7 lessons from our network slicing journey

For mobile operators, there’s a lot to like about network slicing. For starters, it enables their 5G networks to support a much more comprehensive range of use cases and customer types, which opens the door for more revenue opportunities.

These opportunities couldn’t come at a better time. Between spectrum and infrastructure, mobile operators have each spent billions to launch 5G, and they’ll spend billions more over the next decade expanding and upgrading those networks. To recoup that investment, operators will have to get creative, which means more than simply trying to convince consumers to pay more for 5G than 4G.

Considering all the business benefits, why isn’t every operator making slicing part of their 5G strategy from day one? The short answer is that it takes a daunting amount of expertise to implement slicing correctly. The technical challenges under the hood require bringing together several technologies including networks, automation, data, and device management.

As a result, some operators are partnering with systems integrators on proof-of-concept (PoC) trials to determine whether all of the necessary technologies are mature enough to support enterprise-grade slicing. As slicing evolves, the end game will be a fully automated system that enables a variety of scenarios.

PoC for Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) using single-vendor technology exist. But until now, no successful PoC has used a multi-vendor disaggregated network, which is the likely setup for most future networks. We worked with a major telco, a cloud company, and multiple network technology and software providers, from radio to core, to build a PoC for a disaggregated 5G network.

This paper discusses the project and its lessons for other operators setting up disaggregated 5G private networks to offer NaaS.

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