Enterprise and Industrial Apps Lead the Network Slicing Market followed by Public Safety
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This report evaluates enabling technologies and the market outlook for 5G network slicing. The report provides market opportunity analysis including Configuration Management, Performance Management, Service Level Agreements, and more. The report also includes 5G network slicing by specific use cases such as Smart Manufacturing, which includes Remote Monitoring, Supply Chain Management, Asset Management, Real-Time Monitoring, and Network Monitoring.
In addition, the report provides an assessment of major segments such as 5G network slicing in consumer, enterprise, and industrial IoT. The report includes global forecasts for each area covered as well as regional estimates for 5G network slicing by segment, RF band, applications, and industry verticals through 2028.
Select Report Findings:
- 5G network slicing market will reach $5.3 billion globally by 2028
- Global 5G slicing professional services will reach $414.2 million by 2028
- North America will lead the 5G slicing market followed by Asia Pac and Europe
- Network slicing management will reach $29.7 million by 2028 in North America
- Enterprise will lead the market but smaller organizations will grow 50% faster than corporations
- Collaboration among system integrators, vendors, and carriers is key to the long-term success of 5G network slicing
- Leading carriers will work diligently to extend trust and build relationships with vertical partners to optimize 5G solutions
- A key market segment, private wireless networks will require substantial vertical engagement to ensure 5G slicing is meeting their needs
- There is a keen need for service providers of all types (Carrier, Managed Service, Business User) to coordinate with application providers
As networks become increasingly more complex, we see service providers taking a more intent-based networking approach to network management. Accordingly, leading carriers are incorporating various forms of network optimization such as network slicing into their OSS/BSS capabilities. This will be particularly important with 5G as the use cases for future applications and services are many and varied in terms of type, industry vertical focus, and requirements.
5G network slicing enables a highly programmable multi-service architecture, which consists of three layers (1) Service Instance Layer, (2) Network Slice Instance Layer, and (3) Resource Layer. One important architecture component is the Slice Selection Function (SSF), which handles device attach requests and new service establishments.
5G standalone, the base on which network slicing is built, will enable game services the right performance end-to-end (E2E) unlike 4G or Wi-Fi. E2E network slicing enables new business model innovation and use cases across all verticals, and creates new revenue opportunities for communication service providers. It provides service flexibility and ability to deliver services faster with high security, isolation, and applicable characteristics to meet the contracted SLA.
The SSF selects an optimal slice based on user information, device type, and capabilities. This supports one of the important goals of radio access management, which is to support configuration rules for each slice. 5G network slicing also allows for core networks to be logically separated in terms of connectivity and network capabilities. Separation of the control plane and user plane is a key aspect of the 5G network slicing market, allowing resources to be scaled independently.
One of the opportunities for carriers is to leverage 5G network slicing for new business development by way of expanded capabilities for virtual network operators (VNO). Since 5G network slicing enables multiple logical networks to act in an independent manner operationally, a VNO could support many different types of customers including consumers, enterprise, and industrial businesses.
A network slice could be completely different for a consumer using an eMBB application versus an industrial URLLC application. For example, 5G network slicing allows for isolation of bandwidth, processing, storage, and Traffic. This allows resources to be allocated for QoS-specific needs.
Perhaps one of the most promising areas for carriers is to leverage 5G network slicing market capabilities to offer dynamic slicing with differentiated pricing based on customer needs and resource availability. Factors to consider for each slice allocation include bandwidth availability, latency support, and overall network elasticity to scale to customer needs. Additional factors that determine value and cost to the customer include network homogeneity, connection density, and type of connection.
Service providers must take into account use case-specific requirements and parameters, which at the highest level is broken down into three distinct 5G service categories as follows:
- Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB): Mobile broadband-based apps including video watching, browsing, Mobile Office/Productivity, and cloud-based gaming.
- Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC): Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Telepresence (includes Holographic calling), Teleoperation/Tele-robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, UAV/Drone Operation, Public Safety, Smart Buildings and other latency-sensitive applications
- Massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC): 5G will facilitate a highly scalable M2M network for many IoT applications, particularly those that do not require high bandwidth.
One of the more important challenges with 5G is juggling multiple requirements found within each category, which are also often mutually exclusive. For example, URLLC applications require high reliability (e.g. works exactly as it is supposed to work exactly when it’s needed) yet also require very low latency and very high bandwidth.
