Magma Project Accelerates with Establishment of Magma Core Foundation and New Members Under Open Governance

- Project embraces open governance model, creates new neutral, cross-community Technical Steering Committee open for collaboration

- Community welcomes 11 new member organizations fostering innovation for 5G mobile packet core

- Magma Core Foundation's project roadmap integral to cross-community collaboration enabling end-to-end solutions and blueprints

News provided by

The Linux Foundation

Apr 21, 2021, 12:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, April 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Magma project, an open-source software platform that gives network operators an open, flexible and extendable mobile core network solution, announced project and community growth since its recent move to the Linux Foundation to establish a neutral governance framework.

Since moving to the Linux Foundation, Magma has made strides as a community, in partnership with the Open Infrastructure Foundation and the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance. The collaboration has formally become the Magma Core Foundation, and project and community growth includes new members, the adoption of a master architecture roadmap, and formation of a neutral governance structure. In addition, the community will host its first Linux Foundation-managed event, Magma Day, co-located with KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021.

"We are pleased to see the Magma Core Foundation continue to evolve as a leader in network innovation," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT, the Linux Foundation. "Additional collaboration efforts are underway via initiatives like the 5G Super Blueprint which enables communities to build and augment modern networks at scale across 5G, carrier Wi-Fi, private LTE, and more."

"The OpenAirInterface Software Alliance continues to participate in the Magma Core Foundation as a major contributor to the developments of the core network," said Irfan Ghauri, director of Operations of the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance (OSA). "The seed code for one of the main components of the Magma core (MME) is in fact OAI. The fact that early implementations are making it into production improving users' lives is in itself a great source of satisfaction for the OSA. The Alliance continues to contribute through its engineers in the entrails of the Magma core and looks forward to increased adoption of the latter, as greater stability and completeness is achieved over time. This is very hard work but the OSA remains committed to delivering the next features including non-stand alone support and others."

"Since the early days of the Magma project, the OpenInfra Foundation and our global community have aligned with the community's goals to connect the next billion people," said Mark Collier, COO of the Open Infrastructure Foundation and member of the Magma Core Foundation governing board. "We support the development of Magma to form a next-generation mobile networking stack that's aligned with our mission to create open infrastructure code that runs in production. We're excited to see more organizations coming on board to collaborate with us as we support that goal."

"The OpenAirInterface Software Alliance continues to participate in the Magma Core Foundation as a major contributor to the developments of the core network," said Irfan Ghauri, Director of Operations of the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance. "The seed code for one of the main components of the Magma core (MME) is in fact OAI. The fact that early implementations are making it into production improving users' lives is in itself a great source of satisfaction for the OSA. The Alliance continues to contribute through its engineers in the entrails of the Magma core and looks forward to increased adoption of the latter, as greater stability and completeness is achieved over time. This is very hard work but the OSA remains committed to delivering the next features including non-stand alone support and others."

The Magma Core Foundation welcomes 11 new member organizations across CSPs, processing, storage, edge, and more. New members 0chain, Aarna Networks, Connect5G, FreedomFi, GenXComm, Helium, Highway9Networks, MotoJeannie, Shoelace Wireless, Vapor IO, and Whitestack join existing members, including Arm, Deutsche Telekom, and Facebook. The community will work collaboratively on the future of mobile network core solutions, via a new architecture roadmap that's 3GPP generation and access network (cellular or WiFi) agnostic. It can flexibly support a radio access network with minimal development and deployment effort, and includes three major components: Access Gateway, Orchestrator, and Federation Gateway.

To help shepherd this work, a new neutral governance structure, including a Technical Steering Committee (TSC), has been formed. Newly-elected TSC members include Marie Bremner, Raphael Defosseus, Hunter Gatewood, Scott Moeller, and Pravin Shelar.

