AT&T says this is the ‘next milestone’ in its Open RAN journey
AT&T says that it has commercial traffic running on Ericsson Cloud RAN sites in its 5G network.
The first cloud RAN sites are located south of Dallas, Texas, the carrier added. AT&T and Ericsson said that they have migrated one C-Band frequency band, 3.7 GHz, to cloud RAN infrastructure.
AT&T also touted the completion of its first virtualized RAN call, and said that the configuration used for that call has been deployed in its network and that “third-party vendors will be able to use this configuration for Open RAN in the future.”
AT&T announced in December 2023 that it is planning to spend roughly $14 billion over the next five years to shift 70% of its network traffic onto open and interoperable platforms, with the foundation provided by Ericsson. AT&T said at the time of that announcement that it expected to have fully integrated Open RAN sites up and running in 2024, working with both Ericsson and Fujitsu. It plans to start scaling in 2025 and by late 2026, it wants 70% of network traffic to be flowing over “open-capable” platforms.
“This is the next milestone in AT&T’s Open RAN journey. By moving traffic to cloud RAN sites, we’re accelerating our C-band deployment and continuing to virtualize our network,” said Chris Sambar, AT&T’s head of network. “The open network future is coming fast and we’re looking forward to seeing the innovation that it brings for our customers.”
The carrier said that moving to cloud RAN enables AT&T to “deliver and secure data in the most cost effective way possible while also creating an open environment for developers to create new apps and services.”
Fredrik Jejdling, EVP and head of networks at Ericsson, said that the progress on Ericsson Cloud RAN “shows our commitment to supporting [AT&T’s] Open RAN ambition.”