Samsung, and HPE Collaboration Shows the Open 5G Future Starts Now

[TelcoExperts]

Samsung and NTT East announced the expansion of private 5G networks in Japan, enhancing connectivity for various enterprises across Japan. And HPE 5G technologies have been playing a key role in making it happen.

What will be the first true “killer app” for 5G? You don’t have to look far to find an answer: enterprise private wireless. Just scan the headlines, and you’ll see company after company, across every part of the telecommunications ecosystem, rolling out new private 5G solutions. Just as exciting, you’ll find that many aren’t going it alone. With the openness that 5G brings to core networks, we’re seeing new multi-vendor partnerships emerge in ways that were inconceivable just a few years ago.

Here at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), we’ve been talking for years about what open, cloud-native 5G networks will mean for our industry. As one of the early pioneers in this space, we bet big on openness in our groundbreaking 5G Core Stack and 5G core network functions (NFs). Now, we’re thrilled to be among the companies making this vision a reality for communication service providers (CSPs) and their customers. Recently, Samsung and NTT East announced the expansion of private 5G networks in Japan, enhancing connectivity for various enterprises across Japan. And HPE 5G technologies have been playing a key role in making it happen.

Fueling Open Innovation

5G brings a long list of new network capabilities for CSPs to get excited about, including customizable network slices, low-latency services, and much more. Go a level deeper inside the technology though, and you’ll find two innovations that represent an even sharper departure from the telco networks of the past: cloud-native architectures and open interfaces.

• Cloud-native technologies represent a step change in telco networks, allowing operators to take advantage of cloud and IT software methodologies like DevOps processes and continuous updates. With a huge increase in the agility, flexibility, and performance of core networks, all sorts of new service experiences become possible.

• Open core networks introduce new vendors into parts of the network that used to be largely closed and proprietary, allowing CSPs to mix and match core network functions to build best-of-breed solutions for their customers.

Together, these 5G capabilities hold the potential to radically transform the telecommunications industry. At HPE, we’ve been talking about the possibilities since early 2020. It’s why, when we began work on the HPE 5G Core Stack and NFs, we went back to the drawing board to design a completely new architecture that was open and cloud-native from the ground up. We envisioned a future where operators would have the flexibility to create novel, customized solutions to target new markets and launch new businesses. And we made sure that HPE would be right in the thick of it.

Inside the Solution

Today, we’re seeing the future we envisioned take shape in real-world solutions for real-world customers. And we’re thrilled to be collaborating with Samsung to bring diverse and new private 5G network services to life. NTT East recently announced an expansion of its commercial private 5G network service offering to enterprise customers, using a 5G Standalone (SA) core and Radio Access Network (RAN) solutions provided by Samsung.

For the 5G SA core, Samsung selected HPE to provide high-performance Subscriber Data Management (SDM) functions. HPE’s 5G SDM intelligence enables the network to make lightning-fast decisions across thousands of subscriber sessions to ensure the quality and prioritization required by advanced 5G applications. Using the multi-vendor 5G SA core solution, NTT East can offer customized, high-performance, highly reliable private wireless connectivity to customers in manufacturing, media, transportation, and other areas.

The Future Is Open

We couldn’t be more excited to watch how NTT East and their customers use these new private 5G capabilities. Just as exciting though, this partnership highlights the potential of open, multi-vendor 5G innovation—and HPE’s commitment to enabling it. Yes, we can offer a complete 5G SA core solution to support amazing new service innovations. But we can also provide modular 5G core NFs that deliver outstanding performance and interoperability as part of a multi-vendor solution. 

As more operators roll out private wireless offers and other groundbreaking 5G solutions, HPE will be able to help customers in whichever way they choose. The open, cloud-native 5G future is here, and we can’t wait to see where our partners and customers go next.

Written by Oded Ringer

Oded Ringer leads Telecom portfolio messaging in HPE’s Communications Technology Group  (CTG)