulation and the shell in the second sentence and that's the novelty exactly the novelty that professor s would be referring to before of the 2013 amendments to the procedure regulations we will see later on what that that means and the other novelty is the new part of what was at the time article 20 and became article 242 which says that interested parties may submit complaints and to do so they have to comply or to fill in compulsory form providing the commission with all the information provided at the time it's not on the slide just to recall it to you who is an interested party is defined by the regulation itself it's defined by article one h of the procedure regulation which as way of an example it's not a closed list says that interest parties are other member states of course beneficiaries competitors and trade associations and by giving a more general description of interest party everybody who is directly affected by the measure is an interested party which is more or less the same definition that the court gives when it looks at standing so moving from from the legal basis to what the legal basis means in practice there are two entry points for the illegal aid procedure one entry point is the so-called exoficial procedure where we have hinted to it many many times this morning all the quite well-known tax cases we have been discussing this morning are exoficial procedure meaning that the commission acts on its own initiative and then it's covered by the first sentence of the first paragraph of article 12 meaning that it may act it has no duty no obligation to act it can pick and choose the cases the commission wants to act upon or based on a complaint on a formal complaint and then we fall under the second sentence of article then what happens as I said if it's an exoficial the commission enjoys a full discretion in whether to act or not meaning that it could look into the matter and decide that the matter is not relevant not interesting that the distortion of competition seems not to be there seems not to be relevant so on and so forth and simply stop there a different story is when the entry point is a complaint at that point if it's a genuine complaint meaning a complaint that is submitted by an interested party who has filled all the fields of the complaint form which is not that difficult to do pointing to the existence of illegal aid at that point the commission is under a duty to act as a wife strongly made clear by the court of justice in the commission Ryanair case in which the commission tried to resist to Ryanair pressure to act by saying that actually Ryanair simply wrote a letter saying actually it was Mr. O'Leary in person writing a letter to the then vice president Almonia telling him Luke there is stated to to what a flag carrier company in a southern country not giving any other type of information that was it I think that's stated and you should do something because it's outrageous the commission tried to say okay but come on this is not really we cannot qualify that that complaint it keeps no information it gives no reasons why as to that measure should be stated and the court clearly said no no no the procedure revelation as it stood at the time said that when you receive a complaint you have to act actually that when you know of illegal aid you have to act on it and you have to act if you have no sufficient information you go to the member state ask for it and investigate it and then conclude it by way of today as I said such a letter we were after jokeling saying that the postcard from the seaside would qualify as a complaint such a letter would not qualify as a complaint any longer there should be information as to what the measure is about why the complainant thinks that measure constitutes stated and also a number of other informations the pieces of information so as I said if the letter that the commission receives qualifies as a complaint the commission must act must investigate it if not what happens is basically that we fall back into an exoficial or a possible exoficial meaning that the commission still has the information in his hands and can decide what to do with it can decide whether you want to act on it it wants to act on it or it doesn't because it thinks that the matter is not relevant so when the commission decides or is obliged to act what happens basically the procedure that the commission has to go through is exactly the same as for notified aid but for some differences so the differences are that when we're in an illegal aid scenario the commission has a bit more power in in its hands and can issue information injunctions can issue a suspension injunction meaning can tell the member state even not having fully assess the measure you should stop it there until i get to my final decision you should not grant any support which i presume being aid at this stage to anybody or in some extreme cases a recovery injunction as you see it's quite an extreme case has never been done so far also because the requirement under the procedure regulations for doing so are quite straight that there must be no doubts as to the aid measure aid nature of the measure serious doubts about compatibility and also there is there should be a sort of periglumimora meaning there should be an urgency to act quite a high threshold normally when you reach that threshold you have enough information to adopt the final decision and you adopt the final decision which is easier you don't adopt two when you can adopt as i said you adopt final decision because as said by the court in 1990 and also repeated by the court in a final that we were quoting before the only way the commission can say final word on this type of procedures is by way of adopting a formal decision what kinds of formal decisions can the commission adopt exactly the same kinds of formal decisions that the commission can adopt at the end of the notified aid process so at the end of the preliminary investigation a no aid decision we looked into it the elements of 1071 are not fulfilled it's no aid we looked into it they are fulfilled but it's clear compatible aid because it complies there are no doubts that the measure is covered by a set of guidelines or is compatible under the treaty or at the end of the formal investigation maybe because the measure has been modified in the meantime or because the information that the commission has gotten in the framework of the formal investigation in which some more formal steps are to be undertaken the conclusion is that again it's no aid or it's compatible aid or it's compatible subject to the member state implementing some conditions or the most extreme which is also the source of my daily work a negative decision or during the recovery of the ilegate i think that ends also logically the section of the procedure for legal