UNIFIED ACCESS CONTROL WITH NETWORK SLICE GROUPING

Embodiments provide novel approaches to handling network slice groups in access stratum and non-access stratum communications in a cellular communication network. Novel slice identification schema can support group-level identification of groups of network slices without individually listing the network slices. Some embodiments implement a slice identifier that supports wildcard slice/service type (SST) options and/or wildcard slice differentiator (SD) options to support wildcard-enabled slice groups. Some embodiments enable use of such wildcard-enabled slice groups in context of unified access control. Some embodiments introduce a novel criteria type to unified access control to expressly support flexible slice grouping.