KDDI Taps Cisco to Complete PoC on 5G Network with Cloud Native Core, Network Slicing

Cisco has completed a proof of concept (PoC) with KDDI Corporation, a Japanese telecommunications company, to build KDDI’s 5G standalone (SA) network.

Unlike its predecessors, 5G is about creating new services. With this 5G SA network, KDDI will be able to strengthen its 5G business advantage to drive new revenue opportunities with consumer and enterprise customers, offering high capacity and low latency services for its customers who consume higher volumes of data, including commercial use cases such as IoT.

As part of this trial, Cisco is demonstrating the benefits of cloud native software with the Cisco Ultra Packet Core platform, which is the heart of service creation. It works alongside key technologies such as ‘network slicing’, NFV, and automation via the Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) to support specific consumer and enterprise customer use cases.

“Unlike prior mobile generations, the path to profitability for 5G lines not simply with the consumer, but with enterprise opportunities more than ever before,” said Jonathan Davidson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Service Provider Business. “Service creation is critical, and the mobile core is the service creation platform. One of the most important decisions to get right in 5G is the cloud-native core. KDDI is seeing the true benefits of this uniquely designed 4G to 5G evolution strategy that emphasizes agile, business-critical, service creation first. Through our close collaboration on this concept project, we are helping KDDI to define its path to launch commercial 5G services in 2020.”