aid are there any questions on this no so we move to the next procedure which is the procedure for mid-use of aid the procedure for mid-use of aid so what are we talking about in the first place we're talking about a case in which the wrong doer is not the member state so the member state has done nothing wrong it has given aid to a certain beneficiary based on a measure which was either block exempted or duty approved by the commission so fully in the clear but when it gave the aid to the beneficiary then the beneficiary did not comply with some of the conditions that were attached to the aid did not comply to some of the conditions that were either in the legal basis or in the decision in the national legal basis or in the decision itself in such cases the commission has to do exactly what it would do in a in an illegal aid decision in a legal aid so it follows exactly the same procedure it has to it may decide to open because we are not sorry it may decide to open if it's a exoficial or it has to open if it's a complaint so we are exactly in the same framework as before and then if it's obliged to open or decides to open the investigation the investigation ends exactly the same way as the illegal aid investigation meaning no aid no objection compatible aid conditional decision or negative again with recovery because the aid is not compatible as used by the the venture the trust a bit through this one but the misuse of a procedure is really just a copy paste of the legal aid procedure except from the identity except for the identity of the wrong doer that gives rise to existing aid as i said starting this presentation this is the only procedure for really looking into existing aid and it's sad it's so also because they and then because it's so it's the only article that of the procedure regulation that actually refers to 101 of the treaty so to the obligation of commission and member states to keep under constant control old system of of aid why should the commission and the member state keep control of something that was already controlled before meaning that it was either cleared by the commission because it was approved by by decision or that was considered to be compatible because it was a block exempted before simply because the market change the market changes over time the conditions on the market change so something that could be no aid at one point or could be clearly compatible at one point could become over time no longer compatible with the market or become aid due to the changes in the in the market i will again not go through the various articles of the legal basis i leave them to you to read and go straight to the to the as i said it's a cooperative procedure between the commission and the member state and when the commission thinks that something that is out there and this is out there legally so we are hopefully moving apart from the previous procedure the legal aid and misuse of aid procedure it's out there on its own on right but it has become problematic over over time either because it has become aid or because it has become less clearly compatible when the commission reaches that conclusion it has to inform the member state of its preliminary conclusions and give the member states the opportunity to comment so the the question would be in such a way for example let's say let's take a real life example this sector was once a monopoly it has become liberalized over time it's the story of the telecom and energy sectors over time the opening the european liberalizations of those sectors as as a consequence that some of the financial arrangements between the member state and then monopolist became problematic over time and so the commission can go to the member state and tell yes the way you were remunerating your monopolist was fine when there was no competition on the market i don't think it's still fine now that the market is because of EU legislation fully liberalized the member state can say no i think it's still fine because for example i'm remunerating green energy in a perfectly market conformity at that point the commission would react to the view of the member state and would send a member state a second letter in which either the commission says yep okay we agree you're right there is no problem or we think that there are problems and the scheme as such the measure as such doesn't look compatible with the internal market so we tell you what we think are the amendments to the scheme that can go up until the entire repealing of the scheme that would be necessary to make that measure compatible or to take that measure out of the market because there is no way to to make it compatible that letter the second one in the one pointing to problems can have either of two outcomes the member state shares the view of the commission it accepts basically the remedies that the commission has proposed and tells exactly the commission that then the commission records that agreement it records that agreement also by publishing it on the with a notice on the official journal so that all market operators are aware that the member state has committed to doing something and has committed to certain conditions for making that measure compatible and the member state is bound by its agreement or the member state can of course is fully free to disagree with that with that assessment of by the commission again the only way for the commission then to address this disagreement and moreover to address the fact that it still thinks that the measure is not compatible so that by not acting by the member state not acting the problem on the internal market would stay there and would have to do that opening formal investigation which again would need to end with a decision a decision which can be again sorry you were right it was still no aid yeah you might have also tweaked it a bit in meanwhile and it has become compatible or it was compatible from the very beginning and we were wrong in indicating you some amendments to make it compatible or and that's the outcome that is closest to the the letter that gives rise to this procedure it is compatible provided that you do this that and the third thing which is exactly normally what the first letter says so to make it compatible you need to amend it that way and that would be a conditional decision or there is no way this can be made compatible and so you should discontinue it more or less you would recognize the outcomes it's of course only the second part of the outcome there is no preliminary investigation here the preliminary investigation is the first phase that we have seen the sending of the exchange of letters that's it for the preliminary investigation the commission goes directly to the formal investigation so it's only the last set of outcomes that that we have seen for illegal aid and misuse