After a pilot last autumn, the two expanded the project into rural areas, including integrated vRAN tech for 2G
After the first 4G call made on a shared Open RAN in Romania last October, Orange and Vodafone extended the trial into rural areas.
This includes fully integrated 2G virtualized RAN (vRAN) technology, which the two say is “an international first over a shared operational RAN.
The parties claim this is an important step towards migrating RANs to the cloud, with the eventual possibility of moving their entire traditional network to vRANs, spanning 2G, 4G/5G networks. This is in line with European requirements, especially where 3G networks have been closed down or about to be.
Virtualising 2G networks means operators would no longer need to run legacy 2G networks on specialised hardware and could operate virtualised 4G/5G networks as an overlay.
Power of partners
Orange and Vodafone worked with partners on this project. Samsung provided its vRAN software, supporting–2G, 4G and 5G with its O-RAN compliant radios. Wind River contributed the abstraction layer through Studio Cloud Platform on top of the hardware to deploy and scale the RAN software. Dell Technologies supplied Dell PowerEdge servers with Intel processors and acceleration cards.
Through the project both operators say they gained operational experience in managing an active Open RAN network used in real operating conditions, increasing their confidence in the maturity of virtualised networks. It has also enabled them to compare Open RAN and traditional RAN networks and demonstrate similar performance.
Real-life experience
The use of Open RAN in a real environment has allowed both operators to benefit from the advantages offered by this solution, such as a high degree of automation and reduced implementation time. Open RAN technology decouples software functionalities from hardware, enabling remote modernization of mobile base stations with new features and services, faster and more cost-effectively.
RAN sharing also gives operators more freedom and autonomy in managing their own virtualised RAN software on a common cloud infrastructure, while sharing network operating costs.
This approach also results in fewer site visits due to greater network automation although operators can still differentiate their services but with reduced maintaining cost and energy costs.
Important step
Marius Maican, Technology Director at Orange Romania, stated, “This first development of an operational Open RAN network in Romania represents an important step for Orange in its transition to more agile and automated, cloud-native networks. Orange will leverage this successful pilot to develop a center of expertise in Romania in the near future, to support large-scale Open RAN implementations across the Orange network in Europe in the coming years.”
Nicolae Vilceanu, Network Director at Vodafone Romania, said, “With focus on customer experience we are leveraging on the Open RAN momentum to move to cloud-native networks. Open RAN fosters faster innovation and development of new features and services by allowing multiple vendors to develop in the RAN space.
“This enables telecommunications operators to maintain a competitive edge and provide their customers advanced solutions. We are happy to join the Open RAN partners forces for taking further the developments, for a future proof digital society.”
Both operators reinforce their commitment to future Open RAN implementation through this announcement, they state. They are also looking at the possibility of infrastructure sharing in Africa.