Time to let go of the butter knife

Although network slicing presents potential for new monetisation opportunities and efficiencies, its complexity and sprawl still pose challenges

It may not be the next big thing after Bread Slices but it is a market worth USD 1909.5 million revenue by 2030 and could touch USD 3 billion by 2032. In 2021 alone, network slicing clocked USD 261.2 million in revenues as per ReportsandData estimates, while Future Market Insights pegs it at USD 370 million in 2022.

Put simply, network slicing happens when you start building several distinct virtualised and logical networks over a shared multi-domain infrastructure. The physical infrastructure need not be expanded but with slicing you can abstract it, slice it, and provision it for various areas as needed. The basic components are shared between networks but each slice is isolated for specific purposes.

Depending on the kind of use, latency, capacity, coverage, and throughput can be determined and dedicated for each slice. Every slice gets managed independently. Resources like computing power, storage, and bandwidth can be shared and dedicated among networks as required. You can use several tools and approaches for this to happen, like network function virtualisation, software-defined networking, automation, and orchestration. Once you can create independent logical mobile networks – network slices – on the same physical mobile network infrastructure, each slice can work like an isolated end-to-end network that can be purpose-designed for diverse requirements required by specific applications or customers.

Telcos can create several offerings, thanks to network slicing. Like an area-wide use case where slice service is enabled in an area like a factory or a campus or an airport, which would require multiple sites to be configured with specific slice configurations. It is like a time-based slice where a slice service can be created for a limited duration, to be destroyed at the end of the offering. Like Subscription-based slicing where one slice is established (for each of the DNNs the device is using) based on the subscription profile (DNN and NSSAI combinations). Like application-based slicing where policy-based slicing is put into play to match individual applications and route them to specific slices.

“The potential of network slicing in monetising 5G is well understood and recognised by CSPs that have launched commercial 5G networks.”- Manoj Gurnani, Chief Technology Officer and Head – Strategy, Nokia India

Slicing can allow 5G networks to truly dance well on applications like machine-type communication, URLLC, and enhanced mobile broadband delivery.

Nitin M Jadhav, EVP and Head – Network Services, Yotta Data Services explains that it has been demonstrated that network slicing via virtualisation is a successful method for offering adaptable and effective network services. “Virtualisation allows network functions to be implemented as software rather than hardware. This makes it easier to deploy and manage network services since they can be managed in a more agile and dynamic way. This helps and enables faster service delivery, minimal network maintenance, and lower costs since the network services can be easily deployed, managed, and updated without the need for specialised hardware changes.

Why does it work?

A lot is going in the favour of network slicing, according to these reports. There is a heightened need to improve mobile broadband coverage, high adoption of wireless autonomous machines to reduce business overhead costs, and the impetus to support the appropriate adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and other advanced technologies. Now network operators can offer differentiated services to users in user access layers near radio access networks. They can create tailor-made solutions for different clients as per their needs, network, and latency parameters. They can also tap automation and orchestration for diverse product catalogues.

“Network slicing can fundamentally alter how network services are offered and used, giving service providers more flexibility, efficiency, and agility.”- Nitin M Jadhav, EVP and Head – Network Services, Yotta Data Services

Specifications related to network slicing provide mechanisms to develop and evolve telcos’ technology stack in a manner that remains vendor-agnostic.

Manoj Gurnani, Chief Technology Officer and Head – Strategy, Nokia India weighs in on how worldwide many Communication Service Providers (CSPs) have been piloting early use cases of network slicing. “It assures network quality for fixed wireless access (FWA) at home and specific applications like gaming, etc. The potential of network slicing in monetising 5G is well understood and recognised by CSPs that have launched commercial 5G networks. We expect the deployment scale as well as use cases to grow in coming months.”

Network slicing is of interest to most telcos, at least, to all those who are looking at growth through enterprise segments or are expanding into industry verticals, reckons Amresh Nandan, VP Analyst, Gartner. “We noted several proof-of-concept projects and trials during 2021 and 2022 by telcos in North America, Europe, and APAC regions. Since then, several telcos have started implementing network slicing in their technology stack. Some telcos such as Chinese CSPs, Vodafone, and Telia have launched network slicing-based offerings with varying degrees of applicability.”

