Microsoft previews 5G Core

Microsoft announced 5G Core Preview at the end of October. The new service is a way to deploy 5G core network functions to Azure Stack Edge to support an on-premises enterprise private mobile network. The offering connects with 4G and 5G radio access networks to support low latency and secure connectivity for IoT devices.

As 5G adoption grows among enterprises, the offering provides a way to reduce problems with cloud connectivity. Microsoft highlighted use cases like machine to machine automation, real-time analytics, massive IoT telemetry as well as diverse industry verticals such as manufacturing, defense or energy. Customers have the option to deploy packet core instances for Private LTE use cases or the 4G CBRS bandwidth.

A Microsoft contributor explained:

Azure Private 5G Core instantiates a single private mobile network distributed across one or more enterprise sites across the world. Each site contains a packet core instance, which is a cloud-native implementation of the 3GPP standards-defined 5G Next Generation Core (5G NGC or 5GC). A packet core instance authenticates end devices and aggregates their data traffic over 5G Standalone wireless and access technologies.

Out of the box, the offering supports a variety of 5G features including Access and Mobility Management Function, Session Management Function, User Plane Function, Unified Data Management, Unified Data Repository, and others. For 4G scenarios, it supports Mobile Management Entity and MME-Proxy. Customers are able to interoperate with multi-access edge compute partners.