Moving from a one size fits all to 5G and network slicing opens up enormous revenue opportunities delivered through the ability to customize service delivery while sharing resources and components. 5G network slicing enables services to be configured to the specific needs of customers, applications, and vertical industries. With network slicing, every slice of the network can have its own architecture, management, and security to support unique requirements while functional components and resources may be shared across network slices. Each slice can be defined by a specific service level. Service level capabilities can include data speed, capacity, connectivity, quality, latency, and reliability.
A study by Gartner reported that 66% of businesses plan to deploy 5G by 2020. Modor Intelligence, a research organization reports the value of the network slicing market at USD 143.63 billion in 2019 with a forecast to reach USD 446.33 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 20.8% over the forecast period 2020 – 2025. According to GSMA, network slicing, in combination with other enablers and capabilities, will aid network providers to address a revenue opportunity worth USD 300 billion by 2025.
The potential is vast because it comes at a time when technological advancements are creating a perfect storm of opportunities for business. With the advances in IoT technology, cloud computing, and real-time analytics, many enterprises are embarking on major transformations to improve the service levels delivered to their customers and capture new revenue opportunities.
Slicing Makes It Personal…
Potential use cases for business are many and varied, and that’s the key – and the challenge – for network operators.
High-performance 5G networking will make it possible for large groups of people to experience concerts, sporting events, or other live performances via VR/AR broadcasts. Manufacturers will be able to monitor and control sophisticated robot communities in near-lights-out production lines. Logistics companies will be able to find optimum routes for supply chains.
The key benefit of network slicing – and the difference between that and conventional QoS (Quality of Service) solutions, is that the network slices will be customizable – personalizable, if you will – for any given application. That’s because a network slice will give the customer a dedicated, virtual connection that extends all the way down to the physical memory and computation elements of the operator’s core transport network, where individual slices are considered “tenants” of the physical services.
This creates the ability to run multiple logical networks as virtually independent business operations on a common physical infrastructure efficiently and economically.
By contrast, conventional QoS techniques don’t extend all the way into the storage and computation resources, and so can’t perform the same degree of fine-grained per-user isolation and control.
… And Personalization Makes All The Difference
With network slicing, the network operator can now offer the equivalent of a completely private network to each of its business customers. Combining this with the significant speed, latency, and capacity advances of 5G, operators will be able to offer wide-ranging – and customizable – performance attributes economically since the slices will be sharing the operator’s physical infrastructure.
And what are the performance attributes? They include, but are not limited to:
- High throughout
- Low latency
- Massive connectivity
- Energy efficiency
- Reliability
- Data security
That’s a lot of reasons for many businesses to order a network slice or two. And note that these attributes can be combined for any given application. For instance, a factory automation application may call for a slice that offers both high reliability and low latency for controlling production robots. An Internet of Things business might want massive connectivity and high security, while a live VR broadcast could specify a short-term slice with both high bandwidth and low latency.
Use Cases for 5G and Network Slicing
Analytics and 5G
5G networks by definition are extremely complex. Capability deployment, balancing capacity and coverage, deployment of microservices, scaling specific network function, along with utilization management all become more complex and demand greater visibility and intelligence then managing 3G or 4G networks.
Simplifying the management of 5G network slices will require:
Network Ecosystem Observability with real-time analytics that breaks down domain and operations silos is required for the implementation of the full-scale virtualization that will be necessary for network slicing.
Explanatory AI to deliver advanced analytics, AI and ML to accurately detect anomalies and determine the cause, the symptoms, and the customer populations impacted to maintain service quality expected and promised to end-users.
Experience Assurance to automate remedial responses and customer-affecting issues and predict and act upon these issues prior to customer impact.
Ecosystem observability, explanatory AI, and experience assurance will help keep customer service intact and responsive during the transition to 5G, and it will help the operator monitor the effectiveness – and customer acceptance – of network slicing deployments.
