Vodafone has switched on the U.K.’s first 5G Open RAN site in Bath, England. It is the first of 2,500 5G and 4G Open RAN sites that Vodafone plans to deploy. It is a sign of Vodafone’s commitment to the government’s ambition to accelerate the development of the Open RAN ecosystem.
To celebrate the deployment of the site, the first 5G video call over Open RAN infrastructure was made by Vodafone UK’s Chief Network Officer Andrea Dona to the Minister for Digital Infrastructure Julia Lopez earlier this month. Open RAN will allow the UK to diversify its telecom equipment supply chain, according to Lopez.
“This phone call, the first in the U.K. to be made using 5G Open RAN infrastructure, marks a big step forward for innovation in U.K. telecom,” Lopez said. “Diversity in the supply chain is such an important element of the resilience of our telecommunications networks.”
The site uses Samsung’s virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) Solutions, Dell’s open hardware servers and Intel’s Xeon processors. Wind River Studio provided management of containerized Open RAN CU/DU workloads, automation, orchestration, and lifecycle management of network functions. Capgemini Engineering and Keysight Technologies provided testing and integration services in the Vodafone lab to ensure interoperability of the multi-vendor ecosystem.
Open RAN 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 Open RAN infrastructure. The U.K. government announced in December that it will invest in the development of open radio access networks with the goal of having 35 percent of network traffic carried over open RAN by 2030.
“The government is investing in the technology through our $340.59 million diversification strategy so we can deliver the amazing benefits of 5G for people and businesses with more diverse, resilient and secure equipment in our networks,” Julia Lopez, Digital Infrastructure Minister, the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Vodafone previously primarily used three main suppliers — Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia — for its wireless equipment, but it now uses Japanese and U.S. suppliers for open RAN, according to the Financial Times. Last June, the carrier unveiled its strategic vendors – Dell, NEC, Samsung Electronics, Wind River, Capgemini Engineering and Keysight Technologies – to deploy Open RAN in Europe. The company said it believed the move will spark other large-scale Open RAN launches and “spearhead the next wave of digital transformation across Europe.”
In July 2020, the U.K. government ordered the complete removal of Huawei’s equipment from the entire 5G network by 2027, amid pressure from the U.S., according to BBC News.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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