HPE announced new offerings for telecom operators rolling out 5G networks, including its own 5G core stack available from later this year. The company also introduced Aruba Air Pass, to connect 5G mobile subscribers seamlessly with Aruba Wi-Fi access points, and Aruba Air Slice, to improve radio performance.
Aruba Air Pass is based on the Wi-Fi Passpoint standard, that allows mobile subscribers to authenticate on W-Fi networks using their cellular network credentials. Aruba said the system allows businesses to leverage their existing Wi-Fi infrastructure for indoor cellular coverage, rather than investing in small cells or distributed antenna systems. Telecom operators are able expand their footprint to include the nearly 20 billion square feet served by Aruba Air Pass-ready infrastructure worldwide.
Based on the same OFDMA radio technology that powers 4G and 5G radios, Aruba Air Slice is a Wi-Fi 6 technology designed to optimize user and application experience by providing carrier-grade quality assurance. By dynamically allocating radio resources, such as time, frequency and spatial streams, Aruba Air Slice guarantees performance for latency-sensitive applications common to 5G over the Wi-Fi network.
Other HPE products for the telco market include a new HPE 5G Core Stack. This cloud-native, container-based software stack provides telecom operators with the core network capabilities required to deliver new 5G services quickly to subscribers and enterprise customers, the company said. It will be available from the second half of this year as an integrated software and hardware platform, based on validated HPE Telco core and edge blueprints, and supported within HPE GreenLake.
HPE also markets its computing platforms to provide telcos with a virtual IT service environment at the cellular network edge and the managed services offering HPE GreenLake to help lower upfront investment costs in edge hardware and software. The company's telco optimized edge and core blueprints, and the telco edge optimized platform HPE Edgeline EL8000 are available now, directly or through HPE GreenLake.
