Ericsson and Orange Belgium have successfully completed a pilot project that opens the door to automatic 5G network slicing. This will allow them to take full advantage of 5G’s capabilities. Belgium invested in the project.
Orange Belgium and Ericsson are wrapping up the successful completion of a pilot project on 5G slicing automation. That project was sponsored by the FPS/SPF Economy, as part of the Telecom to the next level initiative.
For the project, Orange worked with Ericsson’s Service Orchestration and Assurance solution. The two parties explored how to seamlessly set up and manage 5G network slices. Those slices worked across both the core and radio networks, and as such are usable by end customers.
Orange could easily create and manage slices tailored to the specific needs of large customers. Orange was also able to automate scalability. With the successful pilot project, Orange is ready to get more value out of 5G. This allows the provider to offer slices to customers who have a demand for them. This typically involves large parties from, for example, the healthcare or manufacturing industries.
Why slicing?
Network slicing is a unique capability of 5G. The technology allows multiple vituable subnetworks to exist on a single physical 5G network with their own focus. These could be networks with guaranteed low latency for machine communications, for example, or stable high throughput for remote drone control, for example.
Slices operate as stand-alone networks and do not see interference from, for example, the high usage of the consumer 5G network. In that respect, a 5G slice is a kind of private network for certain customers.
To offer these slices, it is necessary to set them up smoothly and scale them to customer needs. Orange and Ericsson have now demonstrated that this is possible io the Belgian network. A next step is to offer slices as a product for organizations that need a private 5G connection with guaranteed quality.
Orange and Ericsson previously engaged in tests around 5G and slicing. For example, they already managed to use two slices on one phone.