According to Nokia, the Edge Slicing solution will allow operators to offer enterprise customers secure and reliable Virtual Private Network (VPN) services over commercial 4G and 5G networks.
Following the announcement at MWC in Barcelona, Nokia and Cellcom Israel will host a trial with sliced RAN-Transport-Core in Netanya focused on business applications and enterprise interconnectivity over a high-speed metro network.
Alongside this, Nokia will run a live trial with fellow Finnish telecoms company Telia and engineering group Sandvik in Tampere testing how 5G Edge Slicing functions can operate with different mining equipment and digital applications.
The Edge Slicing solution is an evolution of Nokia’s previously announced 4G/5G slicing capability and enables operators to keep critical business data traffic local while running slice management, control, and assurance on existing central mobile data centres. Nokia claimed its 5G network slicing solution will support all long-term evolution (LTE), 5G non-standalone and 5G standalone devices.
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.”
Alongside the 5G Edge Slicing solution, Nokia has also launched a new automated radio access network (RAN) slice management solution which allows operators to select, deploy and manage slices across multiple RAN sites. The new solution consists of resource partitioning, RAN traffic isolation and per slice security management functionalities.
