The Next Generation Mobile Network Alliance (NGMN), which represents operators and vendors, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Linux Foundation for formal collaboration regarding end-to-end 5G and beyond.
Anita Döhler (pictured), CEO of the NGMN Alliance, said: “open source is gaining increasing relevance for the strategic topics of our work programmes — such as mastering the route to disaggregation, green future networks and 6G. We are delighted to partner with the Linux Foundation to jointly drive our mission for the benefit of the global ecosystem.”
NGMN said its mission is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user. It is looking at continuous support for the full implementation of 5G and is setting out the priorities for 6G. Last month NGMN said development goals were high priorities for 6G.
The organisation said this mission “is complementary to the efforts of the Linux Foundation’s LF Networking and LF Edge umbrella projects, as well as others like LF Energy operating within the telecom, IoT, and networking spaces”.
The aim is to create “open, scalable building blocks for operators and service providers” that are “critical to the industry adoption of 5G and beyond”.
They said that specific areas of alignment may include sustainability, network automation and network autonomy based on artificial intelligence, security, edge cloud, virtualisation, disaggregation, cloud native and service-based architecture.
Arpit Joshipura, the Linux Foundation’s general manager for networking, edge and the internet of things (IoT), said: “Integrating NGMN’s expertise across pivotal areas like disaggregation, green future networks, cloud native, automation, and early work on 6G into LF Networking’s 5G super blueprint initiative is a natural next step for the industry.”
The alignment between the Linux Foundation and NGMN represents the latest in a long-standing effort to integrate open source and open standards across the industry. The Linux also collaborates with ETSI, the TM Forum, MEF, the GSMA, the O-RAN Alliance, and more.
