BT investing in cloud and virtualization as 5G rolls out

With its mobile unit EE in the early days of offering up 5G, parent company BT has recently made strategic investments that underpin the operator’s plans for a cloud-native, converged network that uses open source tools to manage mobile, fixed and Wi-Fi services.EE in May officially launched commercial 5G services in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester with plans to expand coverage to busy port areas later this year. According to BT, it will begin offering 5G in the “autumn” in “the busiest parts of 16 U.K. cities by the end of the year.”Back in June, Juniper announced it was selected by BT to provide network cloud infrastructure, which will support the operator’s converged services with cloud-based virtual network functions. Juniper said its products will cover “voice, mobile core and radio/access, global services, ISP, TV and iT services, as well as a host of internal applications.”