What is 5G Slicing? Not the answer AI will give you.

5G slicing is not a new concept but merely an evolution of capability that has been available in mobile networks for the past 25 years.

Since early 2000’s, mobile networks (GPRS & CDMA) have had the capability to deliver private data connectivity for customers that is segregated from other consumer internet connectivity. This segregation gave a business and government customers specific IP Addressing and firewall rules as well as Ethernet connectivity directly into their data centre.

3G advanced this same concept through the introduction of Access Point Name (APN) capability that assisted the mobile network engineers with configuring these segregated / private data connections.

4G took APN capability another step further with the ability to apply performance characteristics to each APN such as minimum data speeds and maximum acceptable error rate.

Whilst introduced in 3G what 4G also enabled was for mobile devices to be configured with multiple APNs and to allocate different applications to specific APNs. This was normalised in 4G with the introduction of voice over 4G (VoLTE) which is a service with its own APN, separate from the internet connection APN, with defined minimum data speeds and latency parameters to support voice over an IP connections.

And now we get to 5G and it’s slicing technology. This again builds on previous mobile technology developments. The key advancement is the introduction of software known as orchestration that assists mobile engineers with configuring private IP networks ( aka APNs) across the multiple network components through a single interface.

I expect that 5G slicing will continue to be used by MNOs for their own services such as VoLTE and their large customers who want private network capability. It seems unlikely that MNOs will be reserving spectrum for customers, which is also possible with 5G slicing, when they spend so much time convincing governments of their need to be allocated more spectrum to support their consumer customer demands.

After more than 30 years in the telecommunications industry I now help companies and government entities who are looking to consume mobile network capability at scale for critical communications develop businesses cases, build market proposals and independently identify opportunities to leverage mobile network technology.