LONDON, UK – Network slicing, a promising new vehicle that will become a fundamental 5G technology, represents a potential US$66B opportunity for wireless service providers (WSPs), says a new report from market research firm ABI Research.
Network Slicing: Commercial Analysis and Enabling Technologies says that at a broad industry level, significant work is taking place to institute best practices around multiple standards and technologies that may need harmonization to enable end to end slice implementations. It adds that the next five years will be pivotal for commercial deployment of network slicing solutions as telcos are now more familiar with opportunities this new technology brings.
Currently, there are very few vendors who can provision end to end slicing solutions, Nokia and Ericsson chief among them, continues the report. Significant work is taking place to institute best practices and optimum mechanisms to integrate discrete domain-based tools with an eye to enable network slicing at a large scale.
“Network slicing revenues will eventually be on an upward trajectory, driven by digital, cloud, and security requirements of multiple industry verticals, particularly for the trio of manufacturing, logistics, and automotive”, said senior analyst Don Alusha, in the report’s news release. “Realizing the full revenue potential is dependent on essential slicing infrastructure from vendors, and pertinent applications delivered by (W)SPs.”
