Verizon says that it has established connections and passed data over multiple network slices in a commercial 5G environment.
Network slicing is the creation of end-to-end networks that are customized to specific customer requirements. For instance, network slices can feature lower latency to serve gamers, higher levels of security to protect financial institutions or characteristics that support IoT networks..
Verizon’s trial is aimed at supporting traffic on the carrier’s cloud-native, containerized and virtualized standalone 5G core. In the trial, a 5G smartphone was registered a 5G smartphone to multiple network slices and passed data through the entire network, Verizon said. The trial included a commercially available smartphone, virtualized and non-virtualized radio access network (RAN) equipment and Verizon’s standalone 5G core.
The test successfully accessed network slicing capabilities from the device and validated the ability of the device chipset, operating system, application, radio network base station and the core of the network to create the end-to-end path.
“Matching network performance characteristics to specific application requirements, network slicing promises differentiated customer experiences to efficiently provide our customers with the type of service they need to complete the task they want to complete on our network and provide them an exceptional experience,” Adam Koeppe, Verizon’s Senior Vice President of Technology Planning, said in a press release.
Verizon has been working on 5G network slicing for several years.
In early July 2020, the company said it had completed an end-to-end call over the 5G standalone core network. The move from the initial deployment mode, referred to as non-standalone because it carried earlier generations of cellular traffic. The move to a 5G-only core enabled advanced capabilities including network slicing.
Several weeks later, Verizon said that it has completed an end-top-end virtualized 5G data session. The difference between the earlier and later news that summer was the addition of a virtualized RAN to the test.
