By Ajay Gautam, Strategic Product Manager 5G RAN
Why is 5G RAN slicing key to delivering on the promise of 5G? As a vital part of end-to-end network slicing technology, RAN slicing will help unlock the potential of a wide range of use cases for various industries, enterprise and enhanced mobile broadband segment. In our latest paper, we discuss what is Ericsson RAN slicing and how it can help realise the full potential of 5G.
From smartphones to smart factories, the promise of 5G is an open innovation platform that enables business and society to take the leap towards a smarter, safer and more sustainable future.
5G network slicing gives service providers the ability to serve a multitude of use cases with lightning-fast connectivity and enhanced performance. Service providers around the world are moving towards 5G network slicing, where slices of virtual networks are allocated to the meet connectivity demands of different use cases. Network slicing facilitates service differentiation and secures the necessary capacity and performance during high load to fulfill service-level agreements (SLA).
A case in point is online gaming. An Ericsson ConsumerLab survey of 7,000 consumers found that 90 percent of those who play video games at least weekly were negatively affected by lag when playing, with at least 1 in 3 sometimes quitting as a result.
Different game genres have different data rates, latency and reliability requirements on mobile networks. This is an area where service providers can offer customised slices for cloud gaming or any AR/VR application. The slicing framework can reserve dedicated resources by orchestrating these across the radio, transport and core networks.
Just like with this cloud gaming example , service providers can use network slicing as a way of differentiating their 5G offering. It helps tap the huge potential of a wide range of use cases for the enterprise and enhanced mobile broadband markets with guaranteed performance.
Ericsson RAN slicing solution enables service providers to offer differentiated handling of new services with respective quality of service and radio resource management for SLA fulfillment. What’s more, our solution is scalable and flexible enough to support a growing number of slicing use cases with faster time to market.
