CORD Project, the community advancing the open source service delivery platform that combines SDN, NFV, and elastic cloud services to redefine network access, on Thursday announced what it called “the first open sourced disaggregated and virtualized Evolved Packet Core (EPC).”

Radisys, a system integrator in the service provider space and a CORD partner, contributed its EPC framework, a foundation for many EPC products, to M-CORD.

M-CORD is built on top of ONOS and the CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter) open source project that combines data center economics and the agility of the cloud with the benefits of a virtualized and disaggregated mobile core, as well as access infrastructure and mobile edge computing for innovation and deployment of 5G, said Radisys.

The integration of open source mobile core applications like EPC will provide enhanced service flexibility and agility in enabling 5G service delivery on the M-CORD platform. Unlike closed source and proprietary mobile platforms, open source M-CORD architecture and applications will accelerate agile service innovation with improved economics, making mobility more cost-efficient, more software-programmable and more cloud-elastic.

M-CORD helps to pave the way for service-driven 5G architecture through capabilities such as programmable Radio Access Network (RAN), disaggregated and virtualized EPC, mobile edge computing, and end-to-end slicing from RAN to EPC, said CORD.

“The open source driven model is a fundamental element for the 5G roadmap as it enables extraordinary agility for identifying and responding to subscribers’ needs far more quickly than traditional mobility standards,” said Joseph Sulistyo, ‎senior director of open networking solutions and strategy, Radisys Corporation. “The integration of open source EPC enhances the M-CORD platform to provide boundless core service flexibility and brings us a step closer to unlocking the promise of 5G.”