VMware Telco Cloud Platform 5G Edition combines VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure and VMware Telco Cloud Automation™. VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure is an evolution of VMware vCloud® NFV™. VMware Telco Cloud Automation contains multi-domain orchestration and automation capability. VMware Telco Cloud Platform also embeds Tanzu Kubernetes Grid that allows CSPs to build, manage, and run containerized workloads across private, telco, edge, and public clouds.

To manage massive data traffic, 5G is designed for a distributed architecture. The user plane and control plane are separated, and the data center and network infrastructure are based on hierarchical multi-tiered layers. For more information about each layer, see the Telco Cloud Reference Architecture Guide 3.0.

Figure 1. Telco Cloud Layers
Telco Cloud Layers