At the PT Expo China (PTEXPO) 2024 exhibition held in Beijing, State Grid Corporation of China (HQ), State Grid Hubei, Hubei Telecom, Hubei Mobile, Hubei Broadcasting &Television, 5G Deterministic Networking Alliance, Central Southern China Electric Power Design Institute, Huawei, and other companies jointly released the world's first commercial short slice-based private network for State Grid Hubei. At the exhibition, Zhou Xiangling, Chief Expert of State Grid Hubei, delivered a keynote speech titled"Innovative Practices and Great Significance of Short Slice-based Private Networks." Other notable speakers, including Yang Bin, Director of the Communications Department for State Grid Corporation of China; Liu Qicheng, Secretary General of the 5G Deterministic Networking Alliance; as well as George Gao, President of Huawei Cloud Core Network Product Line, also extended their congratulations on the commercial release of the world's first short slice-based private network. They emphasized the importance of collaboration among various sectors to promote the healthy and rapid growth of short slice-based private networks, which would unlock the full potential of 5G to better serve and empower key infrastructure industries with scattered production areas, such as electric power and energy, as well as to benefit other similar scenarios.
World's first commercial release of a short slice-based private network for State Grid Hubei
China attaches great importance to the combination of energy and ICT. In this context, the new power system adopts cutting-edge technologies for sensing, communications, and control, unlike the conventional power system. Highlighted by high informatization, automation, and interaction, the new power system can better ensure the secure, reliable, economical, and efficient operating of the power grid. Therefore, the joint release of the world's first short slice-based private network by State Grid Hubei, Hubei Telecom, Xinyang Science and Technology (Wuhan), and Huawei has innovatively and successfully practised 5G communication technologies in the electric power industry. It is the world's first-mover advantage and attempt to establish a private network, where multiple networks are physically isolated for higher security, based on public network base stations. This is really of great significance.
A short slice-based private network is a type of wireless private network. On this network, electric power enterprises purchase services from telecom carriers, and telecom carriers move all core network devices to electric power enterprises' equipment rooms for dedicated utilization. In addition, 5G base stations on telecom carriers' public networks adopt slice reserving, channel resource multiplexing, and dedicated address ranges for private networks. This network meets the core requirements of multiple parties. For example, the electric power industry can have private networks for dedicated utilization, telecom carriers can manage and control public network frequency resources, and both power grid enterprises and telecom carriers can boost their economic returns.
The launch event also introduced three technical highlights of the short slice-based private network solution:
The solution is designed based on the mature, complete, and independent 5G core network dedicated to the electric power system. The dedicated 5G core network is of the carrier-class level and supports both 5G and 4G access.
In this solution, the electric power system's private network reuses its fiber transport network. In addition, the private network uses a dedicated network address range and dedicated SIM cards, which are all managed by the dedicated 5G core network that adopts the evolved MOCN technology.
This solution adopts technologies such as RB resource reservation over the wireless air interface as well as QoS. These technologies enable wireless base stations for the public network to offer physical channel resources for demanded electric power services. In this way, RB resources can be reused to guarantee network coverage for general electric power services.
Owing to the three highlights, the service flows of public and private network terminals are steered to their destined networks after they flow out of a base station. This cultivates the short slice-based private network featuring a unified network address range, flexible and organized provisioning of diverse services, and end-to-end autonomous data encryption networkwide.
As of September 25 this year, by leveraging the short slice-based private network solution, State Grid Hubei has connected power-dedicated terminals in 60 districts and counties in 14 cities of Hubei to base stations with 22,511 radio cells.
The short slice-based private network dedicated to the electric power system has been running over the past two years. It confines data encryption locally. Underpinned by a dedicated 5G core network, a dedicated network address range, and a dedicated IoT card number, the short slice-based private network provides wide-domain coverage and ensures private use while being isolated from other networks for security purposes. In addition, it supervises electric power service data in a way being "observable, measurable, controllable, and adjustable" and manages the electric power IoT card in a centralized and standardized manner.
The short slice-based private network is highlighted by dedicated physical channels and flexible service provisioning. It aims to ensure data transmission and control at a low latency, improve power supply reliability, and optimize the allocation of electric power resources. Furthermore, it substantially upholds the flexible access and scheduling of distributed new energy resources and advances the growth and application of new energy to achieve the "dual carbon" goals.
In addition to the electric power industry, the short slice-based private network solution can be promoted and applied to other industries. For example, it is suitable for sectors, divisions, and individuals that demand flexible service configuration, network data security-specific encryption, low latency, congestion prevention, and reliability improvement. This is because the solution enables a wireless private network to be rolled out to cover certain areas as required merely depending on a set of core network devices and a dedicated network address range. In brief, this solution will definitely bring enormous value to other industries.
The commercial launch made by State Grid Hubei signifies large-scale commercial use of the short slice-based private network solution. This solution will fully support the construction and growth of new power systems as well as provide communications infrastructure for the achievement of the "dual carbon" goals. Furthermore, it will inject 5G into thousands of industries with innovative models, pathways, and insights. Looking towards the future, the solution will substantially accelerate our socioeconomic growth.
