Cisco, Telefónica, and the University of Vigo accelerate ‘Network Slicing’ over 5G

Part of the 5G Galicia Pilot, supported by the Ministry of Economy and Digital Transformation through Red.es, the project will demonstrate the flexibility of the 5G network to adapt to different services and customers.

University of Vigo will deploy a demonstrator on laboratory infrastructure conforming three slices to offer differentiated services: low latency, high bandwidth, and emergencies.

Madrid, February 3, 2021. – Cisco, in collaboration with Telefónica and the University of Vigo, will conduct a 5G Network Slicing pilot test to show how flexible 5G networks allow dedicating specific capacities to different services and customers.

Specifically, this initiative consists of implementing a demonstrator on laboratory infrastructure at the University of Vigo, where three slices will be deployed in order to offer differentiated services: low latency, high bandwidth, and emergencies. For example, this will allow customers to enjoy ultra-high-definition content while securing the resources of the mobile network in the event of an emergency.

It is also intended to start building customer services to being offered through Telefónica’s 5G network. The project will allow Telefónica to obtain key results to boost the ecosystem and leverage technology interoperability and standardization to ease commercial services for customers. Some of the industries benefiting the most from Network Slicing are national security bodies, media and communication, automobile, manufacturing, and hospitality.

Project contributions

As a consolidated 5G infrastructure provider, Cisco will demonstrate the benefits of native cloud software with the Cisco Ultra Packet Core platform, which is at the heart of service creation and works together with key technologies such as Network Slicing, NFV and automation through Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) to support specific customer use cases, both consumers and enterprise. It’s one of the many digitization projects in Spain driven by Cisco ‘Digitaliza’ program.

Telefónica coordinates the project as a provider of one of the most cutting-edge and disruptive technologies of 5G networks (Network Slicing) and as a driver of the standards-based ecosystem.

As a research center with extensive experience in 5G, the University of Vigo is working on the design and deployment of the demonstrator, its validation and performance records, proving the benefits, quality and versatility of Network Slicing technologies.

5G communication systems will become a universal framework supporting simultaneously a wide range of devices and use cases with very different needs (industrial robots, connected vehicles, IoT devices, smartphones…). To achieve this, 5G networks must be flexible, scalable, programmable and dynamically adaptable to different communication requirements. Network Slicing makes it possible to create specific network capabilities for a service or group of users, thus offering separated services over the 5G network; something not possible with 4G and earlier.

Andreu Vilamitjana, Cisco Spain General Manager, said that “5G represents a great opportunity for Service Providers to generate new digital services, monetize their infrastructure investments and, above all, lead the digital transformation. Cisco shares this vision, and this project is an example of collaboration between researchers and providers to accelerate digitization.”

Mercedes Fernández, Innovation Manager and Head of 5G Technology Cities at Telefónica Spain, highlighted: “Telefónica is fully committed to the development of 5G technology that opens up our telecommunications ecosystem to different vertical industries. In collaboration with Cisco and the University of Vigo, this project will significantly boost our goal of making our networks more flexible and scalable to responding with 5G to the different services and customers’ needs.”

Felipe Gil, projects’ main investigator at University of Vigo, pointed out that “working on this pilot with Telefónica and Cisco will allow us to advance in the research of dynamic 5G networks and bring the results closer to the market, since we can collaborate with the people who are developing the latest Cisco products and with those who are engineering next-gen Telefónica networks.”

This is one of the first funded winning projects from the 5G development context held by the Ministry of Economy and Digital Transformation, co-financed by Red.es with FEDER funds and based on the 5G Galicia Pilot initiative, whose goal is to test different vendors technology and leverage results to define the networks of the future.

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About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in technology that powers the Internet. Cisco inspires new possibilities by reimagining your applications, securing your data, transforming your infrastructure, and empowering your teams for a global and inclusive future. Discover more on The Network and follow us on Twitter.

About Telefónica

Telefónica is one the largest telecommunications service providers in the world. The company offers fixed and mobile connectivity as well as a wide range of digital services for residential and business customers. With more than 341 million customers, Telefónica operates in Europe and Latin America.

Telefónica is a 100% listed company and its shares are traded on the Spanish Stock Market and on those in New York and Lima.

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