Some lessons learnt
Commercial equipment not fully compliant with 3GPP Release features
- Most smartphones do not support “testing” (non-commercial) PLMN IDs
- Limited numbers of UEs support slicing. Those supporting can only be active with 1 slice
- 5G RAN slicing is still not supported by some RAN vendors (e.g., Sunwave)
- Handover between gNodeBs of different RAN vendors fails due to incompatibility issues
Roaming mechanisms/optimizations not implemented in most 5G Cores (commercial, open-source)
- Need to align project timeline and 5G Core manufacturers roadmap (N14 interface, LBO roaming)
Deployment of orchestrated (dynamic) network slicing on the RAN side is still far from being realistic.
- Commercial RAN equipment allows communication with an orchestrator through OSS, but it is expensive, or it is not possible due to cybersecurity issues
- Most O-RAN equipment that allows direct communication with orchestrators is still unstable.
