Nokia announced the world’s first deployment of 5G Edge Slicing on a live commercial network with mobile operators, Cellcom and Telia. Nokia’s innovative Edge Slicing solution allows operators to offer their enterprise customers next-generation, secure, reliable, and high-performing Virtual Private Network services over commercial 4G and 5G networks. 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. Nokia and Telia are running a live trial in Tampere, Finland together with high-tech global engineering group, Sandvik. The trial demonstrates how next-generation 5G Edge Slicing functions can operate with different mining equipment and digital applications

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 centers ensuring cost and operational efficiency. It is also scalable and the same virtualized 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.

Joe Madden, principal analyst at Mobile Experts said: “Network Slicing is the most exciting aspect of 5G, as it raises the possibility of new dimensions of ‘higher performance’, and enhanced ARPU from both consumers and enterprise customers. While many providers are focusing on deploying 5G private networks for enterprises, network slicing also opens up new market opportunities for operators with 5G Virtual Private Networks by keeping enterprise traffic local with Edge Slicing using the existing 4G/5G network.”

Yaniv Koriat, CTO and VP Engineering at Cellcom Israel said: “Cellcom is one of the largest telecommunication groups in Israel and we have worked closely with Nokia for a long time. Their new 5G Edge Slicing solution allows Cellcom to differentiate itself in the market with innovative enterprise solutions. It also enables us to develop new opportunities with Cloud Application Service providers.”

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.”

Cloud Service and Infrastructure Provider Opportunity

A distributed and sliced 5G edge architecture creates partnering opportunities for mobile operators and Cloud Service and Infrastructure Providers. High-performing virtualized networks enable service providers to bring edge cloud application platforms close to enterprise customers. Co-location and infrastructure companies’ facilities can be also utilized in the edge slicing deployments. 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 utilize a huge device ecosystem and address a large customer base. This allows operators to utilize 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.

Nokia launches new automated RAN management solution for Edge Slicing

Nokia has also announced the launch of a new automated RAN slice management solution which allows operators to select, deploy and manage slices across multiple RAN sites based on their customers’ requirements. The new solution, which supports the management of LTE, 5G NSA and 5G SA RAN slices, consists of service quality, resource partitioning, RAN traffic isolation, and engineering as well as per slice security management functionalities. By collecting Key Performance Indicators from 4G/5G base stations operators can assure network slicing service levels to their enterprise customers. RAN slice automation has APIs to Nokia’s Digital Operations software enabling end-to-end orchestration and assurance.

Experience 5G Edge Slicing live at MWC22 Barcelona

Nokia is showcasing its 5G Edge Slicing solution on a live network at MWC 2022 in Barcelona. Nokia was first to demonstrate 4G/5G network slicing across RAN-Transport-Core with management and assurance. A number of trials have already taken place with Nokia’s global customer base including deployments of new slicing capabilities such as 5G standalone network slicing, Fixed Wireless Access slicing, slicing in 5G private networks as well as slice management automation and orchestration. At MWC22, Nokia will also demonstrate 5G dynamic slice selection in a live network for enterprise applications.