Verizon recently established connections and passed data over multiple network slices in a completely commercial 5G environment. Network slicing allows customers to send their traffic over virtual end-to-end networks tailored to specific application requirements, while optimizing network performance to support all services. This capability, designed for network traffic on Verizon’s new cloud-native, containerized, virtualized standalone 5G core, will offer unprecedented levels of service agility, flexibility and automated scalability.
“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,” said Adam Koeppe, Senior Vice President of Technology Planning at Verizon.
The recent demonstration successfully registered a 5G smartphone to multiple network slices and passed data through the entire network. The demonstration used a commercially available smartphone, virtualized and non-virtualized RAN equipment in production in the field and Verizon’s multi-vendor 5G standalone core.
This end-to-end test successfully accessed network slicing capabilities from the device and validated the ability for the device chipset, operating system, application, radio network base station and the core of the network to work in harmony to demonstrate a full end-to-end path for data to travel on a virtual network slice.
Network slicing will be made available with the evolution of Verizon’s 5G standalone core. In order to take advantage of this network functionality, customers must have 5G network slicing capable devices.
