The Aviator: Using 5G slicing to innovate across industries

This Catalyst proof of concept shows how 5G’s network slicing capabilities could enable the aviation industry and its partners to re-imagine the overall air travel experience, while also expanding the market opportunity for communications service providers (CSPs). Those partners range from airport operators to aircraft manufacturers, the airlines themselves, advertisers and all kinds of service providers such as parking, left luggage, etc. The Catalyst team demonstrated their project during the TM Forum Catalyst Digital Showcase event in July 2020.

The airline industry today makes tremendous use of many forms of communications technology across its footprint – fr­om simple, best-effort terminal Wi-Fi, to highly secure and mission critical connectivity for passport control.

“The advent of 5G technology and conditions triggered by the current pandemic presents a compelling opportunity to re-imagine the future of aviation,” noted Stuart Birrell, the former CIO of London Heathrow Airport.

5G network slicing allows CSPs to offer differentiated services, each of which has a guaranteed quality of service, bandwidth and security to match the unique requirements of the application. This Catalyst project, The Aviator: Enabling multi-vertical innovation through 5G slicing, explores some of the many opportunities at all stages of passenger journeys. It also shows how orchestration coupled with predictive assurance ensures smooth processes all the way from provisioning and activation, to settlement, billing and monetization.

Vinay Devadatta, the Catalyst lead from Wipro, emphasized the importance for CSPs to be able to offer 5G-based communication solutions tailored to the varying needs of vertical industries at the TM Forum Action Week event this past February.

The Catalyst is championed by AT&T and BT, with participants Cango Networks, i2i Systems, MYCOM OSI, Oracle Communications and Wipro. At the technical level, it demonstrates how complex, multi-partner 5G services can be designed and mapped to slice types that can be ordered in a few clicks via a marketplace to which all the relevant parties belong.

Read more about the first and second phases of this Catalyst project.

The complex, multi-partner 5G services show how the services can be set up (and rapidly taken down as necessary) with various characteristics and functionalities using TM Forum Open APIs, ETSI standardized interfaces, 3GPP Integration Reference Points and other industry standards and specifications.

Mobility betters the aviation experience

There are many examples of how the overall aviation experience could be improved for passengers while also benefiting all parties. For instance, airports have a huge amount of floorspace, which a lot of the time, is mostly empty.

Before the pandemic, typically many people were concentrated into relatively small spaces at the pinch points or bottlenecks in their journeys. Examples include stationary security or passport control structures served by fixed communications for latency and security purposes. If there were an alternative communications capability that supported both the latency and security requirements, then those structures could be deployed where they are needed to avoid congestion, thus improving the travellers’ overall experience and confidence.

Swapping screens

A further instance could be to use 5G to enable passengers to increasingly use their own devices to rapidly download compelling content to those devices in the airport or at the gate to enjoy during the flight. This creates several advantages for all parties. Back-of-the-seat screens in airplanes are expensive and endlessly troublesome for airlines to maintain, and rights to the programming are costly, while people generally prefer to use their own devices which are usually very personal to them.

Most passengers would prefer that there be enough bandwidth in the airport, and potentially, temporary content entitlements for customers to download content or enable them to stream it when onboard using their own devices. At the same time, it would save airlines time and money, and reduce the cost of fitting out and maintaining aircraft entertainment technology.

Depending on the business model, providing differentiated bandwidth in airports could generate additional revenue for airport owners, airlines, content owners and CSPs – who could charge for a tiered quality of service, or provide a ‘freemium’ service for consumers, sponsored by an advertiser.

Flight operations

Planes generate significant operational data volumes that need to be downloaded, analysed and actioned as quickly as possible to reduce flight turnaround times. Getting early access to that information, potentially even as the plane approaches the airport, has the potential to dramatically improve operational turnaround and drive material cost savings for airlines and airports alike. This is another opportunity being explored in this catalyst.

The final word

The aviation industry was chosen as a topical exemplar by the Catalyst team to demonstrate how any sector could benefit from the multiple types and levels of service it demonstrates, which are delivered dynamically, via a single infrastructure.

“Forward looking CSPs could, using 5G and passive fiber, take bold steps to serve industries such as aviation with mobile, secure and agile communications capabilities,” said Birrell. “The inherent control and efficiency of 5G provides far greater configuration flexibility than fixed alternatives used today – in other words, the future is flexible”.

Now available on demand:
Watch the Catalyst team showcase their project