Leading telecom company Vodafone has begun a partnership with vendors, Dell, Samsung, NEC, Wind River, Keysight Technologies and CapgeminiEngineering firm to have the first Open Radio Access Network (RAN) across Europe on a large scale, commercial basis.
According to the tech giant, the move will herald the launch of other commercial Open Radio Access Network’s; in a bid to elicit a new digital transformation wave across Europe.
Vodafone, with these new partnerships, would up its tempo in its development of a new Open RAN laboratory in Newbury, England and also build on its digital skills hubs across Spain and Germany.
The Open RAN network spearheaded by Vodafone itself with its partners , will through a diverse, open vendor ecosystem, open doors for innovation through a more cost-effective, safe and energy efficient customer-focused network system.
The Open RAN network comes with a series of advantages and some of them will be highlighted.
One of them is the leverage it has to bring in more European Tech companies into the budding market, with it having the support and backing of the European Commission and other National Governments of the European Union
Vodafone which signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the European Union telecommunication gurus on Open RAN network will leverage on this to build a European ecosystem, to help boost the digital infrastructure technology of the European Union.
There is also the logic of the EU governments and mobile operator’s support of the Open RAN technology, as they see it as avenues to encourage more vendors come intothe market that is already dominated by Nokia and Huawei.
Vodafone in one of the largest deployments in the world has the October 2020 intial focus of having 2,500 sites it would build its Open RAN on, this in partnership with Dell, NEC, Samsung and Wind River.
The Evenstar program with a new radio equipment defined under it is expected to be in use by Vodafone, in a partnered initiative. Support to ensure interoperability between the components of the equipment is being provided by Capgemini Engineering and Keysighttechnologies that Vodafone partnered with.
The vendors will this year begin to cooperate with Vodafone in a bid to extend the 4G and 5G coverage, first to remote, rural areas of Southwest England and a larger part of Wales and then up to more urban places in subsequent phases.
There is good news for those in Africa too as Vodafone has put plans in place to launch the Open RAN in the continent, ensuing that Africa is and other parts of the world are not left behind in the continued access to the digital world.
Vodafone’s Chief Technology Officer, Mr. Johan Wibergminced no words in his appraisal of the opportunities the Open RAN network offers the teeming populace when he said:
“Open RAN provides huge advantages for customers. Our network will become highly programmable and automated meaning we can release new features simultaneously across multiple sites, add or direct capacity more quickly, resolve outages instantly and provide businesses with on-demand connectivity.”
It is expected that Vodafone’s imprint in the digital world won’t just end with Open RAN, we expect more.
Ayoola Faseyi, an Abuja based Journalist with interest in Technology and Politics. He is a versatile writer with articles in many renowned News Journals.
He is the Co-Founder of media brand, The Vent Republic.
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