Although long touted as the key to 5G revenue growth Network Slicing has been slow to materialize in the marketplace.

Several key capabilities now allow Communications Service Providers (CoSPs) to overcome critical challenges that have hindered profitable deployment of 5G Network Slicing. These new capabilities include:

• Emergence of Standards for Multi-Vendor, Multi-Domain Orchestration
• 3GPP Release 16 Specifications for Non-Public Networking (NPN) and Hybrid Public Network Integrated Non-Public Network (PNI -NPN).
• Proven Models for End-to-End Slice provisioning, enablement and activation
• Ways to meet QoS SLAs and still retain the leverage of virtualization with Dynamic ‘soft‘ Network Slicing

These capabilities are about to make 5G Network Slicing real in 2021 and 2022.

This report describes the capabilities of new 3GPP Release 16 Network Slicing Multi-Domain MANO and NPN, PNI-NPN with examples of how they can come together to create use cases that could become a ‘’sweet spot’’ for near term CoSP revenue growth.

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Executive Summary

Introduction – State of Network Slicing

• 5G Network Slicing revenue has been slow to materialize

I.            

Network Slicing Market Opportunities are very significant

II             Network Slicing Challenges and ‘Pre-standard’ Solutions

• ONAP added basic 5G Network Slice Orchestration in June 2020, but not yet Multi-Domain Orchestration
• Need for Multi-Domain Network Slice Management
• Emergence of Pre-Standards Multi-Vendor, Multi-Domain Orchestration for Network Slicing

III.           Multi-Domain Orchestration Standards Emerging

• Pre-standard’ Implementations by multiple vendors
• 5G Public Private Partnership (5G PPP) and other Consortia have created Multi-Domain, Multi-Vendor Slicing ‘Pre-Standard Prototypes

IV.          Emerging CoSP Opportunity for 5G Non-Public Network (NPN)

• 5G-Enabled NPNs

V.            Advent of Non-Public Networking (NPN)

• Examples of Hybrid Public Network Integrated NPN (PNI -NPN)

VI.          NPN and Network Slicing create ‘Sweet Spot’ for CoSPs

Appendix A. 3GPP standards on Non-Public Networks

Contacts – Intel and Strategy Analytics