Mobile operators’ move towards virtualized, and even cloud-native, networks has been more aspiration than reality for most players until very recently. A burst of deployments of virtualized LTE packet cores in the 2010s largely proved to be the one swallow that does not make a summer. Early virtualization platforms, including the telco-driven ETSI NFV (network functions virtualization), have proved to be very much a first generation technology. Far superior deployability and flexibility will come from cloud-native systems, and those will drive better economics in the 5G era – but have left would-be early adopters back in the phase of dealing with immature solutions that often come with risk or high upfront cost. While the core is driving development of fully…