EE uses network slicing for beer salesEE uses network slicing for beer sales

Specifically, parent company BT said it used 5G standalone and related network slicing capabilities to facilitate quicker and more reliable payments at the market's beer tent in December.

While we're used to receiving this kind of announcement ahead of the festive season, kudos to BT for waiting and sharing the details of the trial after the fact. A such, we know that it carried out a –presumably successful – real-world deployment of network slicing. It's not a massive deal, but it's certainly progress.

It's arguably a bigger deal to those who got their pint quicker from Lavery's Beer Tent as a result. The tent had a dedicated slice of the EE network for a two-week period, supporting eight mobile payment terminals that apparently allowed super-speedy card and mobile payments for thousands of people.

The market, located in Belfast City Hall, draws up 1.2 million visitors per year and the Lavery's beer tent is – unsurprisingly – amongst its most popular attractions, BT said.

That's really all we have to go on in terms of data from the trial. But it's something. And the fact that it represents the first time a business has used network slicing on an EE public network and live 5G standalone core is also noteworthy.

The fact that this type of relatively small-scale trial – interesting though it may be – is indicative of the lack of progress we have seen on 5G SA across the industry to date.

As the GSMA pointed out earlier this week, as of September last year just 18 operators had launched 5G SA services, and even then, we are not talking broad deployments. The technology has taken off significantly more slowly than expected, despite the hype around the potential for 5G monetisation from the resulting services, particularly in the business market.

EE is one of those to have launched 5G SA; in September it flipped the 'on' switch in 15 UK cities, including Belfast. Standalone is included in two of its relatively pricey tariff plans for small businesses, but of course we don't know what a business customer would pay for its own network slice.

Lavery's endorsement of the service could steer some small businesses to look into it for themselves though.

"BT Group's network slicing capability...gives us so much peace of mind, not only in enabling transactions to be completed faster than ever, but also in delivering the dedicated mobile capacity needed to keep our customers happy and queues moving even at the busiest times," said company director Bernard Lavery, in a statement.

BT noted that it's not just about speed though. Network slicing brings better security, the ability to adapt the network quickly to meet a specific customer need, and support for IoT sensors. It can also help cut down on accidentally missed payments by removing the lag between a contactless swipe and the funding being accepted, it explained.

All in all, there's a lot to recommend the technology to UK businesses. Provided the economics stack up, that is.