CNF Charging and 3GPP R16 become a reality with NCC 21.0 release
Nokia Converged Charging (NCC), release 21.0, is now available. The only product of its kind, live in production as a Containerized Network Function (CNF) in a 5G Standalone environment, making the promise of 5G monetization and 3GPP standards a reality.
With the end of 2020, many believe 2021 will bring the rapid adoption of 5G technology we have all been waiting for. According to Omdia, for operators the biggest challenge in 2021 will be effectively monetizing 5G. NCC 21.0 is our answer to that challenge, bringing cloud-native functions and proven capabilities to integrate with 5G core network functions in a multi-vendor environment in order to maximize monetization opportunities for our customers.
Making 5G Stand Alone charging a reality
Though the industry has taken major strides in defining standards for 5G Standalone network functions and their interoperability with 3GPP Release 16, there is no substitute for experience in the field. Our latest release includes proven integrations for 5G network functions that make those standards a reality and provide valuable input to the standards themselves that come from our work on the front lines of the 5G SA evolution. NCC 21.0 also provides the ability to monetize Network Slicing, which has the potential to change the way service providers monetize their networks. The ability to work within the standards, while at the same time helping them evolve to meet the needs on the ground of real-world 5G implementations should be a major requirement for all service providers as they look for their 5G monetization partners.
Supporting our customer needs
As we continue to push our innovative solutions to market, we are seeing increasing adoption and growth in our customer base of our fully containerized, cloud native solution. Their expectations are for much more rapid time to market for new functionality as well as in their ability to release new offers to market. NCC 21.0 is proven to operate in a CI/CD mode with regular quarterly releases as well as continuous drops of functionality, with automated testing, in a matter of days from requirement to production.
In addition to supporting the future needs of our customers and enabling efficiency, agility and reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), we understand that some legacy technology will continue to be relevant and needed for the coming years. With this in mind, and after dozens of installations supporting 2G, 3G and 4G, our solutions continue to provide support for these, ensuring our customers can provide high quality business continuity.
Leading in theory and in practice
As Steve Jobs famously said "The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person."
Through our leadership in 5G charging, both in terms of customer deployments and 3GPP standardization, we are able to take our learnings from the field around how the standardizations work in practice, and feed back into the standardization creation process. This together with our production leadership uniquely positions us to both drive innovation and improvement, whilst also ensuring that operator customer and business needs continue to be at the heart of what we do.
