Telia Finland, Nokia claim 5G FWA network slicing first

Telia Finland and longstanding partner Nokia have announced what they claim is the world's first commercial fixed wireless access (FWA) service to harness network slicing over a 5G standalone (SA) network. The operator's 5G SA core is supplied exclusively by the Finnish vendor, as is its 5G RAN kit.

Telia Finland said the tech combo enables it to offer "guaranteed service levels" to its FWA home broadband users. Using network slicing the Finnish operator asserted it can dynamically allocate a portion of 5G SA capacity for 5G FWA and "flexibly balance traffic between FWA and mobile users."

It was not clear from the official announcement how widely available the commercial FWA service is, only that "deployment is underway" (and it involves the bundling in of Nokia 5G FWA gateways).

The operator alluded to new services, however, such as application category-based slicing, as well as being able to specify slices with differentiated levels of speed, latency and "data quality."

Figure 1: Telia and Nokia claim a world first commercial launch of guaranteed service levels for FWA home broadband users using 5G SA.
(Source: REUTERS/Alamy Stock Photo)

The Nokia 5G SA core "gives the speed, intelligence, scale, and security to deliver 5G services while cost-effectively managing its network with near zero-touch automation and adherence to SLAs," Telia Finland added.

The operator also noted it is using Nokia's carrier aggregation tech to make "best use" of its 5G spectrum assets and improve coverage in key regions.

Telia Finland announced last November that Nokia would be its 5G SA core supplier. The vendor is also a 5G SA core supplier to other parts of Sweden-headquartered Telia Company (Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden).

Nokia FWA slicing action in Africa

Last month Nokia and Safaricom said they had completed what they claim was Africa's first FWA 5G slicing trial on a live 4G and 5G commercial network across RAN, transport and core.

The multivendor pilot took place in Kenya's Western Region, with Nokia providing its AirScale 4G/5G basestations, NetAct network management and FastMile 4G/5G customer premises equipment (CPE) software.

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The trial focused primarily on supplying new types of enterprise network services, including "fast lane" Internet access and application slicing.

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— Ken Wieland, contributing editor, special to Light Reading