MANILA, Philippines — Smart Communications Inc. has reached a new milestone by being the first in the country to prove end-to-end network slicing functionality.
PLDT’s wireless unit said it has successfully deployed a fully functional, end-to-end network slicing Proof of Concept (PoC) on its 5G stand-alone network.
The PoC was completed at the PLDT-Smart Technology Laboratory in Makati City this month.
As the first in the Philippines, Smart joins the first few global operators who have implemented 5G standard network slicing with “slice controller” for each part of the network.
“This is a very exciting opportunity for us to develop new capabilities that will enable us to offer differentiated services or services with varying levels of quality. This means we can partition the network for specific purposes,” said Arvin Siena, vice president/head of technology strategy and transformation office in Smart.
In the PoC, Smart successfully demonstrated that a “slice” could allocate and reserve resources within the network for specific services and customers.
This means that Smart’s network is capable of offering differentiated services via these network slices, delivering quality of service that is tailor-fit to the needs of businesses and consumers.
“For example, we will be able to support drone services (high bandwidth and low delay), massive IoT (low bandwidth and could be non-delay sensitive), eHealth or remote surgery (high bandwidth and sensitive to delay) in the near future, and more, in our common infrastructure. Without slicing, we would need to build different networks for each of these services,” Siena said.
“Slicing is an enabler for us. We have tested it in our lab and we have proven that it works. This will give way to more innovative services,” he said.
Smart said network slicing would also enable the automation of vertical industries such as manufacturing, automotive and utilities, as well as provide better experience to individual consumers, especially for today’s bandwidth-heavy and video-intensive digital lifestyle.
With this, PLDT and Smart join European and Asian operators, which are looking into network slicing as part of their 5G upgrades and offerings.