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What is Infrastructure 2.0 and why do we need it?

Qualcomm President: '5G requires infrastructure like we’ve never seen' At Qualcomm’s annual 5G Summit, the company announced the expansion of its 5G RAN portfolio. The additions, which include the new Qualcomm Radio Unit, Distributed Unit and Distributed Radio Unit system-on-chip platforms, are all part of...

Schumpeter’s gale is blowing Ericsson and Nokia toward Open RAN

“The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns ... illustrate the same process of industrial mutation--if I may use that biological term--that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly...

Japan’s NEC to take part in UK’s 5G deployments: Report

  Japanese vendor NEC will play a role in the development of next-generation 5G wireless networks in the U.K., according to reports published by Japanese newspapers. In a Twitter post last week, Britain's Department for International Trade said NEC is expected "to support roll out of...

Ericsson Cloud RAN solution puts customers on the path to open, flexible 5G

The Cloud RAN solution supports Ericsson Spectrum Sharing and 5G SA and NSA Ericsson has announced Cloud RAN (Radio Access Network), a new solution to be released in 2021, that the company said will add greater flexibility and versatility to operator’s network buildouts, as well...

NEC, ADI to provide 5G O-RAN massive MIMO Radio for Rakuten Mobile

  Japan’s NEC Corporation and global high-performance analog technology company Analog Devices (ADI) announced a partnership to design a 5G Network Massive MIMO Antenna Radio Unit for Japanese telco Rakuten Mobile. The radio unit adopts ADI's fourth-generation wideband RF transceiver solution to achieve high-precision Massive MIMO...

Qualcomm’s new RAN chipsets to accelerate migration toward Open RANs (Analyst Angle)

Earlier this week, Qualcomm announced new chipsets for Virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) and open networks, adding to its existing small cell chipset product line (Qualcomm 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) for small cells). Specifically, the announcement focused on the following domains: The Qualcomm...

Will hyperscalers come after Open RAN, too? (Reader Forum)

Building out a wireless network is expensive, and most of the CAPEX is related to the radio access network (RAN) segment, reaching as high as 80% of total network cost.  For decades, operators have been “locked in” to legacy RAN vendors, like Huawei, Ericsson and...

How Open RAN can drive 5G forward

This trend of disaggregation, virtualization and commoditization has implications beyond just Open RAN. 5G was intentionally designed to be flexible and adaptable. As such, the networks have to mirror that as does the way services are developed and deployed.  “If you really want to deliver...

The 3 consortia fostering the Open RAN ecosystem

Open RAN Policy Coalition In May this year, the Open RAN Policy Coalition was established to advocate for “vendor choice and flexibility in next-generation network deployments,” as Executive Director Diane Rinaldo put it at the time. This is necessary, she said, “from a security and...

5 Open RAN terms to know

Like most things telecom, Open RAN brings with it a complex alphabet soup of acronyms and initialisms. Here we’re providing brief explanations of some key terminology. And, to be sure, this is a superficial description of the following terms and a fraction of the...

DoCoMo, NEC, expand multi-vendor interop with new 5G base stations

  Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo and compatriot firm NEC announced that they have expanded multi-vendor interoperability by interconnecting a new 5G base station baseband unit (5G-CU/DU), developed by NEC and Samsung Electronics and compliant with O-RAN Alliance specifications, with 5G base station remote radio units...

Legacy network support at heart of Mavenir acquisition of ip.access

ip.access brings 2G, 3G support to Mavenir's Open RAN offering Open RAN continues to gain momentum globally, although the primary proof points have been greenfield network builds like Rakuten Mobile's in Japan, which is up and running LTE services, and DISH's under construction 5G standalone...

What are the perceived downsides of Open RAN?

While the benefits of Open RAN (advantageous network economics and deployment flexibility chief among them) are widely touted, there are also well-articulated issues associated with the technology. One question is whether operators are trading reduced capex related to RAN infrastructure for increased integration costs as someone...

Breaking down the pros of Open RAN

Let’s frame the Open RAN value proposition to better understand the benefits of disaggregating radio hardware and software, trading single-purpose equipment for general-purpose hardware and moving vital network functions into the cloud. First and foremost, network economics need to change; for 5G, and LTE,...

Editorial Webinar: Is Open RAN Key to the 5G Future?

The true benefits of 5G will be realized with massive scale, something that operators will have to pay mightily to achieve. In carrier-led effort to shift network economics in their favor, the open RAN ecosystem has flourished in recent years and is poised for...

AT&T and Verizon call out scale, maturity and integration as Open RAN challenges

Last week the U.S. Federal Communications Commission brought together a variety of Open RAN stakeholders for its Forum on 5G Open Radio Access Networks. While greenfield operators like DISH and Rakuten Mobile seemed steadfast in their conviction that Open RAN was ready to go...

Xilinx takes on Open RAN with telco accelerator card for O-DUs and vBBUs

Xilinx previously tapped by Telefónica in its push for massive Open RAN deployments This week San Jose-based Xilinx announced it's shipping a T1 Telco Accelerator Card designed for 5G Open RAN networks with a specific focus on simplifying Open RAN fronthaul termination at an open...

Telefónica CTIO calls Open RAN a ‘necessity;’ signs MoU with Rakuten Mobile

Partnership includes Open RAN and a drive toward advanced network automation As it continues to pursue integration of Open RAN technologies into its multi-national network footprint, Telefónica Global CTIO Enrique Blanco and Rakuten Mobile CTO and CAO Tareq Amin discussed a newly announced partnership that...

The promise and pitfalls of Open RAN (Reader Forum)

It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention. But it should not mean intervention. Such is potentially the case with the proposed effort called Open RAN or O-RAN, which offers software solutions to telecommunication networks but shouldn’t be considered a panacea to relieve...

Qualcomm as the ‘engine’ of Open RAN base stations

Speaking during IFA, Qualcomm President discusses the company's role in the RAN Open RAN is having a big impact on the telecom space with major operators around the world embracing disaggregation of radio access network (RAN) hardware and software. The idea is to give operators...

Vodafone UK turns on OpenRAN 4G site with support from Mavenir

The OpenRAN 4G site will extend mobile services to rural communities Vodafone UK has switched on an OpenRAN 4G site around the Royal Welsh Showground in Powys, Wales with support from Mavenir. The plan is to use OpenRAN to more cost-effectively extend 4G services to...

Vodafone UK sees Open RAN as a way to ‘close the digital divide’

Mavenir worked with Vodafone UK to bring Open RAN site in Wales on-air Vodafone has made clear it expects Open RAN technologies to play a big role across its multi-national network footprint. In its U.K. market, the operator recently said it has brought live a...

Open RAN 101–Role of CI/CD approach for RAN automation: Why, what, how, when? (Reader Forum)

History The DevOps movement inspired large, enterprise organizations with agile practices to allow developers to make quick changes, but it was very difficult to get full benefit, as their legacy development process was not designed for supporting short software development delivery cycles and frequent production...

Improving indoor connectivity with Open RAN (Reader Forum)

In recent months, the telecommunications industry has been abuzz with news about various initiatives related to Open RAN. Essentially, Open RAN refers to open and interoperable interfaces within and between the various subcomponents of the RAN: the radio, hardware, or baseband unit and software....