Sweden’s Tele2 will shift its internal infrastructure to the cloud through Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), as part of its strategy for 5G.

The virtualisation play, which will see the company move its network and IT functions to the cloud, is intended to deliver a “wider set of services to customers within all segments, including business, consumer and Internet of Things”, while big data analytics will also be “vital” to the implementation.

In a statement, Niklas Sonkin (pictured), EVP and COO at Tele2, said the shift was an important step for the company to strengthen its position “as a technology frontrunner”, with cloud and virtualisation set to be “important building blocks for the foundation of 5G”.

“We are strong believers and are actively contributing to the evolution of 5G as a member of Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN),” he said. “The 5G standard will be ready by 2020 and in the field one or two years later.”

To speed up service deployment and to keep costs low, Tele2 said it will deploy OpenStack as the “foundation for our private cloud”, which will be managed by Canonical.

Meanwhile, Huawei will provide the rack mount servers and Cisco will be the network vendor.

Tele2 said it expects to have its first live application in the cloud by Q3 this year.