T-Mobile's Ulf Ewaldsson told us the operator is working on hybrid technology that combines private networking and network slicing
He said that "several" customers have already signed on
The ex-Ericsson man said that a big funnel of customers could follow
MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS LAS VEGAS – T-Mobile’s president of technology Ulf Edwaldsson is quietly confident about the prospects for delivering “hybrid networks” that combine both 5G private network capabilities and network slicing.
This kind of hybrid set-up can enable organizations to send important traffic — be that broadcast video, medical images or financial data — on a slice of public 5G through to an operation's private network.
Fierce Network has already touched on whether enterprises should choose private networks or network slicing, it largely depends on which country your company is operating in. Now, however, Ewaldsson thinks that some organizations in the U.S., at least those using T-Mobile, may say, "why not both?"
Talking to Fierce in T-Mobile’s Magenta-accented private meeting room off the show floor, he said that T-Mobile has started to deploy hybrid networks that combine a private network on site with slicing on both the private network and T-Mobile public 5G network close to the organization’s private network.
Ewaldsson said that a hospital was one of “several” customers that have already installed a hybrid 5G network. As well as installing a 5G private network in the hospital, he said, "We’re able to make the surrounding network pieces capable of network slicing. So, if an ambulance is arriving at a hospital, we can prioritize the traffic from that [ambulance],” Ewaldsson said. This is particularly important if the ambulance is sending emergency x-ray images as it arrives.
Ewaldsson notes that T-Mobile can only do this because of its well-established 5G standalone (SA) network. The operator was the first in the world to deploy a 5G SA core in August 2020. Rival Verizon started to launch slicing trials last year after switching on its 5G SA core in several states in the U.S.
Still, it took T-Mobile quite a while to bring slicing up to speed. Ewaldsson noted that the operator started to show off slicing at sporting events like the Las Vegas November 2023 grand prix and the PGA golf tournament.
Now he suggested that T-Mobile is ready to bring slicing to its enterprise customers through this hybrid networking approach. “What we see is a big funnel of customers,” Ewaldsson said of potential users of the combined 5G private network and slicing approach.
So could this actually be the time that network slicing takes off in the U.S after years of just talking about it? Quite possibly, if Ewaldsson has his way.
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