Airtel and Orange have joined Vodafone and T-Mobile US as co-chairs of the Telecom Infra Project's OpenRAN Project Group. This is the main industry body developing standard architecture for open mobile radio networks. Along with the new chairs, TIP announced a growing number of trials of open RAN architecture and progress in bringing new hardware to the market.
The update was provided at the TIP Insights conference, during which the industry group also announced a new Fixed Broadband project group and progress with its Wi-Fi and open transport projects. The open RAN efforts have attracted the most activity, supported by political pressure in countries such as the US, UK and Germany to develop greater diversity in mobile network suppliers and less reliance on Chinese companies.
Since May, the TIP Exchange for open RAN hardware has grown to 42 listings, including products across the RU, DU/CU, indoor small cell and outdoor macro subgroups, and more products are in different stages of testing and validation, TIP said. Several more operators have started open RAN trials in recent months as well, such as Telecom Egypt, Orange France, Telkomsel and XL Axiata in Indonesia, Italy's TIM, Celcom in Malaysia, Russian operator MTS, Sri Lanka's Dialog, Turk Telecom and BT.
All six OpenRAN subgroups have been developing the Release 2.0 Roadmaps and Requirement Documents, incorporating feedback and input received from service providers and technology suppliers in the Project Group. The requirement documents for RU, DU/CU, RIA and ROMA will be published within their respective subgroups by December, TIP said.
