BROWSING: Open RAN

FCC cuts off Universal Service Fund money to buy and maintain US networks that use Chinese kit It's been a long time coming but, despite the protracted journey, reaching the destination still stings for the small and rural domestic mobile network operators that use network...

History The entire telecom industry is going through a dramatic change that can be only compared to the change that data centers went through in the 2000s, all driven by Moore’s Law. This is driving the need to move from costly, proprietary RAN solutions to...

Inland using Parallel Wireless RRHs connected to virtualized baseband running on Dell EMC servers Open radio access network technologies, which disaggregate hardware from software potentially creating a cost benefit to operators, have been discussed as a potential solution for smaller U.S. operators looking to move...

Open RAN, as the name implies, is meant to be open to multiple vendors, both hardware and software, that work together to achieve interoperability in accordance with an operator's needs. But as incumbent radio vendors like Nokia throw out terms like "open but integrated,"...

The arrival of RAN disaggregation and the corresponding standards for open interfaces, hardware, software decoupling, network intelligence and automation has led to the expansion of a diverse ecosystem of RAN component players, specifically Radio Unit (RU) vendors. While this ecosystem allows operators to pick...

In my last article in this “Who Disaggregated My RAN?” blog series, we covered the advances made by the O-RAN Alliance to deliver an open Fronthaul specification that supports multiple ways in which the base station will connect to the radio and ensures interoperability...

Nokia exec says open RAN marked by both merit and hype Nokia and AT&T today announced a successful trial of a Radio Intelligent Controller (RIC) on the carrier's millimeter wave 5G network in New York City. Nokia's Sandro Tavares, global head of mobile networks marketing,...

As we saw in the last article in this blog series, the disaggregation of the RAN has opened up a number of new and exciting opportunities for a larger ecosystem to grow and thrive. But nowhere has the momentum been felt more than in...

Open RAN vendors organizing to have radios ready to replace rural Huawei kit The open RAN hits keep on coming with key players Altiostar and Mavenir this morning they will work together with equipment OEMs to develop radio units compatible with the frequency bands used...

  New Japanese market entrant Rakuten Mobile, a subsidiary of e-commerce giant Rakuten, is having talks with several governments around the world regarding the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP), Tareq Amin, representative director, EVP and CTO of Rakuten Mobile, said in a recent press conference. “It’s been...

In my first blog in this new Who Disaggregated My RAN? series, “How it All Falls in Place,” I provided the background that led to the industry’s push for the adoption of an open and disaggregated RAN.  Based on my engagements with the entire ecosystem...

Network operators  worldwide are turning to open radio access network (O-RAN) architectures in an effort to simplify 5G RAN deployment and management, allowing more efficient scalability to meet rising data demands. With the recent formation of the Open RAN Policy Coalition, and a liaison...

Open RAN movement latest front in larger geopolitical conflict With the benefit of hindsight, the 5G New Radio standard was collaboratively developed by organizations like 3GPP with a broad goal of creating a single standard rather than rehashing GSM vs. CMDA or LTE and WiMax....

Disaggregated RAN: How it all falls in place The promise of 5G is unlocking significant change and sparking the 4th Industrial Revolution, driving use cases such as industrial IoT and improved healthcare, to augmented reality, autonomous vehicles and smart cities. But if 5G is to...

5G is meant to be flexible so its radio access network should be too Nokia is unique compared to its competitors Ericsson and Huawei in that the company has amped up messaging around open RAN generally and, specifically, its role in balancing open, interoperable interfaces...

As Ansel Adams put it, "There's nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept The story of open RAN is nuanced. Beyond the formidable technology piece, geopolitics inform how the ecosystem of open RAN proponents are framing the issue, which is becoming increasingly...

Nokia collaborated with other vendors in Rakuten Mobile's network build Earlier this month the Open RAN Policy Coalition launched with a number of open RAN vendors, naturally, and operator members, including AT&T, DISH, NTT, Telefonica, Verizon and Vodafone. None of the big three RAN vendors--Ericsson,...

Open RAN Policy Coalition launched this week with key operator members In examining the long arc of open radio access networks, the focus of groups like the O-RAN Alliance and Telecom Infra Project has been on developing open standards and interfaces, then proving that technology...

Open RAN group ties COVID-19 pandemic to RAN vendor choice, security and performance A new group of operators and telecom network hardware and software vendors announced today the formation of the Open RAN Policy Coalition. As 5G deployments continue around the world, open RAN has...

Parallel Wireless CEO: "We have an all G world for a long period of time" U.S.-based OpenRAN provider Parallel Wireless this week announced it was selected by the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications to provide cellular systems to extend connectivity into underserved and unserved...

Cisco, Altiostar, WWT creating vRAN hardware/software/services bundle to drive 5G deployment Building a virtualized radio access network built of best-of-breed components made interoperable through the work of groups like the O-RAN Alliance and Telecom Infra Project is seen as a way to drive 5G scale...

Being open to collaborative problem solving accelerates time to innovation, return Open radio access networks are a hot topic in telecom right now with major, multinational operators looking to break out of the big, end-to-end vendor ecosystem potentially in favor of smaller companies working together...

Altiostar, Intel, Xilinx among Telefónica Open RAN providers Ahead of planned Open RAN trials later this year in Brazil, Germany, Spain and the U.K., telecoms giant Telefónica is collaborating with several ecosystem vendors to develop disaggregated radio access network solutions. The group is working off...