Google Cloud and Nokia have joined hands to develop new, cloud-based 5G radio solutions. The two companies will collaborate on joint solutions combining Nokia’s Radio Access Network (RAN), Open RAN, Cloud RAN (vRAN) and edge cloud technologies, with Google’s edge computing platform and applications ecosystem.

The collaboration will lead to the development of solutions and use cases to solve key 5G scenarios for businesses worldwide.

The initial collaboration, which is already underway at Nokia’s Espoo headquarters, will pursue a number of different workstreams.

The first, which will focus on Cloud RAN, will integrate Nokia’s 5G vDU (virtualized distributed unit) and 5G vCU (virtualized centralized unit) with Google’s edge computing platform, running on Anthos. Nokia’s 5G standalone network with vCU and 5G core will also be tested on Google Cloud Anthos platform as a cloud-native deployment.

Nokia will also work to certify its Nokia AirFrame Open Edge hardware with Anthos. Nokia AirFrame Open Edge distributes computing capacity into the edge of the network and drives the implementation of Cloud RAN, Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), as well as 5G.