o2 Telefónica has implemented Ericsson Cloud RAN at the first of a what will eventually be eight mobile phone masts in the Offenbach area in Germany
BARCELONA–During Mobile World Congress 2025, Ericsson announced that a deployment by o2 Telefónica has marked the world’s first implementation of Ericsson Cloud RAN (Radio Access Network) in a commercial 5G standalone (SA) network. The telco is now using this technology at the first of what will eventually be eight mobile phone masts in Offenbach, Germany.
In preparation for this achievement, o2 Telefónica installed Ericsson’s traditional RAN technology with 5G and 4G/LTE at the Offenbach mobile network sites in 2024. Then, network technicians replaced the this 5G technology with the new Cloud RAN technology.
“We are working on our network of the future that combines the advantages of cloud, automation and virtualization to offer our customers the best experience,” commented Mallik Rao, chief technology & enterprise officer at o2 Telefónica, in a press release. “One building block for this is Cloud RAN technology, which we want to further advance to market maturity together with Ericsson. The separation of hardware and software will enable us to be more flexible in the future when operating and expanding our network. In addition to leaner network architectures, we can install updates at the click of a mouse, so that customers and companies always benefit from the latest 5G functions.”
RCR Wireless News met up with The Head of Solution Line Cloud & Common within Ericsson’s Core Network team Joao Monteiro Soares who said that the full vision of cloud-native networks where the hardware and software is decoupled but able to work together is still “a pretty heavy lift” for a lot of telcos due to the complexity of managing such a network. But o2 Telefónica, he said, have been at the forefront of this cloud-native push, and with this latest development, are truly testing the cloud operating model. “They are operating sites live during day time with traffic running on top at peak hours… and… it shows that we are at a tipping point for at least parts of the network… the technology is there, so now it’s about us getting to the entire operational machine — how we vendors get [the products] to the operators [and] how we help the them operate the network,” he continued.
According to Ericsson, the introduction of Cloud RAN will deliver better scalability to dynamically adjust resources, centralized control to more easily and quickly carry out software updates and maintenance, faster market launch of new services and the option to offer more tailored network resources for business customers.
