Ericsson launches 5G RAN Slicing to spur 5G business growth

Denis Brunetti, president of Ericsson in Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos

Now commercially available, Ericsson 5G RAN Slicing allocates radio resources at one millisecond scheduling and supports multi-dimensional service differentiation handling across slices. This strengthens end-to-end slicing capabilities for dynamic resource management and orchestration that ensure the high-quality end-user experience required by diverse use cases.

Network slicing supports multiple logical networks for different service types over one common infrastructure. It is a key enabler for unlocking 5G revenue opportunities such as enhanced video, in-car connectivity, and extended reality. An Ericsson report estimates $712 billion in an addressable consumer market for service providers by 2030.

The addressable market for network slicing alone in the enterprise segment is projected at $300 billion by 2025 (GSMA data). As 5G scales up, service providers are looking to maximise returns on their investments by targeting innovative and high revenue-generating use cases such as cloud gaming, smart factories, and smart healthcare.

Per Narvinger, head of Product Area Networks, Ericsson said: “Ericsson 5G RAN Slicing dynamically optimises radio resources to deliver significantly more spectrum-efficient radio access network slicing. What makes our solution distinct is that it boosts end-to-end management and orchestration support for fast and efficient service delivery."

He added that this gives service providers the differentiation and guaranteed performance needed to monetise 5G investments with diverse use cases.

Denis Brunetti, president of Ericsson Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos noted, “Network slicing is one of the major 5G capabilities that will enable industries and enterprises to digitally transform their businesses for increased productivity, and will include Industry 4.0, smart city, and public safety applications such as cloud robotics and video-assisted remote operations. It will also address consumer segment use cases such as AR/VR, TV/media for sports event streaming and cloud gaming. Ericsson has a broad range of ongoing 5G network slicing engagements across the globe, and we look forward to introducing this capability to Vietnam.”

Meanwhile, Toshikazu Yokai, executive officer, chief director of Mobile Technology at KDDI, commented that end-to-end slicing is key to monetising 5G investment and RAN slicing will help make that happen. Across different slices in Ericsson's mobile networks, RAN slicing will deliver the quality assurance and latency required.

Ericsson 5G RAN slicing is the first product offering a fully end-to-end solution with RAN slicing based on dynamic radio resource partitioning in under one millisecond using embedded radio control mechanisms to assure quality of service, over the air, in real time, said Sue Rudd, director of Networks and Service Platforms, Strategy Analytics.

“This truly end-to-end approach integrates radio optimisation with policy-controlled network orchestration to deliver inherently secure virtualised private RAN slicing without the loss of the 30-40 per cent spectrum capacity due to ‘hard slicing’," she explained. "Ericsson’s real-time dynamic RAN slicing bridges the ‘RAN gap’ to make e2e slicing profitable.”

The Ericsson 5G RAN Slicing solution offers a unique, multi-dimensional service differentiation handling that allows for the effective use of dynamic radio resource partitioning, slice-aware quality of service (QoS) enforcement, and slice orchestration functionality for service-level agreement (SLA) fulfilment. Built on Ericsson radio expertise and a flexible and scalable slicing architecture, the solution dynamically shares radio resources at one millisecond scheduling for best spectrum efficiency.

This enables service providers to offer a variety of use cases with increased flexibility and versatility. It ensures end-to-end network slice management and orchestration support for fast service delivery and supports business models for virtual, hybrid, and dedicated private networks. The solution can also power use cases for mission-critical and time-critical communication services.

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