Nokia to drive KDDI’s 5G transition with standalone core

Telecommunications company Nokia has announced that Japanese operator KDDI has selected the firm’s 5G Core and Converged Charging software to support its shift to a fully automated, cloud-native 5G Core architecture.

The open 5G Core architecture gives KDDI the flexibility to be responsive to market demands while controlling costs by streamlining operations and unlocking crucial capabilities, such as network slicing, Nokia said in a statement. Developed around DevOps principles, Nokia’s 5G Core will aim to automate the lifecycle management of KDDI’s networks, as well as enable continuous software delivery and integration.

Tatsuo Sato, Vice President and Managing Officer, Technology Planning, KDDI, said: “The deployment of Nokia's solutions marks a key milestone in the evolution of our 5G architecture. The evolution of our 5G architecture will enable us to fully automate and provide better services to our customers. We are pleased to be continuing our strong relationship with Nokia.”

John Lancaster-Lennox, Head of Market Unit Japan at Nokia, said: “We look forward to expanding our 25-year relationship with KDDI with the deployment of our standalone 5G Core solutions. With crucial monetization and operations functions, such as network slicing, KDDI will unlock key revenue opportunities and benefit from increased operational efficiencies as well.”

Nokia to also deploy monetisation solutions and data management software 

Nokia says it will also deploy 5G monetisation and data management software solutions including cloud-native Converged Charging, Signaling, Policy Controller, Mediation and Registers to capture new 5G revenue opportunities, enhance business velocity and agility, and further streamline the operator’s network operations.

The monetisation solutions aim to enable KDDI to monetise new opportunities within the 5G economy. This includes 5G network slicing and network as a service offering, IoT and new business models for B2B2X services through a containerised, microservices-based solution that enables services-based integrations with new 5G network functions meeting standards requirements for 5G convergent charging systems.