FWA powered by 5G SA and network slicing

Elisa’s 5G network covers more than 95 percent of the Finnish population, and as of October 2024, it extends to every municipality in the country. In June 2018, Elisa became one of the first service providers in the world to deploy a pre-commercial 5G network.

Introducing 5G SA services, with network slicing as a key feature

Elisa’s 5G SA journey started in August 2020, when it was first in the Nordics to trial 5G SA connectivity services for voice and data. In June 2021, Elisa officially opened its 5G SA network in Finland. After deploying 5G SA technology in the network, it took a few years before 5G SA services and 5G SA-capable devices entered the Finnish market.

Meanwhile, one of the key questions asked within Elisa was: “How do we create added value for customers with the features enabled by 5G SA?” The question was researched across the company, with close collaboration between the technology and business teams. Discussions led to the same answer: The quality and reliability of the connectivity. The clear conclusion was to deploy a network slicing solution.

After an initial pilot in 2021, the first customer trials at scale were conducted during 2023. One of the earliest trialed services was FWA, powered by 5G SA. This service was designed to respond to customers’ needs in home environments for heavy and demanding broadband use cases that require reliable connectivity such as remote working and online gaming. FWA based on network slicing met the needs and expectations of the most demanding customers regarding the need for high capacity, reliability and simultaneous usage of several services within a household, with a perceived network performance on par with a fixed network connection.

Own Lane FWA implementation Elisa’s premium FWA service is called Omakaista (Own Lane). It is enabled by a 5G SA network that provides the toolbox of capabilities needed to provide a premium FWA service. The performance level of Own Lane 5G FWA is achieved with a specific network slice for FWA, together with radio resource partitioning and relative priority scheduling functionality.

Own Lane FWA based on a 5G SA slice

Since the commercial launch of the 5G SA-based Own Lane FWA service in 2024, Elisa customers have greeted the new services with enthusiasm. The initial customer feedback has proven that they perceive the added value, especially during the peak hours. Typically, the busiest hours of network usage tend to take place in the late afternoon and early evening, when some household members are still working while others might be watching streaming services or playing online games. This can create local congestion in mobile networks and a bottleneck effect in the network. When customers started using the Own Lane 5G FWA service, with the ability to guarantee a certain bandwidth and connection speed, these problems were quickly resolved, resulting in better user experience and happier customers. Elisa’s Own Lane 5G FWA service offers a maximum downlink speed of 1,000 Mbps with a guarantee of minimum 100 Mbps, as well as a promise of a typical speed of 500 Mbps. The service is enabled by an outdoor receiver installed by a technician.

When examining the network performance of 5G SA and NSA services, it can be observed that Own Lane 5G FWA performs better and succeeds in maintaining higher speeds throughout the day. This aligns with customer feedback and highlights the potential of 5G SA-powered services.

Figure 21 demonstrates the development of network performance in one area in the Finnish capital region. While there are some fluctuations in performance for both Own Lane 5G FWA services and regular 5G FWA, the Own Lane services continue to deliver a better user experience, even during peak evening hours.

It is evident that demand for reliable and stable broadband connections continues to grow, and it can be expected that the customer 5G SA adoption rate will improve steadily in the near future.

Deploying 5G SA is a natural part of 5G development

As 5G SA is an evolutionary step toward the full 5G experience, it is essential for service providers to guide their customers to 5G SA as early as possible.

In Finland, 5G NSA penetration is quite high due to early adoption of the technology, and many customers have 5G NSA-capable devices. Although many of those devices can be upgraded with software updates, the transition will take a few years. The more that customers migrate to 5G SA-capable devices, the easier it will be to manage   customer experience in a less complex landscape than today’s mobile networks. From a service evolution perspective, Elisa expects that making 5G SA network capabilities available will boost service development in the 5G SA ecosystem. This is a traditional dilemma about which should come first: New services in order to tempt customers, or customers to draw the interest of application developers. Elisa has chosen to start with simple services, attracting customers who can then begin learning the benefits of 5G SA. While customers are using the services, the user experience can be fine-tuned, and service innovation often grows as users come up with new ideas.

For an enhanced customer experience, Elisa has deployed both mid-band and low-band spectrum for 5G SA. This has enabled early launch of services, as it was not necessary to wait until mid-band coverage reached rural areas.

Going forward, Elisa has extended its 5G SA network services beyond consumer offerings to enhance mobile working capabilities for companies and organizations with an Own Lane 5G FWA service for businesses. In the future, larger companies will get their own version of slicing as 5G SA mobile connections can be used as part of LAN or WAN solutions.