The trial was completed on Ericsson’s 5G Core and Radio Access Network (RAN) technology in the UK with devices powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen for Galaxy Mobile Platform.
Greg McCall, chief networks officer at BT Group said: “Network slicing will enable us to deliver new and improved capabilities for customers in the 5G SA era.
“As we work diligently towards the launch of our own 5G SA network, today’s successful demonstration of how slicing enables us to differentiate Quality of Service to guarantee performance for different segments is a significant milestone, and illustrative of the new services that will be enabled by 5G SA.”
The trial took place at Adastral Park, BT’s home of research and innovation and established network slices for Gaming, Enterprise and Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB).
It also showed how by allocating a portion of the 5G SA network to provide dynamic partitions for specific use cases, optimal performance can be maintained for bandwidth-heavy activities including mobile gaming and video conferencing.
Mobile gaming is experiencing relentless growth, with traffic on EE doubling since the beginning of 2023 to more than two petabytes of data every month.
In the trial, the three companies also demonstrated an “optimal mobile cloud gaming experience” on Nvidia’s GeForce Now, maintaining a throughput comfortably over the recommended 25Mbps at 1080p even when a background load was generated.
The trial also validated the potential of network slicing for BT’s business customers. Using the enterprise and eMBB slices, it demonstrated consistent 4K video streaming and enterprise use cases.
Katherine Ainley, CEO of Ericsson UK and Ireland said: “5G standalone and network slicing demonstrates that leading operators like EE will be able to offer customers tailored connectivity with different requirements on speed, latency and reliability for specific applications, such as video streaming and gaming.
“This ultimate next step in connectivity will enable new service offerings for consumers and businesses who require premium performance while helping to drive future market growth and innovation for the UK in a wide range of new industries.”
