5G core (5GC)
Our 5G Standalone Core frees the innovation within your network, so you can automate, customize and monetize your core with total confidence.
5G is your opportunity to become the company you were meant to be. But how do you serve everyone and everything, while maximizing returns? The answer lies in rethinking the core. Our 5G Standalone Core frees the innovation within your network, so you can automate, customize and monetize your core with total confidence. Nokia proudly celebrates that CSPs and enterprises all over the world are partnering with us to deliver the extraordinary.
What is a 5G core network?
Our 5G core (5GC) delivers an exciting variety of new services to everyone and everything. All communication services are delivered or connected by our 5G core architecture, such as a metaverse’s extended reality, multi-player gaming, industry 4.0 mission-critical applications, smart city services, and any services needing a 5G core’s low latency, ultra-reliability, and massive scaling for internet of things.
As a result, communication service providers (CSPs) can rapidly create and launch services, earning themselves the business results stemming from easier creativity, open innovation, and the nimble pursuit of new market opportunities.
What are 5G core network functions?
The 5G core network functions, shown in blue-green, somewhat resemble 4G core’s network elements, providing familiar capabilities for mobility management, routing, security, policy control, charging, and subscriber data management.
Our 5G core architecture is built using cloud-native technology including a service based architecture (SBA). The underlying products become network functions, implemented as microservices in containers.
Consequently, our 5G core software is readily deployed in multi-cloud stacks, including edge locations.
Furthermore, our 5G core network is automated, enabling rapid deployment, scaling and upgrades. Those factors are required to achieve 5G’s stringent requirements while delivering an ever-varying mix of applications and services.
5G core’s competitive landscape assessment report
Explore GlobalData’s competitive assessment of 5G core vendors. This report includes 5G core’s market assessment, needs, challenges, drivers, buying criteria and recommendations.
Resolving 5G's challenges
Our 5G Core delivers ultra-reliable connectivity and low-latency performance, which are critical to delivering Industry 4.0, massively scaling Internet of Things (IoT), and blending the metaverse’s physical and virtual experiences.
We resolve 5G’s challenges, helping CSPs fully benefit from 5G:
- Profit with services such as network slicing, which enables distinct services to be used by different enterprises or subscribers.
- Simplify with a core geared for AI/ML automation, fast operations, error avoidance, and quickly scaling larger and smaller to save energy by best matching consumed resources with traffic demand.
- Open the core, so that it works across multi-cloud, serves any access, and is deployable anywhere including the edge cloud. With open 5G Core APIs, CSPs can create their own new services.
- Be confident the core delivers financial, operational and strategic benefits, while ensuring the transition to cloud-native 5G standalone is efficient, effective and secure.
What will Telecom Software as a Service (Telecom SaaS) mean for the 5G Core?
CSPs use our 5G Core SaaS for a faster time to value, greater business agility, and better cost management.
Core networks are extremely valuable and must be resilient and reliable. Yet Telecom SaaS changes the way core networks are deployed and operated.
Therefore, 5G Core SaaS must be dependable and operate in a manner that fits the CSP’s needs. We built our 5G Core SaaS per 3GPP architecture, so that you can choose to deploy an entire core, or just a portion, or extend your existing network capabilities. We invite you to explore the nearby 5G Core SaaS materials.
Introducing 5G-Advanced
5G-Advanced evolves 5G to its fullest capabilities, based on the latest specifications in 3GPP releases 18 and 19. This advanced version of 5G enhances performance for demanding applications and supports a wider range of use cases:
- For things: 5G-Advanced offers high-accuracy positioning and timing services that enable applications such as drones and robotics to operate with precision in critical situations. It also supports RedCap’s massive low-power, long-life IoT services.
- For connectivity: It includes features like network energy savings, radio optimizations for extended reality, enhanced slicing, and mobility improvements to coverage, radio performance, reliability, and shorter connection breaks.
- For wide area enterprises: 5G-Advanced facilitates the modernization of railways, power utilities, and public safety systems.
