Telstra and Ericsson said they have finalized the build of the initial wireless capabilities for this project

Swedish vendor Ericsson and Australian operator Telstra announced plans to deliver 5G network slicing services for Australian enterprises as part of their existing partnership.

The pair said they have completed the first phase of work to enable slice-based use cases like fixed wireless access (FWA), broadcasting, automotive connectivity, stadium or precinct services on Telstra’s 5G network.

The partners also noted they have finalized the build of the initial wireless capabilities for this project, to fully operationalize and monetize network slicing using Ericsson’s Dynamic Network Slicing solution.

The two main features of this phase are the orchestration of Telstra’s radio access network (RAN) rate controlled scheduling (RCS) which enables network slices to support efficient utilization of radio resources and creating the ability to automate discovery of the entire Telstra 5G RAN topology by integrating Ericsson’s common topology service and RAN management layer via the Ericsson discovery and reconciliation framework.

Both firms said they aim to finalize the next phase of this joint work during the course of this year. Ericsson said that the next phase of the project involves the development and deployment of more advanced, open architecture supported features.

Emilio Romeo, head of Ericsson Australia and New Zealand, said: “Building these systems with automation as a key feature to reduce complexity and enhanced efficiency is the true path forward to achieve superior service experience, seamless operational excellence, and assured revenue with new business models.”

“The true opportunity of 5G is to be found in its ability to deliver premium, dependable and differentiated service experiences, beyond standard mobile broadband, through network slicing. With Ericsson’s Dynamic Network Slicing capability we are able to design experiences and deliver a service to meet the needs of specific customer use cases. As we continue to invest in and develop advanced 5G connectivity for Australia, the opportunity to extend this capability across a broad range of customer use cases expands and allows us to deliver incredible value for the biggest enterprise customers, all the way across to our individual subscribers,” said Shailin Sehgal, Telstra executive for network applications and cloud.

Last week, Telstra claimed a new global record for 5G uplink speed of 340 Mbps, in partnership with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies.

The Australian telco noted this achievement will enable Telstra customers to enjoy faster and more reliable data uploads on their 5G Standalone (SA) devices. The new 5G SA uplink capability combines Telstra’s mid-band spectrum holdings to create a 140-megahertz channel for sending data from the device to the network, the telco said.

This is complemented by a 240-megahertz channel for receiving data from the 5G SA network to the device, delivering up to 3.6 Gbps in downlink speed and an uplink speed of 340 Mbps, it added.