Automated network slicing delivers optimal capacity and latency
Ronan Dunne, executive vice president and group president of Verizon Wireless, highlighted how 5G, like LTE, is a technology that will evolve over time as standards are finalized and new capabilities are activated in the network. The long goal, he said during Oppenheimer 21st Annual Technology, Internet and Communications Conference, is to use network slicing to deliver services “personalized to the individual users’ needs.”
Verizon’s first pass at commercial 5G is a fixed wireless residential broadband service due out in four cities later this year with Los Angeles and Sacramento, Calif., and Houston, Texas, named so far. From there, Verizon plans to roll out mobile 5G based on the 3GPP non-standalone 5G New Radio (NR) standard, as well as making the fixed sites standards-compliant. Dunne said over the 2019-2021 period, users would see “increased capabilities and applications for 5G.”
Dunne described Verizon’s strategy as “engineering-and technology-enabled. This is not technology for technology’s sake. This is about how do you deliver enhanced capabilities that are meaningful to customers.”
He said conventional thinking about scale would suggest a one-size-fits-all approach, whereas Verizon is focused on leveraging its scale to drive engagement through personalization.
“Network-as-a-platform means that I have all the benefits of scale. With the enhanced capabilities of 5G…increasingly I will be able to deliver a network for a one-to-one relationship. I think 5G gives us the opportunity to build out ecosystems and models that are fundamentally enabled by the technology, not simply based on how do you mobilize an old, traditional wireline experience.”
Dunne said, when thinking about 5G, to think about a 10x to 100x capacity enhancement, battery life efficiency in the 10x range and “burst speeds…think about the fact that you can dimensionalize those elements and deliver them uniquely to a customer, to an application.”
