What is 5G slicing and what does it mean for your business?
The benefits of the 5G network in terms of speed, bandwidth, and lower latency are already well known. However, another equally essential feature is often forgotten: network slicing. Tania Defraine, Director Enterprise Solutions & Platforms at Proximus NXT, explains how dividing the mobile network into separate slices results in maximum operational reliability, flexibility, and cost efficiency.
Guaranteed capacity
With network slicing, applications are assigned a guaranteed portion of the network's bandwidth: a slice. In this way, critical applications with specific latency or bandwidth requirements operate in isolation from other network traffic. 5G slicing is therefore the ideal solution for business processes where delays are absolutely out of the question. Slicing thus guarantees maximum reliability and security.
Great benefits
"5G slicing is the preferred solution for business processes where delays are out of the question and it guarantees maximum reliability and security."
As per example, network slicing offers great benefits for the event sector, where smooth and cashless payments and a stable network connection with guaranteed capacity are indispensable. In Dendermonde, Proximus NXT, together with cashless payment provider EventPay, tested the possibilities of 5G slicing during the busy end-of-year event of Wintermonde.
Event reservation
We used event reservation for smooth and reliable payment traffic. This pre-slicing technique reserves part of the available network capacity for the many 4G devices that do not yet support 5G. This way, EventPay had a designated network slice with a guaranteed capacity for payment processing.
This 'reserved' part of the available network capacity gave EventPay the assurance that its services would be streamlined without having to invest in additional network hardware or software. During Wintermonde’s first weekend, about a third of payments were made via devices connected to that specific slice.
That technology proved equally successful at the summer family festival of Cirque@Taque in Ekeren. Even when the mobile network became saturated, payment traffic via the devices continued to run very smoothly. That is simply because part of the network was specially reserved for this.
Are you already on board with 5G?
You will see that 5G slicing offers great added value where a stable network connection with guaranteed capacity is crucial. Proximus NXT is rolling out plenty of new applications for 5G and 5G slicing. I expect the demand to only increase as more and more companies discover its benefits.
Curious about the possibilities of 5G and 5G slicing for your organization and how Proximus NXT can assist you in this? Discover them here.
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