Mavenir, an emerging player in the open radio access network (RAN) ecosystem, has flagged trials with Deutsche Telekom (DT) on standalone 5G core network technology.

The US-based vendor said it tested its containerized 5G core solution on the German operator's cloud network infrastructure.

It particularly highlighted support for what it described as "4G/5G combo-core functionalities." This is presumably referring to the need to allow 5G and 4G cores to co-exist for some time to come, and boasted its 5G core uses "web-scale technology and cloud-native principles."

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Mavenir said the test validated "combo nodes," required for voice call handover from 5G to 4G, and focused on automation, on-boarding, cloud-native principles, CI/CD, and other non-functional areas such as resiliency, fault tolerance and performance.

The company is already working with DT on open RAN through Telecom Infra Project (TIP) programs.

Its collaboration with the German operator indicates Mavenir is clearly hoping to grab a share of the 5G core market as well, as operators think about their standalone 5G strategies. The vendor describes its solution as a "cloud-native microservices-based 4G-5G combo-core."

DT has already indicated it plans to remove Chinese vendors such as Huawei from its core network – a move that will force it to bring in other players. The market is certainly expected to become more competitive with the transition to standalone 5G, creating new opportunities for an array of players, including HP, NEC, Oracle and Mavenir.

As things stand, the traditional heavyweights still dominate. The most recent figures from Dell'Oro show Ericsson and Huawei accounted for more than half of total sales, $8 billion over four quarters to Q1 2020, with Nokia, ZTE and Cisco making up more than 25% of the market. In that period, revenue increased by 10% year-on-year.

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— Anne Morris, contributing editor, special to Light Reading