aid you might have already noticed that in the last bullet point there is a difference though because in the existing aid procedure there is no recovery the aid was existing and it's protected until the commission adopts the final decision so whatever has been granted up until that time is still to be considered existing aid and since recovery is only recovered of legal aid because that's what article 16 of the procedure regulation says there can be no recovery of course there is no recovery as a caveat and the caveat being that the member state is obliged to discontinue the scheme usually within a quite short term if the member state does not discontinue the scheme that scheme becomes automatically illegal and then we're back to square one recovery can come back into space from that from that only from the moment of the decision only from the moment of because only from the moment of the decision all recipients of that aid are put on notice that aid is no longer existing aid if we go back to the first the first part of our discussion existing aid means approved block exempted or but that's a bit residual aid that has become existing due to the elapsing of the time limit period for its recovery it's really about sector inquires are about a situation in which the commission has a reasonable suspicion that something wrong is systematically going sorry that something is systematically growing wrong in a number of member states as regards a sector of the economy or a type of aid measure let's say the easiest way is to use the only sector inquire that has been carried out so far so a sector of the economy in which the commission was not entirely sure that everything was stated compliant in the internal market was the remuneration of capacity mechanism in the energy sector around Europe so the commission had run into a number of this capacity mechanism and prima facie looked like they were not entirely unproblematic uh what happened is that since capacity mechanisms were also a relatively new animal from a real market point of view because they basically are born because of the huge increase in the use of non-reliable rest energy so you need some backup capacity that was not necessary before what the commission decided to do was not to address one by one or not in the first place to address one by one those capacity mechanisms but to get a better sense of what was going on out there on the market and see whether the way these aid measures with this type of aid measures was implemented in a number of member states was compatible with with the market and how does the commission do so basically the commission sends a number of requests for information to the member states to a number of member states normally and the number of undertakings in those in those member states it collects the replies it looks into the replies and draws up a preliminary report even if the word preliminary is not used in the procedure regulation while doing it we found out that this could only be a preliminary report and publishes it publishes it and invites all interested parties in the union to comment at it and meaning all member states who have replied to the questions or even member states that were not the addresses of those questions or same goes for for the undertakings all market operators are allowed to reply then it takes account of all these comments it starts from its preliminary report and then publishes the final one which is basically the sum the summing up of its preliminary findings and the new findings due to the replies to the report as i said in the very beginning this is not formally speaking a procedure it's simply a fact a knowledge gathering instrument in the end of the commission precisely for those situations in which it would be inappropriate to start opening procedures because the knowledge of the market or the knowledge of the aid measures of the knowledge of the behavior of the different member states is truly perceived not to be enough which means that any concrete follow-up would have to be done under one of the procedures that we have discussed before so if member states notify under a notified procedure but mostly it would be under illegal aid procedures under ex-officer illegal aid procedure meaning that from the fact gathering the commission would have in its end information and it might it may decide as provided for by article 12 1 per sentence it may decide to open illegal aid procedures on those on the information that they have on that information that they've got


The first thing that you must have clarity on is the concept. What type of ice cream shop are you trying to create? Are you going to be selling gelato, yogurt, soft served or sorbet? These are all things that you must identify right from the beginning. This will lead into the equipment that you need, the spacing, the budget, the team, the marketing. And that's the reason why having the concept is so so important right from the get go. At the end of the day, we must understand this concept that we're building is a solution to someone else's problem.


All right, sounds like we're live welcome everybody Back from lunch. This panel is on 5g glimps into a massively connected world I've got three very distinguished panelists with us today, and I will let them introduce themselves Starting on my left with Heather. Hi. I'm Heather Kirksey I'm the VP of NFV for the Linux Foundation, and I head up the opnfv project Which for those of you who may not be familiar with it is an open-source project focused on integrating deploying testing The next gen software based networking stacks Hi, this is Balaji ethirogyla. I work in Ericsson as a director product marketing This is my favorite subject 5g network slicing management orchestration who will enjoy the show Thanks Good afternoon everyone. My name is Ling Li. I'm from China Mobile I previously work for the open all project and now on the TSE of on app and actually internally I'm part of the Nova net project inside China Mobile which drives the strategy and also the vision of the next generation network for the company And we are actually doing both open source projects and internally with various trials So and we look forward to bringing new technologies into trials and also quick commercial adoption Very good Thank you. You are. Oh, that's a really good point Hi, everybody. I'm Phil Rob. I'm the executive director of the open daylight project as well as the vice president of Operations for the networking and orchestration projects within the Linux Foundation. I Spend most of my time right now pretty much splitting between the open daylight and own app Balaji, let's start with you for questions just to give us a background What are the key technical attributes of 5g infrastructure band width device density and so forth? Are we gonna look