Vodafone said that the O-RAN trial was carried out in Torquay and Exmouth, in the U.K.
U.K. telecommunications group Vodafone claimed it achieved the first commercial urban deployment of Open RAN (O-RAN) in Europe, trialing the technology in two U.K. towns to provide mobile subscribers with data download rates of up to 700 Mbps.
In a release, the carrier said that the O-RAN trial was carried out in Torquay and Exmouth, which have a combined population of more than 87,000 people.
“As the first commercial urban deployment of Open RAN in Europe, we’ve been keen to test the network’s performance. From improved internet speeds to greater access to 5G, we can already see the benefits for customers in these towns,” said Alberto Ripepi, Vodafone’s chief network officer.
Vodafone noted that peak data rates of 700 Mbps are double previous internet speeds, with engineers observing that the 5G O-RAN technology was available more than 99% of the time over the course of a week.
The telco also noted that customers can make video calls, play online games and view content without any connection issues or delays thanks to massive MIMO technology, which enhances network performance, increases the capacity of a wireless connection using the same bandwidth and ultimately expands the capability of the mobile site, according to the carrier.
Vodafone also noted that O-RAN will enable the launch of innovative features simultaneously across multiple sites, add or direct capacity and resolve outages instantly.
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Vodafone is committed to having 30% of all mobile sites in the European Union running on O-RAN technology by 2030.
It currently has 14 sites live in the U.K. and it says that a fifth of all sites will be O-RAN-based across Wales and the West Country. The rollout plan includes five cities in the areas with more than 100,000 citizens, Vodafone said.
The U.K. Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), working with British telcos Vodafone, EE, Virgin Media O2 and Three, had set a goal to boost Open RAN deployments so that 35% of the U.K.’s mobile network traffic is carried over Open RAN by 2030. The plan stipulates £36 million (currently $45.4 million) in funding for fifteen projects to trial the O-RAN technology across Scotland, Wales and England, and a £15 million cash injection for the SONIC prototype testing facility for next-generation telecoms tech.
Vodafone and Japanese telco NTT Docomo have recently signed a deal to work together to simplify open RAN testing and integration for network equipment vendors, with a view to harmonize the process and accelerate deployments across the whole operator market.
The two carriers will cooperate to create common software instructions for vendors to test and integrate their open RAN products into carrier networks.