Mobile operators have been slower to embrace cloud nativeness across their whole ICT infrastructure than enterprises in many other sectors, partly because of greater fragmentation and separation between the core and the RAN. Efforts to cloudify have often become stuck in the mire of OSS/BSS (operations and business support), making it hard to achieve the promised benefits of scalability and fast deployment of new services through more efficient software development. Some tier 1 operators began enthusiastically introducing cloud native techniques into their 5G core networks. Telefonica started doing that in September 2021 when it announced a multi-year agreement with IBM for deployment of automation software and services for its first cloud-native 5G core network platform. But operators have found it…