5G is separated into “control plane” and “user plane” [2]. CUPS enables cost-efficient scaling through geo-distribution of essential 5G network functions and services.
Independent Control- and user-plane scalability: Ability to independently scale control and user planes as the mobile network needs. Provides the ability to dynamically adjust the network to ever-changing demands.
User-Plane specialization: CUPS offers the ability to leverage a single control plane for multiple user planes, some of which can be specialized for key applications. Lower equipment costs and operational costs result.
5G Readiness: Architectural readiness for 5G provides lower implementation costs in the future.
Lower backhaul costs: Data termination at the edge of the network where appropriate brings substantial savings in backhaul costs.
Traffic offload: The architecture allows for some traffic to be directed to regional and metro caches in cases such as OTT video and certain enterprise applications, improving overall customer experience.
New use case enablement: Ability to cater to new use cases (e.g., ultra-low-latency applications, multi-gigabit per session, and mobile edge computing) provides opportunities to increase revenue.
Multilevel CUPS offerings: Inline, co-located, remote CUPS offers successive levels of CUPS implementation, bringing maximum flexibility to match an operator's preferred pace of deployment [1].