AT&T is working with Intel and SK Telecom to launch a new "open infrastructure" project, "Airship," which it says will be the foundation of its 5G Core, and help its Artifical Intelligence (AI) project.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) said that it started the project Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), SK Telecom (Nasdaq: SKM), and "other companies" in 2017. Airship will also be used by Akraino Edge Stack, which is a new Linux Foundation project.

"Airship is going to allow AT&T and other operators to deliver cloud infrastructure predictably that is 100% declarative, where Day Zero is managed the same as future updates via a single unified workflow, and where absolutely everything is a container from the bare metal up," says Ryan van Wyk, assistant vice president of cloud platform development at AT&T Labs .

Declarative is a recent term that means that every aspect of a cloud can be defined, managed, and updated via standardized documents, which AT&T says will "give you extremely flexible… control of your cloud infrastructure." This includes orchestrating changes when the cloud documents are updated.

AT&T says that all 12 of its planned mobile 5G sites will use the system as part of its 5G core, as well as helping its AI project to develop cloud microservices. This means creating applications via a several loosely coupled services, and being able to do this by reusing already written code. (See AT&T Reveals Initial 5G Cities.)

— Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, Light Reading