China Unicom, Huawei Sign a Joint Innovation Agreement on 5G Network Slicing

China Unicom and Huawei have signed a joint innovation agreement on 5G network slicing. The partners plan to jointly carry out research, demonstration, and application of 5G network slicing, develop key technologies and solutions for China Unicom's 5G network slicing services and applications, jointly promote industry chain development, and apply slices to more vertical industry markets, such as VR/AR games, industrial control, Internet of Vehicles (IoV), and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Zhang Yong, President of China Unicom Network Technology Research Institute, and He Weijie, Vice President of Huawei Cloud Core Network Product Line, signed the agreement and discussed and planned for the implementation of future innovation cooperation between the two parties.

China Unicom and Huawei Sign a Joint Innovation Agreement on 5G Network Slicing

Huawei's concepts of slice as a service and slice as a product, have played a major role in shaping the 5G business model. With its agile deployment, security isolation, high reliability, and automatic management, slices help operators expand the vertical industry market in the 5G era and fully exploit the potential of their networks.

Zhang Yong, President of China Unicom Network Technology Research Institute, said: "Network slicing is a key native capability of 5G, which can maximize the efficiency of communications networks and reduce network construction and O&M costs. In the 5G era, the concepts of slice as a capability and slice as a product have become an industry consensus. China Unicom will demonstrate the multi-scenario slicing service in vertical industries and deepen the integration with the industry to facilitate digitalization in China.

“We hope that both parties can focus efforts on terminals, chips, networks, and vertical industries, accelerate the slice demonstration and application, and jointly build a new 5G slicing ecosystem in 2018 and 2019, for the purpose of formulating the 5G blueprint, creating completely new markets for 5G, and achieving a win-win through 5G network deployment," continued Zhang Yong.

He Weijie, Vice President of Huawei Cloud Core Network Product Line, said: "As a key anchor for differentiated network experience and operation, the core network plays a more important role in the 5G network. Huawei’s 5G core network uses the microservice architecture to implement on-demand deployment of 5G slices, agile operation, and SLA assurance. We hope to cooperate with China Unicom to explore new business models based on slices and explore the new business value."

2018 will be the year of 5G commercial use. 5G will be put into commercial use in several cities in China. Multiple operators outside China are also preparing for pilots before commercial use. Network slicing is the key innovation and application of 5G networks. With 5G commercial use, Huawei will create completely new (blue ocean) markets for operators.