OPPO has announced the successful testing of a pre-commercial 5G enterprise network slicing solution in collaboration with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies. The creation of the solution marks an important step in realising practical 5G enterprise network slicing deployment and is designed to be implementable by network operators worldwide.
The three companies recently demonstrated the pre-commercial 5G enterprise network slicing solution at OPPO’s 5G communications lab. During this first demonstration of the solution, OPPO worked closely with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies to achieve connection between the core network, wireless network, and chip module.
Using an OPPO Find X5 Pro, dynamic network slicing selection capability from Ericsson 5G Core to support user equipment route selection and policy control (URSP) and 5G radio access network (RAN) slicing solution, the joint team demonstrated application and network traffic partitioning using the pre-commercial 5G enterprise network slicing solution. This enables the steering of applications and enterprise services with specific requirements to defined slices without switching devices. Under the new solution, mobile applications which are able to access the dedicated network slice are easily identifiable via a small icon displayed next to the main app icon.
Commenting on the collaboration, Xia Yang, senior director, Carrier Product Line, OPPO, said, “5G enterprise network slicing is the key to realising 5G-differentiated applications. Based on our company mission of ‘technology for mankind, kindness for the world’, OPPO will leverage our strengths in innovation and collaboration across the tech ecosystem to advance the commercialisation of 5G enterprise slicing technology. Together with our partners, we will enable a wide range of OPPO product users to be the first to enjoy a customised 5G connectivity experience.”
Meanwhile, Monica Zethzon, Head of Solution Area Packet Core, Business Area Cloud Software and Services, Ericsson, said, “5G network slicing enables enterprises to meet their network security, reliability and flexibility needs. This solution, created in partnership with OPPO and Qualcomm Technologies and underpinned by Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core and 5G RAN slicing technologies, provides a foundation for communications service providers (CSPs) to deliver more tailored 5G services for enterprises.”
Further, Sunil Patil, vice president, Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., said, “Demonstration of commercial 5G enterprise network slicing is an important step in fulfilling the promise of 5G standalone (SA). Commercialisation of slicing will provide 5G networks tools to customise 5G capabilities as per the needs of the application.”
By partitioning a physical network into multiple virtual end-to-end networks, 5G network slicing can provide independent, customised network resources based on specific needs and use cases, ultimately unlocking a greater number of 5G resources to provide more flexible and effective 5G networks. The companies will now step up efforts to finalise ecosystem, device, and network details with a view to commercial deployment.