forward to in 5g? Thank you Phil Yes before I talk about this particular, you know the key attributes of 5g Let's look at What are all the operators challenges as they think about 5g or migrating from 4g to 5g? How 5g will address those challenges, which is key attributes actually? I will sum up the challenges into three categories main categories the very first one is Operators are expected users are expecting really complex services, especially in the area of Multiple vertical industries so one service will pass through many vertical industry before being consumed by the end users operate That's a big challenge complex services and the next is as part of the 5g I mean we have that in some sense in 4g because of virtualization, but 5g People will expect operators and the users will expect even much more advanced automation in agility So what is agility in terms of in the context of 5g? So if you see agility for example in general terms when I receive a call from my enterprise customer or from my user The way I take the requirements and the request and process it quick and create a new service, right? That's basically time to market that has to be really really fast cannot take three months Sometimes it may be expected in 15 minutes in 5g area. The next is fulfillment Okay, we defend the service how fast you can fulfill and activate the service So the agility is key and that can be only delivered if your network is highly programmable and Modular that's very key 5g will bring all of that in the last but not the least you probably know most of us cost So they want complex services to be delivered fast and automated way But at the yet at a very cheap price, right? So cost is a key part. So 5g will look at all of these things To you know, some of these are the key attributes now going back. What is 5g? Right, that's a critical to understand because we talked about 1g 2g and 4g. So 5g is not just purely Just the radio technology 5g will include Basically different access the transport as well as the cloud in terms of number of technology Which is 5g based on as of today 5g actually will take even further new technology that is coming up but as of now it will include network virtualization network functions and Automation management and orchestration and many of this will come together and actually will also for security Blockchain is coming up. So we'll use for blockchain for data integrity So all of this will play all these attributes will play a major role in delivering services under 5g Thank you Anyone else want to comment? If I may to add I think as Bellagio is just summarized You know for 5g absolutely, you know, it puts a very peculiar requirements to the network and some of the you know for carriers traditionally we we provide Very few types of services and our network is actually cultivated to that small set of Services, but for 5g You know, especially we have very different applications coming coming in and it has to be deployed and managed and in an eye-draw and Reliable and also for Separated manner on the same infrastructure. That is the vision of 5g and so as administration and automation is absolutely a key area a requirement to that to enable agility, but also we believe that Industry standards and comments like consensus of how vendors would implement Different like services of 5g. For example, there has been discussions about microservice architecture of a 5g applications and how that would be implemented in a network function granularity or in even lower a Final grand like microservice on level and how vendors could work together to put Put together that into our feasible solution is still a big question And one remaining I think is one of the challenges Very good very good And I know certainly from my perspective just as a user as we've gone from 1g 2g 3g 4g Now moving into 5g we can certainly expect through the radio technologies, you know significantly higher bandwidth To support better video and so forth through our wireless networks But also with the expectation expectation of iot and the explosion of endpoint devices It's really also about the defense the density of those devices Just in general from a cell perspective as well as certainly from my You know intense densities from an urban setting So starting with that Those are some of the requirements for 5g and then of course there's the one millisecond Latency Expectations so we've got applications that are going to require much faster response times And as such a lot more changes than just the radio frequency to support 5g Lately so can you tell us a little bit about some of those new applications that are to be enabled with this technology? Through that improved infrastructure Yes from our view on to start with Actually have these enhanced mobile broadband applications families including virtual reality and augmented reality which would require you know Also, I think the ultra latency requirements as you just mentioned and the other type is I think you know the massive iot applications for example vehicle to X and also the smart factory Applications which also I think also require out to reality reliability and also low latency and Some of the other applications like traditional on core network and transport services and also we wanted to enhance the network architecture and also Some of the more I think features unlike Agility to deploy more on reach applications while these common infrastructure and and new technologies Just add on to what lingley has just mentioned One of the key Part as part of the fight again virtualization has has already given us that opportunity right that ability to do things So for example, we're talking about distributed data centers Centralized was as a distributor. So some of the radio functions can be Centralized but in a distributed data centers and some of the core functions. They they actually live in Centralized data center. We can move some of them much closer Especially the one that is related with the user plane for example media codex Video and all these codex can be moved much much closer to the user so that the data plane stays as close to the user as possible But going back to some of the use cases is for example in 5g We can expect You know fiber fiber speed actually so it may actually work for fixed network as well So some of the alternatives towards instead of fiber we could leverage 5g and also Real-time Applications for the car for example just give a typical idea if you use the same principle in 4g for example Use the car analogy and if you want to apply break for the car It'll take using 4g network because of the latency. It could take somewhere around 4.5 feet To make a decision to apply the break But in 5g because of this extreme stringent requirements on the latency We could do that that in couple of inches So that's