Samsung Taps HPE, Openet for Multi-Vendor 5G SA Core Test

Samsung says it successfully demonstrated multi-vendor interoperability on its 5G Standalone (SA) core with an assist from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Openet. The test, which was conducted at Samsung’s lab in South Korea, featured the integration of Samsung’s control, user plane network function, and orchestrator with HPE’s shared data environment and network functions, and Openet’s cloud-native network functions software. A 5G SA core will allow operators to offer many of the new services considered paramount to 5G, including network slicing, mobile edge computing, analytics driven by artificial intelligence (AI), and ultra-low latency networks. Samsung says its 5G SA core will be commercially available in the early part of next year. The trio of companies began collaborating on 5G SA core interoperability in February. The first wave of 5G network deployments are in non-Standalone (NSA) mode, which requires operators to run 4G LTE and 5G on the same mobile core, but operators are expected to begin transitioning to a 5G SA core in the next couple years.