He further points out that leading telcos are investing in infrastructure and operational readiness. “At the same time, they are also working out the right productisation mechanisms for commercial readiness. As 5G SA networks get ready, we can expect more product launches,” he says.

Jadhav believes that network slicing has the potential to fundamentally alter how network services are offered and used, giving service providers more flexibility, efficiency, and agility while opening up new business models and revenue streams.

“Network slices can be tailored to specific needs, such as delivering low latency, enhanced quality of service (QoS), and low data rates for one slice, while another slice is designed to provide high throughput. This ensures that the resources are used effectively, maximising the network’s capabilities while delivering the desired service levels to customers. Increased flexibility and agility, better resource utilisation, and lower costs are some advantages of network slicing. With network slicing, operators can provide customised services with varying levels of service quality, dynamically allocate network resources based on demand, and optimise network performance for various business requirements.”

In a report by 5G Americas ‘Commercialising 5G Network Slicing’ industry analysts affirm that network slicing could be a key factor in monetising 5G investments. Especially with the introduction of slicing capabilities in 5G Standalone networks. With this, CSPs can create new services and applications that will be enabled by these new capabilities. This, particularly, leverages the capability of 5G networks to deliver connectivity across the vastly different QoS requirements required by modern applications.

This is where the ‘one size fits all’ network model of previous generations of mobile networks will go out of relevance. Slicing can allow 5G networks to truly dance well on specific applications like machine-type communication, ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC), and enhanced mobile broadband delivery.

Some examples have already started showing the adoption and interest in this new paradigm. In June 2021, Orange and Nokia tried the deployment of 4G and 5G private networks with network slicing functionality. This happened at Schneider Electric’s factory in Le Vaudreuil, France and, according to the companies, enabled full slice connectivity through domain controller software in the Radio Access Network (RAN), core, and transport layers.

Ericsson, Deutsche Telekom, and Samsung collaborated to deliver what they call the world’s first 5G end-to-end network slicing trial. Done at Deutsche Telekom’s lab in Bonn for a VR streaming game use case, the trial used two independent network slices; one with the default mobile broadband slice and an optimised slice for cloud VR gaming. The optimised slice delivers higher throughput and lower latency and demonstrated an enhanced experience on the gaming slice – even with network congestion around – as claimed.

Gurnani explains why Nokia believes that network slicing has a crucial role to play in 5G monetisation. With its now well-understood capabilities of high speed, low latency, and CUSP architecture, 5G networks are designed to facilitate network slicing use cases like guaranteed FWA, URLLC, Industrial, and Enterprise guaranteed and assured services, etc. that would be key to 5G monetisation.

Money Vs. challenges

Network slicing has the potential to be a highly profitable solution if planned and executed properly. Whether and when it can convert the technology into powerful monetisation is, however, dependent on several variables and what-ifs that can come into play.

Nandan maintains that theoretically, network slicing offers interesting opportunities to telcos and enterprises. “If done well, it can offer customer-led connectivity products which are on-demand, highly automated, and ‘fit for purpose’. Therefore, it does offer opportunities to monetise differently and possibly charge for premium/enhanced services. It can become a basis for specialised connectivity products for enterprises, specific use cases in various industry verticals, greater adoption of specialised IoT use cases, etc.”

“If done well, it can offer customer-led connectivity products which are on-demand, highly automated, and fit-for-purpose,” says Nandan, adding that it does offer telcos and enterprises the opportunity to monetise differently and possibly charge for premium and enhanced services. “It can become a basis for specialised connectivity products for enterprises, specific use cases in various industry verticals, and greater adoption of specialised IoT use cases, etc.”

Agrees Jadhav: “Network slicing delivers a powerful ability to take a portion of the physical network, perform logical isolation along with strong security, and provide a guaranteed quality of service to businesses.”

