Nokia tests 5G SA core on Sylva open-source cloud stack

Kit vendor Nokia claims it has completed the first successful interoperability test of a 5G Standalone packet core’s User Plane Function (UPF) in the Sylva open-source cloud software environment.

The interoperability tests were conducted at the new Project Sylva Validation Centre in France operated by Orange.

Sylva is described as an open-source cloud software initiative ‘that aims to reduce fragmentation of the cloud infrastructure layer for telecommunication and edge services’.  It was launched at the end of 2022 under the Linux Foundation Europe, with Nokia and Orange as ‘supporters’.

More specifically Project Sylva is supposed to be about deploying private 5G powered industry 4.0, IoT and B2B2X use cases at the edge. In terms of what this particular test validation was set up to achieve, it is described as a step toward in creating a ‘flexible cloud-native solution that enables large scale deployments of 5G SA Core Network functions.’

“Nokia’s fully cloud-native Core Network portfolio is designed to support the evolving telco cloud environment through open, flexible deployment options with greatly reduced integration and advanced automation capabilities,” said Fran Heeran, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Core Networks, Cloud and Network Services at Nokia. “The successful completion of the interoperability tests of our 5G SA Core’s User Plane Function at Sylva Validation Center, hosted by Orange, underscores our commitment and the advances we are making.”

Laurent Leboucher, Group Chief Technology Officer at Orange added: “This successful test made with Nokia constitutes an important step towards the adoption of Sylva as an industrial standard reference implementation for demanding telco workloads. More specifically, it addresses use cases (industrial campus, IoT, computer vision) where the traffic can be managed locally on a simple and open infrastructure and can still be controlled by the public network.
Many more use cases will come soon.”

Orange, through it’s B2B unit Orange Business, held a briefing in London yesterday pointing to the success it is having with this sort of deployment, with CEO Aliette Mousnier-Lompré claiming the outfit is particularly well equipped for all sorts of private network and integrator jobs, saying: ‘‘We occupy the right sweet spot between telco and IT world.”

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