The Linux Foundation and the Next Generation Mobile Network Alliance (NGMN) are collaborating on ‘end-to-end 5G and beyond'.

The two have officially signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) stating they will be involved in collaboration regarding the future of 5G.

NGMN's mission is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user.

The forum has a particular focus on mastering the route to disaggregation, sustainability and green future networks, as well as on 6G and the continuous support of 5G's full implementation.

This mission is complementary to the efforts of the Linux Foundation's LF Networking and LF Edge umbrella projects, as well as others like LF Energy operating within the telecom, IoT, and networking spaces.

Creating and providing open, scalable building blocks for operators and service providers is critical to the industry adoption of 5G and beyond, the companies state.

Therefore, the collaboration between NGMN and the Linux Foundation will focus on end-to-end 5G architecture and beyond 5G.

Specific areas of alignment may include sustainability, network automation and network autonomy based on artificial intelligence, security, edge cloud, virtualisation, disaggregation, cloud native, service-based architecture and more.

NGMN Alliance CEO Anita Doehler says, “We very much look forward to a mutually inspiring and beneficial collaboration with The Linux Foundation.

"Open source is gaining increasing relevance for the strategic topics of our work programmes such as mastering the route to disaggregation, green future networks and 6G.

"We are delighted to partner with The Linux Foundation to jointly drive our mission for the benefit of the global ecosystem.

Linux Foundation general manager networking, edge and IoT Arpit Joshipura says, “We are thrilled to be aligning with such an innovative, industry-leading organisation.

"Integrating NGMN's expertise across pivotal areas like disaggregation, green future networks, cloud native, automation, and early work on 6G into LF Networking's 5G Super Blueprint initiative is a natural next step for the industry.

The Linux Foundation's vision to bring together open source software with open standards has been in effect for several years, including collaborations with ETSI, TMF, MEF, GSMA, the O-RAN Alliance, and more.

NGMN also maintains longstanding co-operations with all of these organisations.

The alignment between The Linux Foundation and NGMN represents the latest in a long-standing effort to integrate open source and open standards across the industry.

The NGMN Alliance is a forum founded by Mobile Network Operators and open to all partners in the mobile industry.

Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and, ultimately, will satisfy end user demand and expectations.

The Linux Foundation provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, aiming to deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company.