Ericsson appears to be first out of the traps with a 5G standalone core network contract from Japanese operator KDDI. The Sweden-based vendor announced that it has been selected to deploy a cloud-native dual-mode 5G core in KDDI's 5G standalone network in Japan, "paving the way to ramp-up 5G use case development and realization." It's not clear whether Nokia will also provide standalone 5G core technology to KDDI; like Ericsson, the Finnish vendor announced the completion of a 5G core standalone network trial with the operator in February this year. KDDI has previously revealed that Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung Electronics will be its primary 5G partners. The operator has also been working with Cisco Systems, which trumpeted its role in supporting the operator's "transition to 5G" with the Cisco Virtualized Packet Core and Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS) architecture.