BTが5GコアでNFVを高めるためにCanonicalを採用

この発表は、BTが6月にJuniper Networksと締結した、クラウドベースの統合および仮想化ネットワークインフラストラクチャへの移行をサポートするための同様の契約をダブテールしたものです。BT, the United Kingdom-based telecom provider, is starting to put the pieces together for a 5G core that it plans to introduce in 2022. The company tapped Canonical to provide the open source virtual infrastructure manager that will be part of BT’s NFV program. Canonical develops and manages Ubuntu, the open source operating system, and has extended the capabilities of that platform on its Charmed OpenStack architecture, which facilitates private clouds running on Ubuntu. The announcement dovetails a similar contract BT landed in June with Juniper Networks to support its move to a cloud-based, unified, and virtualized network infrastructure. “BT’s 5G core will be built on Canonical’s Charmed OpenStack and utilize Canonical’s open source tools to automate the deployment and operations of its infrastructure,” Neil McRae, BT Group’s chief architect, wrote in response to questions. BT will also use Ubuntu Advantage, Canonical’s service package for Ubuntu, for ongoing management and support of its 5G core, McRae explained. The private cloud for BT’s 5G core will enable rapid delivery of new services and capabilities, he said. “Canonical is providing the virtualization software which enables an Infrastructure-as-a-Service approach to deliver NFV use cases.” While NFV plays a big part in Canonical’s partnership with BT, the operator’s general manager of dynamic network services doesn’t think NFV will gain traction for a couple years. “Our experience here really is that [NFV is] immature. Customers aren’t really deploying this at scale,” he told SDxCentral in an earlier interview, adding that most customers are still in the exploratory stage. Nonetheless, by splitting its network hardware and software BT hopes to gain more flexibility, scalability, increased capacity, and a wider portfolio of services. The approach also enables operators to share hardware across data centers and update infrastructure via software instead of replacing core network equipment. BT launched 5G services in six cities across the United Kingdom under its EE brand in late May and plans to 10 additional cities later this year.