The companies Ericsson and Vodafone have now completed the very first trial of an on-demand 5G network slice in the United Kingdom, which has been paving the way for the automated virtual networks that can possibly be created within 30 seconds. The network slicing has been seen as one of the main use cases for the standalone 5G networks and are also going to allow the operators for sectioning off certain parts of the network for certain applications effectively.
The network slices can also be customized for guaranteeing a certain speed and also for covering a particular location, along with enabling the industrial, healthcare, broadcast and public services use cases.
However the network slicing is also possible with the LTE, greater capacity, ultrafast speeds and also the ultralow latency of the 5G is going to be supporting some more advanced applications as the cloud-based and software-defined core layer of the networks is going to be enabling the flexibility and the automation that is required for managing any number of the network slices.
In the trial, both the companies have configured an on-demand network slice that will be offering a guaranteed download speed of 260 Mbps and a latency of 12.4ms for the purpose of supporting a virtual reality (VR) application at a particular retailer.
Andrea Dona, chief network officer at Vodafone UK said that, the network slicing has been a valuable step forward and by segmenting their network along with customizing the different slices for the different requirements, they can possibly bring new ideas that will be impossible.