Achieving all three of these in support of quality of service and quality of experience requirements for demanding customers such as smart factories will be a major challenge for service providers. 5G network slicing provides a means by which each of these different use cases may have its own portion of available frequently and associated assignable Quality of Service (QoS) and/or Quality of Experience (QoE) configuration.
5G network slicing enables communication service providers (CSP) to balance the disparate requirements between eMBB, URLLC, and mMTC applications such as availability/reliability, bandwidth, connectivity, cost, elasticity, and latency.
Each major service offering type (Mobile Broadband, Massive IoT, and Mission Critical Communications) will benefit from the ability to allocate a cross-domain, on-demand data pipe with strict QoS/QoE requirements met for any wireless device connected to the network. This is accomplished by breaking down a given service (such as a URLLC-dependent critical communications service) into sub-services, which are in turn mapped to features/capabilities within a network slice.
One of the ways it does this is through the separation of the control plan (CP) and user plane (UP) architectures, allowing for each to scale independently and for CSPs to choose network functions (NF) and resources with optimal efficiency. This is accomplished fundamentally by way of 5G designed to be a services-based architecture (SBA).
The SBA approach allows CSPs to map communications and computing functions together and to better orchestrate service delivery. This represents a programmable 5G multi-service architecture that facilitates the delivery of microservices on a per-use case basis while simultaneously supporting CSP goals to achieve customization and flexibility in a cost-effective manner that manages multiple inter-dependent requirements.
Leading CSPs will leverage their investment in Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) to optimize network slice allocation as well as overall network management and 5G orchestration. Network resources are deployed in a manner in which network elements and functions may be easily configured and reused.
Physical elements are sliced logically into multiple virtual networks, which may be combined with various network functions on a case-by-case basis. 5G network slicing market participants need to understand that SDN and NFV support soft slicing and hard slicing respectively, but they also work closely together to provide highly flexible slicing allocations.
In support of these goals, carriers are planning for networks to ultimately become fully cloud-native in terms of virtualized infrastructure with programmatic services. The 5G network slicing market also supports carrier OSS functions such as the capability to support Self-Organizing Network (SON) algorithms to enable automatic slice instance creation. This SON and network slicing integration will allow for the creation of slices-on-demand in a highly automated manner.
Through this virtualization and a programmatic slicing approach, functions may reside on the same or different physical elements. In other words, core networks may be logically separated with a given network slice representing a custom set of deliverables (availability, bandwidth, etc.).
5G network slicing instances may run on the same infrastructure, shared infrastructure, or separate infrastructure based on CSP decisions relative to cost, availability, and capabilities of network resources. With a radio network agnostic core network, CSPs may leverage a stand-alone, converged 5G network core to support virtually any air interface including 5G New Radio (5G NR), LTE, and WiFi.
Equally important is the ability to allocate computational resources associated with a given network slice. More specifically, mobile edge computing (MEC) provides optimization of 5G network resources including focusing communications and computational capacity where it is needed the most.
Whereas MEC is helpful for LTE, it is critical for 5G, as, without it, 5G would continue to rely upon back-haul to centralized cloud resources for storage and computing, diminishing much of the otherwise positive impact of latency reduction enabled by 5G NR. Network slicing may be used to allocate critical MEC resources on a use-case basis as per the unique demands of a given industry, customer, and service instance.
Leading CSPs will also take an end-to-end approach to 5G network slicing that leverages disaggregation and virtualization of both radio and core network elements. In the core network, NFV and SDN capabilities are leveraged to meet QoS/QoE requirements, whereas in the radio network separation of radio access network (RAN) elements by real-time vs. static functions is important to 5G network slicing. 5G networks split the RAN into centralized and distributed units, enabling a virtualized RAN (vRAN).
By leveraging this separation of equipment and functions via the vRAN architecture, CSPs may allocate either static or dynamic resources with the former providing guaranteed allocation and the latter providing a shared resource with improved network optimization.
This is all managed logically through mapping a network slice ID to a set of configuration rules in the RAN. Among other things, advantages include the ability to allocate slice-specific network functions in some cases and common control functions across network slices as use cases may dictate.
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Table of Contents
1 Executive Summary
Companies Mentioned
- Cisco Systems, Inc.
- Deutsche Telekom AG
- Ericsson
- Huawei
- Intel
- Nokia
- Samsung
- Telefónica SA
- ZTE
Methodology
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