Network Slicing – Is This Key Enabler of 5G Heading for a Big Year in 2021?

Network Slicing is front and center again as Dish Network offers up slice of its brand new network for the DoD’s proposed 5G infrastructure. To be clear, Dish, along with most of the wireless industry, opposes any idea of creating a nationalized, government-owned and operated 5G network. Dish supports the key consensus that such a DoD-owned system would be an inefficient use of their resources, and more so when the commercial operators need those resources (aka mid-band spectrum bands adjacent to C-Band) to establish and maintain USA’s superiority in the global 5G race.

Some key asks in DoD’s Request for Information are as follows-

·        How could DoD own and operate 5G networks for its domestic operations? What are the potential issues with DoD owning and operating independent networks for its 5G operations?

·        While the Department has made available the 3450-3550MHz spectrum band for 5G, are there new technologies or innovative methods as to how additional mid-band spectrum currently allocated to DoD can be made available for 5G faster?

(Author’s note: Here comes Network Slicing!)

·        What are other innovative ideas as to how 5G can share spectrum with high-powered airborne, ground-based and ship-based radar operations in the 3100-3550MHz spectrum band?

·        Do you foresee any national security concerns/issues with DoD sharing with commercial 5G?

·        Is industry aware of any statutory, legal, regulatory or policy hurdles that need to be altered or reconsidered to allow Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, DSS? If so, what are those?

·        How would DSS work with existing commercial spectrum bands?

(Author’s note: Here goes my earlier blog on DSS)

Dish Networks, in its response, stated that its soon-to-be-built 5G network can offer the DoD a network slice for their domestic operations, across a nationally-scaled DISH 5G cloud-native network – “5G provides more robust capability to provide the DoD with any number of dedicated network slices….This next generation network effectively enables the DoD to manage and control a slice of Dish’s network, together with specific spectrum resources, while reducing the cost and accelerating the availability of secure 5G services for the exclusive use of the DoD.”

During a recent industry conference on 5G, Dish Networks’ EVP & Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Bye confirmed that view by reiterating that they are against the idea of DoD building its own network. He argued that if DoD does everything from scratch, it may take ~10 years for DoD owned spectrum to meaningfully carry live traffic; Instead, if the network is deployed and owned by Dish, then DoD can essentially get a dedicated network for them by taking advantage of network slicing.

But, Where do We Stand on Network Slicing Today?

Network slicing is widely considered as made possible by the 5G core standards (along with enhancements to cloud-native and virtualization technologies). It’s worth noting that the concept of network slicing is not exactly unheard of in the context of 4G LTE. Slicing started to formally show up as an inherent part of 5G at the beginning of the 5G Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) specification. But, quoting Sue Rudd, director of networks and service platforms at Strategy Analytics, this Fierce Wireless article highlights that the idea actually has been around for years and came out of the original VPN concept.

I did a quick scan on network slicing’s key evolution milestones and found that in telco context, the first major milestone dates back to 2014 when NTT DoCoMo and Ericsson started their joint development. That resulted in their successful completion of a joint Proof of Concept (PoC) of dynamic network slicing. Meanwhile, South Korea’s SK Telecom also signed similar collaboration deal with Ericsson in 2015. At Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017, Deutsche Telecom, Samsung, and Huawei showcased working network slicing demos and highlighted its role to make 5G “Different”. Then we got into 2018 and 5G network slicing moved from demos/trials to live action. Migu, China Mobile’s entertainment subsidiary claimed to complete first application of 5G network slicing in large-scale live broadcasting. SK Telecom also made good on its promise to implement network slicing in its 5G network that went live at a limited scale on December 1, 2018. The momentum continued in 2019 and 2020 as other major operators, including AT&T, Verizon, and Singtel jumped on the bandwagon. 

Figure: Major Milestones of Network Slicing

In this evolution journey, 2018 can be considered a pivotal year since that’s when network slicing started appearing in live commercial networks (albeit in limited scale). However, in the USA context, the real breakthrough happened earlier this year as Verizon claimed to execute end-to-end data sessions over 5G Stand Alone (SA) core with slices. Network slicing will grab more headlines next year as both AT&T and Verizon deploy this technology in their commercial networks more broadly. By looking at progresses being made at major vendors (e.g. Ericsson, Nokia), 2021 can certainly be expected to be the “General Availability” year for network slicing.

Recap: Network Slicing – What Does it Really Do?

Before digging deeper, let’s quickly revisit what really network slicing is and why we need this in the first place.

