Open RAN deployments seeing traction is rural markets
Parallel Wireless on July 16 announced it is working with multi-national carrier Orange to use its disaggregated Open RAN technology to expand coverage in the operator’s Central African Republic network footprint. In addition to the coverage boost, Orange is looking to grow its 700,000 subscriber base.
While a good deal of Open RAN discussion is focused on its role in ongoing 5G deployment, one of the fundamental aspects of the technology, as it’s described by the Telecom Infra Project, is a unified infrastructure and software stacks for 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G. This is key in developing markets like Central African Republic where only 48% of the population having unique subscriptions.
Orange’s CTIO for the Middle East and Africa Hervé Suquet said the goal is to leverage Open RAN and virtualization to create new service opportunities. “Orange RCA will provide to rural populations the full range of services (voice, data and Orange Money), already provided in urban areas. Being able to run 2G and 3G on the same system today and, as our customers upgrade their devices to 4G in the future, seamlessly upgrade to 4G will help us not only extend our initial investment, but also bring new services much faster. Parallel Wireless is a well-known Open RAN player, and together with the deployment and managed services expertise from i engineering Group, they have become true strategic partners and the key enablers in us undertaking this unique network modernization.”
The viability of Open RAN in rural settings is a hot topic in the United States with numerous rural operators facing a government-ordered rip-and-replace of Huawei equipment. Via the Open RAN Policy Coalition relevant vendors are looking for lawmakers to require a certain percentage of rip-and-replace subsidy to go to their ecosystem of players, including Parallel. In that context, Parallel has seen success with Inland Cellular.
