Samsung said that the trial took place in Tokyo during Q4 2022
Samsung Electronics and Japanese operator KDDI asay that they have successfully achieved Service Level Agreement (SLA) assurance network slicing in a field trial conducted in Tokyo, Japan.
In a release, the Korean vendor said that the companies proved that they could generate multiple network slices using a RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) on a live commercial 5G Standalone (SA) network. The RIC, provided by Samsung in this field trial, is a software-based component of the Open RAN architecture that optimizes the radio resources of the RAN to improve the overall network quality.
Samsung explained that network slicing enables multiple virtual networks to be created within a single physical network infrastructure, where each slice is dedicated for a specific application or service.
“Network slicing will help us activate a wide range of services that require high performance and low latency, benefitting both consumers and businesses,” said Toshikazu Yokai, managing executive officer and general manager of then mobile network technical development division at KDDI.
Through this field trial conducted in the last quarter of 2022, KDDI and Samsung said that they proved out the ability to generate multiple network slices that meet SLA requirements, guaranteeing specific performance parameters — such as low latency and high throughput — for each application. Samsung also proved the technical feasibility of multiple user equipment (UE)-based network slices with quality assurance using the RIC, which performs advanced control of RAN as defined by the O-RAN Alliance.
“Network slicing will open up countless opportunities, by allowing KDDI to offer tailor-made, high-performance connectivity, along with new capabilities and services, to its customers,” said Junehee Lee, EVP, head of global sales and marketing for the Networks Business at Samsung Electronics.
In February 2022, KDDI claimed to have turned on the world’s first commercial 5G Standalone (SA) Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) site in partnership with Samsung and Fujitsu. Powered by virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN), the first network site went live in Kawasaki, Japan.
The network site used Samsung’s Open RAN compliant 5G virtualized CU (vCU) and virtualized DU (vDU), as well as Fujitsu’s Massive MIMO radio units, also Open RAN compliant.
In 2019, Samsung Electronics had announced it has been selected by KDDI to provide 5G network solutions for the telco’s 5G commercial service launch. Samsung Networks provided KDDI with its 5G network solutions, including various radio base stations supporting mid-band (3.7~3.8GHz and 4.0~4.1GHz) and mmWave (28GHz) spectrum, as well as virtualized RAN.