Magma Day

Join the Magma Core Project community on May 3 from 2:30 - 6:00 pm CEST for a virtual Magma Day event. Co-located with KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021, Magma Day is designed to bring CNCF/Kubernetes, LF Networking, and LF Edge communities working across 4G, 5G, and global connectivity together. Magma Day will include a comprehensive review of Magma (use cases, roadmap, vision, architecture) and how to build end-to-end telecom solutions using Magma across open source projects. Access the event schedule and register to add Magma Day to your KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021 registration today.

Member support for the Magma Core Foundation

0chain

"0Chain powered Magma enables siloed WiFi connectivity within businesses to form a seamless augmented network to enhance mobile user experience and reduce operator costs," said Saswata Basu, CEO & Founder of 0Chain, world leader in blockchain and decentralized storage. "In addition, 0Chain dramatically cuts contract negotiation time from years to seconds, and provides dynamic pricing for augmented network providers."

Aarna Networks

"We are delighted to join the Magma Core project," said Amar Kapadia, co-founder and CEO, Aarna Networks. "By integrating Magma Core with ONAP and Kubernetes, we plan to provide communication service providers, government organizations, and enterprises with a fully open source solution that could democratize and accelerate 5G deployments worldwide."

Connect5G

"Magma is the one and truly pioneering project - providing open, unified and access convergent networking. We at Connect 5G believe that the future of the global communication lies in the open technology stacks. Our mission is to bring the rural and remote areas to the global network," said Patrik Melander, chairman and CEO, Connect5G, Inc. "For that purpose we selected Magma as the one and truly pioneering project that provides open, unified and access convergent networking layer."

FreedomFi

"Most common customer objection about any open source project is that it's not enterprise ready. We've heard those objections about Linux and Kubernetes for years prior to those becoming a standard, and we've heard a lot of the same about Magma last year," said Boris Renski, Co-Founder and CEO at FreedomFi. "This year we start seeing customers like Access Parks choosing Magma over a variety of open source and proprietary alternatives to power hundreds of cell sites across the national and state park system. We are quickly approaching the end of Magma-is-not-enterprise-ready cycle and are excited to collaborate with the Linux foundation to grow the project ecosystem."

Helium

"Helium started with a vision to enable wireless networks for IoT powered by the people with a new blockchain-based incentive model," said Frank Mong, the COO of Helium Inc. "We're excited to join the Linux Foundation and the Magma ecosystem to continue to make building all wireless networks possible by combining cryptocurrency, open source, and bringing access to more people globally."

Highway9 Networks

"Magma significantly opens, modernizes and steers the mobility core stack. Highway9 Networks is excited to partner with the Magma community as we deliver innovative 5G ready edge cloud solutions to the enterprise," said Allwyn Sequeira, Founder/CEO of Highway9 Networks

MotoJeannie

"Magma Core provides the necessary toolset that's needed for the industry to innovate. At MotoJeannie, we use a curated form of Magma core, enabling us to focus on delivering the desired value to our end customers. Linux foundation knows how to develop values for the ecosystem using open source, and we are very excited to be part of this community," said Auyush Sharma, founder and CEO, MotoJeannie.

Shoelace Wireless

"Magma converged core provides cost effective cloud native orchestration of WiFi and LTE networks which is critical for Shoelace Wireless' intelligent-edge multipath traffic steering, switching, and aggregation technology to enable use cases such as: network augmentation, smart contract roaming, predictive traffic steering, and HetNet optimization," said Jim Mains, CEO, Shoelace Wireless. "The fact that Magma is open-sourced also allows us to work with innovative partners to accelerate market deployment which otherwise would take many years."

Vapor.io

"Open technologies like Magma will help revolutionize both US and global communications infrastructure," said Cole Crawford founder & CEO of edge and grid infrastructure company Vapor IO. "We have always believed that neutral host multi-tenancy and shared infrastructure unlock the economics that enable the worldwide rollout of advanced networks like 5G. Vapor IO's Kinetic services are ideal for Magma, and we look forward to working with our partners to implement and deploy it on our network."

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