By Peter Cohen

Finnish telco Elisa has enlisted the edge computing expertise of Wind River to build a fully automated 5G far edge cloud, aimed at low-latency and bandwidth-intensive 5G applications. It’s in planning production now and scheduled for deployment later this year, said Wind River.

Wind River Studio will be used as the common distributed cloud platform to “host multiple vendors and multiple technologies in order to further extend cloudification of distributed core and radio functionalities,” said Wind River CTO Paul Mitchell. Wind River will also provide automation and analytics to run the edge network at scale, he said.

The initial scope of the deployment will support a fully containerized 5G user plane function (UPF) from Elisa’s current 5G core vendor, Ericsson. The companies then plan to conduct edge cloud technology assessments. They will include use cases like Open RAN (O-RAN), which demands real-time processing at the far edge of the network.

Elisa EVP, Sami Komulainen said that 5G is gaining traction in Finland. What’s more, Elisa’s 5G customers are their most satisfied. Elisa announced in May 2021 that their 5G network had grown to more than 100 locations. At the time it spanned half the population of Finland. Elisa worked with Nokia and Ericsson to build the network.

“Edge cloud capability with Wind River Studio has the potential to further improve our customer satisfaction in the form of new services and enhanced customer experience, as well as strengthen Elisa’s position as the leading digital service provider in automating operations,” said Komulainen.

Edge will drive European 5G deployment – Wind River CTO

The new edge cloud platform will spark other large-scale 5G deployments throughout Europe,” said Wind River’s Miller. He called edge cloud infrastructure technology “a critical area of investment” to help telcos monetize 5G.

“With a native edge cloud infrastructure, Elisa’s objectives will be to follow their distinguishing factor of true ‘zero-touch deployment, configuration, and enablement with no operator involvement’ with the ability to define, commission and manage edge clouds from a centralized cloud,” said Miller in a blog post.

Auto parts maker and system integrator Aptiv acquired Wind River in January for US$4.3 billion. The deal helped Aptiv lock in an edge-to-cloud portfolio as the auto industry prepares to undergo radical transformation. Data is driving vehicle design and operations, according to Aptiv’s president and CEO, Kevin Clark.https://www.rcrwireless.com