Deutsche Telekom is working with Mavenir on two projects focused on making money with 5G network slicing technology.
Network slicing requires a 5G standalone (SA) network. And DT announced in April 2022 that it was making steady progress in rolling out 5G SA across Germany. DT uses Mavenir’s cloud-native converged packet core.
Today, DT said it is offering its first commercial network slicing service, which provides stable broadcasting of live events. The 5G Live Video Production Service is already being using by the German TV channel RTL Deutschland. It allows professional video production companies to transmit live HD video streams over the 5G network, without special equipment such as a satellite van. This service can also be extended to mobile journalism, where regular consumers can transmit live video production using their own smartphones.
DT and Mavenir also worked together for a network slicing proof of concept (PoC) to show businesses that it’s easy to submit a service request through Deutsche Telekom’s customer portal and request a 5G network slice tailored to their specific needs.
The PoC used open APIs to demonstrate the ordering of 5G network slicing services on-demand. The entire network slice lifecycle is automated. It covers the complete journey from placing the order, to the translation of that order into precise deployment and configuration details for network functions, to the activation of a dedicated end-to-end network slice with a custom service level agreement (SLA).
Ashok Khuntia, president of Core Networks at Mavenir, stated, “Mavenir’s cloud-native 5G core exposes open APIs, allowing Deutsche Telekom’s enterprise customers to seamlessly request deployment and configuration of dedicated 5G core user and control plane network functions, as well as to provision corresponding subscribers’ profiles through an orchestration layer.”
Specifically, the business support system (BSS) takes the customer order and invokes the slice manager. Mavenir’s Digital Cloud Automation (MDCA) software exposes REST API to the slice orchestrator to receive slice creation and configuration requests. To enable seamless integration with third party orchestrators, Mavenir made the API specification publicly available.
The MDCA uses GitOps practices to automate the creation and configuration of the slice. As part of this procedure, the required network function for the slice is instantiated, the slice-specific and other dependent network functions are configured. Once the slice is activated, the slice specific key performance indicators are sent to the operations support system (OSS) layer. This enables monitoring of the network slice’s performance.