AT&T awarded a five-year contract to Ericsson covering the rollout of 5G over its recently acquired C-band spectrum and the launch of 5G Standalone (SA). Financial terms were not disclosed
AT&T has stated a goal of covering 70-75 million people with 5G over C-Band by end of 2022 with plans to reach 200 million by end of 2023.
The new contract covers the Ericsson Radio System portfolio, which includes the Advanced Antenna System, Advanced RAN Coordination and Carrier Aggregation technologies. It will also support future network enhancements like Cloud RAN, which offers communications services providers increased flexibility, faster delivery of services and greater scalability in networks.
Ericsson said its cloud-native solution supports centralized RAN architecture, including:
- 5G Carrier Aggregation and Advanced RAN Coordination — a blended solution that optimizes coverage, capacity, and latency of mid-band and high-band deployments. It enables communications service providers to maximize their spectrum assets when deploying 5G.
- Advanced Antenna System (AAS) — enables extended coverage, while providing tremendous throughput/capacity that can truly enable enhanced mobile broadband.
- Ericsson Fronthaul Gateway — enables more efficient transport of the fronthaul interface by converting it to packet enhanced Common Public Radio Interface (eCPRI)
Scott Mair, President, AT&T Network Engineering and Operations, says: “As we continue to expand our nationwide 5G network, Ericsson’s technology offerings and 5G expertise will assist with our network evolution. This latest agreement provides the pathway for us to deploy Ericsson’s next-generation centralized RAN architecture, enabled by Fronthaul Gateway, with the ability to support future network enhancements, like the evolution to Cloud RAN.”
Niklas Heuveldop, President and Head of Ericsson North America, says: “This agreement reinforces our long-standing partnership of innovation and execution with AT&T. 5G networks will enable unprecedented, sustainable and exponential growth, accelerating the digital transformation of industries and the public sector, for the benefit of consumers, enterprises and society at large. Ericsson is excited to join forces with AT&T to help make this vision a reality.”
AT&T to power its network with Microsoft Azure for Operators
AT&T will power its mobile network on Microsoft’s Azure for Operators cloud starting with the 5G and migrating existing and future workloads over time. Microsoft will assume responsibility for both software development and deployment of AT&T’s Network Cloud immediately and bring AT&T’s existing network cloud to Azure over the next three years. Financial terms were not disclosed. Under an expanded strategic alliance between the firms, AT&T…
