Vodafone UK this week announced that it has switched on the UK’s first 5G OpenRAN.
The site in Bath is the first of 2,500 5G and 4G OpenRAN sites that Vodafone has committed to, and a major step in supporting the Government’s ambition to accelerate the development of the OpenRAN ecosystem. Last month, the UK Government and telecoms operators announced shared ambitions to expand support for the OpenRAN ecosystem. Vodafone has championed the OpenRAN ecosystem since its conception in 2016 and is actively using OpenRAN across many parts of the UK.
As part of the First Site Installation (FSI), the following OpenRAN-compliant technology will be deployed:
- Samsung virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) Solutions, as well as technical, product and integration support
- Dell open hardware serversIntel technologies to enable optimized solutions, including Intel Xeon processors, workload acceleration and connectivity
- Wind River Studio for management of containerized OpenRAN CU/DU workloads, automation, orchestration, and lifecycle management of network functions
Capgemini Engineers and Keysight Technologies have provided testing and integration services in the Vodafone lab to ensure interoperability of the multi-vendor ecosystem. Once technologies and vendors have been verified as OpenRAN-compliant, deployment of equipment becomes a much simpler task.
OpenRAN 4G and 5G antennas from Samsung and NEC will be deployed from mid-2022. Once interoperability tests for these radio units have been completed in the lab, the units can be deployed in a ‘plug and play’ manner on the existing OpenRAN infrastructure.
Andrea Dona, Chief Network Officer, Vodafone UK
This is the beginning of a new chapter for the mobile industry. Our team has been working tirelessly to take OpenRAN technology from a theory in our lab to our customers in the real-world – it’s remarkable how much has been achieved in such a short period of time. OpenRAN as a concept is only five years old, and we’re already fundamentally changing how we deploy connectivity infrastructure.
Thomas Riedel, Head of Samsung Networks Europe at Samsung Electronics
As a global leader, we are proud to begin the UK’s first wide-scale OpenRAN commercial deployment, delivering carrier-grade 5G vRAN solutions to Vodafone. Based on our vRAN experience with tier-1 operators around the globe, this is another meaningful milestone for us, and we look forward to continue working with Vodafone.
