Vodafone named Dell, NEC, Samsung Electronics, Wind River, Capgemini Engineering and Keysight Technologies as strategic vendors for its commercial deployment of Open Radio Access Network (RAN) in Europe.
Highlights:
- Samsung will be a reference RAN software provider.
- Samsung and NEC will supply Massive MIMO radio units based on the Telecom Infra Project’s Evenstar whitebox design
- Dell EMC PowerEdge servers will support the combined DU/CU function running Containers as a Service (CaaS) software from Wind River Studio, which will provide a distributed cloud-native platform hosting the Open RAN applications and virtualised RAN from Samsung.
- Keysight Technologies will deliver its comprehensive Open RAN test solution portfolio designed to support conformance, interoperability and E2E system testing.
- Capgemini Engineering will be the key partner within our lab testing to ensure interworking of the Open RAN multi-vendor ecosystem.
- The O-RAN Alliance 7-2x split, which defines the interface between the radio antenna and the baseband unit, will be used in the deployments, following successful test and simulations that make it the option of choice.
Vodafone said its initial O-RAN focus will be on the 2,500 sites in the UK that it committed to Open RAN in October 2020. Starting this year, the vendors will work with Vodafone to extend 4G and 5G coverage to more rural places across the South West of England and most of Wales, moving into urban areas in a later phase.
Johan Wibergh, Vodafone Chief Technology Officer, said: “Open RAN provides huge advantages for customers. Our network will become highly programmable and automated meaning we can release new features simultaneously across multiple sites, add or direct capacity more quickly, resolve outages instantly and provide businesses with on-demand connectivity.
https://www.vodafone.com/news/press-release/vodafone-europe-first-commercial-open-ran-network