Global Cross-industry Players Inaugurate 5G Slicing Association

[Barcelona, Spain, February 28, 2018] As the founding members, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, Digital Domain, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Huawei, CEPRI of SGCC, Tencent, TIM and Volkswagen AG announce the inauguration of the “5G Slicing Association”. The association will address requirements from vertical industry and the potential application scenarios of 5G network slicing on the way to defining new business models. The initiative will study key technical issues, cooperate with slicing related standards development organizations (SDOs) and foster test beds and trials to verify 5G network slicing capabilities.

5G networks will provide much higher speeds, lower latencies, and new levels of reliability and overall network performance and efficiency compared to previous generations. Importantly too,5G can be an important tool for productivity and enabler for digital transformation in many vertical industries. With the rapid growth in application types, such as augmented reality, virtual reality, autonomous driving, smart factory, 5G networks must become smarter, more flexible and more tailored to vertical customers’ requirements.

As a key innovation in 5G technology, network slicing provides agile and customizable capabilities that allow the efficient construction of service guaranteed dedicated networks for different applications. By adapting the 5G network to different business needs, network slicing has the potential to open up new technological and business opportunities for both the ICT industry and other vertical industries. The members of this association will closely collaborate to realize the full potential together. The main activities of the association include:

• Development of an industry-wide, technical understanding for slicing
• Study and definition of slicing use cases for diverse industries and derive requirements
• Orchestrate E2E slicing SDOs and provide inputs to related standards
• Fostering of business-driven slicing test beds and trials

The 5G Network Slicing Association is a global association and welcomes more partners who are engaged in the action of digitalization of industries, including the ICT industry, vertical industry and even the broader eco-system and value chain. The 5G Network Slicing Association is closely working together with the GSMA Network Slicing Taskforce (NEST) which is prepared to bring the requirements into the standardization.

Quotes:

Zhang Tongxu, General Manager of China Mobile Communication Co., Ltd. Research Institute

“Mobile communications are evolving from the 4G to the 5G, and we are entering the era of Internet of Everything. As the fundamental feature of 5G, network slicing does not only help the vertical industries to achieve digital transformation vision, but also brings new opportunities for operators to engage with the vertical market. We expect that, 5G Slice Association will be the platform to connect the telecom industry with vertical industries. It will help to establish a common understanding of network slicing, establish an enriched industrial chain, incubate application innovation, and explore new business model of network slicing. China Mobile will work together with industry partners to build a healthy and energetic 5G industrial ecosystem, and enable the Internet+ vision.

Antje Williams, Chair of Slicing Association and Executive Program Manager 5G of Deutsche Telekom

“Crucial for our success as a telecommunication operator is to understand the needs of our industry customers and provide smart network solutions that are tailored to their business needs. The launch of this initiative opens up a new phase of global cooperation between operators and vertical industries in the 5G application field.”

Daniel Seah, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Digital Domain

“5G brings the promise of future innovation and invention. As XR technology and content continues to flourish and evolve, consumer demand for consistency in higher data rates and lower latency will grow exponentially. This Association will ensure that we are all optimizing 5G to its highest capacity to provide an enhanced mobile broadband experience for the world.”

Prof. Dr. Thomas Magedanz, FOKUS, Fraunhofer

“We are happy of being part of it as independent digitalization experts knowing the different industries since a long time and recognizing a strong market need to bring the different players to a single table. We hope to see many more verticals joining the Association in the near future in order to shape the 5G infrastructure and various ecosystems in the right way.”

Yang Chaobin, President of Huawei 5G product line, Huawei

“The creation of this Association will promote the cross-sector-collaboration and coordination between mobile industry and vertical industry for the innovation of 5G slicing oriented to 5G commercial launch. We will jointly study the diversified requirement of vertical industry, develop and verify the 5G E2E solutions. Accordingly, we come to fulfill the target for improving the eMBB experience, leveraging next generation mobile networks. In the future, 5G networks will be ubiquitous to provide mobile connections anytime and anywhere.”

Wang Jiye, vice president of China Electric Power Research Institute(CEPRI), SGCC

“In order to support SGCC to become a world-class energy Internet company with excellent competitiveness, we must actively adapt to the new situation of energy production and consumption revolution and grasp the trend of integration of energy revolution and digital revolution. With the platform of 5G Network Slicing Association which integrates wireless communication industry and vertical industry, we hope to explore innovative 5G applications in power grid, to participate in the formulation of related standards, to explore new cooperation modes with operators, and to improve the construction of a new generation of Energy Internet communication network by using modern information and communication technologies. Also, we hope that through the association we could have a close cooperation with operators and other units in communication industry and jointly promote a healthy development of 5G industrial chain.”

Cui Xiao Chun, VP of Public R&D and Operation, Tencent Interactive Entertainment Business Group

5G Slicing Association will accelerate win-win cooperation and innovation between telecommunication and interactive entertainment industries. We look forward to building a more efficient and resilient communication system that enables diverse human-machine interactions to improve user experience based on end-to-end secure and reliable links.

Enrico Bagnasco, Head of Technology Innovation Department, (TIM)

“Network Slicing is one of the key features of the emerging 5G network and a dramatic opportunity to boost the potential of the technologies being standardized in 3GPP. As a major Operator with a sound track towards 5G, we are proud to collaborate with key partners from many Industry sectors to identify common requirements and pave the way to new business developments”

Andreas Kwoczek, Group Research, Volkswagen AG

“This Association will complement the activities the automotive industry is driving within 5GAA and 3GPP. Our expectation is to foster a telecommunication system that predicts the quality-of-service the network can provide for an automotive slice. Additionally, the telecommunication system should act agile to our variable requirements to improve the efficiency of connected and automated driving. The cross-industry-collaboration will show that not only the automotive industry needs these changes.”

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