Proximus : NXT successfully tests 5G slicing for electronic payments during ‘Wintermonde’ event

Visitors to festivals, concerts or sports competitions are likely to have noticed it: cashless payments are rapidly gaining ground. The advantages are obvious: they allow for faster transactions and shortened queues, reduce the risk of theft and facilitates monitoring of sales revenues. At the same time, it goes without saying that cashless payment solutions are highly dependent upon reliable mobile connectivity, which can be complicated by the presence of large crowds connecting simultaneously in a given area.

The concept of slicing can provide an answer to these challenges: it allows operators to divide their public 5G network into smaller network slices that can be leveraged for specific applications. Every slice can be configured based on different parameters and in function of a particular use-case, vertical or customer. Network slices are designed as such that they are isolated from each other, implying that what happens in one slice does not impact the other slices.

The network set-up at Wintermonde, limited in time, included a dedicated slice with a guaranteed capacity for payment handling, accessible only to a limited number of EventPay devices. Thanks to this 'reserved' part of the available network capacity, EventPay could rest assured it could keep running its services smoothly, without any on-premise installations of additional capacity, and without the risk of network saturation. During the first weekend of the event, around one third of the payments at the event were handled through devices connected to this dedicated slice of the network.

The unique characteristic of slicing, differentiating 5G from previous mobile network technologies, makes it an ideal fit for solutions in search of guaranteed connectivity. While the deployment at Wintermonde was a first successful test, one can easily imagine other applications: think for example of real-time data exchanges, communications or remote assistance in emergency situations.

After this first test, Proximus expects to set up several other customer PoCs in the coming months. The first commercial slicing products are expected to be available later in 2024.