what the expectations so it will tremendously open up new opportunity for the new you know Different industry take an example on robotics the very expensive machines you mentioned about the factory is exactly smart factory so In robots for example You could take the control function the brain and take them and put them in a distributed data center Closer to the production environment say if you have 50 robots They're going to cost a lot of money But the brain power is the key one that we take it and put it in the distributed data center But you need to have a less latency The good thing is you don't need to have a 50 brains could have 30 because it's virtualized We'll never in all of this you know the virtualization and the SDN will give those capabilities Yeah I mean when I think about the applications I mean they they've mentioned a lot of the ones that you know I hear on people's minds what I usually like to think about are the ones we haven't invented yet Right, I mean you know the movement from when we went from your old flip phones to our smartphones and all of a sudden the world was different So you know when I think about things like NFV and as dn and their importance for the network it really is going away from these sort of Special purpose boxes to this idea that you've got a flexible Upgradable DevOps agile infrastructure so that when all these crazy new ideas come out Your network is prepared to be there for you Right right and for me that's that's a lot of the tie-in in the sense that You know this is to support 5g We're going to have to move compute and storage much closer to the edge Which means a lot more management and orchestration control from within the networks where it used to be pretty much a centralized cloud That leads back into network function virtualization and the activity being done by opn of v So Heather you know as as you look at that How does opn of v fit into 5g from your perspective? How are the service providers using OpenStack and opn of v to build the software infrastructure needed to enable those new classes of application? Yeah, and it's kind of what I was saying before right you know where we're Reimagining the network instead of being a set of boxes that do things to a flexible software infrastructure And so which is basically the promise of NFP So to the extent that you want your next generation mobile network to have that flexibility to have that agility You know NFP is really at the core of that You know and what we've been doing with OpenStack is you know if you start building up that network There are a lot of pieces that are necessary. So OpenStack Is very important to us also your SDN controller There are various types of data plane acceleration technology that will certainly be important in a lot of these high-throughput Applications analytics that you might want to do on top of the network and so within opn of v We you know basically sort of work on the integration of all of those and make sure end-to-end use cases work across The different pieces that everyone is building necessary for the network If I may add absolutely Open source will play a major role across up and down the stack So like I said 5g is not just one area of technology just to give a typical example We work with Fido a lot, which is data plane, right? So universal data plane highly accelerated because packets going in packets coming out That's the basic thing right, but it needs a very low latency and also we don't lose the packets Right. So for example, just give idea here. We have an open daylight. We have a project called network That will integrate with Fido using any comb. This is a very typical example But small thing but if you see the larger scheme of things in 5g everything matters all these things are integrated and connected What I also think is going to be really really important going forward is you know We're here we're at open stack where to halten probably towards the you know technology side of the world But just you know sort of cultural and process wise when you get to start thinking about a more flexible network or more software-based network What that does open to you But it does change when you're thinking about management and things that it's you're not managing a bunch of boxes you you're managing compute and storage and network infrastructure and so you know a lot of this sort of thought processes the NFV sort of requires but enables I think are still you know We're still kind of figuring out how to wrap our heads around thinking about the network in a different way But I think that will definitely be key to really take advantage. I think of what 5g might be able to enable So I'd like to open it up for questions from the audience as well We've got mics here on either corner or in either aisle here So feel free to stand up and and ask any questions that you might have All right, but we'll continue on. Oh, no, we do have questions. Excellent. Yes, sir. It's almost on Tap on but he says it's on try again Nope There we go. Okay. Yes, we can hear you now. Awesome. Um, so this is a question for you Heather Um, you were talking about like a performance in NFV. So obviously the 800 pound gorilla has been We heard that So I'm just kind of curious some working specifically in the V space We haven't seen really any big integration as far as the data plane side and high-performance IO Inside of containers and I'm curious if any of the four of you have been looking at that or doing any development in that space And what we might expect Yeah, that's certainly a big topic on Everyone's minds right now sort of how Containerization and Kubernetes sort of fits into the stack that we've been kind of working with for about the past two and a half years You know, I think China mobile actually sort of just launched a project in opening a fee specifically looking at container requirements We're basically we're beginning to to figure that out And I think that there's still a lot of open questions about the best way to do it and what sort of workloads will work best You know with what mix of technologies also depending on where they're placed. So I Think the answers are the questions are just now being asked and the answers are being figured out Is what I'm seeing at least It's a very good question on containers a couple of things on the Fido side We're looking at you know the containers version of Fido and also integration of Kubernetes That's on the open source side, but from a vendor perspective. I could add from you know, large vendor in a 5g core Many of you know, we're right now. We started in 2014 actually virtualizing So the journey has already started before we talked about containers, right? So since 2014 we started moving our operators started asking as we started moving the function actual network function to the