Nokia conducts successful tests of 5G standalone core with Orange

• Successful completion of interoperability tests of Nokia 5G SA Core Network Function took place at Orange’s Sylva Validation Center in France
• Sylva is an open-source cloud software initiative that aims to reduce fragmentation of the cloud infrastructure layer for telecommunication and edge services

Espoo, Finland – Nokia today announced the first successful completion of interoperability tests of 5G Standalone (SA) Packet Core’s User Plane Function (UPF) in the Sylva open-source cloud software environment. The tests were conducted at the new Project Sylva Validation Center in France operated by Orange, a long-standing Nokia partner.

The broad goal of Project Sylva is to provide a reference open source cloud software framework, tailored for telco and edge requirements, that addresses the technical challenges of the industry. Sylva was launched at the end of 2022 under the Linux Foundation Europe and its supporters include Nokia and Orange.

The test validation is a key step toward offering a flexible cloud-native solution that enables large scale deployments of 5G SA Core Network functions. For 5G private wireless enterprise customers, Project Sylva aims to provide an efficient way to deploy Industry 4.0, IoT and B2B2X use cases at the edge.

Fran Heeran, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Core Networks, Cloud and Network Services, at Nokia said: “Nokia’s fully cloud-native Core Network portfolio is designed to support the evolving telco cloud environment through open, flexible deployment options with greatly reduced integration and advanced automation capabilities. The successful completion of the interoperability tests of our 5G SA Core’s User Plane Function at Sylva Validation Center, hosted by Orange, underscores our commitment and the advances we are making.”

Laurent Leboucher, Group Chief Technology Officer at Orange, said: "This successful test made with Nokia constitutes an important step towards the adoption of Sylva as an industrial standard reference implementation for demanding telco workloads. More specifically, it addresses use cases (industrial campus, IoT, computer vision) where the traffic can be managed locally on a simple and open infrastructure and can still be controlled by the public network.
Many more use cases will come soon.”

Luis Velarde, Head of Cloud & Infrastructure at Telefónica and leader of validation program at Sylva, said: “The validation program is intended to demonstrate that cloud-native workloads can deploy in a reference Telco cloud stack, promoting standardisation to reduce fragmentation. The validation of Nokia UPF in the platform provided by Sylva is a milestone for the adoption of a cloud-native designed ecosystem.”