Mavenir was the overall leader in the competitor ranking and earned the top spots for both innovation and implementation in ABI Research’s Open RAN Vendor Competitive Ranking Assessment Report. NEC and Nokia rounded out the top three in the list of market leaders. The firm examined eight Open RAN vendors, including Ericsson, Fujitsu, Samsung, Parallel Wireless, and Rakuten.
“Mavenir has demonstrated its role as a leading Open RAN vendor due to its end-to-end cloud-native software and hardware and O-RAN Alliance-compliant solutions,” said Saqlain Ali, Senior Analyst at ABI Research. “Mavenir has made significant efforts to accelerate Open RAN deployments in partnerships with other mobile, chipset vendors, and cloud providers to validate its Open RAN portfolio for multi-vendor deployments.” Mavenir’s customer base includes more than 300 communications services providers in more than 120 countries.
In terms of brownfield deployment (i.e., the installation and configuration of new hardware or software that must coexist with legacy IT systems), Mavenir has more than 57 RAN projects with 39 different customers that include 4G, 5G Non-Standalone (NSA), 5G SA TDD, FDD, small cells, and private networks. All of Mavenir’s 5G NSA and most of its 4G deployments are in brownfield environments, including Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, Virgin Mobile/O2, and Triangle Communications.
Mavenir’s 5G SA and private network deployments are mainly greenfield (i.e., refers to developing a system for a totally new environment and requires development from a clean slate – no legacy code around), according to Pardeep Kohli, CEO of Mavenir.
NEC is among a few vendors supporting commercial brownfield Open RAN deployments, according to ABI. Nokia ranked third for its overall contributions in the O-RAN Alliance Work Groups and investments related to R&D activities and its active involvement in recent integration and testing developments with all major hyperscalers, cloud providers, and operators.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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