Note：The earlier "NETWORK SLICING PoC" and "Vertical Industry Oriented On-demand 5G Service" have been merged into one use case. This use case "E2E Network Slicing Use Case" is the new joint use case for Frankfurt and the future releases.

Participants: China Mobile, Wipro, Huawei, AT&T, Amdocs, Verizon, Reliance Jio, Tencent, China Telecom

Use Case Owner and Contacts:

@LIN MENG  menglinyjy@chinamobile.com

@Swaminathan Seetharaman  swaminathan.seetharaman@wipro.com

@Chuanyu Chen chenchuanyu@huawei.com

@Shankaranarayanan Puzhavakath Narayanan snarayanan@research.att.com

@Borislav Glozman Borislav.Glozman@amdocs.com

Business Driver

Executive Summary: 5G Network Slicing is one of the key features of 5G. The essence of Network Slicing is in sharing network resources (PNFs, VNFs, CNFs) while satisfying widely varying and sometimes seemingly contradictory requirements to different customers in an optimal manner. Same network is expected to provide different Quality of Experience to different consumers, use case categories and industry verticals including factory automation, connected home, autonomous vehicles, smart cities, remote healthcare, in-stadium experience and rural broadband. An End-to-End Network Slice consists of RAN, Transport and Core network slice sub-nets. This Use Case intends to demonstrate the modeling, orchestration and assurance of a simple network slice (e.g. eMBB). While 3GPP standards are evolving and 5G RAN and core are being realized, this Use Case will start with realizing an E2E Network Slice with a simple example of a 5G RAN, Core and Transport Network Slice sub-nets. It will also align with relevant standard bodies (e.g., 3GPP, ETSI, TM Forum) as well as other open initiatives such as O-RAN where relevant, w.r.to both interfaces as well as the functional aspects.

Business Impact: Network Slicing is a feature that almost every service provider will leverage. It allows a service provider to improve their network efficiency by maximizing the network throughput more tailored to each user's use of the network. It is seen as an imperative for efficient and optimal use of their network. This will be particularly relevant as 5G is expected to have upwards of 10,000x the traffic load over 4G and 20GB peak data rates.

Business Markets: Network Slicing, for this use case, is specifically aimed at a 5G access, core and transport. In the future, this might be extended to other domains or applications such as fixed-wireless convergence, Wi-Fi access, all aspects of transport including fronthaul, or unified network management orchestration. Network Slicing functionality is what almost every wireless service provider will inevitably find valuable. The concepts and modeling work being done for Network Slicing will find applications in other areas as well. (Industries) Some applications and industries such as smart cities, remote maintenance, video streaming vs life-saving first-responder type applications will demand different requirements from Network slicing. (Markets/Regions) There are no regional specific aspects to Network Slicing.

Funding/Financial Impacts: Network slicing engenders the optimal use of resources for a Network. Thus, this represents OPEX savings for a service provider.

Organization Mgmt, Sales Strategies: There is no additional organizational management or sales strategies for this use case outside of a service providers "normal" ONAP deployment and its attendant organizational resources from a service provider.

DEVELOPMENT IMPACTS