China Telecom Shanghai, Huawei test network slicing

China Telecom Shanghai and Huawei have successfully jointly implemented access network slicing at a trial site.

The trial solution involves slicing the access network into home, enterprise and campus connections, which will potentially allow the operator to use a single network to deliver all types of services.

OLT hardware is shared by services, and all segments are isolated from each other in order to improve service reliability and network security.

China Telecom Shanghai engaged Huawei to develop an access network slicing solution to address issues including insufficient equipment room space and runaway power consumption associated with rapid user base growth.

“Traditional OLTs do not support the access of full services. Network slicing enables service isolation and optimizes resource utilization,” China Telecom Shanghai vice chief engineer Zhang Jun said.

“Network slicing is our first step toward cloud. It is now being including in the related technical standards of China Telecom. In the future, we will cooperate with Huawei to further optimize network slicing.”

The companies expect that network slicing will propel the development of gigabit networks. This will be essential to helping operators meet the enormous capacity demands of the cloud era.