I found the following summary on a “Network Slice” from Keysight Technologies pretty comprehensive-

Figure: What is a Network Slice? (Source-Keysight Technologies Webinar on 5G Network Slicing, Apr, ’20)

5G is considered transformational as it can cater to individual needs of different industries – automotive, utilities, public safety, media & entertainment- the list goes on. Each of them has diverse requirements in terms of throughput, latency, end point density, and reliability. Network slicing is a key element of the technologies that allow each industry needs to be fulfilled by facilitating multiple logical networks created on top of a common physical infrastructure. The technology allows CSPs to create tailored virtual networks for specific industries/use case types with guaranteed QoS and logical separation from others. Ultimately, this paves the way for end-to-end Service Level Agreement (SLA) with end-to-end network management and automation.

In this technical white paper published by Samsung in April,’20, a conceptual deployment of constituent systems and virtual network equipment in a 4-layer hierarchy was presented along with representative network slice operation scenarios. 

Figure: Deploying Network Slicing in a Four-layer Hierarchy (Source-Samsung White Paper, Apr, ’20)

The figure above shows that due to very low latency requirements, the function of a URLLC would be deployed only in the Local DC, while an eMBB slice extends across the Local and the Market DC. Voice slice, on the other hand, spans the Local DC, the Market DC and the Regional DC. Instead of these 3 broad categories, the slicing can also be focused on individual use cases and/or industries such as AR/VR, cloud gaming, power grids or just higher SLA enterprise networks. 

And, Why Should We Care? Show Me the Money!

Since network slicing is ONE, but NOT the ONLY, key enabler of 5G, precise market sizing attributable to slicing has been a tall order. Therefore market sizing dollar figures are all over the place-

·        On one end, there is a GSMA estimate from Apr ’18, that argues that network slicing, in combination with other enablers and capabilities, will permit operators to address a revenue opportunity worth $300B by 2025.

·        On the other end, a research study conducted by Global Market Insights, Inc. in Mar ’20 forecasted that by 2026, global market size for network slicing will surpass $600M with a key emphasis on autonomous vehicles and automotive industry, in general.

·        In between, ABI Research predicted in Nov ’18 that 5G network slicing can be a $66B market by 2026, led primarily by manufacturing ($32B) and then followed by logistics ($20B) industries.

There is another Arthur D Little study cited by British Telecom at Network Slicing Summit, Berlin in Oct ’18 that by and large aligns with the GSMA estimate above. The core methodology used in that study is as follows – QoE sensitive customers (e.g. business customers) are willing to pay a premium of 20% (or more) compared to “Best Effort” customers. Then, there is a different growth ramp attributed to the two different categories of customers - the study believes that we will see a staggering 34% CAGR for QoE sensitive customers (vs. just 1.1% for “Best Effort” customers) between 2018-2026. With those 2 assumptions, the study concludes that global QoE sensitive customers will be worth $250B by 2022 and $500B by 2026; and network slicing will be a key driver to make that happen.

 Figure: Potential Upside Created by NW Slicing through QoE and SLA for Premium Users (Source - Study by A.D Little, Cited by BT at NW Slicing Summit, Berlin, Oct ’18)

There is another joint study done by Ericsson and BT that focuses on network slicing as the key enabler of the most economic model for IoT service delivery. The study found that in IoT context, the overall impact of network slicing is significantly increased economic benefit for new service launches through new revenue generation, lower opex and greater capex efficiency. The overall resulting economic benefit of the study over 5 years summarizing revenue, opex, and capex impact is 150% over conventional networks.

Figure: Potential Impact of Network Slicing on Enabling Higher Economic Benefit in the IoT Space (Source – Joint Study by Ericsson and BT)

So, What’s Next?

Dish Networks, in its response to DoD RFI, advocated in favor of network slicing as the key enabler for end-to-end solution with guaranteed SLA and complete isolation from other/commercial networks. Whether that approach will gain any traction from DoD (or other entities for similar needs in future) is still to be seen. But, what is obvious is that network slicing has reached the “maturity” marker and established itself as a key consideration in any 5G deployment scenarios. Key standards are already defined, successful trials are done, vendors are prepared, and the need from certain use cases are established - a combination of both supply and demand side factors to propel this technology into the mainstream in 2021 and beyond.

Interestingly, the principles of network slicing are also being applied to adjacent areas, most notably to WiFi by Edgewater Wireless. “WiFi Spectrum Slicing”, their proprietary approach divides a block of unlicensed spectrum into multiple individual lanes for traffic to flow up. Andrew Skafel, Edgewater Wireless’s CEO claims that the capability can result in performance gains of 20~30 times, depending on the individual implementation and application.

Expect a near-constant stream of news around network slicing in the new year as true benefits of network slicing start appearing on the ground with more widespread deployments of 5G to address use cases beyond enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB).