SoftBank announced that it has expanded the field trial of its Segment Routing IPv6 Mobile User Plane (SRv6 MUP) beyond 5G to include the company's commercial 4G network in Japan. This move enables system-wide verification of low-latency Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) and network-slicing services across SoftBank's entire 4G/5G footprint while retaining SRv6 MUP's hallmark low-cost, easy-to-deploy architecture. As part of the initiative, SoftBank conducted a 130-kilometre drive test on the Shin-Tomei Expressway between Numazu City and Hamamatsu City in Shizuoka Prefecture.
SoftBank carried out a demonstration on the Shin-Tomei Expressway—an approximately 130-kilometre stretch between Numazu City and Hamamatsu City in Shizuoka Prefecture—using a 4G/5G network enhanced with SRv6 MUP. AI-powered dashcams installed in vehicles travelling at highway speeds streamed video to MEC servers, enabling engineers to evaluate end-to-end latency and connection stability during frequent handovers between base stations in 4G/5G. When SRv6 MUP was enabled, the team confirmed a latency improvement of more than 10 milliseconds and continuous, stable communication, compared with identical tests conducted without SRv6 MUP.
The dashcam application used in the trial was developed jointly by SoftBank, The University of Tokyo and Kochi University of Technology, leveraging the universities' wide-area distributed execution-platform technology. SoftBank will continue to broaden SRv6 MUP field trials to additional regions and use-case scenarios, harnessing cutting-edge technology to deliver faster, more reliable mobile-communication experiences to its customers nationwide.
