Nokia and A1 Deploy 5G Edge Cloud Network Slicing Solution

Nokia and A1 Austria have completed the first-ever 5G edge cloud network slicing trial in collaboration with Microsoft. For the trial, Nokia's 5G edge slicing solution was integrated with Microsoft Azure-managed edge computing on A1's live commercial network in Vienna, Austria.

During the trial, A1 demonstrated real-time HD video streaming by transmitting live camera feeds from several mobile devices using Multicasting.io's streaming mobile platform, which was running on the Azure edge infrastructure. This 5G edge cloud network slicing solution can be utilized by various industries including retail, media, utilities, healthcare, and transportation, offering mobile operators a chance to create new revenue streams.

The solution enables operators to use both slicing and edge cloud capabilities and provide value to their customers. Network slices can be customized to support specific customers' use cases and different applications based on network performance, quality, traffic routing, latency, and security.

This new solution enabled A1 to isolate its public Internet and enterprise traffic while keeping critical business traffic local using 4G/5G core breakout for enterprise edge cloud applications. The network slices were implemented across Devices-RAN-Transport-Core-Edge Cloud Applications. Nokia's solution also offers a sliced mobile broadband VPN in selected business areas such as a campus or city environment.

Scalable 5G Edge Slicing supports multiple enterprise VPN deployments using the same 4G/5G network. It can be used with all 4G/5G devices, including new URSP (UE Route Selection Policy) capable multi-slice smartphones for different applications. The trial was executed with Azure, which supports enterprise private and public applications at the operator and enterprise edge. Azure-managed edge computing was deployed at A1's data center in Vienna with connectivity to the Azure region in Austria.