Nokia, Vodafone conduct Open RAN trial on live 5G SA network in Italy, ET Telecom

NEW DELHI: Finnish telecom gear maker Nokia Tuesday said it has successfully completed an end-to-end Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) trial with Vodafone on the telecom operator’s live 5G standalone network in Italy.

As per a joint media statement, the trial utilised Nokia’s AirScale Massive MIMO radio and Nokia baseband software running on Dell PowerEdge XR8000 servers and Red Hat OpenShift hosted on Nokia’s 5G core.

It also used Nokia’s MantaRay Networks Management system for a consolidated network view and improved monitoring and management.

Nokia said it is supporting Open Fronthaul features on top of its RAN software. The vendor has already integrated with five open radio unit (O-RU) suppliers. By integrating with Red Hat OpenShift, telcos also have the option to scale their 5G network footprint and quickly introduce new services.

Vodafone aims to have 30% of its masts based on Open RAN technology by 2030 in Europe and is already deploying the technology commercially. This includes 2,500 Open RAN sites in the UK, the first large-scale deployment in Europe, as well as, in Romania.

“Vodafone is dedicated to supporting the development and adoption of Open RAN worldwide by fostering a diverse ecosystem of partners and solutions. This approach offers numerous benefits, including increased choice, enhanced energy efficiency, higher network capacity, and improved performance for customers,” said Santiago Tenorio, Director of Network Architecture at Vodafone.

“Nokia’s collaborative anyRAN approach means that Communication Service Providers can deploy Open RAN with the server hardware and CaaS layer of their choice. Together with our ecosystem partners, we are committed to providing more choice and higher performance in Open RAN solutions to our customers than they will see from other RAN suppliers,” said Mark Atkinson, Head of RAN at Nokia.