Virtualization right virtual network functions VNF Traditionally it was in VMs, but now we are going towards microservices. What we call now is a cloud optimized VNF So it is a deal, right? You just cannot look at web scale. Yeah, I'm going to just do that Telecom is a little bit different because of the many real-time requirements You can't shut the phone off just like that. It has to work 24 by 7 so there are very stringent requirements So that's what we're talking about cloud optimized VNF. It'll be microservices based and Containerized, but most important thing is there are some design principles. We'll apply that will be very telecom great And one of the complications to write is for most telecom network-centered applications There's a great deal more state to manage So figuring out how that works in you know some cloud native, you know concepts is also something that You know needs to get figured out people people were beginning to figure it out And I have no doubt that our community will but they're just you know There's some some you have mismatches of sort of points of view kind of coming towards that that'll be it'll be fun Figure out Fee has been doing great job for the system integration verification finding the issues feeding back to the community Developing it awesome and Erickson is the pioneer for the radio and working with open NFV together And now with Erickson Cisco right out for the FTIO with the honeycomb integration of their perfect job The only thing that I see missing which has been tackled by the court people is the network slicing So what is your view to implement network slicing either part of open NFV or totally keep it out or Let the others to figure out how to handle it for repurposing the whole network by means of slicing deslicing And what's Erickson's view to contribute in that work? Thank you You can take it I am sure that you have some views on network slicing, so I'll let you thank you for that. Yeah Yeah, so just address the concept of network slicing is very critical the piece so Okay, you have the network and the slicing will include Obviously the radio piece is important also the transport piece as well as the course piece. I mean Core space right, but it's beyond not just the network itself Network slicing also involves service slicing very important So there are I see three layers of orchestration playing together to deliver the network slice One is at the infrastructure cloud infrastructure layer, which is heat orchestrator in this case if you take open stack Or it could be a weak load director whatever and then that gives the flexibility on that layer That's very critical then take up the next layer Which is a network management or a VNF application level orchestration for example NFEO all of that So you create more flexibility there in the last piece is a service layer. So that's more of a business layer So, you know different businesses. That's what you create the service So we provide three layers of flexibility to create the network slicing right so network slicing that means not just you know your You know core network. It should be from the radio. Did I answer your question or yes And no my question mainly from open source of our community perspective It's driven by the court people and court especially but nothing from open NFV to drive this to become a reality So what will be we will be seeing as reality implemented by Ericsson driven by the open source Yeah, so yeah pretty much for our for our first two years You know we were we were fairly data center centric You know kind of you know in sort of what we were trying to pull together within opnfv We weren't really looking at at the multi-axis edge quite as much We've actually just started some projects around that both sort of with you know integration of kind of the more data Center stack with core potentially at the edge also open daylight has been doing a lot of work around sort of getting edge access and in the you know the integration with the optical equipment and the line and speed Leaf and spine and all that kind of stuff. So we're we're just we're basically bringing those in sort of right now And looking ahead to see some of that in our next Euphrates release So basically I think So to answer your question There's been ongoing work within folks like open daylight that opnfv is now I think ready to start integrating and addressing And then you know also you're going to that service and application layer stuff You know with the own app project that just got that just got launched with the merger of open o and e-comp You know, I think some of those business slicing Layer capabilities are getting implemented in there and we're working really hard to work on that sort of you know infrastructure Network and and back in integration piece between opnfv and own app right now All these are enablers I'm going to allow Ling Ling Lee to talk about one up. She's expert here, but The these are they are the enablers what you ask questions like Fido the open daylight openshack They're the enablers to create the network slice Yes, but they add I think lbfv is is actually acting as an integration project and it takes from upstream and do the integration testing and For registration for 5g actually own app has been targeted as address that use case But now it's you know for for release one I believe but we are actually doing the architecture design discussion hopefully in the future proof manner, so 5g will definitely be taking consideration and and I think that there is a Also special requirements from 5g scenario is that you know from the current Architecture and discussion we see that 5g actually requires two layers of service Justation in addition to service or justation so that is exactly why we're we're actually proposing that own app to be take serious consideration of having Yet another separated service or just ration up from the global like view Which is to taking consideration of the course to may 5g or just ration from the excess network Transport network to the core network Very good Right. Yes. Yeah, I'd like to continue to talk about this topic about slicing power Because I think a 5g is most driven by 3g pp Mostly and we are talking about open-source how they work with 5g. I think the Balaji has mentioned slicing is like the three layers For the service, I mean slicing and slicing supplement managers So there are two layers in the In the service layers, but if you look at the e-com I think they're just one layer about service or station, but we look at the open home. It's more like two layers. That is marching to 5g architectures. So if these two architectures are not I mean converged They are not aligned with 3g pp 5g Slicing architecture then that's something will not be I mean really aligned between the standard and open source So what do