Suppose you are at a concert with a huge crowd. Then chances are that sending an app or posting something on social media is quite a challenge sometimes. When a large group of people use the 4G network simultaneously, the accessibility and speed of the internet connection is not reliable. Camerize, a platform for live video production with multiple smartphones sought (with the help of Vodafone) a solution to this problem.

"We were looking for a way to reserve bandwidth," says Martinus Meiborg, owner of Camerize. "Because when Camerize is livestreaming an event, a reliable connection with sufficient capacity is essential." Within 5Groningen, an initiative of Economic Board Groningen, Camerize partners with TNO, Vodafone and Ericsson to create a unique Camerize slice. By using 5G, such a slice enables the reservation of a chunk of network capacity for a specific service.

Constant stream of data
Camerize provides multiple-camera production in the cloud by means of smartphones. "We use multiple smartphones as cameras to broadcast live over the internet or a broadcasting system", Martinus explains. "Typical for video over the internet is a constant stream of huge amounts of data in which each second counts. A live broadcast by a TV channel during an event requires an enormous set-up. With Camerize and this 5G solution this is no longer necessary."

Reserving capacity
Wieger IJntema and Toni Dimitrovski of TNO have built a Camerize slice in the 5G lab of 5Groningen. All smartphones that are part of Camerize can upload their livestream using the Camerize slice. This slice can be accessed by a specific group of people only, as a result of which Camerize is not affected by queues on the other ‘general’ network slice. "You reserve, as it were, a chunk of capacity", Toni Dimitrovski explains. "And when Camerize no longer needs that capacity, it becomes available again to others."

5G and network slicing
With 4G all internet traffic uses the same 'slice' of a provider. "The introduction of 5G will totally change that", says Wieger. "With 5G, the network is divided into multiple sub networks. That is what we call network slicing. If there is a lot of internet traffic in slice 1, slice 2 is not affected by that. And if slice 2 is overloaded, slice 1 is unaffected." With network slicing it is possible to create multiple slices on top of the general slice. "The individual slices can be geared to specific needs of applications and services, like Camerize", according to Toni.

Read more about GigaNet (the network of both Vodafone and Ziggo)