Future carrier networks [Guest Editorial]

Although a huge amount of private and public research funds have been spent on future network technologies, very few research results on next generation networks are available in the literature to cater to the responsibilities of a critical communication infrastructure for future Internet with seamless mobility. Future carrier networks need to be able to scale to billions of nodes, interconnect billions of devices, and, especially, provide support for the diversified requirements of carrier grade next-generation services. The original architecture of information communications and technology (ICT) networks, and their networking protocols were not designed for supporting such requirements. Moreover, the usage context for which the mobile and fixed networks were planned has changed considerably. For instance, some of the fundamental characteristics of future carrier networks are: low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities; interoperability and federation of cloud networks with full end-to-end service level agreement (SLA) negotiations; network openness, with the possibilities of integrating network services with computing platforms and higher layers applications (e.g., over the top, OTT); and support new business models, such as network as a service (NaaS), data as a service (DaaS), and knowledge as a service (KaaS). As of today, we have adapted to the new necessities through mere incremental improvements of original architectures, pushing data traffic through infrastructures that were supposed to carry voice and real-time communication services through networks that were meant for data traffic only.