5G Standalone (SA) roaming is a crucial part of the industry’s overall transition to 5G service delivery. That’s why Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier put together several Proof of Concept (PoC) initiatives based on its 5G core backbone, covering the areas of 5G Signaling and Security, 5G Roaming Value Added Service, Network Slicing Roaming as well as Regional and Local Breakout.
Regional and Local Breakout roaming is especially important for future 5G-based low latency applications needed in scenarios such as remote surgery, autonomous driving or smart gids. Last year, Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier and Telefonica tested one such scenario: holographic communication. The partners completed the first low-latency data roaming connection between Germany and Spain, significantly lowering the data roaming packet latency, as well as increasing the traffic throughput and webpage download speeds.
Now, Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier has successfully tested Regional Breakout roaming based on 5G SA technology, deploying it in a purely cloud-based production model. The new model enables Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier to bring 5G SA Regional Breakout roaming to its customers at any location and in any desired cloud infrastructure. The notable strength of the 5G SA architecture in this set-up is speed, scalability, as well as its smooth integration with any customer backend. It also empowers operators to properly steer the Regional Breakout with policy control rules and thus being able to serve their own end consumers and IoT devices.
Csaba Füzesi, Head of Product Management at Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier, is thrilled with the latest Regional Breakout testing developments: “We expect that low latency 5G SA data roaming connectivity will be a primary commercial requirement from our customers in the next years to support all those new scenarios that 5G SA will enable. Our aim is therefore to provide a flexible yet robust production model that enables us to provide our customers with fast time-to-market and high platform scalability. We are confident that this model will be beneficial to the industry and welcome new partners to do further testing together.”
Preparing the industry for 5G service delivery
Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier wants to encourage industry players to move from passive collaboration to active cooperation in 5G service delivery. Dynamic partnerships enable operators to jointly explore and master this technology transformation. Early testing also supports their strategic decision making and accelerates the ideation process that sees 5G SA potentially enable a whole new world of telco services offerings.
There has been significant progress trialing various 5G SA roaming aspects over the past 18 months. In addition to the holographic communications PoC with Telefonica, the Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier established the first 5G SA roaming connection between Europe and Southeast Asia in partnership with Sunrise and AIS Thailand, as well as conducted an inter-carrier 5G SA Roaming PoC with international mobile roaming specialist Comfone.