you think about? For example from Ericsson point of view, do you think the e-com just one layer of service or station? How can they marching to 5g? I mean slicing architectures and what about mainly what do you think about how the overall if not being accepted Then how they all never can support 5g Thank you And that potato do Yeah, without taking into different, you know angles here about open sources But I'm just from a purely technologist perspective, right? To be honest with you. It's not one place. I mean really if you peel into the box. There's always a you will see A box a function within the box That creates network slicing with operationally meaning operational characteristics a function that will take care of you know You know defining Based on what the service layer is telling them in task our template It is decomposed and given to the network slice orchestration level It doesn't matter what what we call the box in different areas by different companies But end of the function is the same and that will actually deliver key characteristics that is required For that piece, right? So it gives that flexibility Then the next layer is the business layer where you define the services That you could have different service models different charging models different slas So it doesn't matter those two boxes sit in one box. I don't see upon me is a technology You know, so that's what I see it Yes, I think you know the requirements. I think first of all we need to get aligned on the use cases and how we You know enable different use cases at what time frame so for now we might start with a simple use case, but I think you're right. We need to do the extractor design and have that discussion in a future proof You know like manner and looking at our 5g scenarios more complicated ones into our design from from the first day and As Balaji said, um, we we're actually having those discussions right now how to merge, you know from e-coms on current Attractor and we's open all I think open all start with Far more complicated use cases than e-com does and right now we are having that discussion and I think we are on a good way, right phil and And also we were taking absolutely consideration of 5g scenarios Because I think that is something that we need to do Right starting maybe some sometime up next year When the 5g standards are stable, I think Next half of year and and that will be really close for us and we need to Take into account that requirements and consideration right now. Yes So if I allow me continue, I think the Both of you answer very very impressive. I mean But I do see the gap. I mean because the slicing of the two layers But look at the onam today is still I mean if without include open all It still is one service ostracian layer. So if we still define the black box Say either include one layer or two layers But I still see because why they divide two layers because they're different vendors, right? So that's the requirement if we just put into one black box Include everybody I think that they're not going anywhere So that so my recommendation is for the service ostracian layer We do need two layers for the slicing. Otherwise 5g might not be supported by all Thank you. Thanks. Thank you very much. Yes Yes, no, and that's actually a really good illustration I mean so obviously a lot of folks in the room are open stackers And open stack plays a very key piece of what we're going to be doing to implement 5g through NFV and so forth But ding brings up a very good point with regard to how in in the telco world the The meshing and the alignment between The standards organizations like 3g pp and the open source projects that are implementing against those or with those as they're happening in real time is Something that I think this group of End users has to deal with more than what we've seen in the past throughout the open the open stack ecosystem And so it is it's it's a very important area on app ecomp and open o are all relatively young On app and ecomp before they merged to this new project called on app And so those are questions that are again that development community is directly grappling with right now To which open stack is a key component within that stack Other questions? Yes In that space on app is not alone. There's open button as well Absolutely So if you look at on app as a merger of the ecomp driven by 18 t open o by china mobile As my friend mentioned merging these together could be much more difficult than going another way like open button For for rest of us, right? I mean to see if these cars both compatible for network slicing for 5g or maybe another way Well, I'll I'll let others answer. I've I've got an opinion there, but please so From my perspective working with open source The most powerful thing you can do is get an industry behind a common platform This is why open stack has been so successful. Um, it got an industry behind Enabling a platform that everyone could then build upon I see own app particularly with the merger between two different orchestration projects that had been launched separately By combining those I'm confident as I always am when you put a bunch of developers in a room They come out with a really solid solution And that's what the developers are literally in the middle of right now between merging Open o and ecomp But when you get such a significant portion of the industry all rowing in the same direction with the foundation It's just helpful to get past that point and get everybody building stuff on top of it more quickly That's my perspective From my perspective, um within opina fee we tend to be fairly Broad and big tense in our sort of approach too and that you know, we enable multiple different sdn controllers in our last release We we you know did integration work around open o we also had a project around open baton integration But then it does illustrate a little bit of what you know, what phil was saying is it's just the open baton community Was a little small and they weren't able to kind of push the project So that integration work through to through to completion. So I mean, there's just a lot to be said about A critical mass of people congregating somewhere Because you can always solve software problems eventually if you have enough of the right people working on them in a healthy culture with a good You know good support So I mean I kind of feel like you know Wherever sort of the coalescence happens, you know to your point developers in a room will will figure out Figure out the problems and we we need to have sort of that that critical mass together and the other thing I always like to You know pitch since there are people here Bring some test cases too, right? You know, I mean there's a lot of good design work and stuff But you know, especially as a project that focuses so much