Deutsche Telekom said that Nokia and Fujitsu have been selected as partners for an initial commercial O-RAN introduction in Germany
German carrier Deutsche Telekom announced a partnership with Nokia, Fujitsu and Mavenir for the initial phase of its commercial Open RAN (O-RAN) deployments across its European footprint.
The European telco noted that Nokia and Fujitsu have been chosen as partners for an initial commercial O-RAN introduction in Germany from 2023 onwards. Customers in the Neubrandenburg area will receive 2G, 4G and 5G services from the deployment in the ‘brownfield’ network environment of Telekom Deutschland.
In addition, Mavenir has been chosen as partner for an initial multi-vendor deployment in Deutsche Telekom’s European footprint starting in 2023.
“Open RAN is critical to Deutsche Telekom’s strategy to foster greater vendor diversity and accelerate customer focused innovation in the radio access network,” said Claudia Nemat, board member for technology and innovation at Deutsche Telekom. “We are committed to open RAN as the technology of choice for future networks and as a catalyst to take Europe forward in the digital era, so we are making it happen with partners. “
“Open RAN has matured over the last months in both stability and performance, which has given us the confidence for an initial commercial deployment. Together with Nokia, Mavenir and other ecosystem partners, we will use our collaboration as the springboard to accelerate open RAN development and create a path to deployment at scale,” said Abdu Mudesir, CTO at Deutsche Telekom.
Deutsche Telekom also highlighted that the sites at Neubrandenburg are built on a multi-vendor O-RAN architecture with open fronthaul support and equipment from Nokia and Fujitsu. Nokia will deliver the baseband units, while the O-RAN compliant remote Radio Units (O-RUs) will be provided by Nokia and Fujitsu.
For further deployments in the the telco’s European footprint, Mavenir will provide the Cloud-Native baseband software for the 4G and 5G distributed units (O-DU) and central units (O-CU), including for the open fronthaul based mMIMO radio units.
Deutsche Telekom also said that it plans to announce additional partners for O-RAN deoloyments.
Deutsche Telekom has co-founded the xRAN Forum in 2016, which led to the formation of the O-RAN ALLIANCE in 2018. In 2021, the German operator had initiated its O-RAN Town pilot in Neubrandenburg to test, assess and gain operational experience from a high-power multivendor deployment in a brownfield network.
The telco also noted that it has also been working together with other leading European operators to advance O-RAN ecosystem and solution development.