We invite you to watch a discussion between Nokia’s Jitin Bhandari and O2 Telefónica’s Mallik Rao, while they assess 5G-Advanced’s value, use cases, enablers & timelines, and role of the ecosystem.
5G core how to guides
Most CSPs use multiple cores to serve multiple access generations. There’s a better way that is more streamlined and efficient. CSPs deploy our core to simplify their networks with a single set of core software products, serving 5G SA, 5G NSA, 4G, 3G/2G and even fixed access (WiFi, DSL, Fiber, Fixed Wireless Access, etc.).
For the evolution of 5G NSA to 5G SA, explore our in-depth materials and make plans to deliver 5G’s full potential.
Security, data protection and privacy are increasingly important with 5G. The core provides a critical role in enabling mission-critical applications, Industry 4.0, IoT services, and consumer personalization. Trust is a vital attribute for these applications and services.
Nokia takes the security built into our products seriously. Our 5G Core is designed for privacy and security, with layered protection based on defense-in-depth design and zero-trust principles and tested against 5G-specific use cases. CSPs get full control to secure their 5G services, thanks to the pervasive and automated security management built into our design practices, 5G Core’s software, XDR security software, and NetGuard Cybersecurity Dome.
Previously, mobile core and telco cloud were automated for the sake of reducing costs, which was achieved by using a telco network element approach. This created islands of automation by relying on element management systems.
5G Core’s cloud-native architecture and techniques change the automation equation, enabling an automation framework based on exposing automation functions to each other via APIs and the creation of closed-loops with feedback. AI/ML techniques achieve further benefits, such as automated fixing of predicted faults.
Network Slicing allows CSPs to monetize services by creating discrete network slices that meet required levels of performance for individual customers and services. CSPs use our core network slicing to create and run separate networks on shared cloud infrastructure. These independent networks enable customized Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for connectivity, mobility, capacity, security, redundancy and performance.
The 5G Core is the anchor of network slices, because it controls a device’s subscription and slice selection. 5G and its cloud-native automation enables this – ensuring one network can be shared across many customers, allowing a CSP to deliver resources to meet the exacting needs of their customers, without impacting others.
Rising energy costs, climate change and sustainability initiatives have never been more important. CSPs urgently seek ways to improve their energy efficiency.
Our approach is to ensure efficient energy consumption at all levels of the 5G Core: hardware, cloud infrastructure, the core’s network functions, and its automation. Techniques include using the latest CPU chipsets, Kubernetes cluster-level power control, optimized architecture for reduced footprints, and power consumption monitoring and reporting.
Taken together with using AI/ML to continuously optimize the network, we enable you to improve your 5G Core’s energy efficiency.
Take advantage of 5G standalone core on public cloud & hybrid cloud infrastructure, automation, analytics, and innovation. Extending the 5G core to edge cloud and across multi-cloud helps enable fast time-to-market, investment agility, quicker operations, and new business opportunities with enterprises.
Bridging the digital divide
Nokia actively contributes to fostering digital inclusion within the telco 5G world. Explore this important topic through our 3 use case videos, available for you to watch.
See our case studies
CSPs can be confident our 5G Standalone Core provides the lowest possible risk while ensuring reliability and protecting their brand value, even as they proceed to disrupt the market with innovative offers.
Explore our leading case studies:
Why choose Nokia for 5G Standalone Core?
Nokia cloud-native mobile core is in live commercial service, serving 5G Standalone (5G SA) and 5G Non-Standalone (5G NSA), plus 4G, 2G/3G, unlicensed wireless, and fixed access. Our core enables CSPs’ profitability, because it:
- Uses cloud-native architecture and infrastructure-agnostic design. Deploy it on multi-cloud, including private, public or hybrid cloud, centralized or edge cloud, with optimized performance for any deployment model.
- Is equipped with extreme automation and it simplifies 5G’s complexity with the latest technology to boost your revenues and reduce costs. Open and programmable, it creates an innovation engine for a strategic business advantage – today.
- Delivers on stringent reliability & quality requirements. It is created & delivered with our broad portfolio and global experience, proven across a leading number of 5G Standalone Core and cloud deployments.
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