TELUS (NYSE: TU) has announced that it will deploy Canada’s first commercial virtualized, Open RAN. Samsung, which had previously handled only greenfield deployments for TELUS, was selected to build out the virtualized Open RAN deployment within a complex, brownfield network environment.
“It’s good news that a company like TELUS is moving forward with Open RAN and virtual RAN. It is another confirmation of the industry’s acceptance of the technologies,” said Joe Madden, Principal Analyst at Mobile-Experts. “It is aggressive to do both open and virtual RAN in a brownfield network.”
Other carriers, such as DISH Wireless, 1&1 and Rakuten, have all deployed greenfield virtualized Open RAN, while AT&T’s deal with Ericsson is open without being virtualized. On the other hand, Verizon had begun its 5G deployment with a virtual RAN that it is not open, according to Madden. “Some carriers begin their 5G journey with the left foot and others with their right foot. It is difficult to judge which is best,” he said.
TELUS said it has “extensively tested” Samsung’s virtual and Open RAN technologies in multiple Canadian markets, validating the telco-grade performance and reliability of multi-vendor open RAN technology. Commercial deployment will begin in the first half of this year and a large-scale network rollout is expected to begin mid-2024.
For this expanded collaboration, Samsung will provide/ vRAN software and Open RAN compliant solutions, including its 64T64R Massive MIMO radios, as well as intelligent automation via Samsung’s Service Management and Orchestration (SMO). Samsung’s AI-based SMO will help TELUS accelerate vRAN rollouts at scale by enabling automated deployment of thousands of network sites simultaneously, according to the carrier.
TELUS’ multi-vendor Open RAN ecosystem collaborations include cloud infrastructure by Wind River. Hewlett Packard Enterprise will provide HPE ProLiant DL110 Gen11 servers featuring 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost, providing the foundation for a Distributed Unit.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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