PLANO, Texas – Ericsson has added yet another live 5G network to its portfolio – its own 5G Distributed Innovation Network in North Texas.

Leveraging expertise across Ericsson's 5G portfolio, a cross-collaboration team envisioned and replicated an end-to-end distributed network across multiple campuses, including Plano Ericsson Village, the company's 38-acre North American headquarters near Legacy Park, and Ericsson's Richardson Labs, a research facility nine miles away.

Customers and partners now have access to this 5G edge computing environment to run no-risk, real-world experiments, working with the latest technology and the teams that enabled it, ultimately removing complexity from future implementation.

Edge computing will play a key role in operators' ability to provide new services and generate new revenue streams from 5G. Enterprise and IoT services, such as new virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and gaming applications, will depend on Edge computing capabilities to provide a better user experience on a lightweight device by relying on processes that happen within the network.

Tomas Ageskog, Head of Digital Services for Ericsson North America, says: "Decades of communications technology experience and a passion for innovation have shaped our ability to anticipate our customers' challenges. This end-to-end network provides a great platform for trial and development to demonstrate what end-users face in deploying 5G in an Enterprise environment across devices, access, transport and core."

Both 5G Core Stand-Alone (SA) and integrated Non-standalone (NSA) radio access network (RAN) are supported in the lab using an SD-WAN connection to the public cloud as well as radio and mobile transport for full application cloud-to-device connectivity, management and orchestration.

Kevin Zvokel, Head of Networks for Ericsson North America, says: "We built it, and we run it both as an operator and as a large, complex Enterprise, demonstrating how 5G and edge computing work together to deliver new services and use cases. We're running real-world experiments and use cases to solve problems today that the industry will encounter tomorrow, such as end-to-end network slicing."

Network slicing is another critical aspect to building and managing a network, enabling operators to move beyond offering simple connectivity to delivering value-added digital services. The 5G Distributed Innovation Network demonstrates Management and Orchestration and automation of end-to-end network slicing using 5G Core SA, RAN, Transport, assurance and SD-WAN.

Ericsson's 5G Distributed Innovation Network now provides a collaboration environment for operators, application developers, hyperscalers and hardware manufacturers developing solutions for 5G. In fact, Ericsson will utilize Dell Technologies hardware at the Ericsson Village to demonstrate a realistic hardware configuration for the edge network.

Demos and use cases with various partners have run the gamut from network slicing to launching a drone with a video/IoT and AR application over 5G mmWave with mid-band LTE anchor and running a Smart Boat over Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) around the lake at the Plano Ericsson Village.

Ericsson's 5G Distributed Innovation Network is the latest example of investments Ericsson is making in 5G research and development. Last year, the company debuted its D-Fifteen innovation and co-creation lab to provide a high-powered platform for building impactful and unique solutions powered by 5G, in addition to its US 5G Core and Orchestration Virtual Innovation Center to expand expertise across packet core, orchestration, assurance and cloud infrastructure.

Ericsson