on those end-to-end use case testing You know the more tests we have that sort of demonstrate requirements Then we can see where the gaps in the platform work where it's falling down Where perhaps different solutions work better than others You know, that's that's always a possibility. So you bring more test cases, please Thank you So I think the opnv is historically more like a manual aligned But look at the the future 5g supporting like on-app supporting them. It's different from manual If you look at that application controller, so what do you think about how how this Being different actor to be converging the future. I mean the it's just supporting found in the future. I mean how all now an opnv They are not totally I mean today's aligned architecture. What do you think about this? Yeah, so I and I basically think that there's there's development work that needs to be done You know, one of the first things we're actually setting up with them Is trying to get ci cd automated ci cd pipeline integration coming from on app Into the opnf v ci cd pipeline, which also brings in from fido and open daylight So that we can so we can just start actually laying down that full stack like on a nightly basis in doing some tests against it Yeah, so that I right now from from my perspective the the ci cd pipeline integration is actually Where for me the you know the emphasis is on because then we have the tooling and we've started down that automation path Of being able to however on app goes. We've laid the foundation for For for testing that Actually from my perspective, I didn't see you know, you know those two approaches diverse that march and you know in terms of opnv and open stack platform both, I think manual or at cnf manual Architectural or on app architecture actually treats like open stack as an external third party Component and what what happens inside is actually irrelevant to opnv integration test At least from my understanding Opnv just expands the scope to include the manual Right, so that means they include the manual, but all now it's like more like application controller centric But if so if I mean fio could be included that should be aligned But if not, then it's purely different I mean starting, you know, if you're looking at you know from the open stack point of view are those apis are actually Partial or subset of the you know the northbound apis so I didn't see any difference Very good. Any other questions? All right, well, then I'll continue on Um, so lingley all of this change uh to be able to support 5g sounds like a rather huge undertaking for the telecom service providers What are the biggest challenges and major areas of focus in china mobile for this transition to 5g? Um, yes, actually, uh, we have been working hard to enable these Network infrastructure, especially enablement technology sdnv. We think that that is actually on you know Pre-requirements for for 5g scenario and second of all as I mentioned earlier. We see that, you know, we need industry standards to be ready Um, so we're also working hard in street gpp and we were actually also Leading that discussion and looking forward to at least get, you know, those specifications Finalized I think sometime around next year and also Because 5g has been, you know Specified is the microservice like agitact application and this is also the first one is to gpp so, um, we're also working with vent Our partners to kind of like to figure out what type of microservice architecture is needed for 5g use cases Right now we have two alternatives One is very much like the nfv of the virtual machine like banner. We have different network functions that deploy it It's in different, you know, like containers, but without any like further division And into a microservice more More final granularity Or basic functional pieces But another alternative is that, you know, we're still drilling down another like level down and really divided and decoupled those sort of like Big functions into small pieces and that would require I think huge Transformation both from the infrastructure layer and also from the application vendors point of view how how they can't align And be intervable between those different tiny pieces In addition to what lingley has mentioned It's not just about the technology as well for, you know, the you know, we are talking to several operators they tell us a lot of things Related with their business processes in the people's culture and religion within the operator community Remember these are 200,000 300,000 people almost a small country And you know moving that whole force You know, you can have the best technologies in the world But people has to be retrained, you know, the process needs to be changed You know, imagine we deliver it takes three months to do l3 vpn service, for example, right? And you're expecting going to the new industry with the new business marvel The expectation is deliver the service in 15 minutes. And the worst thing is my cmo group will come and tell me, okay This product is great. Let's launch it to the market. And then well, we're not getting a good returns on this Let's close it down. So we should be able to wind down as well So that you know, so all the business process needs to be ready for that The technology will be there, but that's many operators worry about that and they're working on it to transform their force Very good. Yeah, I think network ops culture is also going to undergo a significant transformation You know the traditional mindset of you know a net network ops guy is I want to get something stable and never touch it Um, you know, don't don't sneeze, you know near it because I don't want any downtime But I mean I I really think the sort of integration of Dev you know dev ops, you know sort of style pipelines and managing your infrastructure on a much more regularly Updating basis as well as the applications on top of that infrastructure is going to be absolutely Critical for folks to actually get the the real returns on investment that they're looking for I think from NFV in general and certainly in the you know in the 5g 5g space as well Yeah, that that is something that I see as well I mean if if you remember back in the day of the central Database systems of the enterprise and how you couldn't touch those they had to be scale up mainframe type hardware To when the enterprises move to scale out linux boxes Um, you know that type of change in thought processes now going on with The operators thinking that they well, there's a big debate, you know Can you do dev ops in in carrier type networks? Or is that just too unstable and dang I I'm afraid I'm not going to let you ask a question because we're actually out of time But but anyway with that thank you very much everybody and please help me in uh thanking our panelists Thank you