Why Is It So Hard to Run a 5G Core on Kubernetes—And What Needs... Joel Studler & Ashan Senevirathne

This talk explores the challenges of running a 5G core on Kubernetes and discusses what needs to change for the transition to 6G. The speakers, Joel Studler from Swisscom and Ashan Senevirathne from Telstra, explain how traditional telco standards often conflict with Kubernetes best practices. They provide practical examples demonstrating that many cloud-native Network Functions are merely containerized versions of network functions and are still box-centric. The session also highlights the potential for aligning telco design with Kubernetes patterns and emphasizes the importance of exposing APIs to treat the network as a product, allowing mobile networks to evolve into simpler and faster systems.