But realising network slicing for enhanced monetisation is a complex task, Nandan does not dismiss the tricky parts here. “Starting with infrastructure-readiness to operational-readiness to commercial-readiness, changes are needed across most of the layers of the technology stack. At the same time, products based on network slicing would need a high degree of visibility and enhanced assurance. Making all these changes in already complex BSS and OSS stacks of telcos add to the complexity. Management issue is also about the complexity of BSS and lack of a strong service management platform for B2B and B2B2X models.”

“Network slicing is of interest to most telcos who are looking at growth through enterprise segments or are expanding into industry verticals.”- Amresh Nandan, VP Analyst, Gartner

Industry reports show that slicing the RANs can be the most difficult part of deploying network slices, especially dividing and allocating a spectrum of resources called resource blocks to the Mobile Virtual Network Operators. Being designed according to the policy of slicing, and ensuring ortho-gonality among each RAN slice, those are tough areas to handle. Restricted interference from other networks can also raise issues in point-to-point connectivity with an excess of networks.

Maheswaran Shamugasundaram, Country Manager – India, Varonis puts the spotlight on some security questions that need to be tackled with the increased use of network slicing. “While network slicing offers tremendous potential, it also has its own set of hurdles, network slicing as you would agree increases network complexity thereby resulting in security implications. Every network slice based on the traffic it handles and the data it holds require unique security measures. Some of the most prevalent threat vectors in terms of network slicing are denial of service attacks, data overexposure and exfiltration risks, and a high configuration attack surface. Data isolation and protection of information used on one network by being modified by another on the same infrastructure could be a challenge.”

At the same time, there are many on-ground issues like sprawl, complexity, and management problems that pop their heads only when one starts to use network slicing in reality.

Network slicing poses numerous challenges to service providers and developers due to compatibility and integration between hardware and software, avers Jadhav. “The industry is making strides towards standardisation. It, however, has to reach a common consensus with complete architectural elements. The addition of more networks over the same physical infrastructure leads to additional challenges for operators. Difficulty in maintaining SLA, QoS, and security assurance for each slice and managing the spectrum slicing and allocation for highly dynamic scenarios are among the common challenges.”

Addressing the problems of sprawl, complexity, and management issues Gurnani argues that 3GPP defines a central Orchestration Centre and Assurance Centre for central management control and assurance of end-to-end slicing service across network layers. “Nokia Digital Operations (DO) Centre platform provides the central orchestration and assurance control for our end-to-end network slicing implementations.”

Naresh Singh, Senior Director Analyst in Gartner Research and Advisory reasons that network slicing has not delivered the gains that were expected of it. “Just slicing anything will not help unless you can create a strong solution and a premium use-case with that slice. This solution has to come either from the Telco or the vendors. It is still early days to comment on the impact of network slicing.”

He has a point. And that is not all. There are factors like vendor neutrality and multi-tenancy that are very crucial to check whether network slicing has any pragmatic ease or not, especially in the area of vendor neutrality.

“If network slices are not correctly isolated, an attack can disrupt the whole system by just infiltrating one network, and attacks on the central infrastructure can hamper multiple slices at the same time. Also, data isolation and protection of information used on one network by being modified by another on the same infrastructure could be a challenge.” Shamugasundaram also reminds us that the configuration attack surface would be high considering the complexities involved and lack of skills and this could result in the disablement of critical security features or system monitoring services, putting the whole system at risk.

“Maintaining SLA, QoS, and security assurance for each slice and managing the allocation for highly dynamic scenarios are common challenges.”- Maheswaran Shamugasundaram, Country Manager – India, Varonis

Network slicing gives various tenants who share the same physical infrastructure more flexibility, performance, and security.

Ask Jadhav and he argues that network slicing, in theory, is vendor-agnostic. “Network slicing is a method of creating multiple unique logical and virtualised networks over a common multi-domain infrastructure. The idea behind network slicing is to layer various virtual networks – each with its own distinct set of features and capabilities – on top of a single physical infrastructure which is achieved using Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) technologies.”

The primary benefit of this strategy, as he translates, is that it enables network administrators to deploy and oversee numerous network slices from various vendors that are all running on a common underlying physical infrastructure. “This can reduce vendor lock-in, boost flexibility, and ease the creation of new network services. That said, in practice, network slicing may not always be completely vendor-agnostic as some vendors’ proprietary SDN and NFV implementations might make it difficult to integrate their products with those of other vendors. Determining the interoperability and compatibility of various vendor solutions is crucial when designing and deploying a network-slicing architecture, even though network slicing has the potential to be vendor-agnostic.

