Nokia has announced the world’s first deployment of 5G Edge Slicing on a live commercial network with mobile operators, Cellcom and Telia.
The latter deployment is with Sandvik in Tampere, Finland, and will demonstrate how next-generation 5G Edge Slicing functions can operate with different mining equipment and digital applications, the company said.
Nokia’s Edge Slicing solution allows operators to offer their enterprise customers next-generation, secure, reliable and high-performing Virtual Private Network (VPN) services over commercial 4G and 5G networks, it says. Once launched, both companies will be able to offer new services to their customers − driving new revenue opportunities − as well as partner with cloud application and infrastructure service providers. Nokia’s solution is available now for its global customer base.
Nokia and Cellcom’s trial with sliced RAN-Transport-Core is taking place in Netanya, Israel, and is focused on business applications and the customer experience as well as enterprise interconnectivity over a high-speed metro network.
It explained: “Nokia’s 5G Edge Slicing solution is an evolution of Nokia’s previously announced 4G/5G slicing capability. It enables operators to keep critical business data traffic local while running slice management, control and assurance on existing central mobile data centres ensuring cost and operational efficiency. It is also scalable and the same virtualised network infrastructure can be used by several customers in the same area, for example in a business campus containing multiple companies.
“Based on an enterprise customer’s needs, a 5G virtual private network can be flexibly deployed in an area with a 4G/5G base station or in a campus, city, or regional area. With Nokia, CSPs can now offer their customers both on-premise 5G Private Networks or 5G Virtual Private Networks.”
Jari Collin, CTO, Telia Finland, said: “We are delighted to be the first to deploy the first-ever 5G Edge Slicing solution together with Nokia and our important customer Sandvik, who is investing heavily in digital mining technologies and the technology environment in its test mine in Tampere. Our advanced 5G network supports our customers’ business by enabling new kinds of services and making the network more efficient. We will continue to develop innovations and the latest applications, as our mission is to bring the opportunities of 5G to our customers.”
Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said: “Nokia was the first vendor to offer a network slicing solution and we are proud to continue this pioneering story by being the first to offer 5G Edge Slicing to our customers. These successful trials cover different use cases and customer requirements and demonstrate the possibilities of network slicing. I look forward to seeing this important new area grow and deliver opportunities to our customers in the coming year.”
A distributed and sliced 5G edge architecture creates partnering opportunities for mobile operators and Cloud Service and Infrastructure Providers, according to Nokia. High-performing virtualised networks enable service providers to bring edge cloud application platforms close to enterprise customers. Co-location and infrastructure companies’ facilities can be also used in the edge slicing deployments.
The company added: “5G Edge Slicing combined with Nokia’s new Adaptive Cloud Networking solution, which part of its scope is automating the edge cloud network, opens additional opportunities for service providers to create value for enterprises.”
Nokia’s 5G network slicing solution supports all LTE, 5G non-standalone, and 5G standalone (SA) devices, enabling mobile operators to use a huge device ecosystem and address a large customer base. This allows operators to utilise existing 4G/5G network assets, spectrum, and coverage for next-generation VPN services. Nokia’s network slicing solution is based on 3GPP, IETF, and TMForum standards and architecture and works in multi-vendor environments.