SKT, DT, Ericsson demo 5G federated network slicing

SK Telecom, Ericsson and Deutsche Telekom have successfully built and demonstrated the world’s first intercontinental 5G trial network.

The companies used federated network slicing for 5G roaming between trial networks in South Korea and Germany.

The demonstration was hosted at SK Telecom’s 5G Testbed at the BMW driving center at Yeoungjong-do, as well as Deutsche Telekom’s corporate R&D center in Bonn, Germany.

With 5G technology, network slicing will allow operators to configure end-to-end networks that provide the desired functionality and service parameters. Federated network slicing will extend this functionality to visited networks for roaming services.

Implementing this will require enhanced cooperation between international operators, because it will require them to open their networks to host partner services.

This will require pre-existing agreements covering aspects including network slice availability at the access layer, availability in the core network and connections to customer application services. The network slicing will be managed by edge cloud resources.

“5G is not just a faster network. 5G will provide extreme user experience anywhere and anytime, even when the user roams across different operators globally,” SK Telecom CTO Alex Jinsung Choi  said.

“Federated network slicing will enable seamless platform sharing among operators at a global scale for continuous and guaranteed user experience.”

SK Telecom plans to show off federated network slicing functionality at Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona later this month.