Unravelling the vendor-agnostic challenge, Gurnani observes that network slicing standards are defined in 3GPP. “All standard implementations of Network Slicing work across vendor ecosystems. Nokia has successfully integrated our RAN, Core, and Transport slicing solutions in the multi-vendor ecosystems of CSP partners. Network slicing solutions are agnostic to single or multi-tenancy networks, as long as the underlying nodes and network architecture follow the standards.”

If you mean network equipment vendor-agnostic, yes, at least theoretically, as Nandan sees it. “Network slicing-related specifications provide mechanisms to develop and evolve telcos’ technology stack in a manner that remains vendor-agnostic. However, it is not a straightforward change in reality. Operational readiness demands quite a bit of change in OSS and BSS. Vendors supplying OSS and BSS solutions enable network slicing quite differently. Network slicing-related specifications are not rigid in the way network slicing functions are implemented, which means telcos need to find the best architecture suited for their future business models.”

Nandan unravels how this is the first point of complication as several telcos lack clarity on business models. “Further, the business model decision also impacts changes in BSS, for example, to enable B2B2X models. Most telcos are still grappling with automation of order management down to fulfilment. These factors have acted as impediments to faster implementation and roll out.”

Multi-tenancy is a big lever for network slicing.

As Jadhav notes, in cases where it is vendor-agnostic, and multiple users or tenants share a common physical infrastructure, network slicing is better suited. “Network slicing in a multi-tenant environment enables the creation of numerous virtual networks that can be tailored to each tenant’s particular needs while sharing the same physical resources. Each tenant can have their virtual network with dedicated resources and quality of service (QoS) parameters, thanks to network slicing, which can be allocated and managed dynamically in response to changing needs. This gives tenants more control over their network performance and how they deploy and manage their services and applications.”

Can AI help, or not?

A new bright spot in this space is that of on-demand, AI-driven, or dynamic network slicing. Perhaps these new ways can underline the advantages of network slicing while erasing the cumbersome parts of it.

Network resources can be allocated and changed in real-time to meet the varying needs of various users and applications, thanks to on-demand, AI-driven, or dynamic network slicing- echoes Jadhav. “This may contribute to a more seamless and reliable user experience while lowering latency and enhancing network performance. Additionally, by automatically reallocating resources based on shifting traffic patterns and user demands, dynamic network slicing can aid in optimising network utilisation. This may help to lessen network sluggishness, increase its effectiveness, and cut down on running expenses.”

However, as he warns, on-demand, AI-driven or dynamic network slicing also comes with several difficulties. “There is a need for real-time data processing and analysis, as well as for advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms. In a dynamic and ever-changing network environment, it might also be difficult to guarantee the security and privacy of network data.”

In Nandan’s assessment, these are the features and mechanisms to mature and evolve the operations of network slicing. We should see them as differentiating mechanisms as telcos achieve commercial success and start competing with network slicing.

Why not lose hope or one’s bearings?

Anything new and disruptive takes time to find its footing. Telcos will need both foresight and patience to make network slicing work. They will have to watch out for the slippery ground with as much prudence as creativity they would need to unlock the true power of these slices.

As Shamugasundaram cautions, it is mandatory for the service providers who leverage network slicing to closely coordinate with enterprises and customers to maintain secure communication across different network slices and the customers should extend their data protection controls to these network slices. This will ensure the protection of the privacy of users and their critical information assets while enhancing the quality of service.

By creating isolation between various virtual networks, network slicing can also aid in enhancing security in multi-tenant environments, reminds Jadhav. “This gives better visibility and control over network traffic as well as helps to prevent unauthorised access or interference between tenants.”

Once these areas are ironed out, then network slices can start enjoying the new revenue jam-and-butter that can be spread well on them. Without any pills inside.

By Pratima Harigunani

pratimah@cybermedia.co.in