Vodafone has kicked-off the installation of OpenRAN equipment for 2,500 sites across Wales and South West of England. Starting in Devon, OpenRAN technology will be used to replace legacy Huawei technology across 2,500 mobile sites in Wales and the South West of England. This will be a multi-year phased delivery, enabling Vodafone to remove all high-risk vendor (HRV) technology from the radio access network within government timelines.
Over several years, Vodafone has been working with the industry to evolve how equipment is designed and has made several proof-of-concept deployments to trial the technology. After validating the technology in lab environments, Vodafone installed OpenRAN in rural locations, before beginning a multi-site deployment project in Torquay and Exmouth. Each development stage was designed to test technology in increasingly complex scenarios.
The key performance indicators (KPIs) now demonstrate that the performance of OpenRAN exceeds that of legacy equipment in the majority of areas, including 4G and 5G call success rate, as well as download and upload speeds across multiple spectrum frequencies.
Vodafone is now able to commence the removal of HRV technology from the network without compromising customer experience.
Furthermore, due to the embedded interoperability of OpenRAN, Vodafone can explore how working with specialist companies can introduce novel ways of enhancing the customer experience (that would otherwise not have been possible).
Andrea Dona, chief network officer, Vodafone UK, says, “The rapid innovation we have seen in the OpenRAN ecosystem is truly remarkable. The industry only started working on this concept in 2016 in earnest, so to see KPIs align to traditional technology is a testament to the work which has been done.
“Vodafone has been at the forefront of the OpenRAN ecosystem since Day One. OpenRAN is a central pillar to our network strategy for numerous reasons. Most importantly, we see this as a vehicle for transformation, opening doors that would otherwise have been closed.” adds Dona.
John Whittingdale, minister of state for media and data, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, says, “The UK government is determined to strengthen the security and resilience of vital network infrastructure by protecting technology critical to the future digital economy and boosting competition and creativity within the telecom supply chain.”
“This is an important step in doing just that these deployments from Vodafone across Wales and the South-West of England are supporting the UK’s vision for a more open and innovative 5G market.”
OpenRAN is a critical component of Vodafone’s network strategy. OpenRAN can add greater resilience to Vodafone’s supply chain by lowering the barriers to entry for alternative suppliers. This additional competition will also act as a catalyst for improvement, allowing for suppliers to develop in niche areas as opposed to providing complete ‘turnkey’ solutions.
Vodafone’s OpenRAN programme is supporting by various partners, including:
- Samsung: 4G and 5G radio, including 64T64R massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output), as well as the software platform.
- Intel: General purpose processor (GPP), acceleration hardware and network interface cards.
- Keysight: Drive test services using Keysight Nemo Solutions to assure the OpenRAN end-to-end live network performance. Pre-deployment OpenRAN functional and interoperability testing using Keysight Open RAN Architect (KORA) solutions.
- Dell Technologies: Dell PowerEdge servers designed for cloud-based OpenRAN workloads.
- Capgemini: Testing partner in Vodafone labs.
- Wind River: Cloud network platforms (also known as abstraction layer software).
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