Nokia launches industry-first initiative to help operators accelerate network innovation in the AI era

As mobile networks evolve to support AI-driven services, automation, and increasingly demanding enterprise applications, operators need faster, more practical ways to evaluate opportunities for innovation. Mobile Core Early Access was created to address these challenges, allowing participants to see how new capabilities operate in practice. In turn, they can assess business relevance, operational requirements, and deployment considerations earlier in the decision-making process.

“Mobile innovation cycles continue to accelerate, and operators need more than presentations and demonstrations to make confident technology choices,” said Kal De, Senior Vice President, Core Networks at Nokia. “Mobile Core Early Access provides a practical way to experience the latest mobile core innovations in a live environment. By bringing capabilities closer to customers earlier, we help them reduce uncertainty and move more quickly from exploration to deployment.”

Mobile Core Early Access is the first program of its kind to offer a live, hosted, end-to-end environment for exploring the latest mobile core capabilities and use cases alongside radios and devices. After launching in June with a select group of 30 companies, registration is now open to the entire industry.

“Nokia’s Mobile Core Early Access program addresses a longstanding challenge for operators and enterprises: gaining practical exposure to emerging core network capabilities before making deployment decisions,” said Roberto Kompany, Principal Analyst, Mobile Infrastructure at Omdia. “By providing access to a live, regularly updated environment that showcases real-world 5G Core, automation, analytics and network exposure use cases, Nokia is reducing evaluation friction and helping customers shorten innovation cycles. As the industry moves toward AI-native core networks, initiatives such as Nokia’s Mobile Core Early Access can play an important role in accelerating technology adoption and improving customer confidence in future network investments.”

Through Mobile Core Early Access, participants can:

• Explore the latest mobile core capabilities and use cases as they become available.
• Evaluate innovations in a live, end-to-end environment that includes network functions, radios and devices.
• Gain visibility into how new capabilities operate across cloud-native network functions, user interfaces and operational workflows.
• Support technology planning and readiness by understanding deployment considerations earlier in the process.
• Reduce the effort required to establish initial testing environments and align stakeholders on use cases and business value.

For participants requiring extended access, broader flexibility, or deeper integration with their own environments, Nokia offers a paid option to support more advanced evaluation, experimentation, and validation activities.