• It’s been working with Ericsson in the lab 
• Claims tests have gone well, expects cloud native to be a fundamental step forward
• Says it will use cloud native software to accelerate its network evolution

The Italian operator says it’s been successfully working with Ericsson in the lab on testing cloud-native technology which it intends to apply to its core 5G network.  

It claims to be the “first operator in Italy and amongst the first in the world” to do so, “thanks to the collaboration with Ericsson”. The objective is to accelerate its 5G network evolution and means it can adopt solutions for a network involving advanced operational management and will be able to implement the most innovative principles of software architecture (Service Based Architecture) within the new generation mobile networks, it claims. 

Cloud native software, rather than systems running network functions on virtual machines, is now broadly accepted as the way forward for a next generation network able to coax the ambitious services agenda lined up for 5G into being. 

TIM says “the adoption of native cloud technologies represents a fundamental step for the new 5G services development,” and means it can optimize network resources in a dynamic, immediate and automatic way to guarantee high-quality services, bringing the network intelligence and applications close to the customer using edge computing.

“The tests proved procedures for monitoring and transmitting data traffic, defined by the international 3GPP standards, and the solutions for the automatic creation and configuration of network functions, for the automatic repair of faults and for updating core network on live network.”

It’s becoming clearer that many large telcos are looking to develop a next-generation network that can serve serve all their access networks, ultimately using a common architecture and function set so that applications might be served transparently over the one managed infrastructure. Most particularly at the moment, this means being able to serve videos and video-based services to both fixed link and Wi-Fi endpoints as well as to 4G and, increasingly 5G, devices. (see - More WiFi/cellular convergence talk: will 5 be the G that finally cracks it?)