• Telia and Nokia have signed a memorandum of understanding to create together a 5G Standalone application innovation program called Sirius that includes 5G Standalone corridors among highways and seaways across national borders in Europe
• Nokia 5G Standalone Core in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model and Nokia’s Network as Code platform to give Sirius Program and Telia Finland greater business agility and faster time to value for monetizing innovative 5G network services.

Nokia  announced that its 5G Standalone Core SaaS has been selected by Telia Finland as part of a European Union-funded innovation program to give the operator a fully automated and scalable software model for delivering greater business agility and faster time to value in rolling out and monetizing 5G network services.

Telia Finland, working in close collaboration with Nokia, aims to create an innovative 5G Standalone Core stack and to be the first operator in Finland to open its network to application developers for creating new software applications for industries such as transportation. Telia Finland is using European Union funding to help with the creation of 5G SA corridors among highways and seaways for the innovation program, Sirius.

The two companies also signed a memorandum of understanding that will see Sirius utilize Nokia’s Network as Code platform with developer portal (platform) for enabling the creation of software applications for new enterprise, industrial, and consumer use cases. It will also help the operator monetize this 5G network in new and innovative ways beyond connectivity in a SaaS first model.

Nokia Core SaaS moves operators and enterprises away from the legacy practice of deploying customized software run on private infrastructure. Using Nokia Core SaaS through a subscription avoids both up front capital expenditure and the need to perform on-site software maintenance and updates.

Supporting the 5G SA innovation program Sirius, Nokia’s platform will provide application developers with tools such as Software Development Kits (SDK) and Network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which will give access to exposed functionality within Telia’s network and enable developers to build new use cases and capabilities for their customers.

The platform was launched in September, building on close collaboration with developers and operators.

Fran Heeran, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Core Networks, Cloud and Network Services, at Nokia said: “We are delighted to deepen Nokia’s partnership with Telia Finland through our innovative telecom SaaS offerings. Nokia offers a complete, cloud native 5G Core solution which provides Telia with a more agile and customer-centric pathway for operating its network and rapidly delivering new 5G services.”

Shkumbin Hamiti, Head of Network Monetization Platform, Cloud and Network Services, at Nokia, said: “Network as Code is a strategic focus of Nokia for driving new business models and unlocking all the potential that networks can deliver. We have already done a lot of work with Telia in the realm of telco APIs, so this agreement we are announcing today allows us to accelerate this work and jointly empower developers to create new and enhanced software applications through Telia’s network.”

Jari Collin, CTO at Telia Finland, said: “We are excited to announce Program Sirius today with Nokia. Telco SaaS and telco APIs are important catalysts for creating new services and experiences for our customers, and giving Telia new opportunities for extracting value from programmable persona of 5G network assets and enabling new value creation.”