etisalat and Huawei recently demonstrated the Middle East and Africa’s one-of-its-kind 5G network slicing on a commercial 5G Cloud Core. This is a significant milestone for both companies and a transformational benefit for the United Arab Emirates vertical industries. This also marked a ground-breaking step for etisalat by e& towards the commercialization of the Network-as-a-Service.
Network slicing involves creating multiple virtual networks on a shared physical or dedicated network, allowing operators to offer customers different network parts based on their specific needs. Each network slice is individually configured with its security measures and latency settings, tailored to meet the requirements of various applications in a Network-as-a-Service fashion.
For this successful demonstration, the company used a commercial 5G smartphone, commercial radio access network (RAN) equipment, and their commercially deployed 5G standalone core. The company performed a test that thoroughly evaluated the end-to-end service SLAs capabilities implementation on a virtual network slice, confirming the optimal functioning of various components such as the device chipset, operating system, applications, radio network base station, and network core.
Khaled Al Suwaidi, Senior Vice President, Core Networks and Platforms, etisalat by e&, said, “The Network-as-a-Service using Network Slicing Technologies has become one of the main pillars significantly improving the availability of different connectivity options for vertical industries with efficient business models and high-quality connectivity services.”
Gavin Wang, Head of Etisalat Key Account, Huawei Technologies, said, “Huawei is honored to have played an integral role in building the foundation of the UAE’s digital economy and boosting intelligent digital transformation across the country and the wider Middle East and Africa region.”
The company aims to expedite the availability of its commercial Slicing services network nationwide. Their growth strategy focuses on 5G mobility, nationwide broadband, mobile edge computing, and business solutions. This deployment will significantly improve network performance and ensure unprecedented service agility, flexibility, and automated scalability, with notable growth in 5G adoption and fixed wireless broadband momentum.
