5G continues to transform the telecommunications landscape, enabling massive device density, edge computing, and new enterprise use cases. However, operators still face significant cost pressures: from accelerating RAN modernization and 5G SA rollouts to energy demands and the shift to cloud-native network functions (CNFs). As telcos redesign their infrastructure strategies, open source has become a key lever to reduce costs, increase flexibility, and accelerate innovation.

This blog outlines today’s primary 5G infrastructure challenges and highlights how modern open source cloud technologies from Canonical help operators address them.

The telco dilemma: 5G infrastructure challenges

With the advancements of 5G and more complex deployments, telcos face several challenges in building and maintaining 5G infrastructure, including:

1. High investment costs: 5G infrastructure requires significant investment in new hardware and software, especially for hosting the virtualization infrastructure necessary to run 5G software
2. Rising OPEX and energy costs: Power consumption of distributed 5G sites is now one of the largest operational expenses.
3. Cloud-native complexity: Moving from virtualized network functions (VNFs) to cloud-native network functions (CNFs) increases the need for Kubernetes-scale automation and observability.
4. Disaggregated RAN and multi-vendor integrations: Open RAN and virtualised RAN require consistent infrastructure, automation and lifecycle management.
5. Limited spectrum: The available spectrum for 5G is limited and highly regulated, which can make it difficult for telcos to acquire and use.
6. Edge footprint explosion: 5G MEC deployments increase the number of sites operators must manage.
7. Talent and skills gaps: Cloud-native and Kubernetes skills remain scarce in telecom operations teams.
8. Security: 5G networks are vulnerable to cyber attacks, which can compromise the security and privacy of users’ data. The attack surface is larger with 5G compared to previous generations of mobile networks.
9. Vendor Lock-in: a telecom operator is heavily dependent on one or a few vendors for all of its 5G network infrastructure and services, making it difficult for the operator to switch to another vendor without incurring significant costs and disruption to its network.

How open source is changing the game

Open source plays a central role in enabling telcos to modernise their networks: from VNF virtualization to full cloud-native CNF deployments. By standardizing on open platforms like Ubuntu, Kubernetes and OpenStack, operators reduce infrastructure licensing costs, improve interoperability, and accelerate innovation. Today, most large operators run the majority of their 5G core workloads on open source infrastructure.

Shared standards

Open source communities, including CNCF, O-RAN Alliance and Project Sylva, provide common frameworks that reduce integration effort. By adopting open standards, operators can more easily mix vendors and ensure long-term ecosystem interoperability.

Avoid vendor lock-in

In line with the development of shared standards, open source solutions can help avoid vendor lock-in by providing access to code that can be modified and adapted to meet specific needs. This means that telcos and ISVs can avoid being tied to a particular vendor or technology stack and choose the best solutions for their specific requirements instead.

Meet specific-telco requirements

Telcos have demanding requirements when it comes to performance, reliability, and security. Long-term support (LTS) is important in the telco industry, as telcos often have long cycles of release deployment. Open source solutions that are supported over the long term, with no API breaks or major changes that could disrupt telco operations (i.e. 12-month release at least, and a few years on average) are the foremost choice for telcos. This is usually a vendor-driven decision, but choosing the right open source with the right vendor is the key here. The reason is, it is difficult to have a telco-grade system after dealing with all the interoperability and fixing into the puzzle challenges, so it is reasonable for an operator to expect the support cycle to be as long as possible.

Performance, flexibility, and automation are key requirements in the telco industry, as they enable telcos to operate more efficiently and effectively. By leveraging the expertise of the wider community, telcos, and ISVs can build solutions that are optimised for telco environments and that can be easily customised to meet specific requirements.

Cost optimization

Open source software offers cost savings compared to proprietary solutions, which can be especially beneficial for organizations with limited budgets. With open source software, organizations do not need to pay for licenses, and there are no vendor lock-ins. They can leverage the vast community of developers and users to troubleshoot issues and implement new features. In addition to removing licensing fees, open source automation frameworks significantly reduce operational costs by simplifying CNF lifecycle management, improving energy optimization, and enabling consistent operations across core, edge and RAN deployments.

Security

The telecom sector handles a vast amount of sensitive information, including personal and financial data, making it a prime target for cyber-attacks. There are several data privacy and security concerns that the telecom sector faces, including data breaches, malware attacks, insider threats, lack of compliance, etc. In this regard, open source software vulnerabilities are often patched more quickly than with proprietary software. In addition, open source software is transparent and customisable, making it easier to meet the operator’s unique needs and implement security features that align with their security requirements.

In the sections that follow we provide example applications for open source solutions across the telco stack, with a focus on tooling supported by Canonical.

Open source solutions for telcos

Canonical’s telco portfolio spans the entire network – from RAN compute nodes to edge clouds, MEC platforms, private clouds and public-cloud deployments. Ubuntu and our cloud-native infrastructure stack (MAAS, MicroCloud, OpenStack, Kubernetes and Juju) provide a consistent operational model across all layers of the 5G architecture.. This enables telcos to meet any current or future use cases – from OpenRAN to next-generation Core (5G and beyond) and AI at the edge. Ubuntu Pro is Canonical’s comprehensive subscription for enterprise security, compliance and support.

Open source solutions for telcos

Open source for RAN

vRAN and Open RAN deployments require high performance, low latency and hardware acceleration. Canonical works closely with Intel FlexRAN, NVIDIA Aerial and ARM ecosystem partners to optimize Ubuntu for RAN workloads.

Another major Canonical contribution for RANs edge use cases isMicroCloud, which reproduces the APIs and primitives of the big clouds at the scale of the edge. MicroClouds are typically targeted to easily deploy and lifecycle manage distributed micro clouds – bare metal compute clusters of between 3-100 nodes. A Canonical MicroCloud stack consists of certain building blocks. The details for each component are covered in our Telco 5G infrastructurewhitepaper.

Open source for core networks

Most operators deploy their 5G Core on private clouds to maintain strict performance and security control. Canonical’s reference architecture – MAAS for bare metal, OpenStack for virtualised infrastructure, Kubernetes for CNFs, and Juju for automation – provides a proven, carrier-grade cloud foundation adopted by major network equipment providers (NEPs) and operators globally.

Canonical stack for private clouds

Open source for public and hybrid clouds

Ubuntu is known for its reliability, security, and versatility, making it a popular choice for telecom companies that require a stable and secure operating system to run Telco applications in the public cloud. A hybrid cloud architecture combines the usage of a private cloud and one or more public cloud services with a workload orchestration engine between the platforms. Using Juju, operators can orchestrate and lifecycle-manage the same CNF or VNF stack across private OpenStack, MicroCloud edge clusters, and hyperscalers. Juju automation provides a consistent approach that natively supports all major hyper scalers APIs and is a de-facto standard tool for MicroClouds in edge use cases. Additionally, Ubuntu Pro for Public Clouds provides telcos with capabilities based on their unique requirements. Details of these requirements and features from Ubuntu are given in this blog series:Amazon Web services (AWS),Google Cloud Platform (GCP), andMicrosoft Azure.

Wrapping up

5G infrastructure modernization continues to introduce new operational and cost challenges. Open source cloud technologies, combined with Canonical’s automation and long-term support, help operators simplify their architectures, reduce OPEX, and accelerate the shift to cloud-native 5G.

To explore the latest best practices, speak with our telco specialists.