The ability to autonomously orchestrate and manage a network slice extending from an operator’s EPC or cloud-native core, across the transport network and through the RAN, is seen as key to supporting the type of differentiated, revenue-generating services needed to offset the massive capex going into 5G. Flavors of virtually partitioning a network have been around for a while but, with 5G, the complexity explodes given variability of capacity, latency, mobility, device mix, and other factors.
Today Nokia claimed a world’s first with its announcement of new software-based network management, control and orchestration tools related to delivering a slice across the core, transport and radio access networks.
