Deutsche Telekom has taken a clear step towards the adoption of cloud-native 5G services, working with one of the main suppliers to the emerging open RAN business. The company says its use of cloud-native 5G user plane function (UPF) will support multi-access edge computing (MEC) applications, tailored to each use case. Deutsche Telekom has worked on the project with Mavenir, which said that “the reference design is fully cloud-native, abstracted away from underlying cloud architecture, infrastructure vendor and operating owner”. It is coupled with the MobiledgeX edge-cloud platform. The company said that the UPF can be placed on different clouds from different vendors with different ownership. “Service provider control, security, and privacy are maintained by a customer’s owning operator at all times, even when roaming,” the company added. “Cloud-native design of 5G network functions integrated with orchestration tools makes it possible to achieve a new level of flexibility in network function placement. Automation, agility, and flexibility are at the heart of this project.”
