Communications service providers are increasingly adopting cloud-native technologies to harness the potential of 5G not only as a connectivity solution, but also as a business services platform for delivering applications to the network edge. We announced our telecommunications industry strategy last year to help Communication Service Providers address the growing demands of enterprise customers to take advantage of cloud capabilities with 5G connectivity.

We believe that by partnering across the telecommunications stack—with application providers, carriers and communications service providers, hardware providers, and global telecoms—we can decrease the cost and time-to-market needed for the telecommunications industry to shift to cloud-native 5G, and open new lines of business for communications service providers as they deliver cloud-native 5G for enterprises.

As we continue to grow cloud-native services for the telecommunications industry, we’re excited to announce a collaboration with Intel to develop reference architectures and integrated solutions for communications service providers to accelerate their deployment of 5G and edge network solutions.

“The next wave of network transformation is fueled by 5G and is driving a rapid transition to cloud-native technologies,” said Dan Rodriguez, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the Network Platforms Group. “As communications service providers build out their 5G network infrastructure, our efforts with Google Cloud and the broader ecosystem will help them deliver agile, scalable solutions for emerging 5G and edge use cases.”

Under this partnership, we’ll work closely with Intel in three main areas: accelerating the ability of communications service providers to deploy their Virtualized RAN (vRAN) and Open Radio Access Network (ORAN) solutions by providing next-generation infrastructure and hardware, launching new lab environments to help communications service providers innovate on cloud-native 5G, and making it easier for them to deliver business applications to the network edge.

5G vRAN on Google Cloud’s Anthos with Intel cloud-native platforms and solutions

With the industry’s transition to 5G and growth in edge services, Google Cloud and Intel will also collaborate on vRAN solutions. vRAN can bring significant benefits for operators, including improved network performance and spectral efficiency, cost efficiencies, and flexible deployment models. At the same time, these solutions present communications service providers with stringent network, timing, and processing demands. The ability to deploy, manage, and upgrade network functions is critical to enable 5G vRAN deployments at scale.

To help communications service providers streamline the rollout of vRAN, and therefore 5G, we will leverage Google Cloud’s global infrastructure and capabilities alongside solutions from Intel, including:

• Intel’s FlexRAN reference software;
• Intel’s cloud-native Open Network Edge Service Software (OpenNESS) deployment model, and best practices applicable to Anthos;
• Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) and hardware infrastructure based on Intel Xeon processors;
• New reference architecture and solutions to accelerate 5G vRAN with Anthos, an application platform.

Network Functions Validation Lab

In addition, Google Cloud will jointly launch a Network Functions Validation lab and collaborate with Intel to support vendors in testing, optimizing, and validating their core network functions running on Google Cloud’s Anthos for Telecom platform. This lab environment will expand to help customers conceive, plan, and validate their 5G and edge application strategies.

Delivering ISV applications to the network edge

With the rollout of 5G networks, communications service providers have an opportunity to transform the network edge into an enterprise services platform, opening up new lines of business by delivering enterprise applications to the edge. For example, we recently announced an initiative to deliver 200+ partner applications to the edge via Google Cloud’s network and 5G.

In addition to network functions, to make it even easier for communications service providers to deliver applications to the edge, we will collaborate with Intel to develop edge solutions with Intel compute-optimized technology. We’ll also work closely with Intel to create blueprints and solutions to accelerate edge transformation in key industries, such as manufacturing or retail.

To learn more about our telecommunications industry offerings and our partnership with Intel, reach out to your Google Cloud partner or representative.