They say it was achieved using fully containerised central unit/distributed unit (CU/DU) and open front haul. Turkcell’s CTO hails “new era”.
Turkcell announced the world’s first OpenRAN vRAN call with fully containerised O-RAN Split 7.2 architecture, in Turkey.
Mavenir’s OpenRAN vRAN is integrated with the Turkcell core within Turkcell’s telco cloud environment. It is the first workload that will go live on Turkcell’s edge cloud.
Mavenir’s OpenRAN vRAN solution centralises baseband processing in cloud-native virtualised and containerised baseband units (vBBUs). It also exploits fronthaul over Ethernet between vBBUs and multiple remote radio units (RRU).
Dual architecture
The Mavenir vRAN architecture and platform supports 4G and 5G new radio non-standalone (NR NSA) and standalone (SA).
The vBBU is split into Central Unit (CU) and Distributed Unit (DU) and features O-RAN standard interfaces.
The point is that the split between the DU and the RRU makes the RAN system more flexible through an efficient interface (explained in this white paper) so it can use Ethernet, and processing power can be concentrated either into data centres or onto edge platforms.
Mavenir says its OpenRAN vRAN supports “a very secure and transparent interface which is based on a single architecture that can accommodate several deployment scenarios”.
Close to customers
“We strongly believe in Turkcell that innovation is the engine that allows us to be very close to our customers and meet their demands,” Gediz Sezgin, CTO at Turkcell (pictured and a former winner of our CTO of the Year Award) stated.
He added, “Now with OpenRAN, we are entering a new era that offers us new ways of deploying Radio Networks and create a real distributed 5G network to fulfill the expectations that the industry has.
“We are pleased to pioneer this technology with Mavenir by realizing world’s first containerized implementation with a truly open architecture using a mix and match of Open FH supported RRU and CU/DU which reflects the true sense of Open RAN.”
Boost ecosystem
Mikael Rylander, Mavenir’s SVP/GM Radio Access Products. The standard O-RAN 7.2 interface will enable and boost the OpenRAN ecosystem significantly by allowing many RRU vendors to be deployed and to have very effective solutions in all possible frequency bands with great deployment flexibility and with automation and remote operations”.
Turkcell is also transforming its LTE and 5G voice network into 100% virtual infrastructures. Mavenir was selected by Turkcell to deploy its cloud-native, NFV-based IMS solution, in Turkcell’s home country Turkey and other subsidiaries.
Mavenir’s Virtualized IMS (vIMS) solution is designed to fully support LTE use cases and evolve into a fully web-scale platform that can meet the requirements enabling Turkcell to continue to lead the evolution to its 5G networks.