Deutsche Telekom demonstrates for enterprise services a 5G dynamic slicing orchestration

Deutsche Telekom, Blue Planet, Ericsson and Mavenir demonstrated in a proof of concept (PoC) the agility benefits of multi-domain orchestration with open APIs to automatically create new slice-based 5G service offerings on demand. The joint proof of concept shows how enterprises can place a service order in Deutsche Telekom’s customer portal, which triggers the configuration of a secure, dedicated network slice with guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) levels specific to their connectivity requirements.

Slices are implemented as a dynamic and automated service offering that is activated in minutes across the 5G network from the user equipment to the enterprise user’s application. To implement this enterprise service use case, the partners worked together to deploy a 5G standalone network infrastructure in test mode at Deutsche Telekom’s labs in Darmstadt and Bonn.

The setup included the integration of a customer portal as a part of business support system (BSS) provided by Deutsche Telekom, a commercially available multi domain service orchestrator (MDSO) delivered by Blue Planet, a cloud-native 5G Core (5GC) from Mavenir and the radio access network (RAN) from Ericsson, which also includes network management capabilities. Additionally, Deutsche Telekom’s proprietary network resource qualification system, named Bookkeeper, was used for service feasibility control.

Given the diversity of 5G network technology, open APIs are necessary to integrate and manage elements across a variety of technology domains and suppliers. The set of interfaces used in this PoC included industry-standard open APIs from TM Forum.

The following capabilities were proven in the PoC:

• ­Product order placement by the enterprise customer
• Order decomposition and distribution to technology domains by MDSO
• Model-driven RAN and core domains slice orchestration and end-to-end service orchestration in minutes
• Dynamic instantiation of network functions such as user plane function (UPF)
• Customer SIMs subscription and provisioning

Network service differentation

5G network slicing represents a network architecture operating in 5G Standalone that allows the multiplexing of both independent and virtualized logical networks on the very same physical network infra. Each slice is an isolated end-to-end network tailored to satisfy varied requirements asked for by a particular application